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This study aims to examine the relationship between employees’ psychological contract breach and two types of voice behavior based on the social exchange theory. Additionally, the study explores the role of globally responsible business leadership in buffering the negative impacts of psychological contract breach on voice.

Survey data was collected from Chinese full-time employees and the final sample size is 337. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Findings indicate that psychological contract breach (PCB) has a positive and significant impact on employee aggressive voice behavior (AVB), while its relationship with constructive voice behavior (CVB) is not significant. Furthermore, globally responsible business leadership (GRBL) weakens the negative relationship between PCB and CVB, while strengthens the positive relationship between PCB and AVB.

The findings assist organizations in better recognizing the detrimental consequences of psychological contract breach. Second, the findings serve as a reminder to managers of the benefits of displaying globally responsible business leadership. Third, managers should recognize the complexities of globally responsible business leadership.

First, this study sheds new light on the impact of PCB on employees’ desirable and undesirable proactive behaviors by investigating how and when psychological contract breach affects two types of voice behavior. Second, the moderating role of GRBL further enriches our understanding of how to buffer negative effects of PCB and the desirable function of GRBL. Third, this study enriches the social exchange theory by investigating whether the leader−employee relationship will compensate for the failure of organization−employee relationship.

The final effectiveness of employee voice largely depends on voice endorsement. This study aims to review, assess, analyze and synthesize the emerging literature on voice endorsement by focusing on its antecedents to promote future research from a comprehensive perspective.

Based on an integrative review of the literature, the authors conducted a content analysis of 53 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Building on the Shannon–Weaver communication model, this paper summarizes that factors influencing voice endorsement can be classified into five prominent aspects: voicer, voiced idea, contextual factors and noises, voice channel (medium) and voice receiver.

This research holds important implications for practice, providing practical guidelines for employees to speak up, for leaders to endorse voice and for organizations to maintain sustainable development by making full use of employee voice.

This review enriches voice endorsement research by introducing a communication framework to synthesize its antecedents and extends the application of the communication model in organization research. Additionally, the authors offer directions for future research.

Over the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in incivility within the higher education sector, potentially due to mounting pressure and demands on academics, both collectively and individually. The effects on various aspects of academia, such as knowledge and learning, however, remain largely unexplored. The purpose of this research is to fill the gap by performing a theoretical trend analysis and subsequently empirically investigating the impact of workplace incivility on research scholars’ learning engagement and knowledge sharing intentions, including the mediating role of self-esteem.

This study uses a three-stage methodological process: first, a thorough theoretical (bibliographic) analysis of scientific publications, using Biblioshiny, to identify the trends of workplace incivility; second, an empirical, qualitative exploration of the emergent themes and subthemes based on 102 in-depth interviews with research scholars, using NVivo 12 Plus; and third, quantitative testing, using 154 responses and structural equation modeling.

The authors verify a visible negative association between incivility and learning engagement, incivility and knowledge sharing intentions as well as self-esteem’s mediating effect on this relationship. Also, the thematic analysis revealed three distinct themes: the type of incivility; reasons for such incidences; and the impact of such incidences on research scholars.

The research bears implications both to theory and practice. Regarding the former, the gravity and graveness of incivility versus knowledge and learning, within the academic workplace environment, are not simply highlighted, but analyzed and refined, with explicit findings of both scholarly and practicable worth; that also provide solid foundations and avenues for future research.

Further to its primary findings, the research contributes to extant knowledge by elucidating and explicating the topic, both theoretically and empirically, as well as by presenting implications for theory and practice. Regarding practical implications, this research sheds light on how to develop an appropriate organizational culture that facilitates learning engagement and increases knowledge sharing intentions, by nurturing the identified explicit and underlying motivators of civility.

Employee voice is crucial for organizations to identify problems and make timely adjustments. However, promoting voice in organizations is challenging. This study aims to investigate how social media use (SMU) in the workplace affects employee voice by examining its intrinsic mechanisms and boundary conditions. Specifically, this study examines the mediating roles of social identifications and the moderating effects of job-social media fit on the relationship between SMU and social identifications.

