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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between employees’ deference to leaders’ authority and their upward ingratiatory behavior, which may be invigorated by two personal resources (dispositional greed and social cynicism) and two organizational resources (informational justice and forgiveness climate).

In this study survey data were collected among employees who work in the banking sector.

Strict adherence to leaders’ authority stimulates upward ingratiatory behavior, especially when employees (1) have a natural tendency to want more, (2) are cynical about people in power, (3) believe they have access to pertinent organizational information and (4) perceive their organization as forgiving of mistakes.

For human resource (HR) managers, this study points to the risk that employees’ willingness to comply blindly with the wishes of organizational leaders can escalate into excessive, inefficient levels of flattery. Several personal and organizational conditions make this risk particularly likely to materialize.

This study extends prior human resource management (HRM) research by revealing the conditional effects of an unexplored determinant of upward ingratiatory behavior, namely, an individual desire to obey organizational authorities unconditionally.

Falsified online reviews (FORs) are the published/viewable consumer-generated online content regarding a firm (or its representatives) or its services and goods that is, to some degree, untruthful or falsified. The purpose of this study is first to explore the nature of FORs, focusing on reviewers' interpretations and refections on falsity, intent, anonymity and the target of their FOR. Secondly, the authors examine the valence and veracity dimensions of FORs and introduce a typology to differentiate their variations.

using an exploratory research design, 48 interviews were conducted with participants who post online reviews on social media about their experiences with food and beverage serving outlets.

The results show four common forms of FORs on social media. These are reviews focused on equity equalizing, friendly flattery, opinionated opportunism and malicious profiteering.

The authors provide exploratory and in-depth information via interviews, but do not analyse the content of FORs.

Firms should be aware of varieties of FORs and that these may not be limited to malicious content. This is important in terms of showing that in dealing with FORs, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. FORs are not always entirely fabricated, and instead various levels of falseness are observed, ranging from slight alterations to complete fabrications.

Previous research explored how to identify and differentiate FORs from truthful ones, focusing on the reviews or how they are perceived by readers. However, comparatively little is known of the reviewers of FORs. Hence, this study focuses on reviewers and offers new insights into the nature of FORs by identifying and examining the main forms of FORs on social media.

Prediction is a critical task in targeted online advertising, where predictions better than random guessing can translate to real economic return. This study aims to use machine learning (ML) methods to identify individuals who respond well to certain linguistic styles/persuasion techniques based on Aristotle’s means of persuasion, rhetorical devices, cognitive theories and Cialdini’s principles, given their psychometric profile.

A total of 1,022 individuals took part in the survey; participants were asked to fill out the ten item personality measure questionnaire to capture personality traits and the dysfunctional attitude scale (DAS) to measure dysfunctional beliefs and cognitive vulnerabilities. ML classification models using participant profiling information as input were developed to predict the extent to which an individual was influenced by statements that contained different linguistic styles/persuasion techniques. Several ML algorithms were used including support vector machine, LightGBM and Auto-Sklearn to predict the effect of each technique given each individual’s profile (personality, belief system and demographic data).

The findings highlight the importance of incorporating emotion-based variables as model input in predicting the influence of textual statements with embedded persuasion techniques. Across all investigated models, the influence effect could be predicted with an accuracy ranging 53%–70%, indicating the importance of testing multiple ML algorithms in the development of a persuasive communication (PC) system. The classification ability of models was highest when predicting the response to statements using rhetorical devices and flattery persuasion techniques. Contrastingly, techniques such as authority or social proof were less predictable. Adding DAS scale features improved model performance, suggesting they may be important in modelling persuasion.

In this study, the survey was limited to English-speaking countries and largely Western society values. More work is needed to ascertain the efficacy of models for other populations, cultures and languages. Most PC efforts are targeted at groups such as users, clients, shoppers and voters with this study in the communication context of education – further research is required to explore the capability of predictive ML models in other contexts. Finally, long self-reported psychological questionnaires may not be suitable for real-world deployment and could be subject to bias, thus a simpler method needs to be devised to gather user profile data such as using a subset of the most predictive features.

