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This research aims to examines the impact of micro-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices on employee engagement within the public accounting firm setting.

This research uses a quantitative approach with a survey instrument as the data collection tool. A total of 269 complete responses were collected from employees working in the public accounting firms. Micro-level CSR practices were analysed with a hierarchical component model (HCM) in partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to examine the influence of such practices on employee engagement. A predictive performance metric was applied to assess the out-of-sample prediction.

This study uncovers a positive and significant relationship between micro-level CSR practices and employee engagement. Furthermore, the PLSpredict results indicate that the current model possesses high predictive power with all indicators in the PLS-SEM analysis demonstrating lower root mean squared error (RMSE) values compared to the naïve linear regression model benchmark.

While the methods applied in this analysis are at the frontier of CSR research, the present study has not explored the heterogeneity amongst groups of respondents and size of accounting firms. Sampling weight adjustment for the purposes of representativeness was not used in the current research. These could be the subject of future work in this area.

These research findings shed light on the positive manifestation effect of micro-level CSR practices at firm level as well as individual level. Through micro-level CSR practices, firms can reap the benefits of enhanced employee engagement, which leads to productive workforce while also facilitating increased employees’ intrinsic job satisfaction.

Micro-level CSR practices address the needs of the millennium workforce, whereby employees are no longer solely focussed on pay checks as their compensation. Employees are seeking out employers whose CSR practices appeal to their social conscience. Micro-level CSR practices meet the needs of the contemporary workforce yet enable companies to attract and retain skilled employees.

The originality of this research is attributed to the vigorous statistical analysis by the use of HCMs and PLSpredict in PLS-SEM context for the assessment of predictive performance. Also, micro-level CSR practices are conceptualised in HCM for parsimonious purpose.

Following promising growth of the international medical tourism industry, competitions within the global market have escalated tremendously with increased involvement by numerous healthcare providers to acquire a share of its disposable income. The brand reputation would hereby play a determining role as a competitive strategy. Specifically, this paper aims to investigate the impact of social and marketing aspects on the brand image of medical tourism-based hospitals, alongside its relationship toward service quality. In turn, the influence of perceived service quality on satisfaction and the perceived value was examined, in view of further potential behavioral intention among medical tourists on healthcare providers in Malaysia.

The data were collected through a survey questionnaire among medical tourists, with 596 successful cases collected via 6 major private hospitals at 3 popular Malaysian medical tourism locations. Data analysis was then performed using both SPSS and Smart PLS software.

The findings from the present study acknowledged the importance of both social (e.g. social media and word-of-mouth communications) and marketing (e.g. hospital advertisement and price perception) aspects toward establishing brand image among medical tourism-based hospitals. Consequently, the brand image would influence perceived service quality among medical tourists; further entail positive impact on behavioral intention, with satisfaction and perceived value as mediators between both factors. Following PLS predict analysis confirming this model’s high predictive capability, it demonstrated close representation to actual medical tourism scenario in Malaysia.

This study is one of the very few studies that explored the minimally investigated territory on the consequential importance of hospital branding within the medical tourism industry; specifically through extending the literature on the influence of social and marketing efforts toward the formation of brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of ethics and social responsibility on employees’ affective commitment in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This is a quantitative research. The authors employ multistage sampling technique, non-probability and judgmental sampling method. Data were collected through questionnaire survey to measure the respondents’ perceptions of the ethics and social responsibility, as well as internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. The data obtained were analyzed through variance-based structural equation modeling (SEM), i.e., partial least square SEM.

The findings reveal that perceived role of ethics and social responsibility (PRESOR) and internal CSR are positively related to employees’ affective commitment. Job satisfaction is found to be mediating the relationship between PRESOR and affective commitment. The result also showed that internal CSR practices mediate the relationship between PRESOR and affective commitment.

There are few limitations in the present research. First, present research merely investigates the practices of ethics and social responsibility by SMEs and did not perform a comparison with larger organizations. Second, the use of non-probability sampling method is unable to generalize results for the entire population. Future research could address the shortcoming of present research in order to further contribute to the academic and business world.

The findings provide insights to entrepreneurs and SMEs on the manifestation of ethics and social responsibility in enhancing employees’ affective commitment. In turn, it reduces employees’ turnover intention and enhances SMEs sustainability to strive in the competitive environment.

These findings highlight the positive chain effects of enterprises in discharging their moral obligation as well as their social responsibility. The enterprises are benefited from the good reputation which may act as a magnet to attract talent-employees and also sustaining their enterprises through employees’ retention.

This research paper contributes to current knowledge by painting a better picture on the importance of ethics and social responsibility and internal CSR from the employees’ perception. As to date, employees’ perception of ethics and social responsibility and internal CSR practices are still under-investigated. Moreover, past research often focuses the impact of ethics and social responsibility in the larger corporation but scant research is conducted in the smaller organization such as SMEs.

This paper aims to study the knowledge development and research dissemination on employee-centred CSR research through a social network approach by adopting bibliometric analysis.

By using the bibliometric data obtained from Scopus, descriptive analysis using social network analysis together with visualisation tool to examine the knowledge development and research dissemination on employee-centred CSR. The publications were identified by limiting search in Scopus database through keywords, namely, Corporate Social Responsibility, Employee and/or Internal Corporate Social Responsibility, from 2000 to 2018 in all document types and access type. The data were analysed by year, source of publication, author, country, affiliation, subject area and term analysis.

The findings reveal that the Journal of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility Journal are the two key journals publishing in employee-centred CSR. The USA and the UK are the two main countries that dominate the publication production. Most of the publications are in the area of business, management and accounting. Main publications are contributed by Andriukaitiene, R., Swaen, V. and Vveinhardt, J. The number of publication increases marginally from year to year. More focus linkages were established between employee-centred CSR with organisational commitment and firm performance in the late 2016.

