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During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, ubiquitous social media has become a primary channel for information dissemination, social interactions and recreational activities. However, it remains unclear how social media usage influences nonpharmaceutical preventive behavior of individuals in response to the pandemic. This paper aims to explore the impacts of social media on COVID-19 preventive behaviors based on the theoretical lens of empowerment.

In this paper, survey data has been collected from 739 social media users in China to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis.

The results indicate that social media empowers individuals in terms of knowledge seeking, knowledge sharing, socializing and entertainment to promote preventive behaviors at the individual level by increasing each person's perception of collective efficacy and social cohesion. Meanwhile, social cohesion negatively impacts the relationship between collective efficacy and individual preventive behavior.

This study provides insights regarding the role of social media in crisis response and examines the role of collective beliefs in the influencing mechanism of social media. The results presented herein can be used to guide government agencies seeking to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social media (SM) platforms tempt individuals to communicate their perspectives in real-time, rousing engaging discussions on countless topics. People, besides using these platforms to put up their problems and solutions, also share activist content (AC). This study aims to understand why people participate in activist AC sharing on SM by investigating factors related to planned and unplanned human behaviour.

The study adopted a quantitative approach and administered a close-ended structured questionnaire to gather data from 431 respondents who shared AC on Facebook. The data was analysed using hierarchical regression in SPSS.

The study found a significant influence of both planned (perceived social gains (PSGs) , altruism and perceived knowledge (PK)) and unplanned (extraversion and impulsiveness) human behaviour on activist content-sharing behaviour on SM. The moderating effect of enculturation and general public opinion (GPO) was also examined.

Sharing AC on SM is not like sharing other forms of content such as holiday recommendations – the former can provoke consequences (sometimes undesirable) in some regions. Such content can easily leverage the firehose of deception, maximising the vulnerability of those involved. This work, by relating human behaviour to AC sharing on SM, offers significant insights to enable individuals to manage their shared content and waning probable consequences.

This work combined two opposite constructs of human behaviour: planned and unplanned to explain individual behaviour in a specific context of AC sharing on SM.

This study aims to adopt the microfoundation perspective to investigate undesirable knowledge rejection by individuals in organizations in the context of counterproductive knowledge behavior (CKB). The paper advances a conceptual framework of the conditions of knowledge rejection by individuals and their respective knowledge rejection behavior types.

This study reviews the limited literature on knowledge rejection and outline a set of antecedents leading to rejecting knowledge as well as a set of different types of knowledge rejection behaviors. This study reviews and synthesizes articles on knowledge rejection from a microfoundation perspective.

The proposed conceptual framework specifies four particular conditions for knowledge rejection and outlines four respective knowledge rejection behavior types resulting from these conditions. Recipients’ lack of capacity leads to ineptitude, lack of motivation leads to dismissal of knowledge, lack of alignment with the source leads to disruption and doubts about the validity of external knowledge lead to resistance. The authors treat these behaviors as variants of CKB, as they can hinder the productive use of knowledge resources in the organization.

Further investigation of both knowledge rejection causes and the resulting knowledge rejection behaviors will ensure a more thorough grasp of the relationships between them, both in terms of the inherent nature of these relationships and their dynamics that would likely be context-sensitive. Although this study focuses only on the individual level, future studies can conduct multi-level analyses of undesirable knowledge rejection, including team and organizational levels.

Practitioners can use the framework to identify, diagnose and manage knowledge rejection more meaningfully, accurately and purposefully in their organizations. This study offers valuable insights for managers facing undesirable knowledge rejection, and provides recommendations on how to address this behavior, improves the constructive use of knowledge resources and the effectiveness of knowledge processes in their organizations. Managers should be aware of undesirable knowledge rejection, its potential cost or concealed cost to their organizations and develop strategies to reduce or prevent it.

The paper contributes toward understanding the relatively neglected topic of knowledge rejection in the knowledge management field and offers a new way of conceptualizing the phenomenon. It proposes that there are two types of knowledge rejection – undesirable and desirable – and advances a more precise and up-to-date definition of undesirable knowledge rejection. Responding to calls for more research on CKBs, the study examines a hitherto unresearched behavior of knowledge rejection and provides a foundation for further study in this area.

This study aims to examine the effect of supervisor developmental feedback on employee silence behaviour by developing a moderated mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of role breadth self-efficacy and high activated positive affect underpinning the relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour, and the moderating role of interdependent self-construal.

The two-wave survey was conducted among 265 employees. Structural equation modelling was conducted to test the mediation and moderation mediation hypotheses.

Results indicated that high activated positive affect mediated the negative relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour. The authors also found that interdependent self-construal moderated the relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and role breadth self-efficacy, as well as the indirect effect of supervisor developmental feedback on employee silence behaviour via role breadth self-efficacy.

