Workplace gossip erodes proactive work behavior: anxiety and neuroticism as underlying mechanisms.

PURPOSE: Services organizations highly value proactive employees. Managers are interested in promoting frontline employees' proactive behavior because proactivity is crucial for organizational success. The mechanism of negative workplace gossip on workplace prosocial behavior is unclear. This research investigates the factors hindering this valuable behavior, specifically focusing on negative workplace gossip and employee anxiety, through the lens of the conservation of resources theory. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Data were collected from a sample of 352 female frontline employees across diverse service organizations using a two-wave design. Statistical analyses were conducted using appropriate software (e.g., SPSS, AMOS) to test the hypothesized relationships. FINDINGS: The study's findings reveal that negative workplace gossip reduces employees' proactive work behavior, and anxiety mediates the relationship between NWGS and proactive work behavior. Further, Neuroticism strengthens the relationship between NWGS and anxiety. These results offer a novel perspective on the detrimental consequences of gossip in services sector. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Originality/value While research on negative gossip exists, this study specifically examines its impact on frontline service employees, a crucial but under-studied group in service organizations.

Leader's ethical behavior: A precursor to employees' well-being through emotions management.

Contemporary research in leadership demonstrates that the ethical behaviors of leaders are vital to enhancing employee well-being. Despite this, research is scant on the connection between leaders' ethical practices and the well-being of their employees via employee emotions. Relying on affective events theory, this study, directly and indirectly, examined the relationships between leaders' ethical behaviors and employees' well-being (via employee emotions). Furthermore, it investigated employee core self-evaluations as a substitute for the ethical behaviors of leaders that mitigate the influence of leaders' ethical behaviors. A sample of 398 faculties from 20 public universities in Pakistan was chosen using the simple random sampling approach, and then SPSS Process Macro was applied to the sample. Study results indicate that leaders' ethical behaviors facilitate employees to manage their emotions, and effective management of emotions improves their well-being. The research also revealed that employees' core self-evaluation swapped with the ethical behaviors of leaders. The theoretical model, therefore, confirms the significance of EBOL as a strategic resource and employees' CSE as an interpersonal resource, which accentuates one another to manage employees' emotions and promote their well-being. The study offers practical management ramifications and adds to our understanding of EBOL, employee emotions, and well-being.

Dark triad and knowledge hiding in firms: Mediating role of perceived organizational politics.

Negative behaviors at the workplace always disturb the management of the firms. This research investigates the link between the dark triad and various types of Knowledge hiding (Evasive hiding, Playing dumb, and Rationalized hiding) in firms. In addition, this study explores perceived organizational politics as a mediator. The design of this study is quantitative and positivist. The data were collected in three waves (45 days gap) with a random sampling approach from 383 personnel/staff working in Chinese commercial banking firms. The data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique and Smartpls-4 software. This study confirms that dark-triad has a positive relation with knowledge hiding, except psychopathy and Machiavellianism, which have no significant correlation with playing dumb and evasive hiding, respectively. Perceived organizational politics significantly mediate the association between dark triad personality traits and the types of knowledge hiding. Employees with political skills and a trust-based culture can counter the dark-triad personalities and discourage the knowledge-hiding culture. For effective management of knowledge-hiding issues in firms, codifying implicit and explicit Knowledge and developing knowledge repositories can discourage a knowledge-hiding culture.

Impostor leader and knowledge hiding: Attachment avoidance as underlying mechanism.

Impostorism and knowledge-hiding behaviors negatively impact employees and organizational performance. This study examines the association between impostor leaders and knowledge hiding (evasive hiding, playing dumb, and rationalized hiding). Attachment avoidance is discussed as a mediator between impostor leaders and knowledge-hiding. For quantitative analyses, this study collected the data from 429 individuals with two time lags by sharing the survey instrument link on different organizations' randomly selected official media pages. After obtaining approval from the administrators of these pages, leaders and subordinates from these organizations were asked to participate in the study. The partial least squares structural equation modeling method is employed with Smartpls-4 software for data analyses. The findings indicate that impostor leaders promote knowledge hiding in subordinates. However, impostor leaders highly promote rationalized hiding behavior in subordinates. Attachment avoidance mediates the relationship between the impostor leader and knowledge-hiding behaviors. However, the highest mediation relationship exists between an impostor leader and playing dumb behavior in subordinates. This study strengthens the generalizability of the social exchange theory. The implications mentioned in this study are beneficial in understanding and dealing with the Impostorism and knowledge-hiding phenomena.

