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Considering that knowledge, skills and behavior can influence sustainability efforts, this study aims to assess which personality traits influence one’s sense of feeling connected to nature and presumably make more sustainable choices. The study also explores the situational factors that might pose barriers, despite an individual's preference for a sustainable lifestyle.

In total, 54 faculty members from six Higher Education Institutions in Bangladesh were interviewed based on a semi-structured questionnaire on the barriers to a sustainable lifestyle in Dhaka city, while their personality traits were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Big Five Factors and the Connectedness to Nature Scale through a survey.

The results state that Empathic Concern and Fantasy, as dimensions of empathy, have strong positive correlations with feeling connected to nature. The physical, social and psychological challenges also cause fewer people to lead a sustainable lifestyle, despite feeling highly connected to nature.

Sustainability efforts need to be context-specific due to localized challenges the people face. While educators play a key role in mainstreaming sustainability, generalizing the findings of the study to the wider population is limited. Further investigation to explore demographic and socioeconomic factors will provide key insights to the determinants of sustainable behavior.

The findings highlight that educational institutions can play a key role in the development of empathy and sustainability education, while addressing the need for good governance and policies in mainstreaming sustainability for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030.

Few studies have been conducted to understand sustainable behavior in Bangladesh and identify effective methods to promote sustainability. This study provides insights to sustainable behavior in the context of a least-developed country. Additionally, it will support educational institutions to work toward sustainable development by enabling empathic skills development in curricula, leading to more concrete sustainability efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic was an eye-opening experience that put to the test our crisis management competencies across many institutions, including those offered by institutions of higher education. This study aims to review the literature on international business (IB) risks and IB education (IBE) to question whether business graduates are equipped to make decisions in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) marketplace.

While the IB literature has discussed the importance of various sources of risks on global business operations, IBE did not effectively adopt an integrative approach to building the needed risk management competencies related to those risks into our education. The authors argue that this integrative approach to teaching IB is critically needed to prepare future global managers for addressing crises, like that of the pandemic and others. Specifically, this study proposes that this integrated risk management competency can be developed through the building of “synergistic mindsets”.

This study presents a conceptual framework for the components of the synergistic mindset, with intelligence that directly links to present IB risks. These components are cultural intelligence (CQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), public policy intelligence (PPQ), digital intelligence (DQ) and orchestration intelligence (OQ).

Insights related to IBE effectiveness in addressing today’s VUCA market demands and IB risks are discussed.

Cyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.

Using a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.

Based on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.

This work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.

Healthcare workers’ (HCWs’) job-related high exposure to Covid-19 virus arouses fear of Covid-19 among them. Based on the Theory of Mind (ToM), the study predicts that fears will lead to negative psychological (psychological distress) and behavioral (withdrawal intentions) outcomes. ToM is also used to identify social intelligence as a means to counter fear of Covid-19 on heightened psychological distress and increased withdrawal intentions.

To investigate the study design, a sample of 262 HCWs, including doctors, nurses and technicians, were surveyed using standardized questionnaires.

As predicted, Covid-19 fear led to increased withdrawal intentions with heightened psychological distress partially mediating the relationship. The alleviating role of social intelligence on the effects of Covid-19 was supported as high social intelligence reduced HCWs’ turnover intentions, with decreased psychological distress partially mediating the relationship.

Given the universality of the Theory of Mind (ToM), the findings of this study are likely to be generalizable to all pandemics. The study results support the increased application of ToM in organizational settings and have both theoretical and practical implications for health administrators. Based on study results, health administrators are exhorted to develop ToM-based mental models to understand and deal with the fear of contagious diseases. Health administrators can also increase HCWs’ social intelligence to deal with the negative perceptual and behavioral outcomes arising from the emotions aroused by the nature of their work.

