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Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to discuss the application of a multi-level perspective to signaling theory in a recruitment context. Then to discuss how the integration of signaling theory and the social identity approach may provide an improved understanding of the associations between an organization's recruitment activities and applicant attraction outcomes. The paper, first, summarizes the existing research and theoretical developments pertaining to signaling theory, multi-level theory, and the social identity approach. From this literature a theoretical model from which research propositions are developed is suggested. Design/methodology/approach -- This is a literature review, within recruitment contexts, on signaling theory, the association between market signals and applicant attraction outcomes, and the integration of signaling, social identity, and self-categorization theories as a theoretical foundation for research propositions. Findings -- Despite widespread acceptance of signaling theory in recruitment research, surprisingly little is known about the boundary conditions in the association between an organization's recruitment activities and applicant attraction outcomes. Practical implications -- A greater understanding of the application of signaling theory will enable managers to design and administer recruitment activities and processes in order to improve applicant attraction to recruiting organizations. Originality/value -- This paper fills a void in the recruitment literature by integrating signaling theory, social identity theory, and self-categorization theory and providing avenues for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction and evaluate the impact of this relationship on firm performance, specifically the moderating impact of environmental uncertainty on the corporate social responsibility to customer satisfaction relationship.Design/methodology/approach The authors constructed a panel data set by collecting data from Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies and Compustat. The authors used two methods, Newey–West and White–Cluster robust regressions, to estimate the empirical models.Findings The results from this moderating analysis of environmental uncertainty are largely consistent with this study's hypotheses. In particular, the authors find that corporate social responsibility contributes to increased customer satisfaction for large firms, in highly competitive environments and in highly dynamic industries. This paper also finds that in high growth environments, corporate social responsibility can result in decreased customer satisfaction.Research limitations/implications The study is limited to environmental factors in the examination boundary conditions. Researchers should broaden the moderators to include criteria such as market orientation, marketing and/or operations capability.Practical implications The empirical results provide practitioners with insight to better translate corporate social responsibility into higher levels of customer satisfaction.Social implications The empirical results support corporate social responsibility as a viable and productive means of increasing customer satisfaction.Originality/value This study is the first that builds upon the work of Luo and Bhattacharya (2006) and Saeidi et al. (2015) by examining environmental factors that influence the relationship between corporate social responsibility and customer satisfaction. This research provides useful implications for marketing theories as well as business practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of employee psychological empowerment in the leader-member exchange (LMX)-employee voice relationship, and whether role clarity moderated the effect. Design/methodology/approach – A paired questionnaire survey was used to collect data by 295 employees and their supervisors from nine firms in the People’s Republic of China. Findings – The hypothesized moderated mediation model used in this study was supported. Psychological empowerment mediated the positive relationship between LMX and employee voice, and stronger role clarity tends to strengthen this indirect relationship. Originality/value – Few studies have explored the mediating mechanism in the relationship between LMX and employee voice. Based on role theory, this study broadens the research on the LMX-employee voice relationship by introducing employee psychological empowerment as the mediator. This study further explores role clarity as the boundary condition for this indirect relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a viewpoint about the role of cost transparency in consumer markets and whether or not consumers should request cost transparency from sellers, in light of the article by Antonis et al. (2015). Design/methodology/approach – Research in the area of cost transparency, pricing and related theoretical domains is analysed to understand the potential role for buyers and sellers in consumer markets. Findings – Although there are an increasing number of examples of greater operational transparency in supply chains, cost transparency in consumer markets is not widespread. Increased cost transparency represents an important product attribute for consumers, enhancing fairness perceptions and affective evaluations. For sellers, it is a potentially powerful complement to price moves and, through enhancing trust among consumers, can positively influence brand value(s). Research limitations/implications – Operational and cost transparency holds much promise as an emerging area in marketing but research into cost transparency in consumer markets is in its early stages and the limited number of field examples reduces the scope for empirical work. However, using carefully controlled lab experiments, much can be done to understand the generalisability and boundary conditions to its effect. Originality/value – This paper takes a balanced view about value to consumers and the implementation of cost transparency in consumer markets, highlighting key mechanisms through which greater transparency may influence consumer product evaluations and concluding with some caveats in relation to its practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Understanding occupational boundaries is vital in the contemporary economy, in which knowledge-based work is a central feature. The purpose of this paper is to identify and decipher boundary work which affects the cooperation and demarcation between human resource (HR) managers and external organization development (OD) practitioners during organization change processes.Design/methodology/approach Data are based on in-depth interviews with HR managers and external OD practitioners in the Israeli business sector.Findings Encounters between HR managers and external OD practitioners are potentially volatile given mutual experiences of occupational threat. Three distinct patterns of boundary work for negotiating OD-HR jurisdiction are identified. These yield differential occupational and organizational outcomes.Research limitations/implications This study is based on a medium-sized sample of practitioners of HRM and OD in the Israeli business sector. The data focused on one-sided descriptions of occupational relations.Practical implications The findings shed light on boundary work associated with fruitful HRM-OD partnerships. This may greatly advance the success of costly organization change and development interventions which demand the collaboration of both parties. Implications are offered regarding the academic education and practical daily management of both groups of practitioners.Originality/value Despite their growing relevance, empirical