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Employee voice is crucial for organizations to identify problems and make timely adjustments. However, promoting voice in organizations is challenging. This study aims to investigate how social media use (SMU) in the workplace affects employee voice by examining its intrinsic mechanisms and boundary conditions. Specifically, this study examines the mediating roles of social identifications and the moderating effects of job-social media fit on the relationship between SMU and social identifications.

This study conducted a survey of 348 employees in China.

First, SMU affects voice through social identifications. Second, distinct identifications have different effects on voice, such that organizational identification positively affects employee voice, while relational identification positively affects promotive voice and negatively affects prohibitive voice. Third, when social media is highly suitable for the job, the positive effect of work-related SMU on organizational identification is strengthened, while the positive effect of social-related SMU on organizational identification is weakened.

The results indicate that different identifications have distinct impacts on voice. Additionally, this study reveals a double-edged sword effect of SMU on voice through different social identifications. Further, job-social media fit moderates the relationship between SMU and social identifications. These findings have important implications for organizations adopting social media.

Healthcare professionals are key in healthcare organisations but are subject to long working hours and may have to make complex life-and-death decisions. As frontline agents dealing with human lives, giving them a voice is paramount. This study explores the impact of employee voice (assessed based on employee perceptions on how much they are consulted and how much influence they have on task-related decisions) on health professionals' work engagement and burnout when mediated by relational outcomes (perceived organisational support, workplace trust, workplace recognition and meaningful work).

A sample of 3,266 health professionals retrieved from the European Working Condition Survey was used. The quantitative analysis was performed using the partial least square structural equation modelling and multiple regression analyses.

The results indicate that employee voice has a direct positive impact on work engagement, but employee voice's direct effects on burnout still need to be confirmed. Relational outcomes are found to mediate the relationship between employee voice and burnout (decreasing it) and between employee voice and work engagement (increasing it).

Practices of employee voice in the workplace are fundamental to promoting health professionals' well-being. Trust, recognition, support and the feeling of doing meaningful work increase the influence of employee voice, especially in reducing the levels of burnout.

This is the first study that assesses, at a European level, the importance that ‘giving health professionals a voice' has on crucial employee outcomes: work engagement, burnout and relational outcomes.

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study aims to develop a resource-based model depicting a decreased level of psychological resourcefulness – relational energy, as a novel explanatory mechanism that accounts for the harm of abusive supervision, and we further investigate the role of leader humor as a boundary condition.

We applied multilevel path analysis to test our hypotheses with three-time-point survey data collected from 226 supervisor-employee dyads in a telecommunication company in China across six months.

Our results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to employee relational energy, leading to a subsequent decline in employee job performance. The predictions of the depleting effects get alleviated by leader humor.

This study foregrounds the importance of employee relationship management in the workplace and reveals that some abusive supervisors may manage to sustain employee performance and relational energy by using humor in their interactions, which necessitates immediate intervention.

These findings offer novel insights into the deleterious impact of abusive supervision by demonstrating the critical role of relational energy in dyadic interactions. We also reveal the potential dark side of leader humor in the context of abuse in the workplace.

Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

Grounded on trait activation and social learning theories, this study aims to examine the effects of bottom-line mentality (BLM) and perceived abusive supervisory behaviour on proactive employee work behaviour and employee bottom-line mentality (EBLM) in micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Ghana. The moderating effects of relational attachment on how abusive supervisory behaviour relates to employee proactive work behaviour (PWB) and BLM were examined.

The study was based on a quantitative approach. An online questionnaire was used in a cross-sectional survey to elicit data from 643 conveniently sampled employees. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The results support the proposition that owner-manager bottom-line mentality (OMBLM) positively and significantly predicts abusive supervision. The findings also revealed that owner-manager abusive supervisory behaviour significantly predicts employee PWB and EBLM. While the moderating effect of relational attachment on the relationship between perceived owner-manager abusive supervisory behaviour and EBLM is positive and significant, its effect on perceived owner-manager abusive supervisory and proactive employee work behaviour relationship was positive but insignificant.

The authors studied owner-manager abusive supervisory behaviour to understand how OMBLM relates to proactive employee work behaviour and EBLM among MSMEs in Ghana. The study sets the tone to investigate further the impact of OMBLM and the functional effect of owner-manager abusive supervisory behaviour on manager–employee relationships and outcomes among MSMEs in emerging economies.

Based on the affective events and self-concept theories, this study aims to examine the relationship between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and employees' intention to stay with the organization.

In the present study, the authors conducted a time-lagged survey for analyzing the association between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and employees' intention to stay with the organization. The study sample comprises 358 Generation Y employees working in Indian IT organizations. Results were analyzed using Process and Hayes macro process.

