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This paper aims to examine the relationship between perceived investments in employees’ development (PIED) on work engagement and the moderating effects of psychological capital on this relationship for liquid knowledge workers, employed in the Indian cutting and polishing of diamond industry (CPD).

A questionnaire composed of established scales was administered to 134 liquid knowledge workers. Having established convergent and discriminant validity using structural equation modelling, the model was further analysed using the Process macro to check for direct and moderating effects.

The research findings suggest that the perceived investment in employee development and psychological contract enhancement (relational and transactional) made by CPD units for liquid knowledge workers positively influenced their work engagement level. The study also finds that relational contract (not transactional contract) positively moderates the relationship between perceived investment in employee development and work engagement.

This is a cross-sectional single source study; future studies could look at longitudinal and multisource perspective.

The study presents a “star matrix of engagement” that guides the application of the two strategies of perceived employee development and psychological contract enhancement for liquid knowledge workers. This has implications for design and implementation of human resource management practices and policies for employee management.

The study makes significant contributions to existing literature on antecedents of work engagement of liquid knowledge workers by examining the direct and moderating influences.

In this paper, the prior research on virtual teams was reviewed to assess the state of the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine why individuals prefer working in virtual teams (also termed liquid workers and part-time workers). Previous researchers have focussed on the benefits that organizations receive if they hire liquid workers, but to date, no research has been conducted to determine the perspective of these liquid workers. The various definitions of virtual teams are discussed and an integrative definition is proposed that suggests all teams may be defined in terms of their extent of virtualness.

A systematic review of the literature on virtual teams was conducted. The data were collected from 12 informants. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

Six main themes were identified, namely, pliability, opportunities, increased earnings, vigour, family and transportation.

This study was conducted in a three-metropolitan city in India and warrants being extended to rural and international settings to gain additional insights and confirmation of the research findings.

It is suggested that organizations who recruit liquid workers will be in a position for substantial cost savings; this is because organizations usually make payment of liquid workers’ wages on an hourly basis. This will help the organizations to schedule the number of working hours depending on their needs.

The current study is novel as there is a paucity of research in identifying the factors behind working in the virtual community in India. This study presents the first research of its kind to the best knowledge of the author, and the findings will be valuable for companies who are looking for cost savings.

This study aims to theorize a knowledge-based perspective on organizational commitment and turnover intentions among knowledge workers. The authors contribute by examining the impact of knowledge sharing, and managerial human capital respectively, on commitment and turnover in a sample of 274 knowledge workers (engineers) from India. Additionally, the authors examine the crucial moderating role of intra-firm causal ambiguity on these relationships.

Using structural equation modeling and analysis of survey responses, the authors test a moderated mediation model to provide evidence of the positive impact of knowledge sharing and human capital, respectively, on turnover intention, mediated by organizational commitment. More importantly, the authors theorize and present evidence on the moderating role of intra-firm causal ambiguity, on these relationships.

The authors find that knowledge sharing behaviors are both intrinsically and extrinsically motivating for knowledge workers, which results in their emotional attachments and higher levels of identification and commitment, which subsequently results in lower turnover intention. Our findings also highlight the role of intra-firm causal ambiguity in making things difficult for organizations to retain talented employees in tough environments.

The authors provide a knowledge-based perspective of commitment and turnover in knowledge-intensive work contexts. The authors also contribute by provide an interesting account of the role of intra-firm causal ambiguity in knowledge processes leading to commitment.

This study aims to analyze how perceived organizational support (POS), perceived supervisor support (PSS) and perceived co-worker support (PCS) as components of social exchange at work influence turnover intention through affective commitment.

Perception of sales professionals working in life insurance companies, categorized as liquid knowledge workers, on the study variables was assessed through a questionnaire-based survey. Data on a sample of 212 such professionals across 11 companies were analyzed using structured equation modeling. Maximum likelihood estimate method was used to test the extent of model fit. Mediation has been confirmed through bootstrapping.

Results reveal a significant direct relationship between PSS and turnover intention. POS and PCS were found to have significant indirect effects on turnover intention, mediated by affective commitment.

Overall results prompt the authors to recommend that organizations in insurance business must invest resources in promoting organizational support and also adopt a supportive work culture in which social exchange can easily occur. Level of withdrawal intention among sales professionals can be lowered by establishing emotional bonding with them. Supervisors may also be provided adequate training in soft skills to support their subordinates.

This study has highlighted that support at workplace is a binding force between an employee and his/her organization, and thus it negatively affects his/her withdrawal intention directly or indirectly via affective commitment. This paper stands out in the multitude of existing research as especially the relation of PCS and turnover intention has been explored less. It also adds to the scarce literature available on turnover intention among liquid knowledge workers in Indian insurance sector.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of work engagement between the relationship of perceived career support and work performance as well as between the relationship of career adaptability and work performance.

Data were collected form 606 i-generation liquid knowledge workers. They had completed their internship program in the industry for a period of at least one month. Regression analysis was carried out to test the hypothesized framework.

Most of the results indicated support for the hypotheses. Work engagement was found to be mediating the perceived career support and work performance relationship fully. However, work engagement was found to be mediating the career adaptability and work performance relationship only partially.

Engaging liquid workers plays a crucial role in passing the positive effects of perceived career support and career adaptability to work performance.

The findings suggest that managers may take steps to enhance engagement levels of the employees so that it can help the interns high on perceived career support and career adaptability perform well at work.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is unique that tests and finds the intervening role of work engagement between work performance and the two career-related constructs.

This paper aims to examine the influence of the work–family interface on both work engagement and the psychological capital (PsyCap) of the liquid workforce. Also, drawing from the literature on consumer behaviour, the second objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of work engagement and PsyCap on customer advocacy.

A dyadic study was conducted, comprising 200 nurses and 200 patients from different healthcare service providers of India. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the responses collected from nurses and the patients whom they served.

The results confirm that the home–work interface has a positive impact on work engagement and PsyCap. The findings also confirm a positive impact of PsyCap on customer advocacy, but the effect of work engagement on customer advocacy was not significant.

This study confirms that to keep liquid workers engaged in their work and to enhance their personal PsyCap, an organisation should provide the opportunity to maintain a balance between work and home needs. The findings also confirm that personal psychological resources (PsyCap) facilitate prosocial helping behaviour, which keeps customers closer and maintains them as true representatives of the organisation.

The present study is one of only a few preliminary studies examining the predictors of work engagement of liquid workers. Also, an inter-disciplinary approach was taken to understand the link between employee-level variables (home–work interface, work engagement and PsyCap) and a customer-level variable (customer advocacy).

The purpose of this paper is to propose the materials structure-wetting behaviour relationships and to show their peculiarities for some types of surgical woven fabrics and applications of liquids.

To show the effects of fabrics structure on wetting behaviour of surgical textile materials, the special structural indices in terms of yarns and filaments lateral area were used.

It was shown good correlation between total lateral area of filaments in unit area of woven fabrics and wetting contact angle of liquid drops on the tested samples. Probably due to different structure of woven fabrics at a level of fibres, another index, i.e. total lateral area of yarns in unit area of fabrics, is not suitable to show clear effect on wetting behaviour of the samples. The possibilities of applications of relationships for several types of textile materials and liquids were indicated.

To date there are no investigations concerning relationships between special structural properties of the surgical woven fabrics and their wetting behaviour. On a basis of the proposed approach into fabrics structure evaluation, this study developed analysis and some types of new equations for prediction of wetting contact angle of the materials.