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Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study highlights the mediating role of goal-directed energy as a critical psychological resource. The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effect of goal-directed energy on the relationship between narcissistic leadership and employee resilience. The study also explores the moderating effect of psychological availability on the relationship between narcissistic leadership and goal-directed energy.

Data were collected from 857 employees and their supervisors at 137 enterprises in China. Confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical multiple regression analysis and path analysis were adopted to analyze the data.

The results indicate that narcissistic leadership has a positive effect on goal-directed energy, which, in turn, enhances employee resilience. Furthermore, the effect of narcissistic leadership on goal-directed energy becomes more prominent in the context of lower psychological availability.

First, narcissistic leadership is supposed to play an effective role in helping employees gain resources. Second, organizations should attach importance to implementing resilience-building programs on employees to cope with uncertainty. Third, organizations should offer multiple training opportunities to stimulate employees’ goal-directed energy.

First, the findings suggest that employee resilience is influenced by narcissistic leadership, which provides more possibilities for the study on the antecedents of resilience. Second, the study offers novel insights regarding the effect of narcissistic leadership on employee resilience through goal-directed energy. Finally, it also examines psychological availability as the boundary condition between narcissistic leadership and goal-directed energy.

This study aims to analyze the effects of goal-directed feelings on student’s performance in marketing simulations. Calculating path coefficients from data collected at two points in time, the authors tested a model consisting of four constructs personal stakes, anticipatory emotions, volitions and goal-directed behavior. The results suggest that positive and negative anticipatory emotions mediate the relationship between personal stakes and volitions and determine student motivation, behavior and actual performance independently from simulation design, simulation environment and cognitive personality characteristics of the participants. Implications for educators include the need for active pursuit of anticipatory emotion development.

The model consists of the four constructs: personal stakes, anticipatory emotions, volitions and goal-directed behavior. Personal stakes determine involvement and are perceived based on an evaluation of the degree of potential impact of one’s performance on one’s personal well-being. Anticipatory emotions, as explained before, are affected by personal stakes and can be either positive or negative. They influence volitions or wills; these are intentions consisting of both directive components (for example, strategy planning and approach selection) and motivational components (for example, the commitment to a necessary effort). Volitions are the mediators that transform anticipatory emotions into goal-directed behaviors. These goal-directed behaviors comprise the fourth construct, consisting of mental and physical efforts aimed at accomplishing a specific objective.

The hypotheses were tested calculating path coefficients. All hypotheses were supported and statistically significant (p < 0.01; one-tailed significance test). With regard to H1, personal stakes were positively related to both positive and negative anticipatory emotions, with a particularly strong relation to positive emotions. Consistent with H2, anticipatory emotions were strongly related to volitions and, thus, heavily influencing the extent to which students would engage in planning and compare their own effort against that of their fellow students. Fueled by the anticipatory emotions, the volitions, in turn, were strongly related to the actually exhibited behavior, supporting H3. In other words, the students put their intentions into practice and engaged in careful simulation planning as well as in an effort that they perceived to be superior to the one of their peers. It is then no surprise that H4 was also supported. The more the students attempted to be carefully prepared and the harder they tried to outperform their fellow students, the more likely the achievement of the desired objectives became. Finally, H5 was supported, even though only weakly with regard to negative outcome emotions. This indicates that successful performance leads to positive emotions, but a failure in the marketing simulation (measured by a non-achievement of objectives set) does not necessarily make the students feel bad.

In conclusion, the study provides the rising number of marketing educators using computerized simulations with an approach to increase student motivation and performance. It has become obvious that personal stakes alone are not sufficient to fully develop commitment on the side of students. Rather, anticipatory emotions serve as the mediator between those stakes and students’ volitions.

Although a burgeoning body of literature has established the influence of hope and employee creativity, the debate on the relative importance of hope and its components of pathway and agency on its outcomes has not been clarified. Literature has it that hope and its individual components of pathway and agency have a varying magnitude of influence on its outcomes. Some scholars argue that agency and pathway components better predict its outcomes than overall hope. The current study establishes the relative importance of hope and its components on creativity using evidence from Makerere University, Uganda.

The study adopted a cross-sectional quantitative survey design to collect data from the academic staff of Makerere University. The study used usefulness analysis to establish the relative importance of the predictor variables on the dependent variable.

