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This study problematizes the prevailing normative and managerial-dominated view of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media from a power perspective. The aim is to provide a more nuanced and critical understanding of the negative aspects of this phenomenon.

The empirical material encompasses qualitative interviews with employees from 14 organizations and Foucault’s concept of disciplinary discursive power to analyze which and how discourses exert power over employee communication on social media and what role visibility plays in it.

This study indicates that employee ambassadors’ social media communication is governed by two discourses that create complex tensions, where ambassadors constantly must negotiate between self-branding requirements and an authenticity paradox. These tensions intensify through visibility on social media, where employees strategize and situationally silence their communication through self-monitoring and self-surveillance practices. Conclusively, the findings also outline the need for further critical research to offer a deeper understanding of power relations that influence the communication practices of organizational members.

The paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of self-initiated employee ambassadorship on social media and highlights disciplinary power relations that go beyond organizational borders.

The findings underscore that organizations need to address the critical aspects of self-initiated employee ambassadorship and act as facilitators to support employees in their navigation process.

This paper contributes a new critical power perspective on employee ambassadorship on social media.

This paper reflects on antecedents that may cause academic fields to decline or stagnate. It uses a hermeneutic review to consolidate and critique the Internal Marketing (IM) field. Seminal studies of IM and its related construct Internal Marketing orientation (IMO) are identified. IMO is then juxtaposed with contemporary studies from a communications journal identified as core as part of the hermeneutic process.

This study critiques the IMO literature in a hermeneutic review. It draws on the auto-ethnographic tradition to compare IMO with contemporary, related communications articles.

Two antecedents are addressed. There is interest in IM but less so in IMO. Aspects from the IMO literature align with two broad areas, namely customer-centric and company-centric communications. Some IMO aspects have been developed further therein.

This paper recognizes further research opportunities for IMO and communications scholars with a greater focus on boundary spanning employees in national, sectoral and organizational settings. Being conceptual means it lacks empirical testing; being hermeneutic means it contributes to methodological plurality.

Despite having potentially profound organizational effects, IMO lacks awareness and adoption. Recommendations are made throughout to facilitate the adoption of improved communications apropos improving IMO.

The paper identifies employee/employer benefits of adopting good internal communications (IC). IM(O) provides a rationale for sound IC practices.

This paper partially addresses the paucity of research into IMO including BSEs. It improves conceptualization by consolidating the key IMO research on the development and measurement of the construct, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses within the literature.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the formation of the concept of “motivation,” as well as to share experiences and modern techniques of motivation for employees.

This article includes the results of a survey of HR professionals using the Qwoted platform.

Motivation plays a big role in the life of employees and the company. Motivated employees unknowingly become brand ambassadors and help increase the company’s brand awareness, thus helping the business to grow.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this article was first published in this journal.

In 2023, the Leadership Pulse project will have been running for two decades. Since the inception of the program, we have engaged thousands of leaders around the world to quickly learn from them via short pulse surveys conducted multiple times per year. This chapter is the first overall discussion of what we learned during the last 20 years about leader energy, energy flow, predictors of energy, and outcomes of energy, which have been focused on individual and firm-level performance. Over the years, we learned that leaders are not immune to personal energy challenges; in fact, we find that their energy is continually tested by extreme demands within and outside their organizations. Also, we learned that there are solutions for helping leaders manage their energy better, and these do not have to be expensive, outsourced programs. In this chapter, we review key findings from the data and hope to help leaders continue learning to help themselves, their employees, customers, and the organizations they work in overall. I also will review three different interventions that we found to help leaders and employees work and stay at their best and enhance overall organizational goals and outcomes.

This study aims to examine the influence of perceived organizational support (POS) on boundary-spanning behaviors (BSBs) among frontline employees in the hospitality industry. It also considered perceived supervisory support (PSS) as a moderating factor within a conceptual model.

