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Social enterprises (SEs) have experienced unprecedented uncertainty due to COVID-19, and it has challenged the fundamental assumptions underlying the SEs. Little is known about the strategic response of SEs when their fundamental characteristics are being challenged. The purpose of this paper is to explore – how do SEs respond to a crisis caused by the pandemic?

This paper adopts a case study approach and reports the response strategy of impulse social enterprises (ISE) from India. Data were collected through interviews, Webinars and organizational reports. To analyze the data, the authors examined the fundamental assumption on SE that was challenged by the pandemic.

The response strategy of ISE is driven by social and substantive rationality focusing on the relationship with the community and doing what is good for them. The role of communication was vital in gathering support and resources to continue with their function. ISE adapted a mindset of mission agility and created an alternative market for its product.

This study highlights the response strategy of SE in an emerging economy like India, which experienced one of the stringent lockdowns. It is probably one of the few studies that examined the responses of SE under a crisis that challenged their fundamental attributes by adopting the framework of Bacq and Lumpkin (2021).

Based on the conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate if the fear of career harm influences employees’ knowledge-hoarding behavior. The study further examines felt violation as the predictor of employees’ fear of career harm. The study also explores leader-member exchange as a boundary factor influencing the effect of felt violation on employees’ fear of career harm.

The data were collected in three waves from 402 professionals working in the information technology industry in Bengaluru, popularly known as the Silicon Valley of India.

The findings indicate fear of career harm as a critical predictor of employees’ knowledge-hoarding behavior. Moreover, felt violation indirectly impacts knowledge-hoarding behavior by enhancing employees’ fear of career harm. The adverse effect of felt violation was found to be stronger for employees with poor-quality relationships with their leaders.

The study carries important managerial implications as it uncovers the antecedents of knowledge hoarding. First, the human resource department can devise specific guidelines to ensure that the employees are treated the way they were promised. They can also organize training opportunities and mentoring so that the employees’ performance and growth do not get hampered, even if there is a violation. Moreover, such cases should be addressed in an adequate and expedited manner. More significantly, leaders can compensate for the failure of organizational-level levers by developing quality relationships with their subordinates.

The study advances the existing literature on knowledge hoarding by establishing a novel antecedent. Furthermore, it identifies how the employee-leader relationship’s quality can mitigate the adverse effect of felt violation.

The purpose of this study is to comprehend the approach and adaptation of research and development (R&D) professionals in managing work and non-work life during Covid-19. Besides, it investigates the influence of organizational culture on extra-role behavior both within and outside the organizational boundaries during uncertainty.

Being an exploratory study, the data were generated through the in-depth personal interview from 23 respondents of the Indian Space Research Organization. Besides, the study also used data from secondary sources. The authors followed thematic analysis for eliciting themes from the text data.

Primarily, it found that the organizational culture may influence employees to perform extra-role behavior within and outside the organizational boundaries during the pandemic. Besides, it found that R&D professionals are adaptive toward the work from home culture.

The qualitative study is based on in-depth interviews of 23 R&D professionals during the Covid-19. Future studies may conduct a larger-scale quantitative study to generalize the findings. Implications for future research on hybrid work culture are discussed.

This study hints that employers need to move from a short-term transactional approach to a long-term cultural approach to navigate extreme uncertainty. It also highlights reorientation of human resource professionals in managing workplace evolution.

The study extends the literature on organizational culture by attributing culture for the extra-role behaviors of R&D professionals beyond the organizational boundary and navigating uncertainty.

The present study examines the linkage between financial literacy and financial fragility during COVID-19. It further examines if financial literacy has a differential impact on financial fragility based on psychological (financial confidence), economic (wealth) and social (race) factors.

The authors used nationally representative data of the American working age-group. They collated six different datasets collected at different time-periods to conduct the present study. Based on 2,202 observations, they conducted logistic regression analyses to test the proposed relationships.

The authors find that financial literacy reduces the odds of being financially fragile by 9.1%. Furthermore, they find that financially literate consumers having high financial confidence are less financially fragile during COVID-19. Besides, the adverse impact of financial literacy on financial fragility is more for consumers having more than less wealth. The interaction with race is not significant, suggesting that financial literacy cuts across racial boundaries.

Financial fragility is an important factor having numerous deleterious consequences. The authors’ study found that financial confidence, psychological factor and wealth economic factor enhances the negative effect of financial literacy on financial fragility. Banks and financial institutes can develop mechanisms to infuse confidence in individuals during the pandemic to reduce their financial fragility. Policymakers and governments may increase awareness related to debt management practices and design financial literacy interventions to reduce financial fragility among individuals.

