Search results

Utilizing organizational support theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediation effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on the relationship between ethical leadership and citizenship behavior, and investigate the moderating effect of ethnic dissimilarity in the research model.

Using a self-administered questionnaire, data were collected from 294 academics of private universities in China, Malaysia and Thailand. The collected data were analyzed using partial least squares path modeling technique on R platform.

The study found that ethical leadership is significantly and positively related to POS, which, in turn, related to both distinct dimensions of organizational citizenship behaviors – individual and organization. However, further analysis reveals that ethnic dissimilarity does moderate the hypothesized relationships in the research model, in which POS is found to have a mediation effect in the heterogeneous sample but not in the homogeneous sample in terms of ethnic dissimilarity.

To the best knowledge of the researchers, this study is among the first few research works examining the interrelationships of ethical leadership, POS, and citizenship behavior in terms of individual and organizational. Moreover, this is one of the earliest studies to examine the concepts in two different samples in terms of ethnic dissimilarity.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disease which has become a public health concern, whose growing prevalence has been reported as around 33.9% in Iran. As oxidative stress plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of NAFLD, antioxidant compounds such as quercetin could ameliorate the side effect of oxidative stress. The aim of the current study was to assess the effect of quercetin on lipid profile, liver enzymes and inflammatory indices in NAFLD patients.

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted as a pilot study, 90 patients with NAFLD were supplemented with either a quercetin or a placebo capsule twice daily (500 mg) for 12 weeks. Both groups were advised to follow an energy-balanced diet with physical activity recommendations. Blood sample was obtained for laboratory parameters at baseline and the end of week 12.

At the end of the follow-up, quercetin group had significantly greater reduction in anthropometric parameters, cholesterol (−15 ± (−41, 0.00) in Q group versus −1± (−8, 2) in control group, p = 0.004), TG (−56.7 ± 22.7) in Q group versus −13.4 ± 27.7 in control group, p = 0.04), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) (−49.5 ± (−99, 21) in Q group versus −5 ± (−21, 0.30) in the control group, p < 0.0001) compared to the control group. However, changes in fatty liver grade, liver enzymes, as well as high density lipoprotein-cholesterol and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein were not significantly different between the two groups.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was the first study which assessed the effect of quercetin supplementation on liver enzymes, lipid profile and inflammatory indices of NAFLD patients as a double-blind placebo-controlled pilot study.