The findings of this study indicate that leveraging richer profiling data in conjunction with ML approaches may assist in the development of enhanced persuasive systems. There are many applications such as online apps, digital advertising, recommendation systems, chatbots and e-commerce platforms which can benefit from integrating persuasion communication systems that tailor messaging to the individual – potentially translating into higher economic returns.

This study integrates sets of features that have heretofore not been used together in developing ML-based predictive models of PC. DAS scale data, which relate to dysfunctional beliefs and cognitive vulnerabilities, were assessed for their importance in identifying effective persuasion techniques. Additionally, the work compares a range of persuasion techniques that thus far have only been studied separately. This study also demonstrates the application of various ML methods in predicting the influence of linguistic styles/persuasion techniques within textual statements and show that a robust methodology comparing a range of ML algorithms is important in the discovery of a performant model.

Focusing on the individual unit of analysis, we explore how workplace identification can explain why individuals engage in unethical behavior that benefits an organization (unethical pro-organizational behavior; UPB). Social identity theory (SIT) stipulates that we want membership within high status organizations and, at extreme levels, may put the organization’s needs above all else. In taking a holistic approach to identification, we investigated how a strong occupational identification can mitigate this desire to unethically help an organization; occupations are a separate identity source and contain codes of conduct that guide ethical behavior. Utilizing a sample of 236 accountants and financial professionals, results indicated that organizational identification and occupational identification alone did not significantly predict UPB, however, the interaction of these identities did. More specifically, organizational identification significantly positively predicted UPB only when occupational identification was extremely low in strength. This effect was found after controlling for relevant personality and cognitive mechanisms related to unethical behavior. Implications for a multidimensional identification view of unethical behavior are discussed.

Product counterfeiting has been ubiquitously observed in various segments of the supply chain. The intrinsic values of brands create more opportunities for counterfeiting. The damaging reputation of such brands leaves them to deal with the fallouts of counterfeits. Hence, such companies address them mainly through legal action, price and quality strategy. However, consumer characteristics and the random distribution of counterfeit products to the consumer types affect the effectiveness of a counter strategy. This paper aims to generate insights on how to leverage digital technology to curb counterfeit entities with consideration of consumer characteristics and the random distribution of counterfeits to them.

The authors used game theory and vertical differentiation model to understand and encounter deceptive counterfeiting of brand products. The study understands the economic relationship between a brand product manufacturer and consumer types based on their awareness. Further, the authors have considered different cases in the model to gain useful insights.

The results reveal that when the consumers are proactive, informed and value-conscious brand product manufacturers take digital technology counterstrategy to earn the maximum revenue. Hence, this analysis highlights that the effectiveness of a counterstrategy critically depends on the consumer characteristics, whether they are proactive, informed or unaware.

The study outlines that brand product manufacturers must emphasize on the digital supply chain, product redesign and product tracking facility to empower informed and value-conscious and proactive consumers. Moreover, the government should take steps to create awareness among uninformed consumers via information campaigns.

This paper incorporates the role of consumers and brand product manufacturers to understand and address the deceptive counterfeiting issue.

The research on the positive effects of children’s learning in and with nature is persuasive yet a deeper examination of the contemporary and historical discourses suggests that the school garden has been neither welcoming nor accessible to all children. Its detrimental effects on groups of children have been masked within the discourses of urban children’s health and wellbeing, environmental stewardship, and children’s connection with nature. The school garden has been used historically to enact adult agendas to contain and protect urban children from the social ills of modernity; civilise and assimilate marginalised, impoverished, and immigrant groups; and make future industrial and agricultural labourers who would in turn, entrench the white affluent society’s economic and social positions. In this sense, the school garden was used to reinforce patriarchal, colonial, white supremacist, and eugenic aspirations. We consider the school garden movement in North America through a discourse analysis of historical school garden texts to explore how childhoods were culturally constructed and how these discourses have influenced children both in the past and present.

This study aims to reach a perception of the advance of research on deviant organisational behaviours.

