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Virtual kitchens are a new business phenomenon, and how customers react to the new business model is still a largely unexplored topic. The purpose of this study is to examine the underlying mechanisms of consumers’ different responses to their reasoning of the new and disruptive business model of the virtual kitchen.

Based on the attribution theory and situated focus theory of power, this study conducts three online experiments to test the proposed framework. A total of 487 US residents who had prior experience with restaurant food delivery participated in the studies.

The results indicate that external attribution (vs internal attribution) and ethnic cuisine (vs mainstream cuisine) are more likely to elicit customers’ empathy and justice, leading to higher purchase intentions with virtual kitchens. A mainstream virtual kitchen is better off attributing itself to external factors. The significant effects of causal attribution and cuisine type on purchase intention only exist with powerful customers and those with high moral identity.

The results of this study provide valuable insight to virtual kitchen businesses to better position and market themselves to gain customers’ support. The findings also suggest that ethnic and mainstream restaurants should strategize their marketing communications about virtual kitchens differently.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to provide in-depth insight into the growing phenomenon of virtual kitchens. It also contributes to the extant literature on attribution theory and situated focus theory of power.

This study examines the interplay between media-induced emotional crisis framing (anger vs sadness) and message sidedness of crisis response on publics’ attribution of crisis responsibility as well as subsequent company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention.

A 2 (emotion: anger vs sadness) x 2 (crisis response: one-sided vs two-sided) online experiment was conducted among 161 participants in the USA.

Results showed that anger-inducing media framing of the crisis elicited higher levels of crisis responsibility attribution and more negative company evaluation, compared with sadness-inducing media framing. One-sided message response was more effective than two-sided message response in lowering attribution of crisis responsibility when sadness was induced, but no difference was found under the anger-induced condition. Attribution of crisis responsibility fully mediated the effects of emotional crisis framing on company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention toward the company.

This study is among the first to examine the interaction effect between emotional media framing and response message sidedness in an ambiguous crisis. Drawing on the interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, this study integrates the situational crisis communication theory, appraisal-tendency framework and message sidedness in persuasion literature. As such, it contributes to theoretical development in crisis communication and offers communication managers guidance on how to effectively address emotionally framed crises.

This study aims to contribute to strategic crisis communication research by exploring international media representations of third sector crises and crisis response; expanding the range of crisis types beyond transgressions; and developing a framework that integrates framing and crisis communication theory.

Quantitative content analysis was applied to identify patterns in crisis reporting of 18 news media outlets in Canada, Germany, India, Switzerland, UK and US. Using an inductive framing approach, crisis coverage of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) between 2015 and 2018 was analyzed across a wide range of crises, including but not limited to prominent cases such as Oxfam, Kids Company, or the Islamic Research Foundation.

The news media in six countries report more internal crises in the third sector than external crises. The most frequent crisis types were fraud and corruption, sexual violence/personal exploitation and attacks on organizations. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three components of crisis response strategies quoted in the media, conditional rebuild, defensive and justified denial strategies. Causal attributions and conditional rebuild strategies significantly influenced media evaluations of organizational crisis response. Three frames of third sector crises were detected; the critique, the damage and the victim frame. These frames emphasize different crisis types, causes, crisis response strategies and evaluations of crisis response.

The study reveals the particularities of crises and crisis communication in the third sector and identifies factors that influence mediated portrayals of crises and crisis response strategies of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) from an international comparative perspective. The findings have relevant implications for crisis communication theory and practice.

Research on the effects of feedback frequency has reported mixed findings. To tackle this problem, the current study focuses on specific feedback signs (i.e. negative feedback). By integrating the face management theory and attribution theory, this study examined the mediating effect of trust in supervisors and the moderating effect of employee-attributed performance promotion motives for negative feedback.

A field study with 176 participants and two supplemental experiments with 143 and 100 participants, respectively, were conducted to test the theoretical model.

Results revealed that the frequency of supervisory negative feedback negatively influenced employees’ trust in supervisors, which in turn influenced employees’ perceptions of feedback utility and learning performance. These indirect effects can be alleviated when employees have high degrees of performance promotion attribution for supervisor motives.

This research extends feedback research by integrating feedback frequency with a specific sign of feedback and revealing a moderated mediation effect of the negative feedback frequency.

Supervisor incivility and organizational gossip are two examples of dark organizational behaviors. Norm of reciprocity theory suggests that employees may develop revenge intentions after exposure to such behaviors while attributing blame to others. This study aims to empirically investigate the mediating effect of blaming others on the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip on revenge intention.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to test the measurement model. Structural equation model was used to test the research hypotheses based on data gathered in Turkey from restaurant employees in Mersin Marina selected by convenience sampling. Data set that consists of 239 questionnaires was subjected to CFA.

The findings show that negative organizational gossip and supervisor incivility increase to employees’ revenge intentions, and blaming others mediates the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip no employees’ revenge intentions. In addition, blaming others mediates the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip on employees’ revenge intentions.

Empirical study has not been encountered related to dark behaviors of (especially gossip, incivility, blame and revenge intention) restaurant managers and employees as a holistic model. Therefore, this paper contributes to organizational behavior literature. Moreover, this paper suggests to restaurant managers for supply to organizational peace.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how consumer brand engagement (CBE) promotes brand love and eWOM within the influence of brand interactivity and consumer involvement, especially in the context of the smartphone industry and Chinese social media marketing. This study also examines the important role of brand love and gender in this relationship.

