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The purpose of this paper was to lay the necessary conceptual and empirical groundwork of agape in organizations. Specifically, the authors reviewed literature on agape; advanced formal definition of agape; explained the relationship of agape with related variables; developed a scale to measure agape and provided evidence of its reliability and construct validity; showed how agape uniquely predicted employee outcomes beyond transformational leadership; and showed how agape compensated for the lack of transformational leadership.

The authors conducted a survey with 214 working executives who rated their manager on transformational leadership and agape behaviours, and later indicated their own work attitudes. Next, the authors conducted a 20-min between-subjects vignette experiment with 147 business management students who were provided with a description of a supervisor and asked to indicate their work attitudes under the supervisor.

The authors advanced an operational definition and a scale to measure agape. The findings of this study indicated that agape was a unidimensional construct with high reliability. It had significant positive relationships with followers’ job satisfaction, faith and loyalty, team commitment, satisfaction and risk-taking; explained incremental variance in employee outcomes beyond transformational leadership; and compensated for the lack of transformational leadership.

The present research has the potential to inform recruitment, selection, training, promotion and performance evaluation decisions in organizations.

The authors responded to calls for developing a clear and consistent conceptualization and operationalization of agape for improving scholarly research and leadership training and development.

On Justification: Economies of Worth (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991/2006) was a synthetic and comprehensive parsing of common goods, goods that could and had to be justified in public. In response to Bourdieu’s critical sociology, they rather provided a robust and disciplined sociology of critique, the situated requirements of justification. They refused power and violence as integral to the operability of justification. They emphasized the ways in which conventions of worth afforded coordination, not their constitution of or by domination. They refused to make either capitalism, or the state, into primary motors of social order. Indeed, they refused social sphere, structure, or group as the ground of the good. They emphasized the cognitive capacities of agents. There was no passion, no desire, no bodily affect in these justified worlds. There wasn’t even any account of production of value, of children, or of money. And while they recognized the metaphysical aspect of the good and even used Christianity as a template for one of their cités, they rigorously excluded religion. The theory was designed to analyze moments of controversy, not quiescence or quietude. In his subsequent work, Boltanski aimed to address these absences. In this essay, we examine how Boltanski sought to restore love, violence, religion, production, and institution across five texts: Love and Justice as Competences (1990/2012), The New Spirit of Capitalism, co-authored with Eve Chiapello (1999/2007), The Foetal Condition: A Sociology of Engendering and Abortion (2004/2013), On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation (2009/2011), and La «Collection», Une Forme Neuve du Capitalisme – La Mise en Valeur Economique du Passé et ses Effets (2014) co-authored with Arnaud Esquerre.

The research problem investigated in this paper addresses how love can intentionally be reflected in decision-making processes. The study is built on a theoretical and a practical foundation. The theoretical foundation comprises two parts with perspectives from theology and organizational theory. The practical foundation is derived from field research in the area of public administration and church leadership. Examples from field research indicate that trust and building of relationship will change adversarial behaviour into cooperative behaviour. Three network strategies are identified to make decision-making intentionally relational. The conceptual contribution is original, although the authors draw on existing insights from theology and public administration.

The increasing number of people who search for and purchase gifts online underscores the need to better understand the process of searching for gifts online. This study explores online gift-searching with regard to the psychological characteristics of gift seekers and the benefits of searching. This study examines how gift-giving orientations (agape and reciprocity) influence the perceived benefits of searching (utilitarian and hedonic) in online gift-searching behaviour.

The conceptual framework was tested using a survey. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results show that agape positively influences both utilitarian and hedonic benefits, which in turn increase online gift-searching. Reciprocity does not affect utilitarian benefits but decreases hedonic benefits and thus causes a reduction in online gift-searching. The perceived benefit of searching fully mediates the relationship between gift-giving orientations and online gift-searching. Utilitarian benefits are the primary benefits that are sought by consumers who search for gifts online.

Previous research regarding online information searching has focused on searching for items for self-use. This study extends that research by focusing on gift giving. By analysing the mediating effects of both the utilitarian and hedonic benefits of searching, this study provides new insights into whether and how gift-giving orientations affect online gift-searching. Additionally this study offers guidelines for effectively managing online retail environments.

The purpose of this paper is to bring the Nigerian woman from the margins of international obscurity by acknowledging the contributions of reputable academics from an emerging market context on a subject that has pervaded the global podium in recent years – i.e. women in management.

The paper's approach is strictly qualitative in nature – a narrative analysis of a single book on women written by “a woman of status” – Dr (Mrs) Faseke, a graduate of the University of Ibadan and one time Head of the Department of History at the Lagos State University (Nigeria).

This paper acknowledges the “silent voices” of African women, drawing upon a publication that was encountered purely by chance – Modupe Faseke's The Nigerian Woman published by Agape Publications (Ibadan, Nigeria) in 2001.

Although this paper reads very much like an extended book review, it does offer some critical theoretical and practical insight coming from a book published by a local and largely obscure publishing house – Agape Publishers based in the remote city of Ibadan in Southwestern Nigeria.

It is envisaged that after reading this paper, scholars of gender‐themed studies may begin probing a bit deeper into the roots of the Nigerian woman and especially in situations where their voices have been muffled.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel method for evaluation of human-robot affection. The model is inspired by the scientific methods of human-human love evaluation. This paper would benefit the researchers in the field of developing new technologies where emotional interaction is involved.

Among the two available options of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and user study, the latter is adopted and the conventional method of Love Attitude Scale is transformed for human-robot interaction as Lovotics (love + robotics) Love Attitude Scale. A user study is conducted to evaluate the emotional effect of interaction with the robot.

The proposed method is employed in order to evaluate the performance of Lovotics robot. In total, 20 users experienced interaction with Lovotics robot and answered questionnaires which were designed based on the psychology of love, especially to measure love scales between the participants and the robot. Data from the user study are analyzed statistically to evaluate the overall performance of the designed robot.

Various aspects including human to robot love styles, robot to human love styles, overall love values and gender study are investigated during the data analysis. The concept of human-robot affection is still in initial stage of development. Personal and social robots are increasing and much limitation from artificial intelligence, mechanical development and integration still exist.

This is a multidisciplinary research field utilizing fundamentals concepts from robotics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, psychology, biology, anthropology, neuroscience, social science, computer science and engineering.

Considering the recent technical advancement in robotics which is brining robots closer to home, this paper aims to bridge the gap between human and robot affection measurement. The final goal is to introduce robots to the society which are useful and can be especially used to take care of those in need such as elderly.

This paper is one of the first kind to get inspired from scientific human love evaluation methods and apply that to human-robot application.

The purpose of this study is to understand how servant leadership affects employees’ community citizenship behavior by transforming their servant identity. Additionally, the study explicated whether the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ servant identity is contingent on leader–follower value congruence.

For this study data was collected from 468 employees working in the service industry in three waves which were undertaken with a lag of one month. The collected data was analyzed through structural equation modeling.

The results revealed that servant leadership is related to employees’ servant identity. The findings also substantiated the relationship between employees’ servant identity and their community citizenship behavior. The mediating role of servant identity linking servant leadership to employees’ community citizenship behavior was confirmed. Finally, leader–follower value congruence was found to moderate the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ servant identity.

The study is the first to ascertain the mediating role of servant identity linking servant leadership to employees’ community citizenship behavior. It is also the first study to ascertain that the effect of servant leadership on employees’ servant identity is contingent upon leader–follower value congruence.