This research has been done through the text mining method. By reviewing, the papers were selected 360 papers between 1984 and 2020. Based on the Davis–Boldin index, 11 optimal clusters were gained. Then the roots were ranked in any group, using the Simple Additive Weighting technique. Data were analysed by RapidMiner and MATLAB software.

According to the results obtained, clusters are included leadership styles, job attitudes, spirituality in the workplace, work psychology, personality characteristics, classification and management of deviant workplace behaviours, service and customer orientation, deviation in sales, psychological contracts, group dynamics and inappropriate supervision.

This study provides a landscape and roadmap for future investigation on deviant organisational behaviours.

This chapter employs analytic autoethnography to explore and reflect on the author's quest for meaning and whether this redefines or undermines the concept of authenticity as interpreted by the primary advocates of authentic leadership. The data start from author's studies in the Air Force Engineering Military Academy. Turcan develops the typology of search for meaning and its four types: dreamlanding; self-actualising; missing out; and self-transcending. The meaning of life is conspicuously absent from the authentic leadership literature and yet if a leader does not address it how can they function effectively as a leader? This typology may guide future research at this intersection.

Emphasizing the increasing need for social presence in interpersonal interactions and the irreplaceable aspects of face-to-face communications, this study aims to explore the emotional impact of interpersonal influence on consumers after purchase. As individuals respond differently to others’ feedback (positive and negative/verbal and nonverbal), the author investigates potential moderating factors of the impact of feedback on consumer’s emotions in a postpurchase context.

A qualitative study was conducted using the method of semistructured individual interviews to collect data. The author selected a heterogeneous group of 30 consumers belonging to two categories: 13 adults (including seven women and six men) and 17 adolescents (including eight girls and nine boys). The author took into account this type of sampling in the selection of respondents, as investigating the influence of the respondent’s gender is one of the research objectives.

The thematic content analysis method released a set of propositions the author suggests for future validation: five moderating factors the author established from the literature review (strength of social ties, level of expertise, type of the product and consumer’s age and gender), while four factors sprang from the collected data (consumer’s level of conviction, repetition of the feedback, the feedback’s argumentation and its level of discretion).

The subjectivity of the interviewees’ personal descriptions of their felt internal states affects the accuracy of their responses. In addition, the psychological aspect of the study provoked reluctance and discretion from some respondents. Further research studies could target these limitations to study each identified moderating factor separately and search for the secondary variables that tend to be linked to these factors (e.g. the expertise level is linked to personality variables, such as the perceived level of self-confidence). Furthermore, subsequent studies can go beyond the affective impact of feedback and investigate the behavioral aspect (repurchase intentions).

This study is of great importance in providing more explanations for the reasons why consumers repurchase or abandon a product. The importance of the emotional power of others’ feedback suggests that, when positioning their offers, marketers must ensure that their product has a strong chance of acceptance by consumer’s significant other. In addition, companies must argue their offers, allowing consumers to increase their knowledge about the product. Moreover, interpersonal cues and expertise level are more important competences to find in employees. Who is more than a vendor, for example, to be perceived as having a high level of expertise in his field?

This study stresses the importance of face-to-face interpersonal interaction in a time when social lives are submerged by social media and virtual communications. The findings suggest that offline social power still matters, and its impact is relative to multiple factors that count for consumers. Face-to-face interaction has been viewed as the most efficient way to satisfy individuals’ social needs for connectedness.

This paper provides new insights into the impact of offline interpersonal verbal and nonverbal feedbacks. The feedback-affect process within consumers was explored, and the postpurchase context was precisely emphasized.

This study examines how team-level mediating mechanisms (i.e. team psychological safety and team helping behaviour) facilitate the relationship between employees' ingratiation and performance ratings.

The data were collected from 180 customer service teams working in Pakistan's hospitality industry through multiple sources using a paper and pencil questionnaire.

The multi-level structural equation modelling results showed that team psychological safety and helping behaviour fully mediated the relationship between ingratiation and performance ratings.

The study has offered some implications for theory and practices.

This study showed that ingratiation might be a helpful impression management tool within a team context. Such an influence technique nurtures a psychologically safe climate and encourages peers to help each other perform mutual tasks within the hospitality context.