This study conducted a survey of 348 employees in China.

First, SMU affects voice through social identifications. Second, distinct identifications have different effects on voice, such that organizational identification positively affects employee voice, while relational identification positively affects promotive voice and negatively affects prohibitive voice. Third, when social media is highly suitable for the job, the positive effect of work-related SMU on organizational identification is strengthened, while the positive effect of social-related SMU on organizational identification is weakened.

The results indicate that different identifications have distinct impacts on voice. Additionally, this study reveals a double-edged sword effect of SMU on voice through different social identifications. Further, job-social media fit moderates the relationship between SMU and social identifications. These findings have important implications for organizations adopting social media.

This study aims to examine the relation between error management culture and restaurant employee promotive and prohibitive voices. Drawing on socially desirable responding theory, the authors also propose a dual-mediation mechanism underlying the impact of error management culture on employee voice: psychological empowerment, as the agentic motive, and psychological safety, as the communal motive.

The authors recruited 223 participants working in 37 restaurants in China for the two-wave surveys with a one-week interval. The authors use a multilevel modeling paradigm to test the study hypotheses.

This research examines a multilevel model suggesting that error management culture can boost employee promotive voice and prohibitive voice via the mechanisms of psychological safety and empowerment. In addition, the results suggest that psychological empowerment (vs psychological safety) has a strong mediation effect between error management culture and promotive voice, but the authors find no difference in mediating effects between error management culture and prohibitive voice.

Restaurants can encourage employee voice by developing and maintaining an error management culture. Organizations can also consider motivating employees from both agentic and communal perspectives. Moreover, managers should focus more on empowering employees in areas characterized by Confucianism or collectivism.

The current research adds to the voice literature by identifying an organizational cultural antecedent of employee voice–error management culture. Agentic and communal motives are two motivational paths of employee voice. It also extends the social desirability theory by highlighting the role of the agentic motive in the Chinese restaurant context.

Chinese multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) unprecedented, aggressive cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs) have led to several studies examining Chinese CBMAs, which importantly has also led to some degree of “theorising”. This study aims to undertake a “non-theoretical” fact-finding exercise before any theorising and empirical “causal” examination for a better understanding of the phenomenon (the rise of Chinese CBMAs).

This study uses a “stylised facts” approach which documents “empirical regularities” concerning Chinese CBMAs and thus guides new research questions.

Several facts are documented. Firstly, both the value and frequency of Chinese CBMAs are catching up to greenfield investments, with CBMA deals being larger in scale but lower in frequency. Secondly, Chinese CBMAs show a global reach away from the regional orientation of their early years. Thirdly, Chinese MNEs are possibly transforming their value chain with industrial upgrading as an aim. Fourthly, Chinese “full” acquisitions of targets have surged, especially in OECD countries, suggestive of Chinese MNEs’ “radical” acquisition approaches.

The gathered facts lend support to the view of the need for such fact-finding exercises to explicate and shed “new” light on the phenomenon (beyond our “current” views/beliefs). An understanding of the underlying trends beyond bare facts can also identify new knowledge, which can in turn provide new directions for research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the alternative accounts produced by Green Earth Volunteers (GEV), a Chinese environmental non-governmental organisation, over a 10-year period in the context of their campaign to create visibilities about hydroelectric dam projects along the Chang Jiang.

Drawing on conceptions of the human–nature relationship, including those evident in ancient Chinese philosophy and mythology, and the Chinese way of viewing and resolving conflict, this paper offers an interpretive analysis of the alternative accounts of GEV in terms of their form and content.

In terms of their content, the alternative accounts reflect elements of interrelated thinking, being underpinned by a recognition of the relationship between humans and nature, which is evident in Confucianism, Taoism and ancient Chinese mythology. The strategies adopted by GEV are a non-confrontational but feasible way to promote their ecological beliefs in the Chinese context.