Aging is a complex and multifactorial process. This study aims to is focus on mattering in older people. Mattering is the feeling of being important to others in ways that give individuals the sense that they are valued and other people care about them. However, for many, aging brings about the loss of self-esteem, and they feel useless, deprived and unwanted. The authors have adopted the partial least square structural equation modeling technique and Self-Esteem Scale of Rosenberg for evaluating the level of self-esteem in senior citizens of Pakistan. The results reveal a strong association between the predictor and the criterion variables, supporting the view that the communal integration construct is the strongest determinant in old age. Based on the results, the authors can argue that socioeconomic status, social relationships and daily activities and have a direct association with the elderly people’s self-esteem.

The Self-Esteem Questionnaire by Rosenberg (Rosenberg, 1965) and the Quality of Life Questionnaire by Bowling (Bowling, Banister, Sutton Evans and Windsor (2002) are two tested tools that were used to collect the sample data from various neighborhoods of Peshawar. The sample consisted of respondents who were 60 years of age or older. The current study only included men who were 60 years of age or older because men make up a higher number of retirees in the district (84%) than do women. A total of 312 male volunteers, representing a various cadre of job, were recruited at random. The research population’s data were gathered through convenience sampling. Only volunteers who appeared to be healthy in both body and mind were chosen as participants. When older people were unable to complete questionnaires, researchers helped them read the questions and then helped them write down their answers. Out of the 500 survey forms that were sent, 312 were properly completed and used for the analysis.

The results of this study suggest that the happiness and well-being of retired seniors are not only influenced by their general activities, health and socioeconomic status but also more strongly by their psycho-social integration, such as their close and intimate relationships with friends, family and relatives. The findings, therefore, urge the incorporation of social integration aspects in mental health treatment programs and public health policies to support the psycho-social well-being of the elderly. Social relationship variables might become a common aspect of practice through medical, psychiatric and psychological screening and examination.

Due to the fact that research participants were selected from just one city – Peshawar – the results cannot be generalized. As a result, findings are less likely to apply to older persons who reside in other provinces due to sample selection. Future research will be conducted all around the nation, though, and it could produce more precise and broadly applicable findings. Only male respondents applied to the second limitation. Only male participants were sought due to socioeconomic differences, social and cultural obstacles and the small number of female retirees. Therefore, it limits the spectrum of the study.

An individual’s self-esteem is made up of intrapersonal and interpersonal elements. Regarding policy intervention, the present effort will be a crucial step in helping the elderly understand the value of maintaining social networks and will encourage them to maintain close relationships with family and friends to safeguard their well-being in later life. On the other side, this research will help academics, politicians and thinkers better comprehend aging, perspectives of conduct and psychological and emotional viewpoints. One of the most important aspects of life that affects how old people feel about themselves is the support from social networks. Therefore, through raising awareness and fostering a favorable environment for the welfare and self-worth of senior individuals, politicians and society are expected to care for enriching the lives of the elderly. By highlighting the importance of communal support from a multidimensional aspect of a person, this study offers a wider perspective on self-esteem. With this in mind, the authors advise academics to adopt a fresh perspective on interpersonal mechanisms that ultimately aim to improve self-esteem and social support. Social support is a key factor in fostering or inhibiting self-esteem in the elderly and is a strong predictor of mental health. A society must take action to boost older people’s communal integration to improve their quality of life.

This study makes the case for a broader perspective on self-respect or esteem by suggesting that self-esteem may be seen in a broader context rather than in terms of limited characteristics. The authors offer an integrated model of self-esteem that conceptualizes it as an interpersonal phenomenon influenced by multiple vital aspects using various metrics of old age. Self-esteem was envisioned as the result of a number of factors, including social position, activities and interpersonal interaction “relationships with relatives, family, and friends.” The authors’ conceptual framework’s goal is to comprehend the different ways that senior citizens’ lives affect their sense of self-worth.

The purpose of the research is to examine the impact of leader humor on employee job crafting. Using the insights from self-determination theory (SDT), we investigate the underlying mechanism of employees’ flow at work and the moderating role of employees’ playfulness trait.

