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The literature on help-seeking at work has experienced significant growth in the past decades. However, our knowledge about this research domain remains fragmented and lacks sufficient theoretical integration. Therefore, this paper aims to comprehensively integrate the extant literature on help-seeking behavior at work and propose an overarching, organized framework to propel this field forward.

A state-of-the-art review and theoretical development on help-seeking at work are conducted.

First, the authors provide the conceptual clarity of its definitions, key characteristics, types and measurement techniques. Second, the authors develop a fine-grained and integrative process-based framework consisting of antecedents, proximal psychological mechanisms, subsequent influencing processes and distal outcomes to advance our understanding of seeking help in the workplace. Third, the authors offer a detailed agenda for future research to target opportunities within the field.

The current study is comprehensive in surveying the full body of knowledge on help-seeking at work. It uniquely provides a coherent overarching framework that organizes prior findings and channels future research. Additionally, this review paints a complete picture of what has been done and what needs to be done in the field. More research can be spurred based on our conceptual framework.

Emotional intelligence (EI) has a profound effect on the performance of tour guides, though past studies on the subject have neglected to examine the effects of EI on neither the overall nor specific pattern of tour guides' performance. This study examines the overall link between four dimensions of EI (self-emotion appraisal [SEA], others' emotion appraisal [OEA], use of emotions [UOEs] and regulation of emotions [ROEs]) and five dimensions of citizenship performance (helping, self-development, initiative, compliance and adaptability), ultimately identifying the relationship between EI factors and each dimension of tour guides' citizenship performance.

The data from 244 Jordanian tour guides were gathered through a quantitative survey. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and multiple regression analysis were performed to analyze the data.

The results reveal that emotionally intelligent tour guides are more likely to have higher levels of citizenship performance. The most significant factors in determining extra-role behaviors by tour guides are “UOEs” and “others’ emotion appraisal (OEA)”.

This study equips different professional entities in the tour guide industry with useful, contextualized links between EI and citizenship performance. This assists in developing new accreditation policies and business practices to augment tour guides' citizenship professionalism, thereby maximizing their valuable contributions to tourism growth.

This study advances the tourism studies by establishing a new theoretical link between tour guides' EI and citizenship performance. The study also uncovers unique factors of EI that significantly determine tour guides' citizenship behaviors.

Taking attribution theory as an overarching framework, the study aims to examine how employees attribute and respond to a colleague's approach crafting.

Two complementary studies, including a scenario experiment (Study 1; N = 114) and an online survey (Study 2; N = 220), were conducted to test the hypothesized model.

Study 1 found support for the attribution of a prosocial motive to approach crafting, which in turn led to more social support and less social undermining among observers. This mediation was stronger when the job crafter was perceived as less other-oriented. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and further showed that when observers attributed both high impression management and prosocial motives to approach crafting, the positive relationship between their prosocial motive attribution and social support for the job crafter got weakened, while the negative relationship between their prosocial motive attribution and social undermining of the job crafter was strengthened.

The findings demonstrate that approach crafting gives rise to specific attributions and reactions toward the job crafter, which enrich the understanding of the social consequences of job crafting in the workplace.

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.

Drawing on information foraging theory and the SERVQUAL model, this study built a research model to investigate the roles of middle-aged and elderly short-video creators' online attributes in attracting short-video viewers to be their followers.

Taking Douyin (a famous short-video platform in China) as an example, this study used a sequential triangulation mixed-methods approach (quantitative → qualitative) to examine the proposed model by investigating both creators and viewers.

Viewers who clicked the “like” button for the middle-aged and elderly creators' videos are more likely to follow the creators. Viewers will believe that middle-aged and elderly creators who received more likes are more popular. Thus, middle-aged and elderly creators with more likes usually have more followers. Viewers usually believe that middle-aged and elderly creators who more frequently publish professional and high-quality videos have invested more effort and who have official verification also have a high level of authority and are recognized by the platform. Thus, middle-aged and elderly creators with more professional videos and verification usually have more followers. Moreover, verification, the number of videos and the professionalism of videos can enhance the transformation of viewers who liked middle-aged and elderly creators' videos into their followers, and thus strengthen the positive relationship between the number of likes and the number of followers; however, the number of bio words will have an opposite effect.

These findings have implications for platform managers, middle-aged and elderly creators and the brands aiming to develop a “silver economy” by attracting more followers.

This study researches short-video platforms by using a mixed-methods approach to develop an understanding of viewers' decision-making when following middle-aged and elderly creators based on information foraging theory and the SERVQUAL model from the perspectives of both short-video creators and viewers.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to previous research on customer relationships by quantitatively examining differences in the monetary benefits obtained by consumers using social and commercial relationships to make purchases from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Customer transaction and relationship data from an SME in the USA is used to quantitatively assess the value of different marketplace relationships in an entrepreneurial context. Tobit regression is used to empirically model and test the impact of specific relationship characteristics on customer discounts.

Customers using social connections to make purchases obtain significantly larger discounts than customers using commercial connections; customers using direct connections attain significantly larger discounts than consumers using indirect connections (referrals). Interestingly, when examined by connection type, direct and indirect connections do not produce significant differences for social connections, yet they yield notable differences for commercial connections. The findings provide valuable insights to entrepreneurs for understanding and managing customer relationships.