The study findings revealed that agency and hope components of hope significantly predicted creativity. Overall, hope also significantly predicted creativity. Regarding relative importance, hope turned out to be the most “useful” predictor of creativity, followed by its components of agency and pathway.

The study was conducted in a public university setting located in urban areas. The findings may not be generalizable to private settings due to variations in the teacher's creative behaviour with variation in the creative environment. The study was also cross-sectional, which may not yield results of changing employee creativity over time. Further studies should establish the link between hope and creativity using a longitudinal survey to compare employee creativity using data collected at different intervals.

The value of the current study is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the study findings enrich the hope theory by revealing the relative importance of hope on its outcomes over and above its components. The study also confirms the assertions of the dual pathway to creativity model by revealing that employees who are rich in hope components of agency and pathway have the cognitive flexibility to pursue creative goals and, when faced with failure, can generate alternative solutions to solve work problems.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the influence of shared goals and hope on knowledge sharing and knowledge creation in organizations. Furthermore, it examines the mediating role of hope in the relationship between shared goals and knowledge sharing and between shared goals and knowledge creation.

This study has used quantitative research methodology wherein the data have been collected from 221 employees of information technology (IT) companies in India using survey questionnaire. Structural equation modelling has been applied to test the hypotheses of the study.

The findings of the study reveal that shared goals and hope positively influence knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. Shared goals also affects hope positively. Further, hope acts as a mediator between shared goals and knowledge sharing and between shared goals and knowledge creation.

This study is a cross-sectional study conducted in IT companies in India. It can be supplemented by future studies through qualitative approaches and longitudinal data collection.

The study makes a significant contribution to literature by considering shared goals and hope as antecedents of knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. It provides directions to managers to focus on various interventions to strengthen shared goals and hope amongst employees to motivate them to share and create knowledge that can help the organization to get sustainable competitive advantage.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is an early study conducted to examine the influence of shared goals and hope on knowledge sharing and knowledge creation. Further, hardly any study has examined the mediating role of hope in the relationship between shared goals and knowledge sharing and between shared goals and knowledge creation.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that green hope (GH) and green organizational identification (GOI) play critical roles in transforming top management green commitment (TMGC) into desired employees task-related green behavior (TRGB) and voluntary workplace green behavior (VWGB) based on positive psychology.

The authors test the multilevel moderated mediation model by analyzing data collected from 491 hospitality employees and their direct supervisors in 103 teams. At Time 1, the authors conducted a survey of 905 team members to provide demographic information and evaluate TMGC, as well as their own GOI. At Time 2, the authors sent a follow-up questionnaire to employees who participated Time 1, asking them to evaluate their GH in the workplace. At Time 3, the authors sent questionnaires to the leaders of the respondents of T2 survey and invited them to evaluate TRGB and VWGB in the workplace.

The results show that TMGC facilitates two types of employees’ behaviors toward both TRGB and VWGB by enhancing hospitality employees’ GH. As a team-level variable, GOI has a positive moderating effect on the association between TMGC and GH. The authors discuss the theoretical implications as well as practical implications for managers seeking to promote sustainability in their hospitality industry.

This is one of the first empirical studies to investigate the mediating effects of a positive psychology variable, namely, GH – and the moderating effects of GOI on the relationship between TMGC and employee green behavior (EGB).

Ivanitskaya, Glazer, and Erofeev (2009) suggest that “the most fundamental element of any organization that helps the organization to survive is the individual person” (p. 109). It is the motivation of human capital that makes a health care organization come to life. Health care is a unique industry; its accomplishments are directly dependent upon the competencies and technical skills of its employees. “When people in the workplace fulfill their organizational roles, then the organization thrives” (Ivanitskaya et al., 2009, p. 110). Health care systems will require organizations that thrive and exhibit characteristics of continuous growth, expressing excessive levels of energy and an immense capacity for flourishing. Anticipating the challenges of the next decade, health care organizations must achieve a higher degree of employee engagement to enhance organizational performance and profitability. The data analyzed for this chapter indicate that employees who are engaged are more enthusiastic and aspired to achieve both individual and organizational success. The chapter concludes by suggesting five operating practices to establish an employee engagement culture – defining the employee's role in fulfilling the organization's purpose, selecting employees with capability and passion, supporting and valuing the employee, creating sustainable reward systems, and developing feedback and reinforcement mechanisms.

