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The purpose of this paper is to understand the strategic management of a technology-enabled shift from a product-centric to a service-centric logic and to identify the sociotechnical dynamics underlying this transition. The study focuses on how manufacturers manage to create value in industrial markets through digital servitization.

An abductive research approach is used to investigate two manufacturing firms, and an interpretive framework is used as an analytical template. A cross-case analysis is conducted.

The case companies strategically managed sociotechnical processes of digitization to co-create value. Their service orientation delineates dissimilarity in terms of digital servitization. It reflects a viable ecosystem that moves toward datatization through adaptation in one case and a viable ecosystem that moves toward digitization through reconfiguration in the other case.

A theoretically grounded, empirically informed framework is proposed to detect transformational mechanisms to manage value co-creation in digitally servitized contexts, thus contributing to ecosystem viability.

This is the first study to adopt a system perspective such as the viable system approach combined with service-dominant logic to reconceptualize the overall sociotechnical processes and the underlying mechanisms leading to digitized value creation. In line with a systems view and a systematic process based on a transformative attitude toward digital servitization, the empirically informed framework identifies specific co-creation activities and recursive feedback loops.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the macro-social marketing approach by detailing a framework to better understand the driving forces of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that uses the financial crisis in Iceland as a demonstrative example to show how social mechanism theory can help social marketers and policy makers overcome complexity and strive for the social transformation they seek.

This paper suggests the utility of social mechanism theory for understanding wicked problems, how they came to be and how social marketing practices can be applied to resolve market complexities.

Social marketers need to identify what is driving what, to plan and implement interventions that will lead to the social change desired. This paper presents a framework that guides the analyst through this social change process.

This work provides social marketers with the means to understand the “moving parts” of a wicked problem to identify where an intervention is required to achieve the social change sought.

Social marketers set out to undertake interventions that benefit society. However, at times, there can be inadvertent, unintended consequences of these interventions that can be seen as unethical. Such ethical issues can arise from the context, process, method and outcomes of interventions and often bring to the fore the “social fairness” of social marketing. Given that social marketing is aimed at societal benefit, the authors believe that the issue of social fairness is an important one in the context of ethical social marketing. With that in mind, the purpose of this paper is to provide a discussion of the application of a normative ethical framework, labelled the integrative justice model (IJM) (Santos and Laczniak, 2009), to social marketing. This amounts to a macro-social marketing ethical framework.

Conceptual broadening of a normative ethical framework.

The authors hold that the IJM provides several helpful normative guidelines for improving the “social fairness” of social marketing. As such, the presented normative framework of macro-social marketing ethics provides useful guidelines for future development of social marketing codes of ethics.

The macro-social marketing ethics framework provides practical guidelines for social marketers to assess ethical issues in social marketing.

The macro-social marketing ethics framework answers the call of Carter, Mayes, Eagle and Dahl (2017) for development of ethical frameworks for social marketers. It provides a reconciliation of multiple normative frameworks to give a set of guidelines for social marketers that are clear and non-contradictory.

This study aims to adopt the microfoundation perspective to investigate undesirable knowledge rejection by individuals in organizations in the context of counterproductive knowledge behavior (CKB). The paper advances a conceptual framework of the conditions of knowledge rejection by individuals and their respective knowledge rejection behavior types.

This study reviews the limited literature on knowledge rejection and outline a set of antecedents leading to rejecting knowledge as well as a set of different types of knowledge rejection behaviors. This study reviews and synthesizes articles on knowledge rejection from a microfoundation perspective.

The proposed conceptual framework specifies four particular conditions for knowledge rejection and outlines four respective knowledge rejection behavior types resulting from these conditions. Recipients’ lack of capacity leads to ineptitude, lack of motivation leads to dismissal of knowledge, lack of alignment with the source leads to disruption and doubts about the validity of external knowledge lead to resistance. The authors treat these behaviors as variants of CKB, as they can hinder the productive use of knowledge resources in the organization.

