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This paper investigates the dynamics between state affect and trusting cognitive beliefs on post-adoptive information technology (IT) use behaviors in the form of intention to explore and deep structure usage. That state affect can influence behaviors is recognized in practice. In fact, some studies examine the impact of affective constructs, but the way state affect impacts how individuals use IT remains largely unexplored. The authors theorize that state affect, in the form of positive and negative affect, will influence trusting cognitive beliefs regarding an IT artifact (in terms of perceived helpfulness, capability and reliability) and, more importantly, directly influence intention to explore and deep structure usage.

The authors test the model using a sample of 357 IT users. Survey items were derived from established measures, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results of this study suggest that positive affect and negative affect impact trusting cognitive beliefs. Trusting cognitive beliefs positively impact intention to explore with an IT and deep structure usage of an IT. Even in the presence of trusting beliefs, though, positive affect directly impacts intention to explore. Positive affect and negative affect both also have various indirect, mediated effects on intention to explore and deep structure usage.

In order to maximize value from workplace IT, the results suggest managers foster an authentic, positive work environment in order to harness or redirect employees' emotional energies.

This study aims to investigate the effect of the virtual spokesperson type on the consumers' preference for new products. To meet the consumer needs of Generation Z, virtual spokespeople have become new assistants in brand marketing. However, how virtual spokespersons drive consumer preference for new products is minimally understood.

This research conducts three experiments to investigate the influence of virtual spokesperson type on consumers' preference for new products.

The research shows that, for radically new products, competent virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of self-efficacy and thus consumers' preference; for incrementally new products, warm virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of social connection and thus consumers' willingness to buy.

This study broadens research on brand spokespersons and virtual spokespersons. This research also enriches and expands research on the consideration of new product types in brand spokespersons.

Using the lens of upper echelons theory, this study examines the degree to which National Collegiate Athletic Association athletic department performance outcomes are associated with the personal characteristics and experiences of the athletic director leading the organization.

The authors match organizational performance data with athletic director and institutional characteristics to form a robust data set spanning 16 years from the 2003–04 to 2018–19 seasons. The sample contains 811 observations representing 136 unique athletic directors. Fixed effects panel regressions are used to analyze organizational performance and quantile regression is used to analyze organizational revenues.

The authors fail to uncover statistically significant evidence that athletic director personal characteristics, functional experience and technical experience are associated with organizational performance. Rather, the empirical modeling indicates organizational performance is primarily driven by differentiation in the ability to acquire human capital (i.e. playing talent). The results also indicate that on average, women are more likely to lead lower revenue organizations, however, prior industry-specific technical experience offsets this relationship.

In opposition to upper echelons research in numerous settings, the modeling indicates the personal characteristics and experiences of the organization's lead executive are not an economically relevant determinant of organizational performance. This may indicate college athletics is a boundary condition in the applicability of upper echelons theory.

This paper is one of the first studies to examine specificities, including limits of mindfulness at work in an African organisational context, whilst dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It specifically addresses the role of organisational and managerial support systems in restoring employee wellbeing, social connectedness and attachment to their organisations, in order to overcome the exclusion caused by the ongoing pandemic.

The study uses a qualitative research methodology that includes interviews as the main data source. The sample comprises of 20 entrepreneurs (organisational leaders) from Ghana and Nigeria.

The authors found that COVID-19-induced worries restricted the practice of mindfulness, and this was prevalent at the peak of the pandemic, particularly due to very tough economic conditions caused by reduction in salaries, and intensified by pre-existing general economic and social insecurities, and institutional voids in Africa. This aspect further resulted in lack of engagement and lack of commitment, which affected overall team performance and restricted employees’ mindfulness at work. Hence, quietness by employees even though can be linked to mindfulness was linked to larger psychological stress that they were facing. The authors also found leaders/manager’s emotional intelligence, social skills and organisational support systems to be helpful in such circumstances. However, their effectiveness varied among the cases.

This paper is one of the first studies to establish a link between the COVID-19 pandemic and mindfulness limitations. Moreover, it is a pioneering study specifically highlighting the damaging impact of COVID-19-induced concerns on leader–member exchange (LMX) and team–member exchange (TMX) relationships, particularly in the African context. It further brings in a unique discussion on the mitigating mechanisms of such COVID-19-induced concerns in organisations and highlights the roles of manager’s/leader’s emotional intelligence, social skills and supportive intervention patterns. Finally, the authors offer an in-depth assessment of the effectiveness of organisational interventions and supportive relational systems in restoring social connectedness following a social exclusion caused by COVID-19-induced worries.

This study aims to explore the impact of board size, board gender diversity and federation age on the likelihood of having a female chair in National Sports Federations (NSF).

A quantitative methodology compares 300 sports boards in five countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK), using data collected from NSF’s websites.

The board size and federation age have no significant impact on having a female board chair when the countries and the percentage of female directors are included in the model. When the number of women is measured in absolute value rather than in relative terms, the only variable that predicts a woman chair is the country. When the model does not include country differences, the percentage of female directors is key in predicting a chairwoman, and when the number of women is used as a variable instead of the percentage, a board’s smaller size increases the odds of having a chairwoman.

