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Coworker relationships are important in every organization and especially in higher educational institutions (HEIs); however, ostracism is one of the factors that deteriorate these relationships. This study aims to analyse the impact of coworker ostracism on coworker directed knowledge hiding through the mediating role of relational identification and the moderating role of perceived harming intention.

A total of 241 teaching faculty members working in HEIs of Lahore were surveyed. By using the bootstrapping technique, mediation and moderated mediation analysis was conducted via PROCESS models 4 and 7.

The results concluded that perceived harming intention moderates the indirect relationship between coworker ostracism and coworker-directed knowledge hiding through relational identification with coworkers. Such that when more harmful intention is perceived the impact of coworker ostracism on coworker-directed knowledge hiding through reduced relational identification would be stronger.

This study offers managerial implications for HEIs management and faculty for reducing coworker ostracism, improving relational identification and training about attribution techniques to minimize the impact of ostracism on knowledge hiding.

This study has complimented and augmented the research strand of ostracism and knowledge hiding research from emphasizing lateral workplace relationships. Intertwining the Conservation of Resources Theory with Attribution theory a novel insight into the above-stated association is illuminated through the mediating role of relational capital and moderating role of perceived harming intention.

Graphic health warnings (GHWs) on tobacco product packaging constitute one component within a multifaceted set of tobacco control measures. This study aims to understand whether consumers’ attention to GHWs will be associated with recall and quit intentions, using Australia as the case for this study.

Using the 14 GHWs currently in market as visual stimuli, non-probability intercept sampling was conducted, eye tracking and post-survey datasets were collected from a total of 419 respondents across three Australian cities.

Results show the front graphic image areas draw initial attention and the Quitline message area holds the longest attention duration. Attention is highly correlated with better quality of recall of health warning information, emotive responses, believability ratings among smokers and smokers’ perception of health risks and quit intentions. Associations are also noted with perceived health risk and quitting intentions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has objectively tested the effectiveness of in-market tobacco GHWs in Australia and highlights eye tracking as a valid measurement approach that can enhance and drive new insights to evaluate consumer behaviour towards visual stimuli. This study extends new knowledge around the physiological relationships between viewing behaviours, health vulnerability perceptions and intentions to quit smoking, which has theoretical implications for the extended parallel process model which underpins this research.

Grounded on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examines the relationship between tyrannical leadership and knowledge hiding. Additionally, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of psychological distress and the moderating role of psychological safety.

Data was gathered from 435 employees in the corporate sector in China. The study used the partial least squares structural equation modelling approach to assess the proposed connections and analysed the data collected with the help of SmartPLS 4 software.

In the study, it was found that there is a positive relationship between tyrannical leadership and knowledge hiding, and this association is mediated by psychological distress. Additionally, the results asserted that the positive effect of tyrannical leadership on knowledge hiding through psychological distress is less pronounced when there is a greater degree of psychological safety.

Leaders should avoid being tyrannical and adopt a supportive leadership style. They should be aware of the effects of their behaviour on employee well-being, provide resources to help employees cope with distress and foster a culture of psychological safety. This approach promotes knowledge sharing, innovation and employee well-being within the organisation.

This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating a new factor that influences knowledge hiding: tyrannical leadership. Furthermore, it explains that employees who experience tyrannical leadership are more prone to psychological distress, such as anxiety and fear, and are likelier to engage in knowledge-hiding behaviours. Finally, the study identifies psychological safety as a factor that can mitigate the negative effects of tyrannical leadership on knowledge hiding.

In the insurance industry, it is common for the insurance salespeople to sell insurance products to friends, relatives and associates. However, permitting (or encouraging) salespeople to sell insurance through personal relationships may result in some ethical conflicts. For example, some insurance salespeople may help relatives or friends with pre-existing medical conditions buy the health insurance. Previous studies on insurance fraud have rarely focused on this problem. Thus, this study aims to investigate the effects of guanxi (guanxi refers to the durable social connections and relationships a Chinese person uses to exchange favors for a specific purpose) on the salespeople’s acceptance of customer–salesperson collusions. Two types of guanxi are discussed in the research. The author further focuses on how the ethical attitudes and intentions are affected by the salespeople’s guanxi considerations, consequence evaluations, perception of peers’ attitudes, perceived harm to other policyholders and perceived probability of being caught.