The study suggests that social and environmental accounting (SEA) in developing countries is steeped in local cultural and philosophical traditions that need to be considered and incorporated into the design of alternative accounts.

The study contributes to the very limited literature that offers qualitative analyses of SEA in developing countries.

This study aims to explore the role of team personality and leader’s humor style on the use of humor in group communication and the extent to which group humor mediates the association between team personality on the one hand, psychological safety, collective emotional intelligence and group satisfaction on the other hand.

The authors used a survey to collect data from 304 employees nested in 83 groups working in organizations from various sectors in Romania.

The study results show that extraversion is positively associated with group affiliative humor, while neuroticism has a positive association with group aggressive humor. The leader’s affiliative humor style had a significant positive effect on group affiliative humor, while the effect of leader’s aggressive humor style on the use of aggressive humor in groups was not significant. Furthermore, the authors examined the mediation role of group humor in the relationship between team personality and team emergent states and satisfaction. The authors found that group aggressive humor mediates the association between neuroticism and group emotional intelligence, psychological safety and satisfaction, while affiliative humor mediates the association between extraversion and emotional intelligence and team satisfaction.

The study reports one of the first attempts to explore the multilevel interplay of team personality and humor in groups as they relate to emergent states.

Despite the extensive body of research on absolute corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance, limited attention has been given to the distinct concepts of optimal and aggressive CSR engagement, as well as their associations with CSR awarding. This study aims to differentiate between optimal and aggressive CSR engagement and examine their relationship with CSR awarding while considering the moderating influence of board characteristics from the perspectives of stakeholder and agency theories.

This empirical analysis draws on an international dataset comprising 43,803 observations from nine sectors across 41 countries. We employ a least squares dummy variable regression approach that accounts for country, industry and year effects to conduct the analysis.

The results reveal that engagement in aggressive CSR activities beyond the optimal level leads to the generation of a social reputation through CSR awarding. However, the influence of board characteristics on this relationship is significant. Specifically, the presence of a dedicated CSR committee encourages CSR awarding in the context of aggressive CSR engagement. Conversely, board independence constrains the relationship between aggressive CSR engagement and CSR awarding. Notably, board gender diversity does not have a discernible impact on this connection.

Our evidence provides valuable insights to help firms seeking to enhance their social reputation through CSR activities better allocate their resources and avoid unnecessary financial commitments.

This study advances the current understanding by exploring the relationship between aggressive CSR engagement and the recognition of CSR awards. Furthermore, it scrutinises the factors that dictate when such aggressive CSR engagement translates into enhanced social reputation, as evidenced by the attainment of CSR awards.

The article considers the utility of a pluralist perspective in the context of current debates around UK corporate governance reform. Oxford School pluralism advanced both a description of how industrial relations (IR) operated in practice plus a prescription for how it should operate. Whilst economic conditions are different today, a pluralist framing provides not only a useful way of understanding interests in firm governance (description) but also a solid grounding for a pragmatic reform agenda (prescription).

Drawing from key texts in the field, the article considers core concepts within pluralist discourse and discusses their relevance to contemporary policy debates.

The article provides a short outline of recent economic and political developments and considers how a pluralist framing helps explain firm-level interests, challenging the dominant narrative of shareholder primacy. It then asks what policy interventions might flow from this analysis of capital and labour investments, and how feasible they are in the current UK context. This allows a discussion of levels of analysis (evident in materialist theories such as “radical pluralism” and the “disconnected capitalism thesis”). Finally, it reflects briefly on the links between corporate governance and wider patterns of inequality, suggesting the pluralist position is consistent with a Durkheimian sociology focusing on the potential in state-led regulatory interventions to tackle anomie and strengthen social solidarity.

The article brings together literature from what are often treated as relatively discrete areas of enquiry (employment relations and corporate governance) and also considers the public policy implications of these connections.