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The study aims to investigate the impact of workplace ostracism (WO) and fear of the COVID-19 pandemic on the family life of restaurant employees. This research is based on the conservation of resources (COR) theory and work–family interface model to understand the theoretical underpinnings of mistreatment in the food sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study utilized a survey with a structured questionnaire to collect time-lagged data from 238 restaurant employees in the central region of Punjab province in Pakistan. The collected data were analyzed using the SPSS tool with modern-day techniques like bootstrapping, process macro and SmartPLS.

The study reveals that perceived stress levels of the employees increase due to ostracism, leading to work–family conflict. Furthermore, the study found that employees who fear COVID-19 are less stressed by ostracism.

The study's significant contribution lies in demonstrating that the impact of ostracism in the workplace is quite different from what was expected. The results have shown that ostracism can reduce the perceived stress levels of employees, leading to a decrease in work–family conflict, especially in the presence of fear of COVID-19.

With theoretical underpinnings in the conservation of resources theory, this research aims at understanding the link between workplace ostracism (WPO) and its effects on customers' interests in the context of COVID-19, with the mediation of stress and moderation of self-efficacy (SE).

The study followed a time-lagged design. A sample of 217 frontline employees working in the food sector of southern Punjab, Pakistan, responded to the study questions using the survey method with structured questionnaires. A Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) tool was utilized for data analysis with bootstrapping and PROCESS macro.

The findings show that an important mechanism by which ostracism translates into customer service sabotage (CSS) is the increase in perceived stress levels of the employees. Additionally, SE was found to be an important personal resource that acts as a moderator in the said relationship.

Employees with high SE sense less workplace stress even during a pandemic. Leadership should consider the stress-alleviating effect of SE for lessening the damaging influence of WPO on customers.

The study fills an important empirical gap in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, by showing that due to resource loss perceived by employees while being targeted by ostracism, they may decide to transfer their frustration towards organizational customers by sabotaging their service experience.

The fear of COVID-19, being an emerging research variable and a parcel of the ongoing pandemic, has not yet been fully studied with respect to leadership and employee family life. Based on the conservation of resources theory, the current study aims to investigate the relationship between despotic leadership and work-family conflict under the context of fear prevailing due to COVID-19. The paper also highlights the mediating role of emotional exhaustion between the two variables.

Data were collected in two waves by using a time-lagged design from 225 nurses from hospitals in the Central Punjab region in Pakistan. Analysis was done through process macro in SPSS.

Results showed that despotic leadership is positively related to work-family conflict directly and through emotional exhaustion indirectly. Furthermore, the moderation of fear of COVID-19 has also been noted such that its increase strengthened the direct as well as the indirect relationship between despotic leadership and work-family conflict.

During the days of COVID-19, the pandemic posed a strong threat to employees' family lives, especially in the presence of despotic leaders at the workplace. Amidst the widespread fear and harmful effects of COVID-19 on economies and organizations, this study provides novel implications for policymakers, researchers and practitioners for mitigating the impact of despotic leadership on employees' family lives.

This paper draws on the affordance perspective, to explore the social media (SM) usage experiences that might render valuable for academic women professionals, for knowledge exchange, networking and success. Owing to the increased SM usage during COVID-19 pandemic, this paper tries to find out that in what ways do SM affordances facilitate the underprivileged group of women professionals to grow in their careers in a masculine, conservative society through knowledge exchange.

By utilizing qualitative study design, the authors collected data from 31 women employed in Pakistani universities, through unstructured questionnaires. The responses were analyzed through Nvivo.

The generated themes suggested that women in Pakistan are aware of SM's potential for knowledge exchange among fellow professionals. They use it to aid them in communication, collaboration and networking. Additionally, they utilize it to share knowledge and build networks that are vital for career progression and success.

The paper concludes with the implications for practitioners that would aid them in boosting career prospects for women academicians through SM usage in a developing country Pakistan; where women's career outlooks are not as promising as for men; or as bright as for women working in the developed economies.

This a unique attempt to explore knowledge exchange dimensions with the help of SM in the context of working women by the deploying the phenomenological approach.

In the current dynamic world, organizations required rapid changes to meet the increasing demands of their customers. On the other hand, the practice side claims that the majority of the organizational change attempts fail due to resistance from the employee side. Based on the behavioral theory of leadership, the authors examined the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational change with moderated mediation effect of behavioral resistance to change and commitment to change on the stated relationship.

Data were obtained from 333 employees, selected at random, in three waves (i.e. pre-change, during change and post-change) using survey methods from services sector organizations operating in Pakistan.

The authors found that ethical leadership was positively linked to organizational change and this relation was partially mediated by the commitment to change. Further, behavioral resistance to change weakened the relationship between ethical leadership and commitment to change.

The current study illuminates the importance of ethical leaders in the organizational change process, and empirical findings also gave an important direction to build change commitment in employees to reach positive results. Further, change leaders should use ethical practices in the workplace during organizational change initiatives to deal with behavioral resistance to change.

