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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ethical leadership and academics’ retention in universities. It draws on the conservation of resources theory to deepen the understanding of a process underlying this relationship whereby academics are more likely to stay in universities through the practice of ethical leadership. Specifically, it advances academics’ job-related affective well-being as a potential mediating mechanism, fostered by ethical leadership, which lowers their intention to leave.

This study is conducted through a cross-sectional survey of 303 academics in Australian universities. Univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis procedures are deployed to analyse academics’ data. The research hypotheses are tested through a bootstrapped regression analysis of academics’ perceived ethical leadership, affective well-being and intention to leave.

The findings lend support to the hypothesised relations, indicating a significant role of ethical leadership on enhanced intentions of academics to stay in universities by directly conserving their job-related affective well-being.

This paper contributes to knowledge of the relationship between ethical leadership and academics’ retention by identifying job-related affective well-being as an underlying mechanism in the university sector.

This paper has practical implications for higher educational institutes seeking to retain their academic staff. Its findings show that the practice of ethical leadership in universities matters, because it lowers academics’ intentions to leave by nurturing their well-being at work.

This is the first study to examine the impact of ethical leadership on academics’ well-being and intentions to leave in the context of universities in Australia. It is one of the first studies to explore the mediating role of affective well-being in the ethical leadership and leadership and intention to leave relationship.

This paper empirically addresses the question of whether the meaning of ethical leadership is constant across cultures. Drawing on the implicit leadership theory (ILT), we examine whether people in Australia and Pakistan respond to perceived ethical leadership in a similar or different manner. By comparing employees' interpretation of the key attributes associated with ethical leadership, we advance construct-specific knowledge in cross-national contexts.

Since meaningful cross-country comparisons of a research construct require an equivalent measurement of it, we examine the issue of cross-cultural measurement invariance of ethical leadership. Specifically, this study explores the configural, metric and scalar invariance of ethical leadership by obtaining data from matched international samples.

The findings broadly support cross-cultural generalisability of the construct's meaning and cross-cultural transferability of the ethical leadership scale (ELS). They suggest that measures of ethical leadership constructs should be used in different cultures with caution because significant differences may exist at the item level.

This study provides cross-cultural endorsement to the construal of ethical leadership by presenting evidence that supports convergence in the construct's meaning across Eastern and Western cultures. The study has enhanced the construct validity of ethical leadership through the use of the refined multiple-sample analytical approach. Previous studies have assumed that measures of ethical leadership are invariant across various contexts. However, this is the first study to employ a robust methodological technique (metric and path invariance) that demonstrates the significant difference between each item and path and generalises the validity of ethical leadership construct and its measures by using international samples.

Relationship marketing is about developing, maintaining and sustaining mutually beneficial customer–organisation relationships as measured by economic gains. Yet, a purely economic focus does not fully offer a psychological explanation of relationship marketing outcomes. In this regard, this paper has considered gratitude as a significant component of personal relationships, which offers insights into a customer–organisation relationships. Accordingly, this study aims to examine gratitude as a mechanism to predict relationship marketing outcomes, such as overall satisfaction, trust and commitment.

Data were collected from 1,093 millennial consumers across three university campuses.

Results indicate that gratitude is a mediating mechanism that can explain the relationship between young consumers’ perceptions of relationship marketing investments and overall satisfaction, trust and commitment. Perceived benevolence strengthens the relationship between perceived relationship marketing investments and customer gratitude.

The gratitude model contributes an alternative understanding of how young consumers’ perceptions of an organisation’s marketing investments are important in achieving a high degree of relationship marketing outcomes. This paper further incorporates the moderating roles of customer cynicism and perceptions of benevolence, key individual and relational characteristics, that influence the level of gratitude individuals to experience in response to the investments made by organisations.

This study aims to propose the emotional response of gratitude as a mediating mechanism to explain the relationship between perceptions of a service organisations’ relationship marketing investments, customer cynicism and reciprocity and overall satisfaction. Further, the study seeks to test the significance of the mediation effects of these constructs on customer overall satisfaction.