The study is one of the initial studies to examine the antecedents of financial fragility. Based on a time-lagged data, the authors’ study examines the linkage between financial literacy and financial fragility. Though scholars have investigated financial literacy and its implications, scholarly work in this domain during COVID-19 is at best limited. The study contributes to the literature by testing the effects of boundary conditions that can change financial literacy's impact on financial fragility.

The learning outcomes are as follows: to understand the cultural and ethical dimensions revolving around the issue of female feticide; to apply the lens of institutional theory with respective change management measures; and to analyze and evaluate the impact of such intervention programs such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao in the context of emerging economies such as India.

This case attempts to highlight the innovative and effective governance approach by the Government of Rajasthan (India) and, in particular, the State Health Assurance Agency to curb the menace of female feticide and the rising cases of abortion and sex determination in an attempt to favor a male child. The case concentrates on mainly three dimensions of Indian societal ecosystem, namely, the grave concern of preference of male child over female child leading to widespread cases of female feticide in different states in India with specific focus on the state of Rajasthan; the role of cultural dimension which primarily drives such preferential treatment in rural and urban areas in India; and the importance of using effective policy measures in monitoring various activities, introduction of incentive schemes to patients for preventing sex determination and promoting the birth of female child.

This case can be used as a teaching material in the Public Policy course – Social Welfare and Health Policy, Policy interventions, organization theory and change management at the Graduate/MBA level.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 10: Public Sector Management.

Drawing from the literature on person–environment fit and proactive personality, the purpose of this paper is to empirically examine whether congruence between the proactive personality of a leader and his/her follower is facilitative/inhibitive of creativity of the follower.

Data were collected in two waves from 355 followers and 36 corresponding leaders working in a large manufacturing company in India. Hypotheses were tested using polynomial regression analysis and response surface method.

The results indicate that leader–follower congruence in proactive personality is more likely to encourage followers’ creativity. Moreover, leader–follower congruence at higher levels of proactive personality showed higher levels of followers’ creativity than when dyads are congruent at lower levels.

Findings suggest that human resource management in organizations should consider matching leaders’ proactive personality with that of followers’ to foster employee creativity. This is critical from the perspective of recruitment and dyad formulation for jobs that demand creativity.

Research examining why and how congruence in personal characteristics between a leader and his/her follower foster followers’ creativity is at best scant. The study is a novel attempt to examine the effect of congruence in leader–follower proactive personalities on workplace creativity of the follower.

The importance of mental wellbeing and the need for organizations to address it is increasing in the post-pandemic context. Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being adopted in HRM functions, its adoption and utility for enabling mental wellbeing is limited. Building on the Open System Theory (OST) and adopting the technology-in-practice lens, the authors examined the roles of human and technology agencies in enabling mental wellbeing.

The study was conducted in two stages; in Stage 1, the authors adopted a case methodology approach to examine the feasibility of a technology company's offerings to assess mental wellbeing. In Stage 2, the authors followed the grounded theory approach and interviewed 22 key stakeholders and HR leaders of diverse organizations. The authors used Gioia's approach to analyze the data.

The study demonstrates the interdependence and inseparability of human activity, technological capability and structured context. Specifically, the authors observe that AI adoption is pushing the boundaries of how organizations could support employees' mental health and wellbeing. These technological advancements and adoption are likely to facilitate the evolution of agentic practices, routines and structures.

This study carries two important implications. While the advent of cutting-edge technologies appears to affect employees' mental wellbeing, the study findings indicate the assistive role of technology in supporting mental wellbeing and facilitating changes in organizational practices. Second, the ontology of technology-in-practice shows how human–machine agencies gain newer relevance from the interactions that unite them. Specifically, per OST, technology (from an external context) can potentially change how mental wellbeing practices in organizations are managed. The authors extend the existing literature by suggesting that both human agents and internal contexts effectively limit the potential of technology agents to change existing structures significantly.

The authors address the need for more research on the technology-management interface, and the boundaries of technology-enabled wellbeing at work. While AI-HRM scholarship has primarily relied on micro-level psychological theories to examine impact and outcomes, the authors borrow from the macro-level theories, such as the OST and the technology-in-practice to explain how AI is shifting the boundaries of human and machine agencies for enabling mental wellbeing.

