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This paper aims to provide an elucidative and explanatory overview of decision-making theory that human resource management and development (HR) researchers and practitioners can use to explore the impact of heuristics and biases on organizational decisions, particularly within HR contexts.

This paper draws upon three theoretical resources anchored in decision-making research: the theory of bounded rationality, the heuristics and biases program, and cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST). A selective narrative review approach was adopted to identify, translate, and contextualize research findings that provide immense applicability, connection, and significance to the field and study of HR.

The authors extract key insights from the theoretical resources surveyed and illustrate the linkages between HR and decision-making research, presenting a theoretical framework to guide future research endeavors.

Decades of decision-making research have been distilled into a digestible and accessible framework that offers both theoretical and practical implications.

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that facilitate quick decisions by simplifying complexity and reducing effort needed to solve problems. Heuristic strategies can yield favorable outcomes, especially amid time and information constraints. However, heuristics can also introduce systematic judgment errors known as biases. Biases are pervasive within organizational settings and can lead to disastrous decisions. This paper provides HR scholars and professionals with a balanced, nuanced, and integrative framework to better understand heuristics and biases and explore their organizational impact. To that end, a forward-looking and direction-setting research agenda is presented.

After reading this case study, the students will be able to identify the various choices available in social e-commerce using network marketing, interpret data-driven decisions in social e-commerce and evaluate their role in scaling business, analyse cost and revenue management in value segments, evaluate technology adoption among the masses using appropriate communication structures and develop customer relationships and manage their sentiments in the era of social media.

DealShare became a unicorn in 2022 and targeted the rural and low-income groups. Based on a networking model for customer acquisition and a hyperlocal supply chain model, DealShare is increasing its customer base at a rapid pace. However, profitability was still a challenge, and converting high volume into high value continued to be a daunting task. This case study delves deep into the challenges co-founder Sourjyendu Medda and the DealShare team faced. It seeks to address key issues: how should DealShare leverage customer network for faster customer acquisition and how should they increase ticket size and profitability? As a data-driven business, what advantages does DealShare have in influencing customers’ buying behaviour using data? Dependence on social media could have a cascading effect on “word of mouth”. How can they manage customer complaints and increase engagement?

This case study has the potential to be used in different settings. In strategic cost management, this case study can demonstrate strategies for cost management in the value-conscious segment. This case study can be used in marketing management courses while teaching “positioning” in business-to-consumer markets and CRM. For second-year management students, this can be used in entrepreneurship and strategic management courses to demonstrate the network effect in social e-commerce start-up businesses. This case study is also relevant for various course modules in graduate management programmes to demonstrate the power of data-driven decision-making in business.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing

This study aims to identify how restaurants can effectively initiate communication via social media to promote ethical dining behaviors. This research investigates the psychological mechanism of how the matching effect of color and a sustainability activity influence customer attitude toward a restaurant and the role of perceived credibility and green image.

Two experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 used a 2 food source (non-sustainable vs sustainable) × 2 color consistency (inconsistent vs consistent) factorial design (n = 231). Study 2 used a 2 food origin (world-famous vs locally renowned) × 2 color consistency (inconsistent vs consistent) factorial design (n = 220).

The results indicate that the matching effect from the marketing effect of sustainability significantly promotes customer attitudes and visit intentions when background color is consistent. An unexpected matching effect was found between a non-sustainable restaurant using world-famous food with its associated color. This research demonstrates a moderation effect of credibility and a mediation effect of green image to explain the ethical decision-making process for customers.

The findings provide suggestions for restaurant marketers to effectively advertise sustainability initiatives and practices using color as a marketing tool via social media.

This research is one of the earliest studies to investigate the effect of color consistency with primary information to demonstrate how consumers respond to restaurant sustainability in social media messages using local food.

Based on social cognitive theory, this study aims to explore the psychological mechanism behind consumer verification behavior following tourism e-commerce live-streaming.

Based on grounded theory, data were collected through 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews and analyzed.

This study identified that companies commonly use reminder messages and secondary promotions to facilitate the verification of tourism live-streaming products. Throughout this process, consumers undergo various psychologies related to verification. Specifically, they experience four positive verification psychologies: fear of missing out, anticipated emotions, status self-esteem and promotional perception. They also encounter two negative verification psychologies: psychological reactance and invasiveness. In addition, environmental factors such as the type of tourism live-streaming products and tourism destinations, along with individual trait factors like cognitive miserliness, tourism experience, autonomy, regulatory mode and impulsiveness, play significant roles in shaping verification behavior. These factors collectively influence the formation of verification behavior.

This study can provide recommendations for tourism companies to conduct marketing events following live-streaming. It is one of the earlier comprehensive studies discussing how to promote verification behavior following tourism e-commerce live-streaming. It helps to understand the psychological mechanism underlying the formation of verification behavior.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the private label food products, specifically assessing the stability and changes in factors influencing purchasing decisions, and comparing pre-pandemic and post-pandemic datasets.

The study employs the Extra Tree Classifier method, a robust quantitative approach, to analyse data collected from questionnaires distributed among two distinct consumer samples. This methodological choice is explicitly adopted to provide a clear classification of factors influencing consumer preferences for private label products, surpassing conventional qualitative methods.

Despite the profound disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, this research underscores the persistent hierarchy of factors shaping consumer choices in the private label food market, showing an overall stability in consumer behaviour. At the same time, the analysis of individual variables highlights the positive increase in those related to product quality, health, taste, and communication.

