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Public service organizations (PSOs) face a critical dilemma: how to generate more value for society but with a much-reduced resource base. The article advances the strategy axis of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) research by examining EO and proactive market orientation (PMO) as joint-strategic approaches to this end, and how the characteristics of public managers may moderate the paths to value creation.

The article draws on a unique survey-based dataset developed from Brazilian PSOs and employs structural equation modelling for hypotheses testing. Post-hoc analysis, by way of analysis of variance, demonstrates the joint impact of the two strategic approaches on public service performance level.

Entrepreneurial and PMOs are revealed as routes to enhanced service performance, but managers’ domain expertise negatively moderates these relationships. Post-hoc analysis reveals how organizations displaying higher levels of both orientations realize superior performance, relative to those favouring either/or.

The study contributes new evidence for EO model specificity by examining a narrowly bounded sample of PSOs; addresses the neglect of other outcome variables beyond traditional performance, showing the value of EO for society and offers new insights to the managerial conditions that moderate the positive synergies between EO, PMO and service performance.

The study aims to describe the impact of supervisor’s and co-worker’s ostracism on the employee's responses (emotional, psychological and behavioral) through the mediation of employees' efficacy needs and relational needs. Moreover, psychological capital is treated as a moderator to handle the adverse responses of ostracized employees.

The study employed a three-wave quantitative research design to gather data from employees and their respective supervisors who belonged to various healthcare units (N = 510) using self-administered close-ended questionnaires. After that, SmartPLS software was used to analyze the data through a structured equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The empirical results of the study endorsed that ostracism adversely (negatively) affects employees' responses (comprised of emotional, behavioral and psychological). Moreover, the results revealed that employees' needs (efficacy and relational) mediate the relationship between ostracism experienced by employees (supervisor’ and co-workers’ ostracism) and their emotional, behavioral and psychological responses. In addition, it is also evidenced that employees' psychological capital improves the negative association between employees' needs and responses.

The literature in this domain is scarce, and the theoretical stance is weak due to the traditional approaches that are more concerned with the outcomes rather than analyzing the employee's conditional what they are going through. The present study enhances the knowledge of the transactional mode of coping and its application to ostracism in the workplace. The results of the current study may also support the practitioners in formulating interventions to foster a favorable workplace environment.

While the potential for digital innovation (DI) to transform organizational practices is widely acknowledged in the information systems (IS) literature, there is very limited understanding on the socio-political nature of institutional interactions that determine DI and affect organizational practices in social cash organizations. Drawing on the neo-institutionalist vision, the purpose of the study is to examine the unique set of institutional exchanges that influence the transition to digital social cash payments that give rise to new institutional arrangements in social cash organizations.

The paper draws on an in-depth case study of a government social cash organization in Pakistan. Qualitative data were collected using 30 semi-structured interviews from key organizational members and stakeholders.

The results suggest that DI is determined by the novel intersections between the coercive (techno-economic, regulatory), normative (socio-organizational), mimetic (international) and covert power (political) forces. Hence, DI is not a technologically deterministic output, but rather a complex socio-political process enacted through dialogue, negotiation and conflict between institutional actors. Technology is socially embedded through the process of institutionalization that is coupled by the deinstitutionalization of established organizational practices for progressive transformation.

The research has implications for government social cash organizations especially in the Global South. Empirically, the authors gained rare access to, and support from a government-backed social cash organization in Pakistan (an understudied country in the Global South), which made the data and the consequent analyses even invaluable. This made the empirical contribution within this geographical setting even more worthy, since this case study has received little attention from indigenous scholars in the past. The empirical findings showcased a unique set of contextual factors that were subject to BISP and interpreted through an account of socio-cultural sensitivities.

The paper provides practical implications for policymakers and practitioners, emphasizing the need to address institutional challenges, including covert power, during the implementation of digitalization projects in the public sector. The paper has certain potential for inspiring future e-government related (or public sector focused) studies. The paper may guide both private and government policy-makers and practitioners in presenting how to overcome certain institutional challenges while planning and implementing large scale multi-stakeholder digitization projects in similar country contexts. So while there is scope of linking the digitization of public sector organizations to anti-corruption measures in other Global South countries, the paper may not be that straightforward with the private sector involvement.

The paper offers rich social insights on the institutional interchanges that occur between the social actors for the innovation of technology. Especially, the paper highlights the social-embeddedness nature of technology that underpins the institutionalization of new organizational practices. These have implications on how DI is viewed as a socio-political process of change.