Despite the current dynamism in the education sector that was manifested in new approaches to work that require innovative workforce, little empirical studies have been conducted on how to influence innovativeness in higher education institutions. Moreover, though studies have established a link between hope and innovative work behaviour, no study has established how hope and its two components of agency and pathways influence innovative work behaviour. The purpose of this study is to establish the influence of hope and its two components of agency and pathways on innovative work behaviour.

A quantitative cross-sectional research design was adopted in this study. The study employed hierarchical regression to test the hypothesised relationship between hope and its components of agency and pathways on innovative work behaviour using a sample drawn from public universities in Uganda in the two categories of academic and administrative staff.

The findings reveal that pathways and agency influence innovative work behaviour. The Findings also revealed that hope significantly influences innovative work behaviour over and above its individual components of agency and pathways.

The study was cross-sectional in nature and the findings may not portray a true picture of the relationship between the study variables over time as behaviour is ever changing. Further studies could carry out a longitudinal study to establish the effect established in this study at different time intervals. The results provide a more complex understanding of how hope and its two components of agency and pathways enhance innovative work behaviour.

The findings of the study provide insightful direction to managers in public universities in Uganda to consider different avenues of increasing employee hope so as to enhance innovative work behaviour. This can be done through targeted interventions like involving employees in goal setting and setting alternative means to achieve goals.

The value of this study is both empirical and theoretical. Empirically, this study is the first to establish the influence of hope and its two components of agency and pathways on innovative work behaviour in Uganda’s university setting. Theoretically, the study extends veracity of the conservation of resources theory (COR) by clarifying those employees who possess the psychological characteristics of hope exhibit innovative work behaviour. The study also extends on the theory of hope by revealing that agency and pathways influence innovative work behaviour.

If the ideal self is the emotional driver of intentional change, the purpose of this paper is to explore the components of a person's personal vision and how it comes from their ideal self.

Based on the concept of the ideal self from intentional change theory, the paper examines a variety of theoretical foundations, from psychoanalytic to positive psychology. Each views the ideal self and its components as deficiencies needing therapeutic intervention or the heights of human experience and intrinsic motivation.

The ideal self is a primary source of positive affect and psychophysiological arousal helping provide the drive for intentional change. Many current frameworks or theories examine only portions of this model and, therefore, leave major components unaddressed. The ideal self is composed of three major components: an image of a desired future; hope (and its constituents, self‐efficacy and optimism); and a comprehensive sense of one's core identity (past strengths, traits, and other enduring dispositions).

Intentional change is hard work and often fails because of lack of sufficient drive and the proper intrinsic motivation for it. This model of the ideal self creates a comprehensive context within which a person (or at other fractals, a group or system) can formulate why they want to adapt, evolve, or maintain their current desired state.

Prior research has documented a generally positive relationship between employees’ standing on constructs that are commonly studied by positive psychologists and workplace outcomes, such as job performance and retention. Constructs such as adaptability, empowerment, hope, optimism, and resilience are believed to reflect psychological resources that employees can draw upon when facing adversity and challenges in their work, while also reflecting a general tendency or disposition to experience positive emotions and engage with others in ways that reflect such positive emotions. As such, positive psychology constructs may be particularly important for performance in jobs characterized by high levels of social interaction, stress, and challenge. In order to explore the manner in which different positive psychology constructs are related to sales performance, this chapter presents findings from a meta-analytic investigation into the relationships between sales performance and a variety of positive psychology constructs. Findings based on data from 59 unique samples and 14,334 salespeople indicate that some positive psychology constructs exhibit moderate to even strong relationships with the performance of salespeople, although the strength of these relationships appears to have been substantially inflated by common-source bias. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for selection and training within sales occupations, and advance an agenda for future research.

Customer value cocreation (VCC) behavior is gaining increased scholarly attention in the services marketing discipline and has become a top research priority in recent times. Despite the growing interest in studying VCC, less scholarly attention has been paid to study the crucial role of frontline service employees in activating customer participation in the VCC process. Hence, to bridge this research gap, the present research expanded VCC research streams by investigating the mediating effect of frontline service employees' innovative behavior in psychological capital and customer VCC behavior relationship.

Data collected from 255 hotel employee–customer dyads were analyzed through Smart PLS to measure the proposed relationships.

The results suggest the mediating effect of frontline service employees' innovative behavior in psychological capital and customer VCC behavior relationship.

The current research made a significant contribution to the VCC field by identifying driving forces that encourage customers to exhibit VCC behaviors.