Workplace conflicts and knowledge hiding: Mediating role of relational psychological contract breach.

This study explains workplace conflicts (interpersonal and task-related) as antecedents of knowledge-hiding behaviors. Moreover, a relational psychological contract breach is a mediator between workplace conflicts and knowledge-hiding behavior. For empirical evidence, data were collected from research and development institutions in Pakistan. The results confirm the significant association between conflicts and knowledge-hiding behaviors and the mediating role of relational psychological contract breach. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of workplace conflicts (interpersonal conflict and task-related conflict) on knowledge-hiding behaviors (evasive hiding, playing dumb, and rationalized hiding). Besides, a relational psychological contract breach is used as a mediator between workplace conflicts and knowledge-hiding behaviors. By using a simple random sampling technique and time lag strategy, the data were collected from 408 employees working in research and development institutions in Pakistan. For analyses, this study employed partial least squares structural equation modeling statistical technique by using SmartPls-3 software. The results of the study confirm the significant relationship between workplace conflicts and knowledge-hiding behaviors. Relational psychological contract breach also significantly mediates the relationship between conflicts and knowledge-hiding behaviors. However, this study found an insignificant association between interpersonal conflict and evasive knowledge hiding.

Impact of ambient air pollution on outdoor employees' performance: Mediating role of anxiety.

This paper aims to examine the direct and indirect impact of ambient air pollution (AAP) on employees' performance. This study has used cross sectional survey design to collect the data from the outdoor employees of the pharmaceutical industry of Pakistan. The data were collected in time lags from 299. Partial least squares- structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach was applied to analyze the data. The results show that AAP has a significant negative impact on the employees' performance, and anxiety partially mediates the association between AAP and employees' performance. This study reveals that AAP brings anxiety among outdoor employees, which in turn decreases their working performance. The implications, limitations, and future research directions are presented in the last section of this study.

Nexus between financial development, energy consumption, income level, and ecological footprint in CEE countries: do human capital and biocapacity matter?

In recent decades, climate change and environmental pollution have been at the center of global environmental debates. Nowadays, researchers have turned their attention to the linkage between real output and environmental quality and test the environmental Kuznets curve. Majority of the studies focus on a single pollutant aspect and measure the deterioration of the environment through carbon emission (CO2) only. In contrary, the current study uses a comprehensive proxy, ecological footprint, to measure the environmental quality of the sixteen Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). The aim of this paper is to discover the impact of financial development, economic growth, and energy consumption (renewable and non-renewable) on the environment. In addition, for the first time, the current study includes biocapacity and human capital in the growth-energy-environment nexus in the case of CEECs. In doing so, we used annual data of sixteen CEE countries in perspective of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative and cover the period of 1991-2014. For reliable findings, this study focuses on second-generation econometric approaches to check stationarity, cross-sectional dependency, and co-integration among the model parameters. The long-run estimations of the "Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated-co-integration Regression" (DSUR) signify that the effect of economic growth on ecological footprint is not stable and validate N-shaped relationship for cubic functional form between per capita income and ecological footprint (environmental quality). Empirical evidence divulges that financial development and energy use significantly contribute to environmental degradation while renewable energy improves environmental quality by declining ecological footprint significantly. Moreover, the significant effects of biocapacity and human capital are positive and negative on the ecological footprint, respectively. In robustness check through the "Feasible Generalized Least Square" (FGLS) and "Generalized Method of Moment" (GMM) models, we found consistent result. Lastly, the "Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) Panel Causality Test" demonstrates that two-way causal relationship exists between EF and GDP, EF and FD, EF and EU, EF and BC, and EF and HC, while one-way causality is running from RE to EF. This study puts the present scenario of CEE economies in front of the policymakers and suggests that they should consider the vital role of renewable energy and human capital to get sustainability.