This empirical study provides preliminary evidence of the mediating role of breadth self-efficacy and high activated positive affect in the negative relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour. The moderated mediation results further show that the mediation of role breadth self-efficacy between supervisor developmental feedback is contingent on individual interdependent self-construal, such that the mediation effect is significant among individuals with high interdependent self-construal, but the mediation effect of high activated positive effect is independent of individual interdependent self-construal. The findings further extend boundary conditions (interdependent self-construal) that may constrain the effect of supervisor developmental feedback on role breadth self-efficacy and high activated positive affect. The research makes considerable contributions to the cognitive-affective personality system theory by specifying the cognitive and affective mechanisms between supervisor developmental feedback and employee silence behaviour, as well as the boundary conditions.

The COVID-19 outbreak reached a critical stage when it became imperative for public health systems to act decisively and design potential behavioral operational strategies aimed at containing the pandemic. Isolation through social distancing played a key role in achieving this objective. This research study examines the factors affecting the intention of individuals toward social distancing in India.

A correlation study was conducted on residents from across Indian states (N = 499). Online questionnaires were floated, consisting of health belief model and theory of planned behavior model, with respect to social distancing behavior initially. Finally, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that perceived susceptibility (PS), facilitating conditions (FC) and subjective norms are the major predictors of attitude toward social distancing, with the effect size of 0.277, 0.132 and 0.551, respectively. The result also confirms that the attitude toward social distancing, perceived usefulness of social distancing and subjective norms significantly predict the Intention of individuals to use social distancing with the effect size of 0.355, 0.197 and 0.385, respectively. The nonsignificant association of PS with social distancing intention (IN) (H1b) is rendering the fact that attitude (AT) mediates the relationship between PS and IN; similarly, the nonsignificant association of FC with IN (H5) renders the fact that AT mediates the relationship between FC and IN.

The results of the study are helpful to policymakers to handle operations management of nudges like social distancing.

The research is one of its kind that explores the behavioral aspects of handling social nudges through FC.

The zero-waste lifestyle (ZWL) is considered a reasonable step towards controlling waste generation and minimizing the consequences of human activities on the environment. The main aim of this study is to examine the behavioral antecedents of ZWL.

The study draws on the theoretical underpinnings of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the norm activation model (NAM) to develop a conceptual framework to understand the antecedents to ZWL. A cross-sectional survey among 349 randomly-selected consumers provided data analyzed with the partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) methodology.

The results demonstrate that personal norms, attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control positively influenced the intention to adopt ZWL. Additionally, the study showed that the awareness of consequences influenced personal norms, attitudes and subjective norms. However, the study identified an intention–behavior gap in adopting ZWL.

This study serves as a pioneering exploration of the behavioral factors that impact the adoption of ZWL. Additionally, the paper endeavors to elucidate the underlying reasons behind the intention–behavior gap within this particular context. Consequently, the study offers substantial theoretical and practical implications aimed at promoting and fostering greater adoption of ZWL practices.

The rapid expansion of internet usage and device connectivity has underscored the importance of understanding the public’s cyber behavior and knowledge. Despite this, there is little research that examines the public’s objective knowledge of secure information security practices. The purpose of this study is to examine how objective cyber awareness is distributed throughout society.

This study draws on a large national survey of adults to examine the relationship between individual factors – such as demographic attributes and socioeconomic resources – and information security awareness. The study estimates several statistical models using weighted logistic regression to model objective information security awareness.

The results indicate that socioeconomic resources such as income and education have a significant effect on individuals’ information security awareness with richer and more highly educated individuals exhibiting greater awareness of important security practices and tools. Additionally, age and gender represent consistent and clear informational gaps in society as older individuals and females are significantly less knowledgeable about an array of information security practices than younger individuals and males, respectively.

The findings have important implications for our understanding of information security behavior and user vulnerability in an increasingly digital and connected society. Despite the growing importance of cybersecurity for all individuals in nearly all domains of daily life, there is substantial inequality in awareness about secure cyber practices and the tools and techniques used to protect one’s self from attacks. While digital technology will continue to permeate many aspects of daily life – from financial transactions to health services to social interactions – the findings here indicate that some users may be far more exposed and vulnerable to attack than others.

This study contributes to our understanding of general user information security awareness using a large survey and statistical models to generalize about the public’s information security awareness across multiple domains and stimulates future research on public knowledge of information security. The findings indicate that some users may be far more exposed and vulnerable to attack than others. Despite the growing importance of cybersecurity for all individuals in nearly all domains of daily life, there is substantial inequality in awareness about secure cyber practices and the tools and techniques used to protect one’s self from attacks.

The complexity and uncertainty of healthcare operations increasingly require agility to safeguard a high quality of care. Using a microfoundations of dynamic capabilities perspective, this study investigates the effects of nurses' implicit voice theories (IVTs) on the behaviors that influence their individual agility.