Full-time life insurance salespeople from Taiwan were surveyed, and partial least squares method was used in the study.

The results showed that the types of guanxi, guanxi considerations, consequence evaluations, perception of peers’ attitudes and perceived harm to other policyholders were important in forming the salespeople’s ethical decision-making in the customer–salesperson collusions.

This is the first time that guanxi has been studied as the factor influencing collusive behaviors in the problems of insurance fraud. The results challenged an established belief that the insurance salespeople should first target close relations as they build their portfolio of customers.

Although preferential treatment has been considered a positive relationship marketing tactic, this research aims to examine how perceived harm to others as a result of preferential treatment invokes consumers’ negative moral emotions and negative attitudes towards the service provider.

Four studies are presented in this research. A pilot study first provides empirical evidence that customers who receive preferential treatment are aware of potential harm caused to other customers. Three experimental studies then test the hypothesis that shame and embarrassment mediate the effect of perceived harm to others on consumers’ responses to earned and unearned preferential treatment, respectively.

The present studies demonstrate that consumers naturally scan the environment and seek out information about others when judging their own experience; consequently, when preferential treatment is perceived to cause harm to others, it can trigger negative moral emotions. In particular, the authors show that shame mediates the effect of perceived harm to others when preferential treatment is earned, whereas embarrassment mediates this effect when preferential treatment is unearned.

The results of this research contribute to the literature on earned and unearned preferential treatment and negative moral emotions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research to show that negative moral emotions may arise because of perceptions of harm to other customers, particularly in the context of earned preferential treatment. The authors demonstrate that ordinary shopping contexts have the potential to elicit these negative emotions, raising concerns about ethical and moral practices in service environments.

When designing relationship marketing programs incorporating preferential treatment, firms need to consider both the ethics of justice and the ethics of care. Guidelines considering ethics of care should be developed for employees to ensure appropriate training to deliver preferential treatment effectively and avoiding situations causing potential harm to others. Strategies could include encouraging employees to better scan the servicescape to identify if other customers’ needs should be attended first, and providing clearer justifications when administering preferential treatment. The provision of choices such as delayed redemption and passing on benefits to others can help minimise harm and potentially enhance customer service experience.

The studies presented here are the first to examine the role of perceived harm to others as an antecedent of consumers’ negative responses to preferential treatment. In particular, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to show that negative moral emotions may arise in the context of earned preferential treatment, calling into question some basic principles of relationship marketing.

This paper aims to examine how individuals’ need for distinction moderates the effect of perceived harm to others as a result of preferential treatment on customers’ attitudes towards the service provider.

Two experiments test the hypothesis that when a customer receives preferential treatment, the effect of perceived harm to others on the customer’s attitudes towards the service provider is moderated by their need for distinction and mediated by negative moral emotions, such that mediation occurs for customers with a lower (but not higher) need for distinction.

When customers have a lower need for distinction, they scan the environment to seek information about others when judging their own experience. In contrast, customers with a higher need for distinction tend to disregard others’ opinions and feelings, focusing solely on the benefits they receive from the service provider and avoiding moral emotions. Our results show that customers with a higher need for distinction tend to evaluate the service provider more favourably than those with a lower need for distinction in scenarios where the benefit given to an advantage customer imposes a disadvantage on other customers.

To the best of author’s knowledge, this research is the first to examine the interaction between perceived harm to others and one’s need for distinction as drivers of customers’ response to preferential treatment. The authors are the first to show that negative moral emotions may arise for customers with a lower need for distinction but not for those with a higher need for distinction.

The evolution of digital technology has changed the way in which we, as a global society, socialise and conduct business. This growth has led to an increasing reliance on technology, much more interconnectedness and in turn, an expansion of criminal opportunities, known now as “cybercrime”. This study aims to explore the experience of victimisation, perceptions of cybercrime and use of online crime prevention strategies.

The study involved a survey of a representative sample of the adult Australian population. The study sample was made up of 595 Australian adult participants. The study seeks to better understand how previous victimisation, perception of cybercrime prevalence and perception of harm caused by cybercrime are related to the use of online crime prevention strategies. It seeks to contribute to a body of work that has found that crime prevention education focused on increasing knowledge is limited in its effectiveness in reducing victimisation.

