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Although the effects of both news sentiment and expectations on price in financial markets have now been extensively demonstrated, the jointness that these predictors can have in their effects on price has not been well-defined. Investigating causal ordering in their effects on price can further our understanding of both direct and indirect effects in their relationship to market price.

We use autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology to examine the relationship between agent expectations and news sentiment in predicting price in a financial market. The ARDL estimation is supplemented by Grainger causality testing.

In the ARDL models we implement, measures of expectations and news sentiment and their lags were confirmed to be significantly related to market price in separate estimates. Our results further indicate that in models of relationships between these predictors, news sentiment is a significant predictor of agent expectations, but agent expectations are not significant predictors of news sentiment. Granger-causality estimates confirmed the causal inferences from ARDL results.

Taken together, the results extend our understanding of the dynamics of expectations and sentiment as exogenous information sources that relate to price in financial markets. They suggest that the extensively cited predictor of news sentiment can have both a direct effect on market price and an indirect effect on price through agent expectations.

Even traditional financial management firms now commonly track behavioral measures of expectations and market sentiment. More complete understanding of the relationship between these predictors of market price can further their representation in predictive models.

This article extends the frequently reported bivariate relationship of expectations and sentiment to market price to examine jointness in the relationship between these variables in predicting price. Inference from ARDL estimates is supported by Grainger-causality estimates.

As the demand for online auctions increases, the process of monitoring multiple auction houses, deciding which auction to participate in and making the right bids, become challenging tasks for consumers. Hence, knowing the closing price of a given auction would be an advantage, since this information will ensure a win in a given auction. However, predicting a closing price for an auction is not easy, since it is dependent on many factors. The purpose of this paper is to report on a predictor agent that utilises grey system theory to predict the closing price for a given auction.

The focus of the research is on grey system agent. This paper reports on the development of a predictor agent that attempts to predict the online auction closing price in order to maximise the bidder's profit. The performance of this predictor agent is compared with two well‐known techniques, the Simple Exponential Function and the Time Series, in a simulated auction environment and in the eBay auction.

The grey theory agent gives a better result when less input data are made, while the Time Series Agent can be used with the availability of a lot of information. Although the Simple Exponential Function Agent is able to predict well with less input data, it is not an appropriate method to be applied in the prediction model since its formula is not realistic and applicable in predicting the online auction closing price. The experimental results also showed that using moving historical data produces a higher accuracy rate than using fixed historical data for all three agents.

Grey system theory prediction model, GM(1, 1) has not been applied in online auction prediction. In this paper the authors have applied grey theory into an agent to predict the closing price of an online auction, in order to increase the profit of bidders in the bidding stage. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the grey prediction model is more then 90 per cent, with less then eight historical data inputs.

Consumers often use various cues such as health stars and nutrition claims on product packaging to draw inferences regarding healthfulness. However, much less is known regarding the role of brand names in consumer decisions around healthfulness. The purpose of this study is to introduce angelic branding as a brand naming strategy that may act as a supernatural agent benevolence (i.e. loving, kind and merciful) prime that leads consumers to perceive that the brand’s products are healthful.

Study 1 examines the effect of angelic brand names on brand healthfulness perceptions. Study 2 investigates the mediating role of brand virtuousness perceptions on the relationship between angelic branding and brand healthfulness perceptions and the downstream consequences on purchase intention. Study 3 explores the moderating role of authoritarian supernatural agent belief (i.e. angry, vindictive and punishing) on the relationship between angelic branding and brand virtuousness perceptions, and subsequent brand healthfulness perceptions and purchase intention.

The results of this study demonstrate that angelic branding results in healthfulness perceptions for a healthy product (i.e. vitamins; Study 1a), an unhealthy product (i.e. cookies; Study 1b; eliminating perceptual fluency as a potential alternative explanation for the phenomenon) and across different product categories (i.e. surface spray; Study 1c). The results from Study 2 find that angelic brand names prime brand healthfulness perceptions because of the activation of brand virtuousness perceptions (not brand quality perceptions; eliminating a general halo effect as a potential alternative explanation for the phenomenon). The results of Study 3 show that strong belief in authoritarian supernatural agents attenuates the angelic brand name–brand healthfulness priming effect.

