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A workplace bullying dynamic involving multiple individuals targeting victims can lead to the victim losing emotional bonds or affect-based trust with their colleagues, resulting in employee silence. The literature has largely ignored this negative aspect of social dynamics. This study aims to examine the relationship between workplace bullying and employee silence behaviors and determine whether affect-based trust mediates this relationship and whether climate for conflict management moderates the mediated relationship.

Hypotheses are tested using surveys and scenario-based experiments among faculty members in Indian Universities. There were 597 participants in the survey and 166 in the scenario-based experiment.

Results revealed that workplace bullying correlated positively with silence behaviors, and affect-based trust mediated the bullying-silence relationship. The hypothesized moderated mediation condition was partially supported as moderated the mediating pathway, i.e. indirect effects of workplace bullying on defensive silence and ineffectual silence via affect-based trust were weaker for employees with high climate for conflict management. However, the study failed to support the moderation of climate for conflict management in the relationship between workplace bullying and affect-based trust and workplace bullying and relational silence. The results of this moderated effect of climate for conflict management were similar in both studies.

This study is one of the few attempts to examine employee silence in response to workplace bullying in academia. Additionally, the study revealed a critical area of trust depletion associated with bullying and the importance of employee perceptions of fairness toward their institutions’ dispute resolution processes.

The purpose of this commentary is discuss how musical intervention and imagined interactions can be used to deal with conflict. Music has been called the universal language because of its tonality and rhythm. It affects conflict and aggression and helps people to deal with stress. Research is reviewed showing physiological arousal with background music. The effects of music on aggression are summarized in terms of emotional regulation, catharsis and empathy, and the use of mental imagery in the form of imagined interactions, including relational maintenance catharsis and conflict linkage, is discussed. The incremental sound organizer (ISO) principle of music therapy is discussed as a mechanism to affect emotions while listening to music. Finally, a tool to measure the emotional effect of music on listeners is discussed in terms of the musical mood wheel.

This is a commentary on the effects of background music on reducing aggression.

Music can reduce aggression, depending on how it is used. Music affects how we manage our emotions, reduces stress, provides catharsis and can be a distracting element. Music can enhance empathic feeling; induce positive moods, social bonding, physiological changes and neurobiological changes; and affect our arousal.

Music therapy and musical intervention can be applied to conflict resolution.

The ISO principle of music therapy is designed to deal with changing a person’s emotions as they listen to a medley of music. The mood of the person is measured using a series of scales reflecting a continuum of sadness to happiness, and the music is designed to match the mood of the patient to the music being played and/or listened to, which in turn fosters the achievement of an altered state of consciousness. For example, if you are angry, start with music that is loud and gradually switch to a more tranquil piece of music. “The vectoring power of music is that we change the mood or emotion of persons from one affective pole (joy) to its opposite (anger) through small incremental changes in the rhythm and intensity of the music” (Honeycutt, 2003, p. 82).

Background music in music psychology literature is often referred to as musical intervention. Background music can help us recall positive and negative scenes as the music triggers endorphins in the brain (Salimpoor et al., 2011). Background music is intended to enhance the surrounding context without drawing significant attention. It is often played in spaces such as restaurants, stores, offices or public places to create a certain mood or ambiance.

It is important to note that the effectiveness of musical intervention in reducing aggression can vary based on individual preferences, the specific type of music used, and the context in which it is applied. Additionally, while music intervention can play a role in aggression reduction, it is often most effective when used as part of a comprehensive therapeutic approach.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between employer and employees in a public power sector undertaking through the validation of CODE (compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment) and PLE (workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement) model.

A hypothesized research model was developed and validated by using structural equation modeling (AMOS 20). In total, 303 responses were accumulated by administering a structured questionnaire among the employees of a state-owned power sector.

The results revealed that a harmonious climate of employee relations is prevailing in the public power utility. Additionally, the findings suggest that the CODE and PLE model of employee relations are found to be positive and significant by investigating the impact of compensation, organizational justice, dispute resolution and employee empowerment as the predictors; and workforce productivity, employee loyalty and employee engagement as the critical outcomes of employee relations.