This study identifies key levers, in particular perceived prevalence and harm of cybercrime, as critical in the use of online crime prevention strategies by potential victims.

As such, this study provides an important evidence base on which to develop more effective online crime prevention education and awareness campaigns to reduce cybervictimisation.

The practical implications include the relationship between cybervictimisation and self-protective online strategies of potential victims and the development of more effective online crime prevention programmes.

The research takes a different perspective from much of the previous research, seeking to better understand how attitudinal factors (perceived prevalence of cybercrime and perceived harm of cybercrime) might motivate or influence the use of online crime prevention strategies by potential victims.

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed organizations across the world to suddenly adopt work from home at a mass scale to maintain business continuity. This study aims to investigate the influence of lack of social interaction in work from the home arrangement on employee work effectiveness.

The data were analysed using the partial least square (PLS) structural equation modelling (SEM) approach, a nonparametric method based on total variance, through SmartPLS software 3.0. The data were collected from 399 participants in India using the snowball sampling technique. The target populations were the people who were working from home due to the pandemic and by asking them to forward the survey link in their network.

The results suggest that social interaction has a significant positive impact on work effectiveness. However, this impact is not affected by the employee's perceived benefits of maintaining social distancing during the pandemic. The study also found that social interaction is important for both genders and found no significant difference in the relationship between social interaction and work from home effectiveness for male and female employees.

This study will be useful for human resource practitioners and managers as they build strategies to adopt work from home as a regular practice even in non-pandemic situations.

This study is the first to examine the influence of lack of social interaction on the work from home effectiveness during the COVID-19 times. It examines the moderating role of the perceived benefits of maintaining social distancing and gender on the effect of lack of social interaction as a barrier to work from home effectiveness.

Moral intensity is the degree of feeling we have about the consequences of moral choices, similar, for example, to those perceived for crimes, from petty larceny to murder. Moral intensity is thought to increase moral sensitivity and judgment. Because the accounting professions require members to respond to accounting fraud with more sensitivity and intensity, we examine this response in 220 professional accountants (mostly Certified Public Accountants) under a controlled experiment using two different cases. We examine the first three parts of the Rest (1986) model including ethical evaluation, judgment, and intention to act. We measure moral intensity in the accountant’s perception of overall harm and societal pressure. As in prior research, we find that the degree of moral intensity may be contextual. We find that the ethical evaluations may become affected by perceived overall harm, and whistleblowing intentions by perceived societal pressure. However, in both cases, the professional’s judgments are most affected by moral intensity. Consistent with prior research, whistleblowing intentions may involve many other mitigating variables, such as audit reporting or non-audit reporting limited by codes of conduct. These findings relate to the increasing attention paid by the SEC to finding accounting fraud.

This manuscript makes three important contributions to the existing literature. First, there are few studies in this area and Jones (1991) identifies that moral intensity is issue contingent; therefore, replication studies using different scenarios are needed. Second, Bailey, Scott, and Thoma (2010) have suggested that accounting ethics research has focused too narrowly on Component II of Rest’s Four-Component Model. None of the previous studies looked at all three steps in Rest’s Model; therefore, our manuscript provides an important contribution over the other previous studies. Third, our sample uses professionals and not students as surrogates for professionals.

During a brand crisis, consumers construct attributions to understand the cause of the crisis and to assign blame, with attributions of blame to firms consequently lowering brand attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to explore attributions of blame in performance- versus values-related brand crisis. Do consumers assign different levels of blame to values- versus performance-related brand crises?

The authors conducted three experimental studies, plus one pilot study, with American, British and Australian participants in which they manipulated the type of brand crisis as values- or performance-related to determine the extent to which consumers attribute blame to the firm and the effects of those attributions on consumers’ brand attitudes.

Findings indicated that consumers assign more blame to firms for a values-related brand crisis than for a performance-related brand crisis.

The findings of this study explain how consumers are harsher towards firms that violate some moral or social standards than those that exhibit product defects.

For branding and public relations officials, finding greater internal attribution for values-related brand crises offers implications for how and what information about such crises ought to be conveyed to manage consumer response and brand reputation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the findings are the first to explore attributions in blame toward values- and performance-related brand crises.