This research is limited, as it only considers angelic brand naming and not any other benevolence cues in brand logos, such as halos and angel wings. This research is also limited in that it only considers healthfulness perceptions drawn from English angelic brand name cues and from participants within the USA and the UK.

This study has important implications for brand managers in the development of new brand names. Angelic brand naming is suggested as a strategy for brand managers to prime perceptions of brand virtuousness and brand healthfulness and to influence consumer behavior. However, brand managers are cautioned against the use of this brand naming strategy if it is intended to mislead or deceive consumers, resulting in detrimental effects on their health.

This research makes a unique and novel contribution to the literature in brand names on consumer decision-making. Angelic branding is introduced as a brand naming strategy that can act as a supernatural agent religious prime to influence perceptions of brand virtuousness, brand healthfulness and consumer behavioral intentions (i.e. purchase intention).

Research suggests that “front‐line” service jobs typically require emotional labour owing to the high levels of interpersonal interaction inherent in such work. Although emotional labour can be performed face‐to‐face (in person) or voice‐to‐voice (on the telephone), little is known about whether the type of emotional demands and the relationships with strain outcomes differ according to mode of delivery. The purpose of this paper is to research these issues.

Relationships are assessed between three dimensions of emotional labour (emotional display rules, and the faking and suppression of emotions) and strain outcomes (psychological distress, work‐life conflict and job satisfaction) in a sample of 124‐cabin crew (face‐to‐face interaction) and 122 telesales agents (voice‐to‐voice interaction). The emotional labour dimensions that are significant predictors of strain outcomes for both groups are examined by multiple regression.

No significant differences were observed between groups in mean levels of emotional labour variables. A greater proportion of variance in all types of strain was explained by the emotional labour components for participants who interact with customers face‐to‐face but these differences did not reach statistical significance. The emotional labour dimensions that predicted each strain outcome varied according to mode of delivery.

Ways by which service sector organisations might counteract the potentially negative effects of performing emotional labour are discussed.

The study provides some initial evidence that the impact of mode of delivery in emotion work is worthy of further investigation.

This study aims to examine the influence of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – on knowledge transfer and travel agents’ performance. In addition, the study investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance.

A positivist research philosophy was adopted with a quantitative approach, in which quantitative data were gathered based on questionnaires to tackle different stages of the study. To test the hypotheses, a self-administrated face-to-face survey of about 42 questions, launched on November 7, 2016, was used to compile response from top and medium management Category A travel agents operating in Egypt.

Based on a sample of 577 travel agents’ frontline employees, the results showed that the three dimensions of travel agents’ competencies have a positive effect on knowledge received by the employee. Findings further indicated that knowledge received by employee mediates the link between these three competencies and travel agents’ performance. The link between the competencies and knowledge received by the employee was found to be positively moderated by employee absorptive capacity. Moreover, these findings suggested that the relationship between knowledge received and travel agents’ performance is stronger when employees’ absorptive capacity is greater.

This study is bound by certain limitations that also provide fertile grounds for further research. First, the study examined how an employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance. However, innovation as a dependent variable can be investigated. Second, one limitation is that the study is restricted to Category A travel agents only in Greater Cairo. Third, examining the antecedents of ability, motivation and opportunity seeking to transfer knowledge is also important.

It is important for travel agents, owners, managers and employees to acknowledge absorptive capacity as a critical component for organizations to sustain, grow and compete. Travel agents can also take steps to develop their employees’ absorptive capacity. Doing so would further enhance the success of knowledge, employees and travel agents’ performance. Also, travel agents’ top management has to ensure their employees’ absorbing knowledge, identifying and recognizing external knowledge, processing and understanding it, combining it with existing knowledge and applying the new knowledge to commercial ends. Hence, the development of absorptive capacity contributes to a travel agent’s achievement of competitive advantage.

This study contributes to the literature by expanding the extant literature on knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity by investigating the influence of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer in the Egyptian context. In addition, it investigates the direct effects of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer. Finally, the paper investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance

Using a four‐person email negotiation on a fictitious house‐sale as the context, this study explores the effects of (1) familiarity and similarity manipulations on agent‐agent relationships, and (2) the emotional attachments that novice agents and principals form and maintain over the course of a single negotiation. Results show that only agent‐agent pairs receiving both manipulations (similarity and familiarity) were uniquely more successful in achieving an agreement, and that positive feelings for novice agents begin aligned with the principal and end aligned with the other agent. This demonstrates that relationship‐building in the online environment may be easier for some partnerships than for others, and that the dual‐loyalty conflict facing agents seems to encourage one partnership being preferred to the other at any one point in time. Implications for theory and for email negotiations are discussed.