Using theories from service marketing and consumer psychology, this study develops and tests a customer gratitude model (CGM). Field surveys based on existing measures were used to elicit data from 1,104 respondents. The measures were validated and subsequently the CGM was tested to establish the veracity if the nomological network presented.

Results indicate that perceived relationship marketing investment exerted an indirect effect on gratitude through the mediating effect of reciprocity and cynicism. Further, perceived relationship marketing investments impacted overall satisfaction through its mediating effect of gratitude, and gratitude explained the indirect influences of reciprocity and customer cynicism on overall satisfaction.

This study contributes to services marketing literature by examining the emergent role of gratitude between customer perceptions of service organisations and pro-organisational attitudes, like overall satisfaction.

This research encourages service organisations to implement relationship-building strategies, beyond that of purely economic benefits, that seek to enhance the emotion of gratitude, which will lead to greater overall customer satisfaction.

Despite emphasising relationship longevity between customers and service organisations, literature has not yet focused on the role of gratitude. The CGM provides valuable insights for further inquiries.

Occasionally, retail employees “break the rules” in order to help customers. Currently, there is little research on the mechanisms by which a sales assistants’ positive deviance intentions help them attain specific personal and organisational goals. The purpose of this paper is to examine one mechanism, hope, which develops employees’ deviance intentions to provide benefits to the customer, themselves and the organisation.

A survey captured responses from 270 frontline employees from the retail and services sector. AMOS 23 was used to conduct measurement, path and mediation analyses.

This study highlights the role of employee hope in developing employees’ positive deviance intentions, and improving perceptions of organisational performance. Results demonstrate that the direct positive impact of hope on positive deviance intention was significant. Furthermore, positive deviance intention was found to positively impact employee goal attainment and perceived organisational performance. The authors’ employee hope model offers a better understanding of positive outcomes of employee deviance, suggesting that retail managers should invest resources to build strong employee–organisation relationships.

This is the first study to empirically demonstrate that employee hope can explain how customer-oriented positive deviance intentions help employee goal attainment and improve their perceptions of organisational performance.

Off-price fashion retailers are expected to dominate the retail sector over the next five years. Surprisingly, selling excess designer labels, in what some describe as a disorganized manner, appeals to certain shoppers who enjoy the “thrill of the hunt.” Recent research conceptualized consumers, whose motivation for, and outcomes from, fashion shopping set them apart from previously reported shopper types. Referred to as “Sport Shoppers,” they view fashion shopping as an achievement domain. The purpose of this paper is to quantify such shoppers through the development of a valid psychometric scale.

Four studies, comprising depth interviews and online surveys, across two countries were employed to develop a three-dimensional scale of the sport shopping experience. Factor analyses and structural equation modeling were used to analyze and test a theoretically hypothesized model.

Study 1 generated items aligned to the three theoretical dimensions of the sport shopping experience. Study 2 confirmed reliability and factor structure of the psychometric scale. Study 3 provides evidence of convergent and discriminant validity with previous shopper types. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates nomological validity through a theoretically hypothesized model of the sport shopping experience.

This is the first study to employ achievement goal theory in a consumer behavior context to delineate an emergent shopper type. The developed scale is the most comprehensive, multi-dimensional measure of the experience of this new consumer type. As such, it represents a valuable contribution to fashion retail and consumer behavior literature. The scale enables practitioners to quantify target markets and identify relationships to other factors, such as overall satisfaction and brand repurchase intentions.

Little is known about the adoption of mobile banking technologies in emerging Asian economies. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the motivators that influence a consumer’s intentions to use mobile banking.

A web-based survey was employed to collect data from 348 respondents, split across Thailand and Australia. Data were analysed by employing exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, path and invariance analyses.

The findings indicate that for Australian consumers, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived risk (PR) were the primary determinants of mobile banking adoption. For Thai consumers, the main factors were PU, PR and social influence. National culture was found to impact key antecedents that lead to adoption of m-banking.

The actual variance explained by the study’s model was higher in Australia (59.3 per cent) than for Thailand (23.8 per cent), suggesting future research of m-banking adoption in emerging Asian cultures.

