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The paper aims to clarify the relationship between exploitative leadership (EL) and organizational cynicism (OC). Besides, it aims also to examine the mediating role of emotional exhaustion (EE) underpinning this relation.

The data were collected by a questionnaire from 491 employees, who work in four telecom firms.

The paper provides empirical insights about how EL influenced OC; it suggested that EE fully mediated the positive relationship between EL and OC.

To the author’s knowledge, it is the first study to address the relationship between exploitative leadership and organizational cynicism. In addition, it is the first one to explore the mediating mechanism of emotional exhaustion underpinning this relation.

The study was designed to generate and test a model of employee cynicism toward organizational change from the communication perspective in a higher education institution.

Using the theoretical framework of social information processing (SIP), the study investigated the communication processes in the social context, which contributed to employee cynicism toward organizational change in the higher education setting. Path analysis was used to test the overall model fit.

The findings suggest that the three variables, perceived quality of information, cynicism of colleagues, and trust in the administration, predict change‐specific cynicism, which, in turn, lead to intention to resist change.

As an initial attempt to explain employee cynicism toward organizational change in higher education settings, this model inevitably has loose ends. Further research is needed to expand the model from a communication perspective.

The research provided administrators with strategies and advices to cope with employee cynicism during organizational change.

This is the first known study to examine the concept of change‐specific cynicism within the theoretical framework of SIP. It points to a new direction which warrants the attention of communication scholars.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Increased globalization and constant advances in technology ensure that the business environment has become tougher to operate in than ever before. Firms must constantly evolve to remain competitive. If that was not enough, many have enemies within to contend with. Evidence suggests the cynicism is among the most serious of these challenges. The problem is becoming so widespread that it has been referred to as the organizational equivalent of cancer. Various definitions of cynicism have been forwarded.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Traditional approaches to organizational change are of little use in the bid for increased innovation as they reinforce top‐down predictability. An alternative approach is through the creation of pockets of good practice which act as role models of change. These pockets need to be subversive of existing practices but simultaneously deliver organizational success criteria. The success of this approach is dependent upon managers developing a critical perspective about organizational control systems. Contrary to received wisdom the foundation for this critical perspective may be most usefully developed from the manager’s own cynical experience of organizational life. In building this critical perspective management development may begin to fulfil a wider educational role in society.

Psychological contract violation has gained the attention of both practitioners and academics in recent years. Critical commentaries have questioned whether breaching such a contract has implications for employee attitude and behaviour, and ultimately organisational performance. This paper addresses the question “To what extent does psychological contract breach impact on employee attitude and behaviour?”. The study is based on an industrial textiles company and draws on quantitative and qualitative data. The findings suggested that triggers of violation impinged on employee attitudes but not on behaviour, trends substantiated by analysis of the organisation's absenteeism records. The qualitative data helped explain this trend and have highlighted two contextual issues. The first of these is labour market conditions and perceptions of job insecurity and second of these is a sense of collegiality and pride in the job.

In an era of global economic expansion, the harsh underside of capitalism clearly affects human subjectivities and consciousness.¹ Emotions, which both express and structure subjectivity and consciousness, reflect and manifest the social reality of human life in its various globalized dimensions. My argument in this chapter thus concerns the ways in which the contradictions as the harsh underside of capitalism affect the subjectivities of racial minorities. For this reason, the relationship between emotions and commodity capitalism is an especially pressing concern for the formation and expression of racial identity in the United States today. To understand the social reality of race in the U.S. capitalist system is to take seriously the affects that express and constitute the critical social thought of racial minorities. As African Americanist scholars such as Cornel West (1994, p. 42) have argued, the ideology of unregulated capital in corporate consumerism creates market moralities and market mentalities that “erode civil society.” The critical thought of black Americans, West (1992, p. 42) avers, suffers irreparable damage by images that relentlessly commercialize the so-called good life:These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others – and thereby edge out nonmarket values – love, care, service to others – handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America.Corporations thus capitalize on civil rights gains while commodifying the activist politics of communities and governmental organizations. In effect, the “status quo” of government that promotes economic justice and civil rights protections is fragmented and replaced by corporate domination and the rule of the free market. Instead of turning to non-commercial avenues of civil society to change oppressive relations of power, Americans opt for consuming social change in a laissez-faire economy that equates individualism and free choice with purchasing merchandise. In her powerful critique of class privilege and consumption-based individualism, Bell Hooks (2000, p. 81) explains how the media's use of race to promote a “shared culture of consumerism” vitiates community values and deflects attention from class antagonism. Such consumerism, Hooks maintains, promotes ambitions for lifestyles of conspicuous consumption and celebrity that renders incoherent and undesirable a democratic sensibility that made civil rights gains for women and minorities possible in the first place (Bell Hooks, 2000, p. 77).

