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The digital revolution has changed consumer–service provider interaction, spawning a new generation of FinTech. This paper analyzes consumers' reactions to artificial intelligence (AI) (vs human) decisions.

The authors tested their predictions by conducting two experimental studies with FinTech consumers (n = 503).

The results reveal that consumers' responses to AI (vs human) credit decisions depend on the type of credit product. For personal loans, the rejection by an AI provider triggers higher levels of satisfaction compared to a credit analyst. This effect is explained via the perceived role congruity. In addition, the findings reveal that consumers’ rejection sensitivity determines how they perceive financial services role congruity.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is the first to jointly examine AI (vs human) credit decisions in FinTech and role congruity, extending prior research in the field.

Studies have shown that negative publicity adversely affects brand trust, but exactly how brand trust can be damaged remains poorly understood. This study aims to explore how negative publicity influences image congruity and, subsequently, brand trust. In addition, the study also examined the effectiveness of two corporate strategies to repair both congruity and trust.

Based on a valid sample of 522 Chinese consumers between the ages 20 and 50, this study adopted a quasi-experimental design involving two types of negative publicity (performance- and value-related) and two initial corporate repair strategies (compensation and public apology) intended to repair brand trust.

Negative publicity shaped brand trust through both functional congruity and self-congruity. Moreover, the type of negative publicity affected the role of image congruity in brand trust. The effectiveness of repair strategies further depended on the type of negative publicity.

Mobile phones were an appropriate focal product for this research, but examining only one product category may limit findings’ generalizability. Negative emotions such as frustration or anger and their relationships with congruity can also be addressed in future work. Subsequent research can additionally consider more conditions to explore alternative routes of processing related to brand trust.

Brand trust is a vulnerable brand asset on which negative publicity can have seriously negative consequences. Marketers and brand managers should assess the extent to which negative publicity can damage image congruity and brand trust and come up with different repair strategies subsequently.

This study contributes to the limited and fragmented literature on consumers’ evaluations of negative information. Findings offer fresh insight into the impacts of negative publicity on image congruity and brand trust. The implications extend beyond negative publicity to other forms of negative information, such as rumors, fake news and negative word of mouth. Results also highlight the importance of adopting appropriate repair strategies to restore consumers’ trust in the event of negative publicity.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the benefits of Ad-Video and Product-Video congruity for embedded online video advertising. A conceptual model is constructed to test how congruity between online advertisements, advertised products and online videos impact consumer post-viewing attitudes via processing fluency.

An online experiment with eight versions of mock video sections (with embedded online video advertisements) was conducted. The study is a 2 (type of appeal: informational vs emotional) × 2 (Ad-Video congruity: congruent vs incongruent) × 2 (Product-Video congruity: congruent vs incongruent) full-factorial between-subject design. A total of 252 valid responses were collected for data analysis.

Results show that congruity is related to the improvement of processing fluency only for informational ads/videos. The positive effect of Ad-Video congruity on processing fluency is only significant for informational appeals but not emotional appeal. Similarly, the positive effects of Product-Video congruity on processing fluency are only significant for informational appeals but not emotional appeal. Involvement has been found to be positively related to processing fluency too. Processing fluency has a positive impact on the attitudes toward the ads, advertised products and videos.

The finding that congruity is related to the improvement of processing fluency only for informational ads/videos extends the existing literature by identifying the type of appeal as a boundary condition.

Both brand managers and online video platform owners should monitor and operationalize the content and appeal congruity, especially for informational ads on a large scale to improve consumers’ responses.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effects of Ad-Video and Product-Video congruity of embedded advertisements on video sharing platforms. The findings of this study add to the literature on congruity and processing fluency.

This study aimed to verify the impact of consumers' self-congruity on brand loyalty behavior when stock-out happens; the role of the psychological reactance theory as a mediator was assessed.

Data collection was carried out in the form of a questionnaire survey. Data from 417 respondents were analyzed, and structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

The findings revealed the positive significant impact of consumers' self-congruity on their brand loyalty behavior, and the mediating effect of psychological reactance between self-congruity and consumers' brand loyalty behavior.

This study offers retailers/brand owners a deeper understanding of the remedy strategy needed to reduce the sales loss in their firms when stock-out happens.

This study provides a theoretical and empirical test on the influence of consumers' self-congruity on their brand loyalty behavior, bringing consumers' psychological reactance into the research as a mediating factor, thereby enriching the existing research on consumers' out-of-stock reactions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of attractiveness on perceptions of female athletes' potential success in managerial positions using role congruity as the theoretical framework.

Using a simulated employment evaluation, participants (n=68 male, n=121 female) were asked to evaluate the résumé of either an attractive female athlete or an unattractive female athlete for an entry‐level management position in a sport organization. Participants evaluated the athlete on hiring recommendations, competence, and anticipated liking for the applicant.

Analysis of the data indicated that attractive‐looking athletes had a significant advantage over unattractive‐looking athletes on all dependent measures. Athletes perceived to be unattractive were more harshly evaluated for entry‐level managerial positions.

The unattractive‐looking female athletes in this study may have been perceived as having both the masculine characteristics of athlete in addition to appearing to be less feminine. This combination of the masculine role of athlete, heightened by a less‐feminine appearance (i.e. unattractive‐looking), may have negatively impacted the unattractive‐looking female athletes in this study, providing further support that when women demonstrate characteristics considered to violate appropriate gender roles, they will be punished for such violations. These findings are a potential addition to role congruity theory in that backlash was occurring as a result of violating two roles; being both athletic and less attractive.