Organizational Cronyism as an Antecedent of Ingratiation: Mediating Role of Relational Psychological Contract.

The present study investigates the relatively less explored construct organizational cronyism as an antecedent of employees' ingratiation. Moreover, the role of the relational psychological contract as a mediator between organizational cronyism and ingratiation is also examined. The data were collected from employees working in different ministerial offices, such as the ministry of defense production, human rights, parliamentary affairs, petroleum, and natural resources, in Islamabad, Pakistan. Through a convenience sampling approach, 250 employees provided data for this study. Due to sensitivity and less approachability to these organizations, the convenience sampling technique was used. The data were collected in two waves with 12-week intervals. The results confirm that organizational cronyism is significantly related to the relational psychological contract, which in turn results in employees' ingratiation. The employees who have close ties with their leaders and enjoy extraordinary favors from their leaders, display more compliance behavior as compared to those employees who have distance from their leaders.

Financial development and its moderating role in environmental Kuznets curve: evidence from Pakistan.

The nexus among real income, energy consumption, financial development, and carbon emission has broadly conferred area in energy and environmental literature. However, there is no study in the literature which investigates the moderating role of financial development between real income, energy consumption, and CO2 emission in Pakistan. This study reveals the role of financial development as a moderator in the conventional environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). To achieve the objectives of this study, two approaches are employed, (i) with main effects and (ii) with interaction variables, using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach in the case of Pakistan covering the period 1970 to 2016. Findings of the empirical analysis confirm the EKC hypothesis in the first case (without interaction effect) and our second estimations (with interaction effect) show that financial development significantly moderates the association of real output with CO2 emission (both for the long run and short run). The negative effect of financial development on carbon emission reveals to efficacious energy management with effective environmental performance. More precisely, the results of second estimations reveal that all three interaction variables are statistically significant but the EKC curve is no more. Thus, the current study proposes that the moderating effect of the financial sectors may be the possible reason which has been ignored by prior researchers and they found mix results regarding the existence of EKC in Pakistan. In addition, the Granger causality test confirms the feedback effect between real income and carbon emission and one-way causality from all the three interaction variables and financial development to CO2 emission. Lastly, this study posits some important policy inferences in the perspective of new economic policy formation in Pakistan.

Design Perceptions for 3D Printed Accessories of Digital Devices and Consumer-Based Brand Equity.

Drawn on means-end theory and relationalism, this study investigates the impact of 3D printed branded accessories' design perception on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). In addition, how experiential value mediates the relationship between product design perception and CBBE. Based on a random sampling approach, the present study collected 535 3D printed branded accessories users' responses through social media (WeChat). The data were analyzed through partial least squares, structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach, smart PLS-3. The results reveal that two dimensions of design perception (functional and kinesthetic) have a significant impact on CBBE. However, design perception (visual) has failed to impact significantly on CBBE. The experiential value significantly mediates the relationship between all dimensions (visual, functional, and kinesthetic) of design perception and CBBE. This study concludes that experiential value/user experience is an inevitable mediator between product design perception and CBBE. The implication and limitations of this study are discussed in the last section of this study.

Management practices and performance of mergers and acquisitions in Pakistan: mediating role of psychological contract.

UNLABELLED: The objective of this study is to examine the direct and indirect effect of management practices (procedural justice, coordination approach, communication system, integration strategy, and coping programs) on merger and acquisition (M&A) performance in the Pakistan banking industry. Psychological contract (PC) acts as a mediator between Management practices and M&A performance. The Present study distributes a structured questionnaire to 700 bank employees of different management cadres. The useful response rate is 76 % (536 employees). It uses PLS-SEM technique for data analysis. FINDINGS: (1) procedural justice is a key strategy which has highly significant direct and indirect effect on M&A performance; however integration strategy and the communication system have an only direct effect. (2) PC performs partial mediation at different levels between management practices and M&A financial and non-financial performance. This study provides an effective solution to solve the soft issues during and post-M&A process. This is one of the few studies which effectively integrate the five constructs into a single framework to study their effects on M&A performance. Limitations and future research directions are presented in the last section of the study.