investigations of daily HRM-OD interfaces are scarce. This exploratory research addresses this gap in the literature and offers theoretical and practical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper aims to explore how and when a business’ transparency leads to greater willingness to engage in sustainable and responsible consumption by consumers.Design/methodology/approach Data were collected in two studies. Study 1 collected data from 219 consumers in a large shopping mall. Study 2 followed an experimental approach and used data from 327 participants.Findings The current research contributes to theory by hypothesizing and demonstrating when transparency is associated with higher willingness for sustainable and responsible consumption. Critically, the positive benefits of transparency vary according to a business’ future orientation, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and levels of customer involvement.Practical implications An important societal and practical implication of the current research is that business should not be expected to only focus on transparency in isolation but rather also needs to consider levels of perceived future orientation, CSR and levels of customer involvement to strengthen sustainable and responsible behavior effectively.Originality/value This research builds on and extends current knowledge by exploring the key role of business’ transparency in influencing sustainable and responsible customer behavior and examines critical boundary conditions for the observed effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and empirically validate a repertoire of management behaviors associated with the adoption of lean systems, showing how a subset of such behaviors differentiates more advanced lean systems in a specific setting.Design/methodology/approach The study applies regression analysis and non-parametric hypothesis testing to an original data set coming from field research of 26 cases of adoption of lean operations practices.Findings The study: identifies in the lean literature a repertoire of management behaviors that support lean implementations and complement the adoption of lean practices; provides a way to operationalize them; validates this repertoire of behaviors; and shows that a subset of these behaviors is associated with more advanced lean implementations, suggesting the necessity to adopt a situational approach to lean leadership.Research limitations/implications The findings have boundary conditions, defined by the national, industrial, and size context in which the study was conducted.Practical implications The study provides practical guidance for lean system implementation suggesting a repertoire of management behaviors within which firms can identify and validate specific, appropriate subsets of behaviors aligned with the company strategy, culture, size, environment, bundle of lean operation practices adopted, and maturity stage of lean adoption.Originality/value This is the first study to provide quantitative, non-anecdotal evidence of the relationship between specific management behaviors and the successful implementation of lean operations practices. It offers a novel method to operationalize and measure lean management behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This study aims to distinguish two regret conditions, other-blame regret (O-regret) and self-blame regret (S-regret), and investigate the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of the relationship between regret and negative word of mouth (NWOM).Design/methodology/approach Four experiments and one survey study test hypotheses regarding how O-regret and S-regret influence NWOM through mediating mechanism of anger and sadness and how the impact of regret on NWOM is moderated by boundary conditions.Findings The results show that consumers who experience O-regret transmit more NWOM than those who experience S-regret. Anger is a dominant emotion when consumers experience O-regret and mediates the impact of regret on NWOM, and sadness is a dominant emotion when consumers experience S-regret and mediates the impact of regret on NWOM. In addition, purchased price (full vs discount price), regret context (private vs public context) and return policy (strict vs lenient policy) are found to moderate the effect of regret on NWOM.Research limitations/implications This study was conducted in China, which has a unique business environment that may differ from other countries. Therefore, this research opens a new avenue to further examine such a phenomenon in countries where a more lenient return policy is a standard business practice. Cross-nation studies comparing how different return policies and other business environment conditions are warranted in future research.Practical implications The study provides several insights for marketers considering the management of NWOM by understanding consumer O-regret and S-regret in either online or offline retailing situations.Originality/value This paper contributes to the extant literature by distinguishing different outcome regrets. The theoretical conceptualization and empirical findings shed further lights on the relationship between regret and other negative emotions and how O-regret and S-regret lead to different impacts on NWOM through different paths of mediation mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose An increasing number of studies have demonstrated a positive effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on employee organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), but little attention has been paid to the mechanisms and boundary conditions underlying this effect. The purpose of this paper is to propose a trickle-down model and examine the mediating role of supervisor ethical leadership and the moderating role of perceived organizational distributive justice in the CSR-OCB relationship.Design/methodology/approach To test the arguments, the authors collected field data in four companies located in a central city of China. Through a multi-wave data collection design, a total of 187 employees reported their perceptions toward firms’ CSR and organizational justice at Time 1, and reported their direct supervisors’ ethical leadership behaviors, and their own OCBs at Time 2 (four weeks later).Findings Empirical findings demonstrated that CSR had a positive effect on employee OCB, as mediated by supervisors’ ethical leadership. In addition, this mediation effect was found to be moderated by perceived organizational distributive justice such that the mediation relationship was stronger when perceived organizational distributive justice was lower than when it was higher.Originality/value The present study makes three major contributions. First, it contributes to the CSR literature by revealing the underlying mechanism of ethical leadership through which CSR will lead to increased employee OCB in the workplace. Second, the moderation findings of the study add a new piece of empirical evidence suggesting the boundary condition of organizational distributive justice affecting the positive effect of CSR on employee OCB. Finally, the trickle-down theoretical model demonstrates the pivotal role of leadership in transforming CSR into positive employee outcomes, providing valuable insights into future research that examines why CSR motivates in-organization employees at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, by employing the Leggett–Williams fixed point theorem, we study the existence of three solutions in the multi point fractional boundary value problem where 2< α ⩽3 and m ⩾1 are integers, 0< ξ 1 < ξ 2 <⋯< ξ n <1 are constants, λ ∈(0,∞) is a parameter, a i >0 for 1⩽ i ⩽ m and . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]