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PurposeAlthough past research has looked into myriad consequences of workplace incivility, little attention has been paid to the effects of supervisor incivility (SI) on employees’ sense of vitality and their discretionary work effort (DWE). Moreover, the mechanisms that drive the harmful effects of SI remain largely unknown. The current study seeks to address these gaps in the literature. In particular, this study aims to examine how SI culminates in decreased DWE.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a cross-sectional survey design, data for this study were gathered from 151 employees of two large companies in the financial services sector of Pakistan. A number of analysis techniques (e.g. confirmatory factor analysis and bootstrapping) were used to analyze the data.FindingsAs predicted, SI was found to be negatively associated both with subordinates’ sense of vitality and DWE while vitality was found to be positively associated with DWE. Findings also indicated that one way in which SI negatively affects subordinates’ DWE is by decreasing their sense of vitality.Practical implicationsThis study offers several useful implications for management practice in relation to preventing SI and mitigating its effects and bolstering employees’ sense of vitality.Originality/valueTo the best of the knowledge, this study is the first to unpack the relationship dynamics of SI, vitality and DWE, and to introduce a mechanism by which SI translates into reduced DWE.

Burgeoning research on workplace dignity has captured the interest of organizational-behavior scholars. However, research to date has either focused on the conditions that contribute to workplace dignity or how individuals experience and respond both to dignity and dignity threats. Little is known about the psychological and behavioral consequences of dignity in the workplace. Building on the resource caravans principle of conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study attempts to bridge this gap and investigates ‘how’ employees’ perceptions of workplace dignity might affect their discretionary work effort. Two-wave survey data were collected from 180 employees in the development sector organizations in Pakistan and the bootstrap mediation analysis using PROCESS macro was performed to test the hypothesis. Whilst workplace dignity, organization-based self-esteem, and discretionary work effort were found to be positively associated with each other, organization-based self-esteem mediated the workplace dignity–discretionary work effort relationship. More specifically, workplace dignity positively predicted discretionary work effort through increasing organization-based self-esteem. As a pioneering study examining how workplace dignity affects discretionary work effort, this research not only advances the relevant literature, but also lends credence to COR theory’s relatively less scrutinized resource caravans principle. Implications for theory, research, management practice, and strategic human resource management are also discussed.

PurposeUsing the lens of conservation of resources (COR) theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of humble leadership on project success by integrating the mediating role of goal clarity. The authors also argue that organizational culture moderates these direct and indirect relationships through goal clarity.Design/methodology/approachTime-lagged data were collected from 329 employees in the civil construction sector of Pakistan.FindingsThe results indicate that humble leadership enhances project success through mediating and moderating mechanisms.Research limitations/implicationsThe present research ends with an argument, managerial consequences, limits and guidance for future research.Practical implicationsThe results influence a project-based organization on the selection and promotion of humility among project managers.Originality/valueThis research answers the following research question, which has been ignored in the literature: What are the suggested mechanisms for humble leadership in promoting project success?

Extant research has shown that experiencing incivility and ostracism can increase the risk of emotional exhaustion, however, lesser is known about the factors that mitigate such risk. Framed through the conservation of resources theory, this study identifies and tests the hitherto unexplored moderating role of self-compassion in the relationships between workplace incivility and emotional exhaustion, and workplace ostracism and emotional exhaustion. A total of 310 employees working in the service-sector organizations (higher education institutions, banks, and telecom companies) in Pakistan participated in this cross-sectional study. While workplace incivility and workplace ostracism were positively correlated with emotional exhaustion, self-compassion was negatively correlated with workplace incivility, workplace ostracism, and emotional exhaustion. Results further revealed that self-compassion moderated the workplace incivility–emotional exhaustion and workplace ostracism–emotional exhaustion relationships such that people high in self-compassion felt less emotionally exhausted. The findings indicate that there is potential value in developing self-compassion, for which a number of interventions are discussed.