Data from 403 participants who are followers of the smartphone brand’s social media page was collected via an online survey. PLS-SEM was also used for examining the research model.

The findings of this research reveal that the (perceived) brand interactivity, and consumer involvement, are key factors influence CBE. As expected, brand love and consumers’ eWOM intention are significant outcomes of CBE. In particular, the relationship between CBE and consumers’ eWOM intention is mediated by brand love. However, gender did not moderate the proposed relationships.

By integrating social exchange theory and attribution theory, this study deepens the understanding of CBE and brand love by examining the relationship between brand interactivity, consumer involvement, CBE, brand love and eWOM in the context of smartphone and Chinese social media marketing.

Despite its flourishing development since first proposed, job crafting literature has provided limited insights into why people craft their jobs. This study theoretically develops a two-dimensional integrative framework for the motives of job crafting, including orientation (self-oriented vs work-oriented vs other-oriented) and self-determination (autonomous vs introjected vs external) dimensions. We further investigate the specific motives of job crafting from actor and observer perspectives.

We conducted two critical-incident recall surveys among 120 and 100 employees from varied sectors and organizations, who responded from the actor and observer perspective respectively. 395 and 299 valid open-ended responses were then collected and coded following the steps for content analysis.

Drawing from the proposed two-dimensional theoretical framework, we identified 16 specific job crafting motives from actor and observer perspectives.

Our findings remind managers to pay attention to employees' motives of job crafting and take appropriate managerial actions according to their varied motives.

By incorporating job crafting from the motivation literature and identifying diversified motives that drive employees to engage in job crafting, this qualitative study contributes to both the job crafting literature and the broader application of self-determination theory in the field of organizational behavior.

This empirical study aims to explore how actors in specific human resource practices (HRPs) such as line managers (LMs) impact employee productivity measures in the context of financial institutions (FI) banks.

This cross-country study adopted a qualitative methodology. It employed semi-structured interviews to collect data from purposefully selected 12 business facing directors (BFDs) working in the top 10 banks in Nigeria and the UK. The data collected were analysed with the help of the trans-positional cognition approach (TPCA) phenomenological method.

The findings of a TPCA analytical process imply that in the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, the BFDs line managers’ human resources practices (LMHRPs) resulted in a highly regulated workplace, knowledge gap, service operations challenges and subjective quantitatively driven key performance indicators, considered service productivity paradoxical elements. Although the practices in the UK and Nigerian FIs had similar labels, their aggregates were underpinned by different contextual issues.

To support LMs in better understanding and managing FIs BFDs productivity measures and outcomes, we propose the Managerial Employee Productivity Operational Definition framework as part of their toolkit. This study will be helpful for banking sectors, their regulators, policymakers, other FIs’ industry stakeholders and future researchers in the field.

Within the context of the UK and Nigeria’s FIs, this study is the first attempt to understand how LMHRPs impact BFDs productivity in this manner. It confirms that LMHRPs result in service productivity paradoxical elements with perceived or lost productivity implications.

Grounded on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examines the relationship between tyrannical leadership and knowledge hiding. Additionally, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of psychological distress and the moderating role of psychological safety.

Data was gathered from 435 employees in the corporate sector in China. The study used the partial least squares structural equation modelling approach to assess the proposed connections and analysed the data collected with the help of SmartPLS 4 software.

In the study, it was found that there is a positive relationship between tyrannical leadership and knowledge hiding, and this association is mediated by psychological distress. Additionally, the results asserted that the positive effect of tyrannical leadership on knowledge hiding through psychological distress is less pronounced when there is a greater degree of psychological safety.

Leaders should avoid being tyrannical and adopt a supportive leadership style. They should be aware of the effects of their behaviour on employee well-being, provide resources to help employees cope with distress and foster a culture of psychological safety. This approach promotes knowledge sharing, innovation and employee well-being within the organisation.

This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating a new factor that influences knowledge hiding: tyrannical leadership. Furthermore, it explains that employees who experience tyrannical leadership are more prone to psychological distress, such as anxiety and fear, and are likelier to engage in knowledge-hiding behaviours. Finally, the study identifies psychological safety as a factor that can mitigate the negative effects of tyrannical leadership on knowledge hiding.

Drawing from cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) and attribution ambiguity theory (AAT), this paper aims to examine how employees interact with queer customers within the hospitality service and the ways that queer representations regulate emotions when discriminated against by normative gender roles.

This study used a mixed method. Study 1 used firm-level secondary data to analyze hospitality firms’ efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the effects on firms’ profit margins and customer satisfaction. In Study 2, an experimental design was used to understand how employees’ assailing behavior toward queer customers interacts with employee feelings of guilt and impacts their sabotage and organizational citizenship behavior via self-serving bias. Study 3 further explored how queer customer victimization interacts with stress to influence their perceptions of organization DEI authenticity and corporate social responsibility (CSR) through resilience.

Hospitality firms’ DEI efforts were associated with varying outcomes, including higher profit margins but lower customer satisfaction, while guilt weakened the impact of employees’ assailing behavior on their outcomes and customer stress amplified the effect of assailing behavior on queer customers’ perceptions of DEI authenticity and CSR through resilience.

Hospitality organizations should take proactive measures to address self-serving bias among employees. Moreover, fostering an inclusive culture is crucial, with managers playing a pivotal role in facilitating discussions and creating an environment that values diversity, inclusivity and respect for all employees.

The study makes a remarkable contribution to hospitality literature by focusing on CDT and AAT in providing valuable implications for DEI advocators to be aware of the tensions between heteronormativity and queer representations in service encounters.