This study contributes to neo-institutional theory by theorizing covert power as a political force that complements the neo-institutional framework. This force is subtle but also resistive for some political actors as the force shifts the equilibrium of power between different institutional actors. Furthermore, the paper presents the social and practical implications that guide policymakers and practitioners by taking into consideration the unique institutional challenges, such as covert power, while implementing large scale digital projects in the social cash sector.

This study aims to examine how the legitimacy of internal auditing is reconstructed during enterprise resource planning (ERP)-driven technological change.

The study is based on the comparative analysis of internal auditing and its transformation due to ERP implementations at two case firms operating in the food sector in Egypt – one a major Egyptian multinational corporation (MNC) and the other a major domestic company (DC).

Internal auditors (IAs) at MNC saw ERP implementation as an opportunity to reconstruct the legitimacy of internal auditing work by engaging and partnering with actors involved with the ERP change. In doing so, the IAs acquired system certifications and provided line functions and external auditors with data-driven business insights. The “practical coping mechanism” adopted by the IAs led to the acceptance (and legitimacy) of their work. In contrast, IAs at DC adopted a purposeful strategy of disengaging, blaming and rejecting since they were skeptical of the top management team's (TMT's) sincerity. The “disinterestedness” led to the loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the stakeholders.

The article offers two contributions. First, it extends the literature by highlighting a spectrum of behavior displayed by IAs (coping with impending issues vs strategic purposefulness) during ERP-driven technological change. Second, the article contributes to the literature on legitimacy by highlighting four intertwined micro-processes – participating, socializing, learning and role-forging – that contribute to reconstructing the legitimacy of internal auditing.

This study aims to examine the relationship between pollution and life expectancy in oil producing communities, where there is a dearth of empirical evidence on how knowledge and coping strategy, agriculture and foreign capital inflows mediate the relationship between pollution and life expectancy.

The study employed a cross sectional survey design to analyze the roles of knowledge and coping strategy, agriculture and foreign capital inflows in the relationship between pollution and life expectancy in Benekuku and Okpai oil producing communities in the Niger Delta. The study employed the modern structural equation modeling (SEM) estimator.

Estimates show the mediating effect of agriculture on air pollution-longevity (coeff. = 0.398; t-value = 4.425; p < 0.05) and (coeff. = −0.120; t-value = −3.862; p < 0.05) mediating effect of foreign capital. The result revealed that agriculture and foreign capital inflows are significant mediators in pollution-life expectancy relations, affirming the Niger Delta as a pollution haven. However, knowledge and coping strategy with estimate of (coeff. = 0.233; t-value = 6.150; p < 0.05) spurs life expectancy.

The study suggests knowledge of hazard identification and reporting and awareness of coping strategy as the panacea to poor life expectancy rate in these local oil producing communities.

The study departs from existing works by estimating the mediating roles of agriculture and foreign capital inflow in air pollution-Life expectancy by controlling for knowledge and coping strategy using the structural equation model with ethical approval from Health Ethics Research Committee.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0734

This paper's purpose centres on advancing the current financialisation strategies within digital transformation (DT) through a rebalanced synthesis of both financialisation and people/centric, non-financialisation strategies of the DT field. Based on empirical data from Bahrain's energy sector, a new framework on People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership is developed, capturing DT's human values deficit and proposing a new model on financialisation and non-financialisation strategies showing ‘how’ and ‘why’ DT is implemented in contemporary organisations.

This study conducted a mixed methodology of narrative interviews, case studies and reviewed significant contributions from the DT, leadership and change management debates. A total of 26 operational and high-level leaders from Bahrain, 8 top energy companies and Braun and Clarke's 6-phase analysis were combined to form four empirical thematic bundles on ‘how’ and ‘why’ leaders adopted financialisation and non-financialisation strategies to resolve organisational sustainability issues in an Arabic context.

Four sets of findings (bundles 1–4) highlight participants' financial and structural understanding when implementing DT initiatives, the different leadership styles ranging from authoritarian to network leadership, the socio-economic, political and cultural ramifications of their practices and the urgency of staff reskilling for organisational resilience and strategic sustainability. Based on the eight energy cases and interviews, a new values-driven, People-centric Sustaining Network Leadership Model is developed to show a more effective and efficient use of financial and non-financial resources when organisations implement DT initiatives in efforts to resolve global energy sustainability problems.

Leadership, change management, DT, energy and environmental sustainability is a huge area of scholarship. While new studies emerge and contribute to this growing body of knowledge, this investigation has focused on those that significantly highlight how to make effective use of financialisation and non-financialisation resources. Therefore, all the literature on the topic has not been included. Although this study has filled the non-financialisation gap in current DT studies, a further rebalancing of the financialisation versus non-financialisation debates will be needed for theoreticians, practitioners and policy makers to continue addressing emerging and more complex socio-economic, political and cultural issues within and beyond organisations. Limitations are the study's focus on the Bahrain energy sector and the limited sample of 26 leaders.