This study links ethical leadership with organizational change using the behavioral theory of leadership, an unexplored area in the existing literature that gives a new insight to academia and practice side officials to successfully implement any organizational change initiative.

Based on action regulation theory (ART), this study aims to test the impact of individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) training on small business owner career success (financial attainment, satisfaction and achievement). Moreover, this relationship was unpacked through a dual mediation model of IEO behaviour and career resilience.

A four-wave, longitudinal randomized controlled field experiment was conducted in which 527 small business owners participated from Lahore, Pakistan (training group = 256, control group = 271). The data analysis was done via ANCOVAs (group comparison) and PROCESS Model 6 (for serial mediation).

The results demonstrated that after getting IEO training, the small business owners had increased IEO behaviour, career resilience and career success as compared to their counterparts in the control group. In addition, the effect of IEO training on career success was attributed to the underlying role of IEO behaviour and career resilience development.

This is one of the few studies that have demonstrated the impact of IEO training on the career-related outcomes based on the action regulation perspective.

The present research aims to empirically test the “Barriers to abusive supervision model” to find how employee-related (core self-evaluations) and situational factors (perceived job dependency) make an employee trapped in the spiral of supervisory abuse. In addition, the work–family spillover lens is used to explain how employees' retaliation is targeted at their families in response to abuse from their bosses.

The current study has employed a three-wave longitudinal moderated mediation design and analysed data from 265 employees working in the hospitality industry of Pakistan.

The results of this study have shown that low core-self evaluations put employees in a spiral of supervisory abuse and they instil aggression towards their families. This association is further strengthened when employees are dependent on their job.

This study is one of the first to use the “Barriers to Abusive supervision” model to answer who and in which conditions tend to trap in the spiral of abuse and integrate the work-to-family interface model for elaborating the outcomes to the family domain.

Child malnutrition is a grave concern for Pakistan, as the country has one of the highest incidences of child stunting in the developing world. The present study examines the relative significance of parents' education on a child's nutritional status in Pakistan.

For analysis, the study has used data from Phase 7 of the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) (2017–2018). Since the dependent variable ranges from 0 to 1 (1 indicates not a stunted child, while 0 represents a stunted child), binary logistic regressions are used for the analysis.

The results show that mothers' and fathers' education positively contributes to a child's nutrition. However, mothers' education is considered more significant, especially in the long run. The mother's education categories are positive and significant in the long run, while only their higher education is positive and significant for the father's. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect also shows that the probability of stunting is less if the mothers are educated. The long-run coefficient for mothers' higher education is 0.752, while that of fathers' higher education is only 0.232.

The present study compares the importance of mothers' and fathers' education in child nutrition and concludes that the role of the mother is more crucial for child upbringing. There are rarely any studies that focus on the role of fathers' education in child nutrition and compare whose role, mothers' or fathers,' is more important for child well-being.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2023-0483

In the 21st century, spirituality is becoming an interesting phenomenon in the workplace and has been discussed by academicians, researchers, and practitioners alike. This growing knowledge offers important insights and calls for conceptual and empirical studies on workplace spirituality. Accordingly, the current research aims to examine how ethical leadership (EL) helps to foster workplace spirituality and job satisfaction (JS) in the information technology (IT) industry. Additionally, it investigates the mediating role of workplace spirituality and moderating role of self-efficacy (SE) in the relationship between EL and JS.

Using a cross-sectional design, the data were collected from 268 employees in the IT industry and analyzed on SmartPLS 3.2 using structural equation modeling.

The findings indicated that EL promotes a sense of spirituality and increases JS. Additionally, results suggested that workplace spirituality partially mediates, and SE moderates the relationship between EL and JS.

The results suggest that the top executives should work on identifying and developing ethical qualities to promote a sense of meaningfulness (workplace spirituality) and increase JS.

The research provides an important contribution to the academic literature by exploring the role of EL in fostering spirituality among employees and the moderation of SE on the relationship between EL and JS in the services industry.

The paper aimed to explore the underlying work engagement role in transformational leadership and employees' job performance relationships. Moreover, this study also looked at the moderation of leaders' managerial skills in the transformational leadership and work engagement nexus.

The time-lagged data of 360 followers — leader dyads nested in 71 teams were collected from star-rated hotels in Italy and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was executed.

Based on social learning theory and idiosyncrasy credit theory, the SEM results demonstrate that transformational leadership is significantly and positively linked with job performance and work engagement mediated this relationship. The results also confirmed that leaders' managerial skills strengthen the transformational leadership and work engagement nexus.

Hotel managers should consider hiring individuals with transformational leadership skills and provide training to Polish their managerial skills in order to enhance employee engagement at work, which may result in job performance.

With this study, the researchers emphasize the significance of transformational leadership and work engagement for better job performance in the Italian hospitality industry. Our analysis also provides new evidence that leaders' managerial skills strengthen the transformative leadership and work engagement nexus. The study is one of the first to investigate the boundary conditions of leaders' managerial skills in the transformational leadership and work engagement relationship. Based on the findings, the practical and theoretical contributions are also discussed.