This study empirically demonstrates that social relationships can be both prevalent and influential in the marketplace. The methodology used to quantitatively assess the monetary value associated with different methods of engaging with SMEs allows objective comparisons among different types of customer relationships. Quantification also allows important relationship characteristics to be empirically examined, including how the relationships compare to one another and to nonpersonal marketing activities. Ultimately, these novel contributions generate important insights to help marketers and entrepreneurs better understand customer relationships.

Supervisor incivility and organizational gossip are two examples of dark organizational behaviors. Norm of reciprocity theory suggests that employees may develop revenge intentions after exposure to such behaviors while attributing blame to others. This study aims to empirically investigate the mediating effect of blaming others on the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip on revenge intention.

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to test the measurement model. Structural equation model was used to test the research hypotheses based on data gathered in Turkey from restaurant employees in Mersin Marina selected by convenience sampling. Data set that consists of 239 questionnaires was subjected to CFA.

The findings show that negative organizational gossip and supervisor incivility increase to employees’ revenge intentions, and blaming others mediates the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip no employees’ revenge intentions. In addition, blaming others mediates the impact of supervisor incivility and negative organizational gossip on employees’ revenge intentions.

Empirical study has not been encountered related to dark behaviors of (especially gossip, incivility, blame and revenge intention) restaurant managers and employees as a holistic model. Therefore, this paper contributes to organizational behavior literature. Moreover, this paper suggests to restaurant managers for supply to organizational peace.

Due to rapid digitalization, the emergence of the “phygital” environment, which blends physical and digital experiences, creates unique challenges for researchers. This paper aims to introduce an interpretivist methodological framework designed to understand consumer behavior in phygital environments. The framework enables an in-depth exploration of the contextual factors, subjective experiences, personal emotions and social networks that influence consumer behavior in this space.

The framework was developed after a thorough literature review of the phygital environment and interpretivist research landscape. Consistent with the phygital transformation theory, this approach allows researchers to go beyond the limitations of purely quantitative methods, gaining a deeper understanding of consumer behavior in phygital environments. The framework is organized into four meticulously designed pillars, each focusing on specific aspects of research and using distinct data collection and analysis approaches.

The systematic framework facilitates exploration of various dimensions of consumer experiences in phygital settings through qualitative research techniques. Uncovering the richness of contextual factors, subjective meanings, consumer experiences and social interactions within the phygital environment yields meaningful insights into consumer decision-making and preferences. These insights help marketers craft better phygital marketing strategies.

This interpretivist framework presents a unique approach for researchers hoping to investigate consumer behavior in phygital environments. It offers deep insights and understanding of this largely unexplored space, contributing to the evolving body of knowledge in phygital studies.

Public safety (communicators; e.g. 9-1-1, police, fire and ambulance call-takers and dispatchers), like many other public safety personnel (e.g. police, paramedics), (re)suffer operational stress injuries (OSIs) that are too often hidden and at a prevalence higher than the general population. Unfortunately, there are very little data for OSI rates in Canadian communicators. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the only pan-Canadian study focusing on organizational culture, and its potential influence on OSIs, within the communicator context.

The authors conducted a 179-item online survey of Canadian communicators comprising 17 validated screenings for occupational stress injuries and symptoms and four open-ended questions relating to their agency's organizational culture. The authors thematically analysed participants' open-ended responses and their screening scores.

A semi-grounded thematic approach revealed that managers and supervisors were significant contributors to negative perceptions (n = 165) of organizational culture, potentially resulting in or worsening existing OSIs. Specifically, leadership was viewed as ineffective, inconsistent, unsupportive, abusive and toxic, with limited understanding of communicator roles. Communicators described feeling devalued, particularly when leaders fail to recognize communicator OSIs, which can perpetuate stigma. Conversely, positive leaders (n = 24) were described as supportive, communicative and encouraging.

The findings suggest that while leadership behaviours are a key factor in employee well-being, it varies considerably across agencies, impacting treatment-seeking behaviours. The authors’ new understandings of leaders' roles in OSIs may help reduce the frequency and severity of communicator OSIs, helping ensure that emergency services are delivered to Canadians.

Playful work design (PWD) is a set of proactive strategies implementing fun and self-challenge at work to actively create better work conditions. Following the job demands-resources theory, this study aims to investigate the effects of PWD’s dimensions – i.e. “designing fun” and “designing competition” – on task and contextual performance (Study 1) and on the dimensions of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) – i.e. altruism, conscientiousness and civic virtue (Study 2). Furthermore, the present research investigates the mediating role of work engagement (WE) for both studies.

Two samples of 339 and 141 Italian workers participated by filling in a self-report questionnaire. Measuring models and hypotheses have been tested by structural equation models.

Results suggest that WE partially mediates the relationship of the “designing competition” subdimension of PWD with task and contextual performance (Study 1) and with conscientiousness and civic virtue of OCBs, while “designing fun” shows a positive direct relationship only with altruism (Study 2).

This paper contributes to expanding knowledge about PWD’s effectiveness in facilitating performance and positive behaviors. Furthermore, it disentangles the different effects of PWD’s dimensions on performance. In light of the results, both employees and managers should be aware of the beneficial consequences of introducing fun and self-competitiveness when completing their own work activities.