Further investigation of both knowledge rejection causes and the resulting knowledge rejection behaviors will ensure a more thorough grasp of the relationships between them, both in terms of the inherent nature of these relationships and their dynamics that would likely be context-sensitive. Although this study focuses only on the individual level, future studies can conduct multi-level analyses of undesirable knowledge rejection, including team and organizational levels.

Practitioners can use the framework to identify, diagnose and manage knowledge rejection more meaningfully, accurately and purposefully in their organizations. This study offers valuable insights for managers facing undesirable knowledge rejection, and provides recommendations on how to address this behavior, improves the constructive use of knowledge resources and the effectiveness of knowledge processes in their organizations. Managers should be aware of undesirable knowledge rejection, its potential cost or concealed cost to their organizations and develop strategies to reduce or prevent it.

The paper contributes toward understanding the relatively neglected topic of knowledge rejection in the knowledge management field and offers a new way of conceptualizing the phenomenon. It proposes that there are two types of knowledge rejection – undesirable and desirable – and advances a more precise and up-to-date definition of undesirable knowledge rejection. Responding to calls for more research on CKBs, the study examines a hitherto unresearched behavior of knowledge rejection and provides a foundation for further study in this area.

Organizational learning relies on problem-solving as a way to generate new knowledge. Good problem solvers should adopt a problem-solving orientation (PSO) that analyzes the causes of problems to arrive at an effective solution. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this relevant, though underexplored, topic by examining two important antecedents of PSO: knowledge sharing mechanisms and transformational leaders’ support.

Hierarchical linear modeling analyses were performed on a sample of 131 workers in 12 plants. A questionnaire was designed to collect data from shop-floor employees. Knowledge sharing was measured using the mechanisms of participative practices and standardized practices. Management support was assessed based on the extent to which supervisors engaged in transformational leadership.

Knowledge sharing mechanisms are an antecedent of PSO behavior, but management support measured in terms of transformational leadership is not. However, transformational leadership affects the use of knowledge sharing mechanisms that, in turn, is positively related to PSO behavior.

The research provides practical guidance for practitioners to understand how to manage knowledge in the workplace to promote employees’ PSO behaviors.

Though problem-solving activities are intrinsic in any working context, PSO is still very much underrepresented and scarcely understood in knowledge management studies. This study fills this gap by investigating the antecedents of PSO behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to show empirically how knowledge management, particularly knowledge integration (KI), acts as a mediator between different leadership styles and Enterprise Systems (ES) success. It proposes a model of KI as a mediator between two leadership styles (the transformational and transactional leadership styles). The study also aims to expose the most relevant leadership styles to be practiced by leaders when managing the ES post-implementation stage.

Valid data were collected from 263 survey respondents in Malaysian companies. The authors employed structural equation modelling and used the path modelling approach to investigate the underlying relationships between the variables. The authors then tested the mediating effects of KI by using the bootstrapping procedures proposed by Preacher and Hayes, which suits the path analysis method.

The results provide empirical evidence on the relationships between the variables and on the role of KI mechanisms as a mediator between leadership styles and ES success, especially in the ES post-implementation phase. Both leadership styles have to be practiced by leaders while managing an ES.

Future research can investigate the role of KI mechanisms as moderators between both leadership styles. The study can also be expanded by looking in-depth at other leadership styles.

This paper is useful for management researchers and as a guide to management practice for business managers.

This paper proposes a model that examines the vitality of KI effect in ES post-implementation stage by different leadership styles. The results expose the importance of leaders’ adoption of KI mechanisms and call for manager attention to the importance of using the right leadership styles when managing ES.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the comparative effect of transformational and servant leadership and to determine incremental variance that servant leadership can explain in employee innovative behaviour above and beyond transformational leadership. This research also examines the competing mechanisms by which transformational and servant leadership influence innovative behaviour.

The data were gathered from 338 employees working in information technology firms of Pakistan and the proposed relationships were tested through partial least squares technique using SmartPLS software.

The results reveal that servant leadership not only exerts stronger influence on innovative behaviour, but also explains an incremental variance in innovative behaviour above and beyond transformational leadership. The findings further indicate that the impact of transformational leadership on innovative behaviour is better transmitted by affective commitment. On the contrary, the impact of servant leadership is better translated through creative self-efficacy.