This research uses quantitative survey data collected from 2,552 Canadian nurses during the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the fall of 2021. Structural equation modeling is used to test a conceptual model that hypothesizes the effects of three different IVTs on nurses' creativity, spontaneity, agility and the quality of care they deliver to patients.

The results reveal that voice-inhibiting cognitions (like “suggestions are criticisms for higher-ups”, “I first need a solution or solid data”, and “speaking up has negative repercussions”) negatively impact nurses' creativity and spontaneity in crafting solutions to problems they face daily. In turn, this affects nurses' individual agility as they attempt to adapt to changing circumstances and, ultimately, the quality of care they provide to their patients.

Even if organizations have little control over employees' pre-held beliefs regarding voice, they can still reverse them by developing and nurturing a voice-welcoming culture to boost their workers' agility.

This study combines two theoretical frameworks, voice theory and dynamic capabilities theory, to study how individual-level factors (cognitions and behaviors) contribute to nurses' individual agility and the quality of care they provide to their patients. It answers the recent calls of scholars to study the mechanisms through which healthcare operations can develop and sustain dynamic capabilities, such as agility, and better face the “new normal”.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the insights of founding entrepreneurs to understand what they consider as motivating factors in their decision to act upon entrepreneurial intentions. Using this information, the entrepreneurial trigger event influence was conceptualized, and a scale developed for use in subsequent testable models.

Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to construct an instrument that measures the presence and influence of entrepreneurial behavior triggers. The concept of triggering events was explored with 14 founding entrepreneurs. Themes emerged from this enquiry process which informed the development of four primary entrepreneurial triggering events. Over 600 entrepreneurs participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify dimensions of entrepreneurial triggers and was tested using confirmatory factor analysis.

Entrepreneurs perceive that personal fulfillment and job dissatisfaction serve as two significant trigger events which will lead individuals to engage in entrepreneurial behaviors. This research supports theorizing that suggests entrepreneurial trigger events have influence in motivating individuals to act upon entrepreneurial intentions and some trigger events may have more influence toward behavior than others.

This research is subject to multiple limitations. Trigger events were limited to those identified in literature and the interviews. Most entrepreneurs participating in this study were from a limited geographic region. The entrepreneurs in this study reported their triggering event based on their memory which could have been affected by inaccurate recall or memory bias. No attempt has been made to model the comparative effects of the different variables on entrepreneurial outcomes. Finally, the entrepreneurial trigger event instrument did not measure the participant's demographics or psychographics which could have played a role in the influence of reported trigger event.

This study extends previous research that trigger events serve as catalysts for entrepreneurial behavior. Findings support the premise that different types of triggers have different levels of influence as antecedents of entrepreneurial behavior. Specifically, positive, negative, internal and external entrepreneurial triggering events were explicated. The Entrepreneurial Trigger Event Scale created to facilitate this study enables researchers to explore the effects of types and perceived influences of precipitating trigger events on the intentions of the individual that result in entrepreneurial behavior. The optimized instrument further expanded Shapero's (1975) proposed theory of the origins of entrepreneurial behavior.

The development of a scale provides researchers with the opportunity to include the influence of entrepreneurial trigger events, as perceived by entrepreneurs, in future testable models. Entrepreneurial development organizations can use the knowledge to assist in understanding when potential entrepreneurs may act upon entrepreneurial intentions. Information gained can have significant implications for understanding the initiation of entrepreneurial behavior, entity establishment and business growth.

This research responds to a call for investigation into the influence of entrepreneurial trigger events on a person's decision to act upon entrepreneurial intentions. It is an early attempt to conceptualize a relevant construct of entrepreneurial trigger event influence and to develop a scale for use in empirical testing. It is distinguished by using planned behaviors, push and pull, motivation and drive reduction theories. These theories are applied to the perceptions of successful entrepreneurs to develop a construct and validate it.

This study proposes that the relationship between the employee's moral identity and unethical behavior might sometimes differ from linearly negative, given certain contextual variations, such as unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). The pro-organizational motivation of UPB may appeal to individuals' morality to perform unethical behavior for their organization. Herein, using the social identity perspective, the present study hypothesizes a curvilinear relationship between moral identity and UPB with the moderation of organizational identification.

Data collected in two field studies, from 316 and 185 executives in Study 1 and 2, was analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results affirmed an inverted U-shaped relationship between moral identity and UPB. Further, organizational identification moderated the relationship such that an increase in organizational identification augmented the UPB tendency for low moral identity individuals while inhibiting the UPB tendency for high moral identity individuals.

The current study uniquely demonstrates how moral identity might promote unethical behavior in pro-organizational contexts. Further, this research shows how high moral identity might mitigate the negative outcomes of high organizational identification.