The study recommends some plausible insights for practitioners, decision-makers and policy formulators to develop strategies and policies for nurturing congenial employee relations and also to cultivate a facilitative work environment for generating contented and competent manpower.

Validation of CODE and PLE model of employee relations in the new perspective of power sector undertaking is an epoch-making and novel contribution that offers significant empirical evidence to the extant literature. Moreover, the exploration of employer–employee relations in this context is a unique and innovative effort toward existing research.

The purpose of this study is to examine how construction project managers’ conflict management styles (CMSs) affect project team resilience from the perspective of social identity theory.

This study adopted a cross-sectional survey design and collected paired data from 110 construction project managers and 474 employees in China. Based on the data collected, the authors tested the proposed hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that a project manager’s cooperative CMS positively affects team resilience, and a project manager’s competitive and avoidant CMS negatively affects team resilience. Team followership plays a mediating role in this relationship. The team power distance moderates the effects of a project manager’s cooperative and avoidant CMSs on team followership.

This paper enriches the existing literature on conflict management in construction projects and have potential guiding significance and application value for team resilience management practices.

The acceleration of globalized commerce and economic activities has meant that conventional and Shariah (Islamic law) compliant organizations transact and negotiate among themselves. Therefore, this study aims to explore the concept of corporate negotiation and the communicative principles that guide the negotiation process among Shariah-compliant organizations.

The study uses a qualitative method through an inductive interpretative approach by conducting 20 in-depth interviews among four groups of experts. These consist of three muftis, ten academicians in Islamic assets, finance and asset jurisprudence; three practitioners in charge of inter-organizational negotiation and decision-making; and four shariah board members of selected Islamic banks.

The findings reported that business negotiation is used by Islamic organizations for reconciliation, consultation, resolving disagreements and as a means of achieving spiritual satisfaction. Furthermore, the key communicative principles of the negotiation process consist of the credibility of informational exchange, flexible interactions and the openness and truthful disclosure of information.

The empirical data discussed in this study supports the claim that macro-environmental factors and social and cultural values should be considered when examining business negotiating behaviors. However, this study focuses only on the banking/service organization negotiation. Therefore, future research should focus on the Islamic negotiation process in the context of diplomatic and international relations.

The findings reported in this study offer insight for negotiators operating among Islamic organizations to understand the principles and process of negotiation in the purview of Shariah standards and principles.

In terms of theoretical implications, this study reveals a clear conceptual difference between the conventional concept and the Islamic perspective of corporate negotiation. Also, this study highlights the impact of organizational culture, specifically Islamic management strategies, on the business negotiation process and business communication principles.

This study aims to provide a precise understanding of how corporate sustainability information is used in socially responsible investing (SRI). The study is motivated by the lack of a recognised body of knowledge on this issue. This study, therefore, collates and reviews relevant studies (67 studies) to provide guidance to investors interested in SRI and identify a research agenda for academics desiring to contribute to this area.

This study conducts a systemic literature review employing recognised key words and searching the Web of Science. HistCite is utilised to ensure important cited studies are not missed from the collection. The review was conducted from two perspectives: (1) sources of sustainability information and (2) how the information is used in SRI.

The review identifies five major sources of sustainability information, including corporate reports, ESG ratings, industry affiliation, news and private communication with firms. These sources of information play different roles in the cross section of SRI strategies (i.e. negative and positive screening, active ownership and integration). This study provides guidance on how to use this information in SRI and provides recommendations for future research on how analysts interact with the information, how different informational characteristics impact implementation, ways to improve data quality, improvements to analysis methods and where data use needs to be extended into new strategies.

This review contributes to the SRI literature by inventorying studies of an important, yet omitted aspect, namely, sustainability information. This work also enriches the literature on corporate sustainability information by investigating how this information can be used for a specific purpose, namely, SRI. Given the increasing interest in SRI, this review will provide much-needed guidance for a range of practitioners, including investors and regulators.

