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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to transform face-to-face teams into virtual ones through the adoption of remote working modes. This event has represented the starting point of a process that is changing how management control (MC) systems are designed and implemented to guide employees towards organisational objectives. The previous literature on virtual teams (VTs) has devoted scant attention to MC issues. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how MC – and particularly cultural control – has changed to cope with the shift from face-to-face to VTs and by analysing the interrelationship between the different control mechanisms and the resulting tensions.

The research adopts the methodological framework based on abduction to provide a theoretical explanation and conceptualisation of MC in virtual settings. To tackle the research objective, this work undertakes a cross-sectional field study based on semi-structured interviews with managers of different service companies.

The results of the research highlight the key challenges that managers are called to deal with to design and change MC systems when implementing remote working. In particular, managers must cope with the reduced possibility to leverage cultural controls. To do this, this study’s analysis found that managers act by introducing and/or removing formal and informal controls and by orchestrating the interplays and tensions between these mechanisms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date limited attention has been paid to MC in VTs. Moreover, few researchers have investigated the process of MC change from face-to-face to VTs. This work aims to contribute to this nascent stream of literature by providing interesting implications for both research and practice.

As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

This paper aims to examine the effect of employees’ emotional labor on work engagement and boundary-spanner creativity based on the job demands-resources model from the perspective of salespeople.

To analyze the data, a confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling procedure using LISREL 8.5 were used. Next, the conditional process modeling was fitted to test the moderated mediation hypotheses.

The analysis results showed that deep acting has a positive effect on work engagement, whereas surface acting has a negative effect, indicating that work engagement of sales representatives is differently related to each factor of emotional labor. Second, work engagement of salespeople has a positive effect on boundary spanner creativity. Next, entrepreneurship has a moderate effect in the relationship between emotional labor and work engagement with customer stewardship and has a positive moderating effect in the relationship between work engagement and boundary spanner creativity.

Considering the positive effect of boundary spanner creativity on work engagement, it is important to maintain interaction with customers, including adaptive behaviors and customer orientation, as customers’ demand increases. The individual competence and capability of salespeople such as entrepreneurship are directly related to interaction with customers, so when the right strategy is defined for each type of entrepreneurship of salespeople, it will create a positive corporate culture and lead to performance improvement.

Compared with most studies, more direct factors of emotional labor were assessed to detect positive effects in this study. More specifically, when salespeople were forced to fake their feelings, they were more likely to recognize stress or burnout due to emotional dissonance between what they really felt and what they had to express to comply with organizational regulations.

A major paradigm shift focusing on the dark side of leadership has generated lots of concern for organizations as leadership has cascading effects on employees’ behaviour. This study aims to understand negative behaviours in the organization as a system of interrelated interaction initiated from the top which trickles down to employees.

Drawing on the theories of social exchange and norms of reciprocity, social learning and displaced aggression, this study models how and when abusive supervision relates to employees’ task performance. The model is empirically tested and extended to cover mediation and moderation processes. Drawing data from 218 bank supervisors and employees, this study uses the structural equation modelling to analyse a trickle-down model of abusive supervision.

Results from multi-waved, multi-sourced data indicated a mediating effect on the abusive supervision–performance relationships and provided support for employees’ guilt proneness and emotional dissonance as moderators. Overall, the results provided support for a moderated mediation relationship in the trickle-down model.

This study provides new knowledge into the potential boundary conditions of employees’ guilt proneness and emotional dissonance in affecting the relationship between abusive supervision, counterproductive work behaviour and task performance.

Drawing on the job demands-resources theory, this study investigates the mediating role of job satisfaction and the moderating roles of abusive supervision and perceived organisational support (POS) in the relationship between perception of organisational politics (POP) and employee job performance. This study hypothesised that employees with high POS and low abusive supervision can function effectively even in organisations with a high level of organisational politics.

The study was conducted anonymously on 408 employees, from companies operating in Poland which were completed using the computer-assisted telephone interview method. Statistical verifications of the moderation and mediation analyses were conducted with PROCESS macro.

The results showed that a high level of POP does not diminish employee performance when employees perceive low levels of abusive supervision and a high level of POS. Furthermore, the results revealed that job satisfaction mediates between POP and employee performance.

This study integrated research on politics, abusive supervision and POS to examine the collective impact of these variables on employee performance. The findings have important implications in terms of the potential buffering that can be applied to reduce the negative impacts resulting from POP.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of abusive supervision on work engagement, stress and turnover intention of subordinates. It was also proposed that work engagement and stress mediate the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intention. Self-determination theory and the job demands-resources (JD-R) model provide the theoretical framework for the hypotheses.

The sample of this study consisted of 172 employees from public and private companies operating in different sectors of the economy. The hypotheses were tested through multiple regression analysis.

The results show that abusive supervision negatively influences engagement and contributes to increasing subordinates' stress and turnover intention. The study also found that the relationship between abusive supervision and turnover intention is mediated by engagement, but not by stress.

Data was obtained from a convenience sample and cannot, therefore, be generalized.