The fear of the pandemic, confinement at home and the need to work created a unique situation. The pandemic catalyzed work-from-anywhere practice by adopting information and communication technologies (ICT) across all industries. While ICT saved organizations, it increased technostress among the workforce. A better understanding of the adverse effects of ICT usage might enable organizations to manage the mental well-being of the workforce. While technostress is gaining increasing interest, scholarly work investigating the dimensions of technostress and its impact on creating stress across various employee demographics and industry types is missing. Contrary to the prevalent assumptions, the authors theorized and tested the adverse moderation effect of the home-work interface on the linkage between technostress dimensions and stress. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

The study captures dimensions of technostress and the resulting stress at work using a survey-based analysis of 881 working employees in India, representing multiple industries and functions.

The study indicates that techno-overload, techno-complexity and techno-invasion significantly impact employees during the pandemic. The authors further found that the home-work-interface is a powerful factor in understanding the complex linkage between dimensions of technostress and its outcomes.

Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory and the Job-Demand-Resources model, this study highlights the adverse impact of this trend on employee well-being. However, the study suffers from a cross-sectional research design. The technostress research has focused primarily on static, at-premise environments and mostly on high ICT usage industries. Due to the pandemic, it has neglected the impact of various technostress dimensions across employee cohorts subjected to rapid technology-enabled working. Further, most studies focus on the voluntary choice of remote work. Employees struggle with the unexpected and involuntary shift to technology-enabled remote work. This study contributes to the literature by examining the consequences of technostress in the context of non-voluntary remote work. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, this study highlights the adverse effect of organizational home-work interface in influencing ICT-created stress.

The increasing use of ICT enables telecommuting across the workforce while increasing organizational productivity. Due to the pandemic, these trends will likely change the future of work permanently. To minimize employee stress, practitioners need to reconsider the dimensions of technostress. Further, the study cautions against the prevalent interventions used by practitioners. While practitioners facilitate a home-work interface, it could have adverse consequences. Practitioners may consider the adverse consequences of home-work interface while designing organizational policies.

This study during the pandemic is crucial as research forecasts the likelihood of other cataclysmic events, such as future pandemics and political or climate change events, which may sustain technology-driven remote work practices and remain a feature of the future workplace. Hence understanding the implications of the dimensions of technostress would help organizations and policymakers to implement necessary interventions to minimize employee stress.

The present study examines the dimensions of technostress across multiple industries and job functions in an emerging market marked by a high economic growth rate and an Eastern cultural context. This study presents the dark side of excessive ICT adoption and indicates how organizations and HRM practices can help mitigate some of these effects.

A better understanding of applicant attraction enables organizations to manage their talent needs, thus enhancing HR effectiveness. Even though generational difference exists in modern organizations, scholarly work investigating the salient predictors of applicant attraction between the Gen-X and millennial cohorts is missing. The authors attempt to inform the literature by addressing this gap.

The study captures applicant attraction using a survey-based study of 1949 working employees in India, representing Gen-X and millennial generations.

The study provides critical factors that differentially impact millennial and Gen-X members' attraction toward an organization. It also reveals that satisfaction in the current job affects millennials and the Gen-X cohorts differently.

Recruitment research has neglected the predictors of applicant attraction among generational cohorts. Further, studies on generational differences have originated in western contexts and have ignored the emerging economies. Based on the responses of working professionals, our study increases the generalizability of the results.

The multi-generational workplace has the largest proportion of both Gen-X and millennial employees. A deeper understanding of their preferences can help HR practitioners leverage the drivers of applicant attraction. The study provides inputs to design recruitment strategies to target generational groups within and outside the organization.

The present study examines the phenomenon in an emerging market marked by a high economic growth rate and an eastern cultural context. The study presents a more realistic representation of applicant needs by sourcing inputs from working employees across generation groups.

Teacher effectiveness has been a matter of concern not only for the parents and students but also for the policy makers, researchers, and educationists. Drawing from the “self-efficacy” theory (Bandura, 1977), the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between teacher self-efficacy and teacher effectiveness. In addition, it explores the role of collaboration among teachers and principal leadership in explaining the above relationship.

Data were collected from 575 secondary school teachers and 6,020 students representing grade 6-12th from 25 privately owned schools in India. Teacher self-efficacy, collaboration and principal leadership were reported by the teachers whereas effectiveness of each teacher was captured from around ten students each who were taught by the corresponding teacher. Data were analyzed using SEM-PLS.

Results confirmed a positive association between teacher self-efficacy and the three dimensions of teacher effectiveness, namely, teacher’s delivery of course information, teacher’s role in facilitating teacher-student interactions, and teacher’s role in regulating students’ learning. Results also confirmed that both collaboration and principal leadership are positively related to teacher self-efficacy.

The results of the study indicate that schools need to focus on enhancing self-efficacy of their teachers and give importance to teacher collaboration and principal leadership in order to improve their effectiveness in terms of delivery of instruction, teacher-student interactions, and regulating student learning.