The study findings suggest significant relationships between knowledge sharing system, job crafting, meaningfulness in work and intention to stay among Gen Y employees. Moreover, the results demonstrated that knowledge sharing system, directly and indirectly, impacts employees' intention to stay via sequential mediation of job crafting and meaningfulness in work.

In today's era of hyper-competition and “war for talent,” retaining talented professionals has become the topmost priority for organizations. This becomes even more challenging with new generations, Gen Y and Z, entering the workforce driven by entirely different needs compared to earlier generations. Thus, the present study offers an integrated framework that organizational practitioners could utilize to enhance the retention of their young talented professionals.

Despite the emerging interest in the concept of knowledge sharing, few studies investigated the association between knowledge sharing system and intention to stay among Gen Y employees. Also, research still lacks in examining the underlying mechanism of how knowledge sharing system may enhance job crafting and meaningfulness in work, which could fuel Gen Y employees' intention to stay with the organization.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a shift from the ideal of immersion to a practice of “committed localism” in the ethnographic study of relational work in the post-bureaucratic and service-based economy.

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork following management consultancy projects in a hospital and a manufacturing company in Denmark. The approach was predicated on committed attention to the everyday of consultancy work activities and associated relational dynamics. This involved being present at the client sites, observing and listening in concrete situations of interaction and engaging in conversations with the multiple actors involved, both external consultants and members of client organisations.

The paper shows how “committed localism” was practiced in the ethnographic study of management consultancy as it is relationally accomplished in and through concrete situations of interaction between consultants and different actors in client organizations and the associated meaning production of the involved actors.

The paper develops the notion of “committed localism”, originally introduced by George Marcus, into a methodological concept to challenge the conventional ideal of immersion as the hallmark of “proper” ethnography. Such a shift is particularly pertinent for the ethnographic study of relational processes involving multiple actors occupying different positions in the temporary social spaces of contemporary workplaces.

This study aims to examine if relational attachment could be considered as a mediator in the relationship between social support and career regret. The theoretical framework is based on Kahn’s (2007) work on meaningful connections.

The authors used a three-part survey for data collection, spread over two months from 368 employees for co-worker social support and 324 employees for supervisor social support working in different sectors in India.

The results indicate that for co-workers, relational attachment acts as a mediator between instrumental support and career regret; but for personal support, the mediation effect is absent. However, instrumental support is not directly related to career regret. Notably, in case of social support from the supervisor, there does not seem to be any mediation effect for personal or instrumental support. But social support is related to career regret for both categories of support.

The authors contribute to literature that examines the mechanism, driving social support and career regret. By understanding how these factors interact and impact one another, researchers can develop interventions and strategies to help individuals navigate career decisions, improve their personal relationships and increase their access to social support. Ultimately, this research can lead to improved well-being and career satisfaction for individuals. As the sample is generalized, there is scope to examine if the relationships differ based on the work structures and idiosyncrasies of the industries.

This study examines the unmapped mechanism that mediates the social support and career regret relationship, and in the process, provides new directions for research.

Job characteristics can potentially influence employees’ attitudes and behaviors. However, their impact on employees’ innovative behaviors, particularly in public sector organizations, has received little scholarly attention. Based on relational job design theory and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study aims to examine the effect of job contact on public sector employees’ innovative work behavior through the mediator of happiness at work. It also assesses whether prosocial motivation strengthens the influence of job contact on innovative work behavior (via happiness at work).

The model was examined on a sample of 180 employee-supervisor dyads (90 supervisors and 180 employees) recruited from various government departments in the United Arab Emirates.

The findings support the proposed moderated mediation model in which job contact positively and significantly impacts innovative work behavior. The association between job contact and innovative behavior via happiness at work is found to be stronger for employees who are highly prosocially motivated.

The findings offer prescriptive insights into public sector employee happiness and prosocial motivation by illustrating when and how job contact influences innovative work behavior. The authors also present relevant managerial recommendations for promoting public sector employees’ innovative behavior.

Integrating individual and relational centric voice literature, the authors draw on self-presentation theory to analyse the role of status pursuit in employee voice. Status pursuit is believed to be ubiquitous as it is linked to access to scarce resources and social order pecking.

The authors present a cross-level conceptual model outlining relational nuances of employee status pursuit that drive upward voice.

The model integrates status pursuit with peer- and leader-related facets, focusing on three targets of voice: immediate leader (supervisor), diagonal leader (supervisor of another team/unit) and co-workers. The model highlights how employee voice can be directed to diverse targets, and depending on interpersonal attributes, how it serves as underlying links for upward voice.

While employee voice can help to address important workplace concerns, it can also be used to advance employees' self-interest. Though there is a wealth of research on the importance of employee voice to organisational performance and individual wellbeing, especially through collective representation such as trade unions, there is a lack of literature on how employees navigate the social-relational work setting to promote their interests and develop status.