The use of online surveys for data collection may introduce a self-selection bias, and the non-probabilistic sampling method could limit the generalizability of the results.

Practical implications suggest that managers in the private label industry should prioritize enhancing quality control, ensuring effective communication, and dynamically adapting strategies to meet evolving consumer preferences, with a particular emphasis on quality and health attributes.

This study contributes to the existing body of literature by providing insights into the profound transformations induced by the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer behaviour, specifically in relation to their preferences for private label food products.

This study explores how police culture is experienced by women officers serving in positions where they are significantly underrepresented (i.e. leadership and elite specialty units) and the environmental factors that shape these experiences.

A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews with 71 women serving in male-dominated roles was conducted (N = 39 ranking women; N = 32 women on elite units).

Participants described five occupational, organizational and assignment-level factors that shaped their workplace experiences. While some contextual forces at play are similar for women working patrol (e.g. traditional police culture, the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement) unique position-level factors were also identified (e.g. the high-risk and consequential nature of the work).

While the cultural environment for women patrol officers has improved in the past few decades, the same cannot be said for women working in positions that are still dominated by men. More attention to this area of policing is needed to ensure gender diversity is achieved throughout organizations and not only in positions deemed suitable for women.

The study extends research on women in policing beyond the focus on patrol. Further, it explores the assignment- and rank-based perspectives of police culture, which are largely absent from the literature.

This paper aims to examine the barriers that act as a hindrance and are the reason behind the struggles for the successful practice of diversity and inclusion. It also provides suggestions that organisations across the Asian region can adopt to have a conducive work environment to flourish diversity and inclusion.

Qualitative data were collected from 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews, where the male and female interviewee ratio was 6:4. The interviewees were diversity and inclusion leaders, diversity and inclusion consultants and human resources (HR) experts from Asian countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, UAE, Singapore, Bangladesh and Nepal. The interviewees belonged to varied industries, including information technology, automobile, manufacturing, engineering, logistics and independent consultants. Every interview recorded was transcribed, and an inductive content analysis technique was used using NVivo. Broad themes and several antecedents were identified which hinder the successful practice of diversity and inclusion.

There exists a patriarchal mindset in society as the main reason; that is why Asian countries are finding it difficult and are struggling to embrace diversity and inclusion successfully. There is a lack of awareness amongst managers about how inclusive gender diversity impacts the company’s financial status. Reports show that companies that have female board members have better profit margins in comparison to those that do not.

This study was conducted within one industry setting, the service sector; therefore, the findings may not apply to other industries because of the different organisational cultures and HR policies.

This study offers managerial implications that can help the organisation foster and embrace diversity and inclusion by overcoming the barriers.

There should be fair and equitable inclusivity of females in the workplace. Female employees should be heard without biases and discrimination and allowed to speak up with equity. Females should not be seen differently during organisational decision-making, participation and empowerment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few to explore the challenges faced by Asian region organisations to embrace diversity and inclusion by empirical evidence. The study shows how the Asian region struggles to go beyond gender diversity and move away from patriarchal hegemony, which is the study’s unique contribution.

The purpose of this review is to evaluate existing learning agility measures and offer recommendations for their use in organizational and scholarly contexts.

This is a general review paper assessing the psychometric qualities of prevalent learning agility measures. Measures were selected based on their predominance and use in the learning agility literature and organizational settings.

Learning agility measurement is an area requiring further research. Multiple conceptualizations of learning agility exist, making the true structure of learning agility unclear. The learning agility measures in the academic literature deviate from learning agility’s traditional conceptualization and require further validation and convergent validity studies. Commercial measures of learning agility exist, but their development procedures are not subjected to peer review and are not widely used in academic research, given the cost associated with their use.

Learning agility is prevalently used in organizational settings and is receiving increased scholarly attention. Various conceptualizations and measurement tools exist, and it is unclear how these theories and measures relate and differ. This paper contributes to practice by providing practical guidelines and limitations for measuring learning agility.

Learning agility was initially conceived as a multidimensional construct comprising people agility, results agility, change agility and mental agility. As the construct has evolved, the dimension structure of the measure has evolved as well. This study addresses a gap in our current understanding of how to conceptualize and measure learning agility.

The study employs two independent experimental studies to collect data. It focuses on the matching effect between advertising appeals and product types. The Elaboration Likelihood Model serves as the theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive processing involved in consumers' responses to these advertising appeals and product combinations.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising appeals on consumers' intentions to purchase organic food. We explored the interaction between advertising appeals (egoistic vs altruistic) and product types (virtue vs vice) and purchase intention. The goal is to provide insights that can enhance the advertising effectiveness of organic food manufacturers and retailers.

The analysis reveals significant effects on consumers' purchase intentions based on the matching of advertising appeals with product types. Specifically, when egoistic appeals align with virtuous products, there is an improvement in consumers' purchase intentions. When altruistic appeals match vice products, a positive impact on purchase intention is observed. The results suggest that the matching of advertising appeals with product types enhances processing fluency, contributing to increased purchase intention.

This research contributes to the field by providing nuanced insights into the interplay between advertising appeals and product types within the context of organic food. The findings highlight the importance of considering the synergy between egoistic appeals and virtuous products, as well as altruistic appeals and vice products. This understanding can be strategically employed by organic food manufacturers and retailers to optimize their advertising strategies, thereby improving their overall effectiveness in influencing consumers' purchase intentions.