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This study introduces three variables related to brands that have the potential to enhance university students' advocacy intentions. The research explores how university brand identification, the perceived prestige of the university brand and the social benefits associated with the university brand impact students' advocacy intentions. Additionally, the study examines the moderating role of gender in these relationships.

Cross-sectional surveys of 326 undergraduate students enrolled in a Spanish university, and structural equation modeling was used to test and validate the conceptual model.

The findings from the structural equation modeling indicate that university brand identification, perceived university brand prestige and university brand social benefits significantly influence students' advocacy intentions. Furthermore, the multigroup analysis reveals a gender difference in the factors influencing advocacy intentions. Female students demonstrate significance in all three antecedents, whereas male students only show significance in university brand identification and perceived university brand prestige.

The current study's findings provide several insights for higher education institutions in developing enduring and committed relationships with their students.

This study offers relevant insights into the body of research on university branding, explaining the students' advocacy intentions through the variables of university brand identification, perceived university brand prestige and university brand social benefits. Also, this study is a novelty in introducing empirical evidence for the importance of the moderating role of students' gender.

This paper aims to examine the evolution of organizational identification (OI) research over the past five decades and its journey through various lenses, such as the collaborative network of authors, organizations and countries. The conceptual and intellectual structure of the construct is analysed via keywords and co-citation pattern mapping.

OI research is rising in popularity, with 118 papers published in 2019, 168 papers in 2020 and 15 publications till February 2021 in the Scopus database. The Scopus database is used to retrieve 55 years of OI studies published between 1965 and 2021. The free bibliometric tools Biblioshiny and VOSviewer are used to analyse 1,034 journal papers.

The result showed that R. Van Dick is the most influential author and the USA is the most involved country in OI research. As per the findings, the Journal of Organizational Behaviour published most of OI research and “corporate social responsibility” and “organizational commitment” seem to be the most used keywords alongside OI.

This study will be highly beneficial to OI researchers making their understanding about the construct better. It will also encourage social psychologists to understand the construct utility in workplace social welfare programmes. The research could also help governments and funding bodies to evaluate grant requests. Furthermore, researchers from countries with the lowest proportion of OI studies would be encouraged to spend more time and effort in this area. It will offer insight into international marketing and how individuals and stakeholders perceive and connect with an organization globally.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the important research studies carried out in the domain of OI in the international context. This is also one of the few studies which is spread out across different disciplinary areas including international marketing and management. The success of this paper can open avenues and influence future researchers to study in the OI and related cross-disciplinary areas of international management.

One of the most decisive objectives of human resource management (HRM), essential for business performance, is to attract, maintain and engage a qualified workforce. This study aims to identify and prioritize the antecedents of employer branding, which are considered extremely important by potential applicants when they choose to join a particular employer.

The authors have adopted a popular multicriteria decision-making technique fuzzy analytical hierarchy process, to prioritize the identified antecedents. The modified Delphi techniques with the 22 experts have been conducted to validate the identified antecedents. Structured questionnaires were discussed, and their reliability was assessed using the expert’s opinion.

Results of this study indicate that potential applicants consider career advancement opportunities as the most important enabler that persuades them to join a particular employer. Future employees are also motivated to join if they are offered attractive compensation packages, which are distinct from competitors. Furthermore, corporate social responsibility is evolving as an antecedent of employer branding as potential candidates are attracted to employers who are socially responsible.

Employer branding can serve as a strategic HRM technique for any business seeking to attract, recruit, retain and involve outstanding employees, as the success of the organization is determined by how its image is built, communicated and promoted. This study provides insights for HR managers and practitioners who can think of developing an effective employer brand communication that offers a distinct and in-imitable image and reputation as an employer of choice.

This study is unique, as it offers meaningful visions to HR practitioners and experts for designing employer branding strategies for attracting potential applicants to join their organizations.

The purpose of this study is to examine how employees’ deference to leader authority may induce their unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) and whether this translation is more likely to materialize in the presence of two personal factors (dispositional greed and proactive personality) and two organizational factors (workplace status and job rotation).

The empirical assessment of the research hypotheses relies on quantitative survey data collected among 350 Canadian-based employees who work in the healthcare sector. The statistical analyses include hierarchical moderated regression.

The role of deference to leader authority in stimulating UPB is greater when employees (1) have a natural disposition to always want more, (2) enjoy initiative taking, (3) believe that they have a great deal of prestige in the organization and (4) operate in an organizational environment in which job rotation across different departments is encouraged.

The results inform managers about the risk that employees’ willingness to obey organizational authorities unconditionally might escalate into negative behaviors that can cause harm to both the organization and employees in the long run, as well as the personal and organizational circumstances in which this escalation is more likely to occur.

This study extends extant research by investigating the conditional effects of an unexplored determinant of UPB, namely, a personal desire to defer to organizational leaders.