There are some limitations to this study which we believe provide useful directions for future research. Firstly, the authors have not considered the role of gender typing in sports activities which explains the extent that women participate in specific sports (Sobal and Milgrim, 2019) and the related perception of such sports in society. The social representation of sports activities classified as masculine, feminine or gender-neutral can hypothetically influence women’s access to that specific federations’s leadership. The authors included the country factor only partially, as a control variable, as the social representation of sports usually goes beyond national boundaries.

This study has implications for sport policymakers and stakeholders, and for institutions such as the IOC or the European Union that implement equality policies. If the aim is to increase female presence in the highest position of a sports board and to achieve gender equality more generally, other policies need to be implemented alongside gender quotas for the sports boards, namely, those specifically related to the recruitment and selection of the sports board chairs (Mikkonen et al., 2021). For example, given the implications of critical mass and its ability to increase more female’s engagement then the role of existing chairs acting as mentors and taking initiative in this objective may be warranted. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the existing gender portfolio of each board and its subsequent influence on recruiting a female chair, regardless of the organization’s age. Knoppers et al. (2021) concluded that resistance to gender balance by board members is often related to discriminatory discourses against women. The normalization of the discourses of meritocracy, neoliberalism, silence/passivity about the responsibility of structures and an artificial defence of diversity emphasise that equality should not only be determined by women (Knoppers et al., 2021).

When countries are included in the model, the results suggest that the social representation of a female board member is different from that of a female board chair.

The originality of the study is that it shows the factors that constrain women taking up a chair position on NSFs. Theoretically, it contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how a critical mass of females on boards may also extend to the higher and most powerful position of chair.

Research on artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential effects on the workplace is increasing. How AI and the futures of work are framed in traditional media has been examined in prior studies, but current research has not gone far enough in examining how AI is framed on social media. This paper aims to fill this gap by examining how people frame the futures of work and intelligent machines when they post on social media.

We investigate public interpretations, assumptions and expectations, referring to framing expressed in social media conversations. We also coded the emotions and attitudes expressed in the text data. A corpus consisting of 998 unique Reddit post titles and their corresponding 16,611 comments was analyzed using computer-aided textual analysis comprising a BERTopic model and two BERT text classification models, one for emotion and the other for sentiment analysis, supported by human judgment.

Different interpretations, assumptions and expectations were found in the conversations. Three subframes were analyzed in detail under the overarching frame of the New World of Work: (1) general impacts of intelligent machines on society, (2) undertaking of tasks (augmentation and substitution) and (3) loss of jobs. The general attitude observed in conversations was slightly positive, and the most common emotion category was curiosity.

Findings from this research can uncover public needs and expectations regarding the future of work with intelligent machines. The findings may also help shape research directions about futures of work. Furthermore, firms, organizations or industries may employ framing methods to analyze customers’ or workers’ responses or even influence the responses. Another contribution of this work is the application of framing theory to interpreting how people conceptualize the future of work with intelligent machines.

The aim of the paper is to analyze how actors in foodservice companies organize for inbound open innovation (OI).

This paper conducted a case analysis of a large and successful foodservice company operating in the Dutch market. Furthermore, drawing on 18 interviews and archive data, we identified the main organizational practices involved in the implementation of inbound innovation activities and the ways they are embraced are defined.

The results provide a holistic view of the main organizational practices a foodservice company implemented at different organizational levels, to exploit external knowledge coming from third parties and to promote the sharing and recombination of knowledge resources within the organization. The identified organizational practices reveal the main interaction patterns between relevant internal actors and other external parties in the company network, as well as between actors on different hierarchical organizational levels which allows processing relevant innovation information and make relevant decisions about it.

Implications are provided in terms of both theory and practice. This paper helps foodservice companies to create an internal organizational environment that supports the exploitation of customer knowledge.

There are few studies on how companies organize themselves for OI in general, and especially in the foodservice sector.

There remains a critical issue in sport management scholarship in that the field lacks a well-defined framework for delineating practical implications in research. This research aims to answer the following research questions: (1) What types of practical implications can be identified in sport management research? (2) How can sport management research frame the practical implications of the study in a way that is both theoretically sound and useful for practitioners?

Through a scoping review and within the lens of Jaworski (2011)'s framework for managerial relevance, the study examined 427 articles from European Sport Management Quarterly, Journal of Sport Management and Sport Management Review published between 2000 and 2020.

This study presents a five-pronged framework that identifies target managers, organizational tasks, time horizons, philosophical impact and desired outcomes. Furthermore, the current research offers suggestions for how to present managerial implications in sport management research.

The findings shed light on the managerial relevance of the recent sport management body of work, developing an important framework for practical implications for the field to reflect and incorporate into future studies. With a theoretical understanding of how to frame the practical implications of sport management research, the gap between academia and industry can continue to narrow, and the relevance to the industry may be more pertinent than ever before.