The analysis and findings are only limited to data retrieved from the Scopus database from year 2000 to 2018 on 31 December 2018. Besides, the selection of the quality criteria is based on researchers’ definition of suitable empirical basis.

The findings of this paper provide insights to the researchers on the development of CSR research has expanded to internal stakeholders. It also contributes by identifying the sources of research and its development trends in employee-centred CSR research.

The findings provide a holistic picture of domino effects of CSR initiatives in organisational behaviour. It also further reinforces the awareness internal CSR being another important perspective of CSR.

The originality of this paper lies in its contribution in the bibliometric approach to study the dissemination trend of employee-centred CSR research from the Scopus database.

This research is set to assess the achievement of digital economy through digitalization adoption (DA) among Small Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). For more insightful findings, a comparison between the service-based and non-service-based industries was performed. Besides, it endeavours to identify the important and performing dimension of the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

Quantitative approach through purposive sampling technique was used to collect data from the SMEs. Variance-based structural equation modeling was adopted to assess the model and multi-group analysis (MGA) was executed to examine the difference between the two classified industries. For the identification of the dimension, Importance-Performance Map Aanalysis (IPMA) was carried out.

Technology and organization recorded significant positive influence on digitalization adoption but not environment. Digitalization adoption between the two classified industries shows divergent results. IPMA concur the importance and performance of the technology and organization dimension, in which SMEs shall focus on for digitalization adoption.

This is cross sectional research and data were collected at a single time frame. Hence, the result is a state-or-art finding. Assuming that if there are changes in government policies, the results may differ. Besides, there are other possible groupings that could affect the results in which is not covered in the present research.

The findings imply that the DA amongst SMEs has yet to achieve its full spectrum, which indicates Malaysia has yet to fully embrace digital economy. Nevertheless, DA is the fundamental for a successful digital economy.

This research provides the general public an overview that SMEs are adopting digitalization with various degree. This specifies that the society is paving towards digitalization with the SMEs actively adopting more digital technologies.

The novelty of this research arises from the utilization of the TOE framework to link to the achievement of the national digital economy. Additionally, current research adopted a rigorous approach to investigate the issue by using MGA, the hierarchical component model (HCM) and IPMA for holistic findings.

Purpose of This Chapter: This study explores the positive chain effects of Employee-Centered CSR (ECCSR) in harmonizing the current challenges of The Great Resignation from the perspective of employees’ well-being.

Design / Methodology / Approach: The quantitative approach was used to test the proposed research model by using a self-responded questionnaire. Purposive judgemental sampling was applied to qualify the respondents based on the criteria that they are gainfully employed now and during the pandemic. The responses gathered were analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

Findings: The findings show that ECCSR significantly and positively influences employees’ well-being, specifically workplace well-being (β = 0.793), social well-being (β = 0.761), psychological well-being (β = 0.712), and subjective well-being (β = 0.611). The PLSpredict results reveal that the proposed research model possesses the predictive relevance of ECCSR in reflecting the reality of employees’ well-being.

Research Limitations: The data were collected in the post-pandemic phase to capture the employees’ state of mind. Hence, the findings may not represent the normal business cycle challenges.

Practical Implications: The empirical evidence suggests that depressing organizations to consider implementing ECCSR for employees’ well-being which in turn enables the organizations to navigate through turbulent times a little easier.

Originality: The novelty of this study is attributed to the positive and detailed findings of ECCSR in the context of employee well-being for organizational resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tribological performance and mechanisms of BN/calcium borate nanocomposites (BCBNs) as additives in lubricating oil.

BCBNs were prepared by heterogeneous deposition method. And the morphology and structure of samples were analysed by transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectra and X-ray powder diffraction pattern. The maximum non-seizure load (PB) of samples was tested using four-ball friction tester. The average friction coefficients and wear tracks were obtained. In addition, tribological mechanism was also investigated using optical microscope, energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscope.

It was found that the nanocomposites present core-shell nanostructure with the thickness of shell around 12 nm and the diameter of particles 100-200 nm, and tribological tests indicate that the PB value of BCBNs was increased by 113 per cent, whereas the average friction coefficient was decreased by 23.6 per cent and the bloom’s wear area was also decreased by 25.2 per cent.

This paper involves investigation on tribological properties and mechanism of the BCBNs with core-shell structure.

This study draws upon the theory of eudaimonic motivation to develop a model that explains job performance in high-tech industry. This study aims to clarify through what mediating mechanism employees' social interaction and self-efficacy can substantially influence their job performance. At the same time, competence enhancement is examined as a moderator that influences the effects of social interaction and self-efficacy.

The hypotheses developed in this study were empirically tested by collecting three-source data from a leading international business company in Taiwan's high-tech industry. The survey data of this study were first analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis for testing the hypotheses of the study. Post hoc tests were then performed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping analysis for the purpose of double verifications.

This study finds that social interaction and self-efficacy relate to job performance via the full mediation of occupational commitment and achievement striving. Besides, the relationship between social interaction and occupational commitment is positively moderated by competence enhancement, while the relationship between self-efficacy and occupational commitment is negatively moderated by competence enhancement.

This work shows important findings that complement previous research on personnel performance and competence. First, this work confirms that social interaction and self-efficacy play critical roles for indirectly influencing job performance through the full mediation of occupational commitment and achievement striving among engineers in high-tech industry. Second, the moderating effects of competence enhancement on the relationships between social interaction and occupational commitment and between self-efficacy and occupational commitment are confirmed by this study.