Drawing from social capital theory and resource dependence theory, this paper aims to test the relationship between top management team (TMT) government social capital and firm’s innovation performance via firm’s network prestige, and the moderating effect of TMT academic social capital.

The authors collected data from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research Database as well as A-share listed firms’ annual reports, and finally generated a sample of 922 firms and 2,464 firm-years from 2008 to 2014. UCINET 6.0 was used to analyze the data.

The authors find that the government social capital of TMT is positively related to firms’ innovation performance and firms’ network prestige plays a mediating role in this relationship. In addition, TMT academic social capital can strengthen the links between TMT government social capital and innovation performance through firms’ network prestige.

This paper not only contributes to literatures on the mechanism in the relationship between government social capital and firms’ innovation, but also to literatures on the effectiveness of the heterogeneity of firm’s social capital.

To provide theoretical guidance on improving luxury brands’ marketing performance, this study aims to examine the impact mechanism and boundary conditions of luxury brand buyers’ consumption resources on observers’ brand attitudes from the perspective of consumers’ power distance beliefs (PDBs).

Four experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 examined the influence of the interaction of consumption resources and PDBs on luxury brand attitudes; Study 2 examined the mediating role of prestige perception. Study 3 excluded alternative explanations of (dis)association motivation and envy. Finally, Study 4 examined the moderating effect of brand relationship norms.

Consumers with low PDBs had lower attitudes towards luxury brands when consumption resources were acquired through luck (rather than effort). However, no significant difference in luxury brand attitudes was found between these two consumer groups when PDBs were high. Consumers’ perceptions of prestige played a mediating role in the main effect, whereas brand relationship norms moderated the main effect.

First, this study reveals the unique role of PDBs in shaping consumer attitudes towards luxury brands. Second, it uses consumption resources as a signal for luxury consumption and identifies a way to influence consumers’ attitudes towards luxury brands, namely, their perceptions of prestige. Third, it uncovers the influence of consumers’ brand relationship norms on the formation of luxury brand attitudes.

How to improve continuance commitment for platform workers is still unclear to platforms' managers and academic scholars. This study develops a configurational framework based on the push-pull theory and proposes that continuance commitment for platform workers does not depend on a single condition but on interactions between push and pull factors.

The data from the sample of 431 full-time and 184 part-time platform workers in China were analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (FsQCA).

The results found that combining family motivation with the two kinds of pull factors (worker's reputation and algorithmic transparency) can achieve high continuance commitment for full-time platform workers; combining job alternatives with the two kinds of pull factors (worker's reputation and job autonomy) can promote high continuance commitment for part-time platform workers. Particularly, workers' reputations were found to be a core condition reinforcing continuance commitment for both part-time and full-time platform workers.

The findings suggest that platforms should avoid the “one size fits all” strategy. Emphasizing the importance of family and improving worker's reputation and algorithmic transparency are smart retention strategies for full-time platform workers, whereas for part-time platform workers it is equally important to reinforce continuance commitment by enhancing workers' reputations and doing their best to maintain and enhance their job autonomy.

This study expands the analytical context of commitment research and provides new insights for understanding the complex causality between antecedent conditions and continuance commitment for platform workers.

Supporting distant teams is a frequent phenomenon. Through the lens of the social identity theory, this research aims to examine differences between local and distant fans regarding drivers of team identification.

A multigroup structural equation model was employed. The data were collected through an online survey with 1,285 sports fans.

Team distinctiveness constitutes an important aspect fueling identification for all fans, whereas congruence between own and team personality is important for local and displaced fans only. Team prestige does not impact identification for either group.

To build up a base of highly identified supporters, clubs should emphasize those aspects of team brands that fans consider distinctive. When targeting local fans, clubs should also focus on communicating the brand's unique personality aspects.

This is the first study that assesses the potential differences behind fans' social identification with local and distant teams.

The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of individuals willingly opting for employment positions that do not fully use their education, skills and abilities, a phenomenon known as voluntary overqualification. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence and the formation mechanism of this emerging phenomenon. Drawing upon social cognition theory, this study explores the relationship between work values and voluntary overqualification while also examining the mediating role of the future work self and the moderating role of perceived marketability.

This study used a longitudinal approach, collecting data through questionnaires administered at multiple time points. The sample consisted of 607 employees from various departments of five Chinese companies. Regression analysis using the PROCESS macro in SPSS was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive relationship between employees’ work values and voluntary overqualification. Furthermore, this relationship is mediated by the future work self. Additionally, perceived marketability plays a moderating intermediary role in the whole model.

This study contributes to the overqualification literature by introducing a novel type of overqualification and unveiling the mechanism by which work values influence voluntary overqualification. The findings provide insights for understanding and managing employees who are voluntarily overqualified.