This chapter builds on previous research that conceptualized organizational politics as an organizational stressor. After reviewing the studies that integrated the occupational stress literature with the organizational politics literature, it discusses the negative implications of the use of intimidation and pressure by supervisors, implications that have generally been overlooked. Specifically, the chapter presents a conceptual model positing that the use of intimidation and pressure by supervisors creates stress in their subordinates. This stress, in turn, affects subordinates’ well-being, evident in higher levels of job dissatisfaction, job burnout, and turnover intentions. The stress also reduces the effectiveness of the organization, reflected in a high absenteeism rate, poorer task performance, and a decline in organizational citizenship behavior. The model also maintains that individual differences in emotional intelligence and political skill mitigate the stress experienced by subordinates, resulting from the use of intimidation and pressure by their supervisors. In acknowledging the destructive implications of such behavior in terms of employees’ well-being and the productivity of the organization, the chapter raises doubts about the wisdom of using it, and advises supervisors to rethink its use as a motivational tool. Implications of this chapter, as well as future research directions, are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether the organizational spirituality (OS) also called for spiritually-based organization (SBO) concept continues to be, in fact, a source of refreshing ideas to the organizational studies.

Regarding that OS is a theme that does not pertain to the scientific mainstream, the criteria to select valuable work were broader. On this basis, this literature review focused on a set of distinct sources: empirical and theoretical-conceptual papers (i.e. peer-reviewed), books, book chapters and doctoral dissertations. The material should be written in English and matched specifically the terms “spiritually-based organization,” “organizational spirituality” and “spiritual organization” in the websites of prominent scientific publications such as Google Scholar, EBSCO, Emerald, Sage and Elsevier. The premise was to portray an ample overview about what the scientific research has been yielded on this topic covering the period of 23 years (i.e. 1999–2022).

Data revealed that a large portion of the scholarly work of OS has been largely published in journals of modest factor impact or in books/book chapters. Such evidence indicates that OS definitively is not embraced by the scientific mainstream, despite the relevance of this topic. Further, it appears that the study, research and writings about SBOs, despite their positive effects and features, do not draw the attention of the majority of academic community. As a result, this field of knowledge has been characterized by scant work. This conclusion sounds somewhat astonishing considering that companies strongly driven by financial and economic concerns have proved not to be useful to humankind well-being and the planet.

This review sought to concentrate only on scholarly work that could bring something noteworthy to the debate of the OS concept. By the same token, other related concepts such as workplace spirituality and spirituality in the workplace, which have been properly explored, were not approached here. The author surmises that such path may account for somewhat the reduced number of work found about this topic, despite the fact this review drew on Google Scholar as well.

This study aims to explore the moderating role of cynicism about change in the positive relationship between authentic leadership and employee commitment to change.

This study used an exploratory research design with deductive approach to invite responses of doctors, nurses and para medical staff of public sector district hospitals, set to be privatized, on structured close-ended questionnaires. Data gathered from four hospitals chosen because they were undergoing restructuring that facilitated the testing of our propositions were analyzed through structural equation modeling using AMOS. A total of 271 usable responses (response rate of 65 per cent) were analyzed. Interaction and simple slope tests were applied to test moderating effects.

Results indicate that authentic leadership is positively related to commitment to change. Cynicism about change moderated this positive relationship such that a high level of authentic leadership has a stronger impact on commitment to change when cynicism is low rather than when cynicism is high.

Results show that in Pakistani hospitals undergoing restructuring, leaders who use authentic leadership will have followers who are more committed to enacting the planned changes, but this effect is magnified if followers are not cynical about the change. Thus, regulators of public sector hospitals may benefit from this study by developing authenticity in hospital leaders to mitigate cynicism about and enhance their commitment to change.

This study is the first which has explored relationships among cynicism about change, authentic leadership and commitment to change in a privatization context of Pakistan. Findings should be tested in other cultural contexts to determine generalizability.

The aim of this study is to explore the impact of cynicism on the relationship among personality traits, organizational contextual factors and job outcomes. This study set up and examined the overarching model on resistance to change. Moreover, there were two models theoretically presented and investigated, i.e. direct and indirect models. This study was an attempt to explore and capture the causes of organizational cynicism against the change initiative.

A case study research design was used in this study, and data were collected from 335 employees by using purposive sampling technique and structured questionnaire. While linear regression and Baron and Kenny’s (1986) tests were used to evaluate the direct and indirect models.

Results highlighted the considerable positive relationship between dispositional resistance and employee’s turnover intention. Additionally, significant connection was also examined among organizational contextual factors and job outcomes, whereas interactive impact of behavioral resistance was found in the relation among dispositional resistance, organizational contextual factors and employee’s intent to quit. However, another dimension of organizational cynicism, i.e. cognitive resistance, could not influence the direct linear relationship between organizational context and continuance commitment.

Major limitations of this research were non-probability sampling technique, cross-sectional design, single organization and traditional data collection tool.

Management can eradicate cynicism by providing social support and positive information, i.e. job security, wage award, medical benefits and promotion criteria, after implementing change. The management can clarify the objectives of that change by including employees in decision-making, reducing employee’s turnover intention. Organizational cynicism is a faith, which means that the change leaders have lack of integrity; when organizational cynicism mixes with negative cognitive process, it leads to a more destructive behavior against that change.

This study contributed to the extensive knowledge of organizational cynicism. A conceptual model of resistance to change the model was unique in nature. There were rare studies conducted to check the impact of organizational cynicism on privatization, especially in the sub-continent. Therefore, it will add a good contribution in quality literature to understand the cynicism and its consequences for privatization.