We adopted a three-wave field survey of 306 employees recruited from various industries. The moderated mediation model was examined using latent structural equation model analysis.

Results revealed that leader humor positively affected employees’ flow at work and subsequent job crafting. Moreover, both the direct effect of leader humor on employees’ flow at work and the indirect effect of leader humor on employees’ job crafting via flow at work were amplified by employees’ playfulness trait.

Leaders are encouraged to use jokes and humorous language to facilitate job crafting among playful subordinates. Organizations can create a work environment conducive to flow at work through job redesign, regardless of employees’ levels of playfulness trait.

The paper uncovers the critical role of flow in the relationship between leader humor and employee job crafting and identifies employees’ playfulness trait as a boundary condition in which leader humor works.

Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

This study aims to develop a framework that explains how and when telework is related to emotional exhaustion and task performance, by conceiving work overload as a mediator and self-leadership as a moderator. For this purpose, two studies were conducted. Study 1 aims to understand whether telework would be related to emotional exhaustion and task performance and if work overload would mediate such relationships. Study 2 aims to analyze whether self-leadership was a significant moderator of the mediated relations found in Study 1.

The hypotheses were tested in a sample of 207 (in Study 1) and 272 (in Study 2) participants, which were exclusively teleworking. The results were analyzed using PROCESS macro in SPSS.

The results of Study 1 showed that telework dimensions were negatively related to work overload, which consequently decreased emotional exhaustion and increased task performance. In Study 2, self-leadership moderated the indirect effect of work overload on the relationship between telework and emotional exhaustion, such that the indirect effect was stronger for those who scored higher in self-leadership. However, it was not significant for task performance.

This paper adds to research on telework by focusing on the employee's mental health and performance, in the context of mandatory confinement. The authors identified telework dimensions that may act as resources to cope with the increased work overload inherent to telework, as well as the importance of personal resources in these relationships.

This study aims to construct a mental health service system for middle school students in the post-COVID-19 era with the framework of Six Sigma DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve and control) and analyze the influencing factors of the mental health service system to study the implementation strategies of quality-oriented mental health services in middle schools.

This study was conducted in Tianjin, China, from September to November 2022, and 350 middle school students from Tianjin Public Middle School were selected as subjects. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data. In this study, the Six Sigma DMAIC method, sensitivity analysis method, exploratory factor analysis and principal component analysis were used to analyze the mental health services provided to middle school students.

Based on the Six Sigma DMAIC framework, this study indicates that the contribution rate of the mental health service process factor is the largest in the post-COVID-19 era. The mental health cultivation factor ranks second in terms of its contribution. Mental health quality and policy factors are also important in the construction of middle school students’ mental health service system. In addition, the study highlights the importance of parental involvement and social support in student mental health services during the post-COVID-19 era.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, a study on middle school students’ mental health in the post-Covid-19 era has not yet been conducted. This study developed a quality-oriented mental health system and analyzed the influencing factors of mental health for middle school students based on data analysis and the Six Sigma DMAIC method.

This study aims to focus on how smartphone addiction impacts young consumer behavior related to mobile technology (i.e. the compulsive app downloading tendency). After a thorough literature review and following the risk and protective factors framework, this study explores factors that could mitigate its effects (resilience, family harmony, perceived social support and social capital).

The study used the covariance-based structural equation modeling approach to analyze data collected from 275 Generation Z (Gen Z) smartphone users in Spain.

Results suggest that resilience is a critical factor in preventing smartphone addiction, and smartphone addiction boosts the compulsive app downloading tendency, a relevant downside for younger Gen Z consumers.

Through the lens of the risk and protective factors framework, this study focuses on protective factors to prevent smartphone addiction and its negative side effects on app consumption. It also offers evidence of younger consumers’ vulnerability to smartphone addiction, not because of the device itself but because of app-consumption-related behaviors.