We examine the stability of market prices for 35 technology and 35 industrial stocks for the period December 31, 1993 to October 31, 2002. A phase portrait plot of the detrended log prices and de‐meaned returns of the two sectors shows a chaotic pattern in the stock prices indicating the presence of nonlinearity. However, when we compute the Lyapunov exponents, negative values are obtained. This shows that the price fluctuations for the 70 stocks result primarily from diffusion processes rather than from nonlinear dynamics. We evaluate forecast errors from a naïve model, a neural network, and ARMA models and find that the forecast errors are correlated with average changes in closed‐end fund discounts and other sentiment indexes. These results support an investor sentiment explanation for the closed‐end fund puzzle and behavioral theories of investor overreaction.

This paper aims to examine the relationships and predictive power of organisational justice factors such as distributive and procedural justice along with demographic factors towards the employee readiness for organisational change in a developing country.

The paper uses random sampling of large public sector organisations of a developing country. This is a cross‐sectional study where the researcher has used a self‐administered survey questionnaire for data collection. The researcher used analytical techniques such as descriptive statistics, factor loading and Pearson's correlations. Finally, hypotheses were tested using the multiple regression analysis on to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 15.0 for Windows.

It is concluded that employees of public sector organisations in a developing country can develop their positive attitudes and behaviours for organisational change on the basis of distributive and procedural justice. Furthermore, the findings of the paper hold that demographic variables such as gender, age and marital status have no positive and significant relationships with employee readiness.

This study contributes to the literature on change management, human resources management, organisational behaviours and organisational development. This study may support the management and practitioners of change management in assessing and evaluating organisational change programmes, particularly in the developing country.

The originality of the paper lies in the use of multivariate statistics on the organisational justice variables in order to examine the attitudes and behaviours of the employees of a public sector employer of a developing country.

Following the work of Kastenbaum in 1972, the concept of subjective age has been extensively explored and numerous studies have shown that subjective age often has a greater explanatory power than chronological age. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, little work has focused specifically on subjective age at work. The purpose of this paper is to help fill this gap. The aim is to show that workers have a subjective age bias specific to the organisational context, and that this reveals their attitudes to work better than their overall subjective age bias.

In total, 508 French salaried workers in three sectors (education, health, retail industry) answered: a French adaptation of Steitz and McClary's questionnaire to working life; the French version of the subjective age questionnaire; a scale of satisfaction with professional life; and a workplace attachment scale.

The results confirm that there is a subjective age bias at work, linked to the type of organisation and constituting a better predictor of attitude to work than overall subjective age. This finding suggests that chronological age is less relevant than subjective age at work.

The existence of subjective age at work, more pertinent than chronological age, can call into question the a priori categorization of workers by age group, an issue already raised by many authors.

The authors believe that the scale of subjective age at work can be used by human relations consultants or managers as a decision‐making tool in the context of professional mobility or in setting up mentoring projects.

The concept of subjective age is interesting from a theoretical level, to understand the subjective relationship of workers to their work‐place, and from an applied level, as a decision‐making tool in the context of professional mobility or in setting up mentoring projects. This research calls into question the a priori categorization of workers by age group, raising the possibility of a different approach to the management of older workers.

There is ample evidence that many firms do not fully disclose environmental liabilities. Since it is likely that full disclosure of these liabilities may lead to greater accountability by a firm, it is important to identify factors related to the treatment and disclosure of these specific liabilities. This study reports on factors found to be related to the intentions of 263 financial executives to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities based on scenarios developed for this research. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior, we find that intentions to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities are positively related to an executive's attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and sense of obligation. We also provide evidence that the magnitude of the environmental and financial consequences has a positive, significant relation to these intentions and find that financial executives from privately held companies are less likely to accrue and disclose environmental liabilities than those from companies that are publicly traded. These findings suggest that encouraging positive attitudes toward environmental accruals and disclosures, enhancing the behavioral control of financial executives over the accrual decision, and heightening their moral obligation to disclosure these liabilities may lead to better accounting treatment and transparency of environmental matters.