The study results suggest that employees are prone to leave an organization when they are subordinated to abusive leaders, corroborating the idea that workers choose organizations but leave their leaders. This, in turn, reinforces the importance of adopting proper leadership selection and training processes.

This research addresses the dark side of the relationship between superiors and subordinates, which has been scarcely examined in the Brazilian literature. It also draws attention to different harmful consequences associated with dysfunctional behaviors of professionals that hold leadership positions in organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of both supervisory abuse and moral efficacy in the weakening or strengthening of moral courage. The study also tests how the interaction between both could influence moral courage.

Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of public hospital nurses in Egypt and structural equation modeling was used to analyse the data.

The study findings revealed that abusive supervision is negatively related to moral courage whereas moral efficacy is positively related to courage. Furthermore, moral efficacy moderates the abusive supervision-moral courage relationship in such a way that the negative association between abusive supervision and moral courage is reduced when moral efficacy is high.

Because of the cross-sectional design of the study, inferences regarding causality cannot be made. Furthermore, more research is needed to identify whether the results of this study apply in other contexts.

Organizations should identify abusive supervisors and offer them abuse-prevention training to circumvent their hostile behaviour. Organizations should also try to consider follower moral efficacy when matching supervisors with followers.

The study addresses calls for research on the personal factors that could mitigate the undesirable effects of abusive supervision.

Job satisfaction is indispensable in the daily life of the workforce, and the mechanism that drives job satisfaction requires the attention of the management of corporate organisations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the predictors of work environment on job satisfaction among nurses in both federal and state tertiary hospitals in Lagos State.

The study used the longitudinal research design to elicit information from the respondents. The research instrument used is a nursing work index scale by Aiken and Patrician which has been established to have a high internal reliability coefficient. The simple random sampling strategy was used to administer the research instrument to 364 nurses. The study used hierarchical multiple regression to analyse the data obtained.

This study discovered that all the variables collectively determined nurses job satisfaction; however, the salary was the most fundamental essential predictor that drive nurses’ job satisfaction followed by advancement and promotion. All seven predictors, namely, socio-political climate; administrative and managerial support, autonomy and responsibility, salary, supervision and working condition, recognition and achievement, advancement and promotion, collectively exert positive relationship with nurses’ job satisfaction. The study concluded that to retain and prevent turnover intention among nurses, and other health-care workers, the management of hospitals must pay due attention to issues relating to job satisfaction, as this is likely to increase health-care system effectiveness, boost mental and social health of the nurses.

This study shows that job satisfaction in the workplace comes from diverse techniques, as other factors have been proven effective other than salary in international cultures and regions, but in Nigeria, salary and career promotion take pre-eminence above other factors. This is because of Nigerian socio-cultural realities and that is another paradigm shift.

This study aims to explore the holistic context of organisational staff retention in small, medium and large organisations. It also aims to identify the factors affecting the retention of organisations of different sizes.

The study implements an empirical test of a model created during previous research with the participation of 511 employees. The responses to the online questionnaire and the modelling were analysed using the partial least squares structural equation modelling method. The models were tested for internal consistency reliability, convergent and discriminant validity, multicollinearity and model fit.

Two models were tested by organisation size, which revealed a total of 62 significant correlations between the latent variables tested. Identical correlations were present in both models in 22 cases. After testing the hypotheses, critical variables (nature of work, normative commitment, benefits, co-workers and organisational commitment) were identified that determine employees’ organisational commitment and intention to leave, regardless of the size of the organisation.

As a result of this research, the models developed are suitable for identifying differences in organisational staffing levels, but there is as yet no empirical evidence on the use of the scales for homogeneous groups of employees.

The results show that employees’ normative commitment and organisational commitment are critical factors for retention. Of the satisfaction factors examined, the nature of work, benefits and co-workers have a significant impact on retention in organisations, so organisational retention measures should focus on improving satisfaction regarding these factors.

The readers of the journal would appreciate the work, which highlights the significance of employee psychology and retention for organisational success.

The study is based on primary data and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, is one of the few studies that take a holistic approach to organisational staff retention in the context of the moderating effect of organisational size. This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of employee retention and in contrast to previous research, examines the combined effect of several factors.

This study used the literature review and the modified Delphi method to evaluate the importance of the catering quality indices of university canteens in China. In order to compile the catering quality indices of university canteens in China as reference for the subsequent improvement of Chinese canteens.

This study first analysed literature data to establish the preliminary quality indices and used the modified Delphi method for measurement. After three rounds of Delphi analysis by 35 experts, the results of the catering quality indices of university canteens in China are summarised.

The research results show that university canteen catering quality issues are divided into six dimensions, including catering safety management, employee hygiene management, catering service, food quality, environmental atmosphere and corporate social responsibility. Catering safety management is the most important index, followed by employee hygiene management.

The research results can be used as suggestions for follow-up improvements in the quality of university canteens in China and a basis of reference for amendments to relevant national or local laws and regulations. The food prices, food quality and whether food hygiene and safety standards are met by university canteens are all related to the health and vital interests of the teachers and students, as well as the stability of the university. Therefore, the government should increase supervision in these aspects to avoid decline in the quality of meals due to low profits and enforce strict requirements for food safety.