The study provides practitioners and policy makers with an approach for the successful implementation of DT initiatives in the oil and gas sector. For academics, this study provides empirically unique and interesting thematic bundles, insightful analyses into leadership, organisational change, digital transformation and network leadership theories to develop an innovative and creative People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership Approach/Model on the practical barriers, implications/impacts of various leadership styles and potential solutions via a socio-cultural values-based alternative to the current financialisation discourse of DT.

While there is a growing body of literature on DT, Leadership and Organisational Transformation and Change, there is a dearth of scholarship on the human-orientated strategies of DT implementation outside of western contexts. A contemporary and comprehensive, empirically evidenced analysis of the field has led to the development of this study's People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership model which frames, captures, synthesises and extends the dominant cost-minimisation rhetoric of DT discourse to include a shared set of leadership practices, behaviours, intentions, perceptions and values. This helped to reveal the previously missing ‘how’ and ‘why’ of DT’s operational and strategic implementation.

There is a compelling need for developing constructs in management science rather than adapting the constructs that have been developed in other domains. Having emerged in the 1950s, quality of work-life (QWL) measures have proved to be ineffective due to the lack of conceptual clarity and theoretical support. The article analyses the QWL measures highlights their coherence and verifies them for being used in specific contexts.

The study includes three stages to develop a QWL Measurement Scale. Fourteen questions were developed based on QWL concepts. They were validated using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) which split the dimensions into five factors. A survey was conducted on 375 medical residents. Finally, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), convergence and validity were tested along the five dimensions.

Results extend the QWL concept and provide theoretical support for the same. Five dimensions were developed to measure QWL namely: pay and benefits, supervision, intra-group relations, working conditions and training.

The study may offer an overview of evaluation strategies to researchers and organizations that aim to improve employee QWL while they enhance its effectiveness through reliable instruments.

The scale developed in this study contributes to the body of QWL literature in the healthcare arena. It may be beneficial to carry out further research in this domain.

Current research on mental health in the construction industry is fragmented, making it difficult to obtain a complete picture of young construction workers’ mental health conditions. This situation adversely affects research progress, mental health-care planning and resource allocation. To address this challenge, the purpose of this paper was to identify the themes of mental health conditions among young construction workers and their prevalence by geographical location.

The scoping review was conducted using meta-aggregation, guided by the CoCoPop (condition [mental health], context [construction industry] and population [construction workers 35 years old and younger]) and PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews) frameworks.

A total of 327 studies were retrieved, and 14 studies published between 1993 and 2022 met the inclusion criteria. The authors identified 13 mental health conditions and categorized them under nine themes. Mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance-related disorders constituted the most researched themes. Studies predominantly focused on young male workers in the Global North. The prevalence estimates reported in most of the studies were above the respective country’s prevalence.

This review extends previous studies by focusing specifically on the themes of mental health conditions and giving attention to young construction workers whose health needs remain a global priority. The study emphasizes the need to give research attention to lesser-studied aspects of mental health, such as positive mental health. The need to focus on female construction workers and on homogenous sub-groups of young workers is also emphasized. The findings can guide future systematic reviews on the identified thematic areas and help to plan the development of interventions.

The introduction of robots as value-adding “workers” on the shop floor triggers complex changes to manufacturing work. Such changes involve highly entangled relationships between technology, organisation and people. Understanding such entanglements requires a holistic assessment of contemporary robotised manufacturing work, to anticipate the dynamically emerging opportunities and risks of robotised work.

A systematic literature review of 87 papers was conducted to capture relevant themes of change in robotised manufacturing work. The literature was analysed using a thematic analysis approach, with Checkland’s soft systems thinking as an analytical framework.

Based on the literature analysis, the authors present a systemic conceptualisation of robotised manufacturing work. Specifically, the conceptualisation highlights four entangled themes of change: work, organisation of labour, workers’ (experiences) and the firm’s environment. Moreover, the authors discuss the complex patterns of interactions between these objects as relationships that defy straightforward cause–effect models.

The findings draw attention to complex interactions between robotisation and manufacturing work. It can, therefore, inform strategic decisions and support projects for robotisation from a holistic perspective.

The authors present a novel approach to studying and designing robotised manufacturing work as a conceptual system. In particular, the paper shifts the focus towards crucial properties of the system, which are subject to complex changes alongside the introduction of robot technology in manufacturing. Soft systems thinking enables new research avenues to explain complex phenomena at the intersection of robotisation and manufacturing work.