Purpose Despite the existence of a vast body of research on entrepreneurship, little is known about why some entrepreneurs are able to generate and realize more business ideas than others. This study aims to present a prospective answer to this question by empirically examining the relationships among human capital outcomes (entrepreneurial knowledge and skills) and the number of business ideas generated and implemented. Additionally, the authors examined the moderating effect of the entrepreneurial self-efficacy on the proposed relationships. Design/methodology/approach A statistical analysis on a sample of 340 Russian entrepreneurs was conducted. Findings The results from the analysis indicated that human capital outcomes (entrepreneurial knowledge and skills) are positively related to the number of generated and implemented ideas. Furthermore, it was seen that entrepreneurial self-efficacy significantly moderates the relationship between human capital outcomes and the number of implemented ideas. However, self-efficacy has no significant moderating effect on the relationships among human capital outcomes and the number of generated ideas. Finally, the results showed that the number of ideas generated mediates the relationships among human capital outcomes and the number of ideas implemented. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has investigated the combination of such variables as entrepreneurial human capital outcomes, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the number of new business ideas. This paper investigates this gap in the literature with an empirical analysis of the relations between the mentioned variables based on data collected from Russian entrepreneurs.

In community emergency management, it is crucial to generate evacuation task plans (ETPs) to help reduce risks in complex disaster situations. Case-driven and model-driven approaches have their respective advantages in generating ETPs, which can complement each other. With case-driven approach, historical experience can be fully used to establish the relationship between typhoon scenarios and historical ETPs. Through model-driven approach, the continuity of ETPs can be guaranteed when required information to operate the plans is missing. This study aims at proposing an integrated approach that can combine the benefits of both case-driven approaches and model-driven approaches. Based on the structural modeling of evacuation tasks, this paper proposes an integrated approach to generate ETPs for community typhoon emergencies. Finally, a case that is based on actual problems is provided to verify the reasonability and effectiveness of the proposed method.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether, how, and when trait emotional intelligence (EI) influences the relationships between operational stress and decision-making styles for personnel working in highly stressful professions. Data for this study were collected via a cross-sectional and voluntary survey from a sample of 268 professionals (doctors = 60, paramedics = 99, police = 50 and personnel from paramilitary troops = 59) who frequently encounter emergencies as a part of their jobs. Hierarchical regression analysis and PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test hypotheses. Results indicated that EI significantly moderated the relationships between: i) operational stress and rational decision-making, and ii) operational stress and intuitive decision-making such that the relationship of operational stress with rational and intuitive decision styles was significantly positive when EI was high and significantly negative when EI was low. EI also moderated the relationships between: i) operational stress and dependent style and ii) operational stress and avoidant style such that these relationships were positive when EI was low, and negative when EI was high. Along with its theoretical contributions, this study offers several implications for practice that are discussed at the end.

Drawing on affective events theory (AET) and workplace incivility spiral, this study tested a conditional process model to explain, when and how, affective workplace events (workplace ostracism and workplace incivility) affect employees’ emotions and work effort. Data for this cross-sectional study were collected via an online survey from 251 employees at three public sector universities in Quetta, Pakistan. Results indicated that both ostracism and incivility encumber work effort, and that one way via which ostracism negatively affects work effort is by provoking targets’ negative affect (NA). Results also revealed that workplace incivility exacerbated positive relationship of ostracism and NA such that this relationship was stronger when incivility was high and weaker when incivility was low. Moreover, the indirect effects of ostracism on work effort were also contingent on workplace incivility. Practical implications are discussed at the end.