Data were gathered from 651 full-time hospitality employees across 12 hotels in China. The analysis of the data used confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The findings revealed that POS influences hospitality boundary spanners’ BSBs, specifically external representation (ER), internal influence (II) and service delivery (SD). In addition, PSS moderates the relationship between POS and these frontline employees’ behaviors.

This study offers practical strategies for hospitality professionals to enhance frontline employees’ BSBs and foster supportive workplaces that drive employee excellence. These strategies encompass cultivating a supportive organizational culture, implementing supportive measures, fostering a sense of belonging among employees and ensuring supervisors’ well-being and competence in supporting their teams during daily interactions. These actions effectively motivate customer-contact employees to excel in their performance.

Fostering a helpful attitude in frontline employees is crucial for service firms’ success. Hospitality organizations must provide support to achieve this. Few studies have explored how organizational support contributes positively to the BSBs of customer-contact employees. This study goes beyond oversimplification and delves into the nuanced interplay between perceived support (POS and PSS) and hospitality frontline employees’ BSBs, focusing on ER, II and SD. The moderated mediating model enhances the understanding of support dynamics in the organizational context.

This study aims to quantitatively consolidate the research conducted over the past four decades on how internal branding activities drive employee commitment. It summarizes several operationalizations of internal branding and tests the moderating effect of employee’s personal characteristics and job characteristics on the relationship between internal branding and employee commitment.

This paper uses meta-analysis as the research methodology. The analysis includes a sample of 65 studies (from 62 published works), yielding 226 effect sizes (coded into 82 composite effect sizes) over an aggregated sample of 21,706 respondents.

This study finds that brand communication, brand-centered human resource management (HRM), training and development, organizational support and culture, brand-centered leadership and an excellent reward system are the key operationalizations of internal branding. Furthermore, employee’s personal (education, age and gender) and job (tenure, work status and level of customer orientation) characteristics significantly moderate the internal branding–employee commitment relationship.

Limited empirical literature on some of the internal branding operationalizations such as brand-centered HRM and rewards has curbed the scope of moderator analysis.

This paper proposes some effective ways of implementing internal branding strategies and provides support for boundary conditions that brand managers should consider to strengthen the impact of internal branding activities on employee commitment.

As per the authors’ knowledge, this paper is among the few quantitative consolidations of four decades of research on the internal branding–employee commitment relationship.

This research aims to investigate the relationship between employer branding and its antecedent organisational culture within the context of the private banking sector. The study also investigates the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity as a consequential construct. Additionally, the mediating role of trust and the moderating role of gender in the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity has been examined.

The present study’s findings result from data analysis collected from a sample of 454 employees working in private banks in India. The data analysis was conducted utilising the structural equation modelling technique with the assistance of analysis of moment structures (AMOS) software.

The study’s findings indicate that supportive and bureaucratic (formal) culture in private banks exhibit a significant relationship with employer branding. However, the relationship between innovative culture and employer branding was found to be insignificant. The research also reveals a significant positive association between employer branding and employee brand equity variables: brand consistent behaviour, brand endorsement and brand allegiance. Further, the study highlights the mediating role of employee trust in management in the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity. Examining demographic variables suggests that gender moderates the relationship between employer branding and employee brand equity.

The originality of this study lies in its exploration of the critical role of organisational culture variables in shaping employer branding within the context of private banks. The findings highlight that cultivating supportive and bureaucratic cultures can effectively enhance the employer branding of private banks. The study emphasises the outcomes of employer branding initiatives, signifying that they contribute to developing brand equity among employees. This leads to long-term employee commitment and advocacy towards the organisation, as employees become brand advocates for the bank with which they are affiliated. The study contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between organisational culture, employer branding and employee brand equity, providing valuable implications for the private banking sector aiming to reinforce their employer brand and increase employee engagement.