The authors identify the important factors consumers consider when adopting m-banking. The findings of this research give banking organisations a foundational model that can be used to support m-banking implementation.

The study is perhaps the first to examine and compare the intention to adopt m-banking across Thai and Australian consumers, and responds to calls for additional research that generalises m-banking and m-services acceptance across cultures. This study has proposed and validated additional constructs that are not present in the original SST Intention to Use model.

Organizations have increasingly been compelled to engage in ecological businesses in recent decades, necessitating identifying environmental practices contributing to enhanced sustainability. One of the main reasons for doing this research is to see how far down the path to green transformational leadership (GTFL) in Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) practices in the healthcare industry in Pakistan. Additionally, this research aims to analyze how this change affects the long-term success of businesses in sustainable performance (SP).

To identify factors related to the study variables, the research utilized master journals, as well as the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The ISM-DEMATEL (Interpretive Structural Modeling - Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) technique was employed to establish a hierarchical model. This model facilitated the identification of cause-and-effect relationships among factors, which were further elucidated using the DEMATEL interrelationship diagram.

The analysis of the results indicates that Green Training (F4), Green Job Analysis (F1), Intellectual Stimulation (F10), and Green Product Innovation (F9) are the primary factors that have a significant impact on achieving Environmental Policies and Regulations (F13), and Subjective Environment Norms (F14) of SP factors.

The study is implemented in the healthcare industry of Pakistan, with a focus on practical and managerial aspects. It encourages managers to develop and adapt their human resources policies and environmental strategies. Implementing safety health standards is crucial to mitigate the detrimental effects on the environment. The research was carried out during the period of the pandemic. The scope of this study was restricted to the healthcare industry in Pakistan.

In order to improve SP, this study presents a unique strategy combining sustainability into decision-making procedures with the function of GTFL in GHRM. Implementing safety health standards is crucial to mitigate the detrimental effects on the environment.

The purpose of this paper is to draw upon social information processing theory and its purpose is twofold. First, it aims to examine the relationship among five brand personality traits (responsibility, activity, simplicity, emotionality and aggressiveness) as to brand equity created on social media in the banking industry of Latvia. Second, it aims to unveil the indirect effects of brand personality on brand loyalty, treating brand equity as a mediating variable.

A questionnaire was designed and a survey method was employed in line with the above-mentioned purposes. Data were collected from 404 customers who followed retail banks on social media. A series of hypotheses were developed and tested using structural equation modeling.

The results show that aggressiveness, followed by responsibility and activeness, form positive brand equity on social media. In contrast, emotionality and simplicity do not contribute to the brand equity of banks on social media. The results also reveal that brand equity positively impacts brand loyalty and partially mediates brand personality and brand loyalty relationship. The theoretical model is thus validated and can be used in future research.

The current study is cross-sectional and has a limited sample size and representativeness. Nevertheless, the results of the present study bring valuable implications for marketing managers who value the role of social media in creating long-term company–customer relationships.

Over the past 20 years, the literature has been dominated by studies that mainly focus on the definition of brand personality and its traits. Unlike the aforementioned efforts, the current study brings new insight into the subject by focusing on brand personality created on social media and linking it to the actual consumer outcomes and exploring the mediating role of brand equity in the banking industry of Latvia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of customer perceived relationship marketing (CPRM), service quality and brand experience on tourists’ satisfaction and actual spending behavior in the emerging hospitality industry in Iran.

A total of 308 valid questionnaires were collected to empirically evaluate the measurement and structural model using the PLS path modelling approach, a variance-based structural equation modelling (VB-SEM) technique.

The results support the causal relationships that exist between the exogenous and endogenous constructs. Furthermore, three other factors were found to be second-order constructs: brand experience (reflective-reflective) comprising of sensory, affective, behavioural and intellectual; service quality (reflective-reflective) comprising of tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy; and actual spending behaviour (reflective-reflective) comprising of dining frequency and dining expenditure.

Current literature has commonly investigated the attitude, satisfaction and behaviour of a traveller’s intentions; however, limited research has examined an experienced tourist’s actual spending behaviour in an emerging hospitality industry environment, such as Iran.