The discrepancy between expected and actual food product features can be an important indicator of food quality and thus may inform consumer decisions. Using mixed method design, this paper explores whether and how expectation discrepancy affects food consumers' quality perception and purchase intentions under food safety risk situation. In the first phase, a qualitative study based on in-depth semi structured interviews (N = 15) was conducted. The interview results revealed that consumers in general responded negatively towards the existence of expectation discrepancies as it led to poor perceived food quality. It was further revealed that the discrepancy in expectation dimensions had a stronger effect on consumers’ perceptions as compared to the discrepancy in expectation extent. In the second phase extensive online survey (N = 2172), it was confirmed that expectation discrepancy had significantly affected quality perceptions and purchase intentions. Moreover, perceived quality played a mediating role between expectation discrepancy and purchase intentions. In addition, expectation proportion (measured with the importance of specific food feature) was shown to strengthen (moderate) the impact of expectation discrepancy. Furthermore, the effects of expectation discrepancy were stronger for high-risk food (versus low risk food). The current paper shows that the effects of expectation discrepancy play a highly significant role in forming perceptions about food safety, therefore, precise marketing strategies can be made by clustering consumers according to the expectation proportions.

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate the determinates of Korean students in China to use e-government services. A total of 400 structured research questionnaire instruments was designed and administered to potential respondents of which 93.75% responded. The Technology Acceptance Mode (TAM) was used as a theoretical framework for this study. The data gathered was analyzed with SPSS version 20. The results show that all the predictors (Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Service Quality, and Citizen Trust) investigated are significant positive determiners of Korean students' intention to adopt and use e-government services. The results further indicated that Citizen Trust positively and significantly moderated the positive relationship between perceived ease of use, perceived service quality and intention to use e-government services but failed to show any positive moderation effect on perceived usefulness and intention to use e-government services. The implications of these findings are further discussed.

The precise classification of community service cases is the most fundamental aspect of intelligent community service systems. However, data imbalance makes it challenging to achieve the desired level of precise classification. Existing transfer learning methods use open Internet knowledge for identifying case features and mining potential feature relations. However, community service cases have the characteristics such as short text length and non-public content, which restrict the transfer learning modes. In this paper, a cross-region transfer learning method is proposed to solve the classification problem of cases with small datasets in data imbalance situation while considering the perspective of regional cooperation. First, an ontology modeling method is applied to standardize the case features, reducing the effect of semantic ambiguity on transfer results. Secondly, to improve the effectiveness of source domain classification, this paper utilizes an extended marginal fisher analysis where the distance is measured by the inner product between data. Next, the mapping matrix from target domain to source domain is learned through domain adaptation. Finally, the method is verified based on the empirical data from Lanzhou and Beidaihe in China. Experimental results on classifiers show the proposed method helps regions to improve case classification rates significantly through knowledge complementation. The proposed approach can be followed to build case-based community service systems of reasonable accuracy and limited sample sizes.

The purpose of this study was to empirically explore whether or not the level of emotional intelligence of adolescents mitigates the potential adverse effects of the fear of terror on their psychological well-being. Data for this study were collected through a voluntary survey from a sample of 385 adolescents residing in the terrorism-affected provinces of Pakistan: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan. The results from the structural equation modeling revealed that fear of terrorism had a significant negative relationship with the psychological well-being of adolescents. The study results further revealed that emotional intelligence significantly moderated the relationship between the fear of terrorism and the psychological well-being of the adolescents. Therefore, the negative relationship was stronger for those with low emotional intelligence and weaker for those with high emotional intelligence. This study also discusses several practical implications along with suggestions for future research.

This study explores the relationship between the different dimensions of psychological empowerment and the level of work effort exerted by the employees. It also focuses on the cultural differences between the two diversified Asian nations of China and Pakistan regarding the variables under consideration. Furthermore, the gender differences within these two cultures are also analyzed. The results from a sample of 212 employees from China and 216 employees from Pakistan showed that the dimension of meaning and impact were positively related to work effort while the dimensions of competence and self-determination had not significant relation with work effort for Chinese sample. Whereas the dimensions of meaning, competence and impact had positive significant relation with work effort but the dimension of self-determination was not significantly related to work effort for Pakistani sample. The results also showed that the Chinese employees on average scored higher on all the variables under consideration as compared to Pakistani employees. No gender differences were found for Chinese sample whereas significant gender differences existed for Pakistani sample.