This research unravels the role of transformational and servant leadership in fostering innovative behaviour in knowledge-intensive organizations. Findings of this investigation also suggest that by following a two-pronged leadership strategy, managers can augment innovative behaviour by enhancing employees' creative self-efficacy and affective commitment.

This research provides initial empirical evidence regarding the incremental variance that servant leadership can explain in innovative behaviour above and beyond transformational leadership. Moreover, this research adds to leadership and innovation literature by unravelling the comparative effects of these two forms of leadership on innovative behaviour through theory-driven competing mechanisms.

The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, the authors examine the potential mediating role of promotion focus in terms of the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Second, the authors set out to examine whether the indirect effect of transformational leadership and follower work engagement through promotion focus is stronger when followers' public service motivations are higher versus lower.

The present study examines the association between transformational leadership behavior and employees' work engagement. Data included measures of transformational leadership behavior and promotion focus as well as public service motivation and work engagement. Utilizing a field sample of 316 employees, the study tested the proposed relationships with robust data analytic techniques. Results were consistent with the hypothesized theoretical framework, in that promotion focus mediated the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and work engagement stronger when public service motivation was high and weaker when public service motivation was low. Based on the findings, the study concludes that the connection between transformational leadership behavior and work engagements partially mediated by promotion focus and this mediated connection is stronger when employees' public service motivation is high and weak when employees' public service motivation is low—thereby yielding a pattern of moderated mediation.

The study findings suggest five main conclusions. First, consistent with previous studies (Aryee et al., 2012; Bui et al., 2017; Hetland et al., 2018; Li et al., 2021; Ng, 2017; Tims et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2009), the study found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. Second, along the same lines of previous research (Brockner and Higgins, 2001; Hetland et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2017; Kark et al., 2018; Tung, 2016), this study found a positive association between transformational leadership and employees' promotion focus. Third, as hypnotized, the study found a positive association between employees' promotion focus and their work engagement. Fourth, as hypothesized using regulatory focus theory, promotion focus positively mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. This result elucidates the underlying mechanism that enables leadership to influence employees' work engagement, particularly, through the self-regulatory promotion focus. The result demonstrates that leadership relates to and affects basic motivations of the promotion systems, which have been known as a basic human need for development and growth. The study demonstrates that leaders may be able to promote followers' motivations by provoking a promotion focus frame and this motivational frame further shapes followers' outcomes in terms of employees' work engagement. Hence, this finding support previous research claiming that promotion focus acts as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between transformational leadership and various outcomes(e.g. Johnson et al., 2017; Kark et al., 2018). However, this study adds significantly to existing research by being the first study to empirically test and pay attention to the promotion focus frame as the underlying psychological mechanism through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. Finally, consistent with the study hypothesis, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the promotion focus-work engagement association. In addition, as the study hypothesized, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the mediating relationships between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement through promotion focus in public sector organizations. It appears that the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' work engagement through promotion focus is enhanced by the role of employees' PSM. In other words, the employees' public service motivation increases employee engagement further for employees with high situational promotion focus than for employees with a low situational promotion focus, which could be explained by the fact that more public service motivation is more meaningful to followers with promotion focus motivational framework to be more engaged. That is, public servants who are predisposed to respond to motives grounded primarily or exclusively in public institutions and organizations are more engaged at work due to their self-regulatory promotion focus spirit. This result is in congruence with findings that indicate that PSM is an important driver of organizational performance and has a positive impact on organizational behavior (Ritz et al., 2016). This finding does provide support to Bakker's (2015) proposition that PSM may strengthen the positive relationship between personal resources (e.g. optimism and self-efficacy) and work engagement because public servants with high levels of enduring PSM find their work important and meaningful. Therefore, they are likely to invest their resources in public service work, be engaged in their work and perform well.