This study was the first to explore if the influence of perceived attractiveness on hiring preferences for female athletes applying for management positions was similar to the influence of attractiveness as reported in research that has examined this influence for women in social and managerial settings. The results of the current study indicated female athletes that are perceived as unattractive must walk the tightrope of being masculine, but not too masculine.

This research aims to examine the indirect relationship between feminine traits and employee contextual performance through transformational leadership. Additionally, it explored the role of leaders’ sex in moderating the relationship between feminine traits and transformational leadership through a moderated mediation model that subsequently influences employee contextual performance.

This study tested and validated the moderated mediation model using a two-wave survey with 295 samples. Bootstrapping was adopted for model testing.

The results indicated that leaders’ sex moderated the relationship between feminine traits and employee contextual performance through transformational leadership, such that the indirect effect was stronger for female leaders than for male leaders.

Female leaders can improve employee contextual performance by demonstrating transformational leadership with feminine traits. Organizations must implement measures (i.e. training) to promote the acceptance and application of leader gender and gender-role trait diversity, reduce the prevalence of gender stereotypes and help leaders benefit from learning and implementing the effective combination of leadership and feminine traits.

The study demonstrated the joint effects of leaders’ sex (difference) and gender-role traits on employee contextual performance through transformational leadership. These results provide female leaders with feminine traits to gain a leadership advantage and an in-depth understanding of role congruity theory from the perspective of leadership effectiveness.

This paper aims to evaluate alternative theories about how perceived innovativeness and perceived relational skills interact with gender to explain evaluations by managers of scientists and engineers' promotability into management.

A cross‐sectional design is used. The sample (n=2,278) is drawn from 24 large US corporations. Separate surveys are administered in each corporation to scientists and engineers and to managers evaluating them.

Managers rate men and women equally promotable. Furthermore, women whom managers perceived to be especially innovative receive higher evaluations of promotability than similarly accomplished men. And, among those perceived to have low relational skills, women and men are evaluated similarly.

More research is needed to evaluate how ambivalent stereotypes and pressures from organizations to suppress categorical thinking might combine to affect evaluation and selection processes in diverse work settings.

Companies should be concerned about the potential tendency for managers to reward a few individuals when they exceed stereotypical expectations. Employees should be aware of and actively manage the impressions that managers have of them with regard to innovativeness and relational skills.

This paper calls attention to the role of ambivalence and legitimacy theories that predict that women will receive higher evaluations when they exceed stereotypical expectations of innovativeness and that when women do not meet stereotypical expectations of relational skills, managers will temper their harshness in evaluating them. In developing this analysis, it seeks to contribute to the understanding of evaluation processes by considering the context in which evaluations take place.

Considering the benefits that gender diversity could bring to audit firms, especially in a time when the audit profession faces criticism and the COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gender inequality gap, this study aims to explore the lived experiences of female former audit managers from a social role theory and role congruity theory perspective, to understand the factors that contributed towards their resignations.

An exploratory qualitative research approach and an interpretative phenomenological analysis design were used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior female audit managers who had resigned from Johannesburg Stock Exchange-accredited audit firms.

The female former audit managers reported their unique experiences in terms of a lack of transparent career progression discussions, audit firms being run by “old boys’ clubs” and unfair treatment linked to bias, job overload and indistinct ambitions to become audit partners.

The homogeneous sample included a small number of female participants from a limited number of audit firms.

The findings could inform audit firms how to address the factors contributing to female audit managers’ resignations and to challenge stereotypes to retain more women for promotion to audit partner-level, thereby capitalising on the benefits of a diversified management structure that could lead to higher quality audits and address gender inequality.

There are mainly two viewpoints on women’s leadership effectiveness compared with that of men – the questioning view and the admiring view, two points of view that are not in agreement. Based on that, this study aims to find the gender difference in leadership effectiveness.

This study uses carefully matched male and female presidents (223 pairs) of Chinese listed companies and male and female chief executive officers (141 pairs) of American listed companies as samples. Analysis of variance was conducted to analyze the indicator data of the leadership effectiveness.

The findings show that women’s leadership effectiveness is not significantly inferior to that of men, and that women’s leadership effectiveness compared to that of men in the Chinese cultural context is not inferior to that in the American cultural context. The findings do not support the questioning view of women’s leadership effectiveness.

This study first uses the carefully matched (female/male leaders) data of Chinese listed companies and American listed companies as samples to find which viewpoint (the questioning view and the admiring view) is supported or is not supported.

The purpose of this study is to explore how initial public offering (IPO) investors view female presence on boards of directors in the USA.

This study utilizes hierarchical regression and analyzes data collected from firms undertaking their IPO’s in the USA during 1997 and 2007.

The findings of this study suggest that US IPO investors react negatively to female presence on the board of directors. However, this negative effect has weakened post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

The results of this study may not generalize to other settings.

Gender bias against females in the boardroom exists but appears to be weaker post-Sarbanes-Oxley.

One hurdle to greater female representation in entrepreneurial ventures in the USA may be weakening as a result of greater awareness of female director contributions to board functioning.

First, the study represents one of the few attempts to examine the influence of female directors on organizational outcomes in IPO firms. Second, this study represents one of the first studies to consider the influence of director gender on IPO performance. Finally, this study extends extant research by examining investor reactions to female board presence. The results of this study suggest that bias against females in the boardroom may exist but appears to be weakening post-Sarbanes-Oxley. This finding indicates increasing awareness of female director contributions to board functioning on the part of IPO investors.