Over 2.7 million workers are employed in the UK construction industry and with the fragmented nature of the construction sector; cases of poor mental health of workers are on the increase. This upsurge in the number of workers experiencing poor mental health could directly impact construction safety with significant financial adverse consequences on employers and the UK economy. Studies have identified lapses within the construction sector emphasising the lack of transparency regarding reporting of mental health and well-being of construction workers due to the inadequate engagement from employers and the lack of genuine leadership commitment to tackle mental health.

This study adopted a non-probability purposive sampling strategy, using a self-selected sample. A self-administered questionnaire benchmarked against the mental health core and enhanced standards tools by the “Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers” served as the basis for the methodology. A total of 106 industry managers from highways, construction, maritime, utilities, home building, rail and haulage/fleet were involved in this study.

The findings indicate that the industry is making good strides towards addressing mental health issues; poor mental health have significant financial burdens on businesses and the economy; some contractors have mental health initiatives and programmes in place; there is inconsistency of support available to employees; some contractors now integrate leadership training; the level of engagement vary based on the strategy and action plan adopted by organisations; different mechanisms are adopted for monitoring mental health issues, and there are cross-industry initiatives.

A limitation of this study is the number of participants which is not representative of the entire UK construction workforce. Therefore, the findings from this study as much as it presents some understanding of employee mental health and well-being cannot be overtly generalised across multiple industries, different geographic regions or contexts.

Employers should have a clear representation of the mental health of their employees to help them understand what affects worker’s mental well-being and how they can support them. Disregarding the multifaceted causes of mental ill-health due to the perceived financial implications could be more devastating for the industry.

The person who works in an office starts his or her day with a choice of attire. The way they look in the office depends on the decisions they make on their clothes. This study aims to identify the challenges faced by employees in the management positions in the Sri Lankan apparel industry who regularly come into contact with customers when they have to decide upon the most appropriate work attire for the position they are occupying in their organization.

Collection of data was primarily achieved through a well-structured questionnaire containing a mixture of open- and closed-ended questions. Targeted employees were managers, designers and merchandisers belonging to Generation Y whose total number was sufficient to obtain 50 feedbacks. Six more interviews were conducted with the intention of finding out more about this matter.

The majority of employees in the management positions in the Sri Lankan apparel industry who have regular contact with customers prefer to dress in “smart casual attire”, which means semi-formal clothes. Lack of availability of certain varieties of business attire in Sri Lanka proved to be a major challenge for some employees. Overpriced clothing, less comfortable clothing and lack of the right fabrics and designs were also challenges. These findings highlight the importance of manufacturing a wider variety of business attire using moderately priced but comfortable fabrics to make affordable and good quality products. There is a need to have a persuasive merchandising method to achieve good sales and provide a pleasant shopping experience to the customers.

Sri Lankan workwear retailers as well as apparel designers can benefit from the findings of this research as there is no evidence of any other studies on this subject. Therefore, this will help them to fill the market gap for business attire by addressing these challenges.

The literature currently offers only fragmentary insights into the research on the relationship between employee emotions and human resource management (HRM). Therefore, further research is essential to bridge this knowledge gap. Our study aims to identify the mediating effects of positive employee emotions and exhaustion in the relationship between HRM and employee engagement.

Drawing on the literature review findings, a conceptual model was formulated to illustrate the relationship between HRM, employee emotions and engagement. A confirmatory analysis was conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM CFA) on a sample of 1,000 employees to validate the proposed model. The data were collected in 2021, with a particular emphasis on exploring the indirect influence of HRM on engagement through positive employee emotions and exhaustion.

The quantitative research aimed to test a model depicting the relationship between HRM and employee emotions. The findings indicate the robust effect of HRM on positive employee emotions and exhaustion. The authors observed significant variation in the level of impact depending on the size of the organisation (stronger in large firms) and the sector (stronger in the public sector).

The study bridges the gap in our understanding of the link between HRM and employee emotions. It would be advisable to further explore the specific impact of individual HRM practices on both positive and negative employee emotions. It is worth extending the scope of future research to explore components of the investigated constructs as well as mediators and moderators of the relationship between HRM and employee emotions.