This study examines how professional service firms' communication effectiveness (affiliative communications style, social dialogue and information provision), social cognitive capital and rapport established between an auditor and SME client are instrumental in influencing the latter's evaluation of the technical quality of an audit.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to create a cross-sectional survey covering four geographic regions in an emerging economy – Thailand. The authors examine the hypotheses by employing social interaction theory.

A study of 744 SME executives plus post-survey interviews with three audit partners revealed that an affiliative communications style and information provision are positively associated with the rapport developed between financial auditor and client, and that rapport, in turn, had a strong association with client perceptions of audit quality. In addition, affiliative communication style, information provision and social cognitive capital had a direct (positive) association with perceptions of audit quality. The effects of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital varied, depending on whether or not the SME client possessed formal accounting qualifications.

The study contributes to the literature on the business-to-business professional services, and accounting in particular, by explicating the important roles of communication effectiveness, rapport, and social cognitive capital in the relationship between an auditor and a client. Moreover, the paper reveals that the differences in educational background of clients result in differential impacts of communication effectiveness and social cognitive capital on rapport and perceptions of audit quality.

Teams across a wide range of contexts must look beyond task performance to consider the affective, cognitive and behavioral health of their members. Despite much interest in team health in practice, consideration of team health has remained scant from a research perspective. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues by advancing a definition and model of team health.

The authors review relevant literature on team stress, processes and emergent states to propose a definition and model of team health.

The authors advance a definition of team health, or the holistic, dynamic compilation of states that emerge and interact as a team resource to buffer stress. Further, the authors argue that team health improves outcomes at both the individual and team level by improving team members’ well-being and enhancing team effectiveness, respectively. In addition, the authors propose a framework integrating the job demands-resources model with the input-mediator-output-input model of teamwork to illustrate the behavioral drivers that promote team health, which buffers teams stress to maintain members’ well-being and team effectiveness.

This work answers calls from multidisciplinary industries for work that considers team health, providing implications for future research in this area.

The paper examines the historical shifts in policing strategies towards individuals with SMI and vulnerable populations, highlighting the development of co-response models, introducing the concept of “untethered” co-response.

This paper conducts a review of literature to trace the evolution of police responses to individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) and vulnerable populations. It categorizes four generations of police approaches—zero-policing, over-policing, crisis intervention and co-response—and introduces a fifth generation, the “untethered” co-response model exemplified by Project SCOPE in Philadelphia.

The review identifies historical patterns of police response to SMI individuals, emphasizing the challenges and consequences associated with over-policing. It outlines the evolution from crisis intervention teams to co-response models and introduces Project SCOPE as an innovative “untethered” co-response approach.

The research acknowledges the challenges in evaluating the effectiveness of crisis intervention teams and co-response models due to variations in implementation and limited standardized models. It emphasizes the need for more rigorous research, including randomized controlled trials, to substantiate claims about the effectiveness of these models.

The paper suggests that the “untethered” co-response model, exemplified by Project SCOPE, has the potential to positively impact criminal justice and social service outcomes for vulnerable populations. It encourages ongoing policy and evaluative research to inform evidence-based practice and mitigate collateral harms associated with policing responses.

Given the rising interactions between police and individuals with mental health issues, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper highlights the urgency for innovative, non-policing-driven responses to vulnerable persons.

The paper contributes to the literature by proposing a fifth generation of police response to vulnerable persons, the “untethered” co-response model and presenting Project SCOPE as a practical example.

This study aims to integrate entrepreneurship theories and acculturation perspectives into a unified lens to understand opportunity development by transnational entrepreneurs (TNEs).

This study uses a conceptual method, considering how acculturation strategies of TNEs influence cross-cultural arbitrage.

We develop six propositions that define how acculturation strategies relate to different levels of cultural embeddedness of transnational entrepreneurs and ultimately influence the process by which the entrepreneur engages in cross-cultural arbitrage.

We are one of the first to integrate the sociology of immigrants with entrepreneurship to better understand how TNEs engage in cross-cultural arbitrage.