First, it examines the extent to which transformational leadership contributes to employee work engagement. That is, the current study adds to the literature by using promotion focus attributes to probe the underlying mechanism through which transformational leaders enhance employee engagement in the workplace (Kark and van Dijk, 2019). Second, by combining insights obtained from the literature on the self-regulatory theory (Higgins, 1997) and the PSM theory (Perry and Wise, 1990), this study adds to work engagement literature by showing the importance of PSM as an institutional factor in work engagement. Lastly, the study expands the transformational leadership literature by using a moderated mediating model that recognizes PSM as a situational variable in the mediating relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement.

The results have several implications for practice. Findings reveal that transformational leaders can enhance follower work engagement by inducing their promotion focus orientation. Managers can, therefore, display more transformational behaviors, such as providing a compelling vision, communicating high expectations, promoting new ideas and giving personal attention to each employee in the workplace. In addition, managers may develop a promotion-focus orientation among their followers by appealing more to their ideals and aspirations than to their duties and responsibilities (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Organizations, on the other hand, could offer leadership training and development programs designed to enhance transformational leadership Behaviors. As for employees' PSM, public organizations have to be more creative in attracting, selecting and retaining employees with high levels of public service motives (Kim, 2021). Public organizations can also train their employees on public service values and enhance their incentives structures to align their motivational predispositions with the organization mission and values.

The present study adds to the existing theory in two ways. First, despite significant progress in exploring the process and boundary conditions for transformational leadership with beneficial work behaviors, the study findings paid attention to the underlying psychological mechanism, precisely the self-regulatory promotion focus frame through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. A second theoretical contribution of the present study is that it adds to the long line of research supporting a more concerted effort to understand both the moderating and mediating mechanisms that link transformational leadership to follower outcomes. By using the moderated mediating model, this study shows that transformational leaders can induce a promotion focus within followers who have developed a public service motivation profile to be more willing to engage in their organizations. The current study also has several practical implications that can be drawn from the study findings. First, organizations should become more sensitive to their employees' (promotional and preventive) self-regulatory foci. Managers should be trained to be strategically oriented toward people's growth and development. Second, by serving as role models, managers can shape their subordinates' regulatory foci. The more managers' actions suggest that they are focused on promotion, the more likely it is that their subordinates will follow suit. Third, managers may emphasize the use of positive feedback, such as praise, by giving it when employees succeed and withholding it when they fail. This feedback style is more likely to elicit a promotion focus, especially if the praise for success focuses on what the employee was able to accomplish (e.g. “You aided in the advancement of an important task!”) rather than negative occurrences that the employee was able to avoid (e.g. “You were extremely cautious and as a result, you avoided making the wrong judgment.”) (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Moreover, the moderating role of public service motivation in the effects of transformational leadership on work engagement through a promotion focus mechanism suggests that managers should not assume all employees would engage in their work similarly to their transformational leadership behaviors. Managers may find that followers who have values that are consistent with public service are more inclined to their promotion focus frame and thus are likely to internalize both motivations, which ultimately leads to more work engagement. As a result, managers should help employees, for example, feel a sense of accomplishment and recognize that they are contributing to society as an intrinsic reward. Finally, human resource managers must be mindful of their selection and placement decisions. Ensure that members are highly motivated to serve in the public sector and have the desired regulatory focus.

Even though the influence of transformational leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has been extensively studied in human resource management, evidence on the mechanisms through which transformational leadership affects OCB is only beginning to emerge. In view of the ambivalence about strategies of advancing OCB, this paper aims to establish whether and the extent to which the relationship between transformational leadership and OCB was mediated by organisational justice and affective commitment.

The study was based on a random survey of 300 employees from a medium-sized public university, and 122 employees from public and private sector organisations in Lesotho. Partial least squares structural equation modelling and process macro techniques were used to analyse data.

The results confirmed significant paths between transformational leadership and organisational justice; organisational justice and affective commitment; and affective commitment and OCB. The results further suggested that perceived justice and affective commitment were significant serial mediators between transformational leadership and OCB.

Elucidation of the nature of mediating factors between leadership and OCB would leverage organisations’ level of understanding of why transformational leadership is critical to promoting OCB, and hence encourage them to design programmes that would equip supervisors with skills necessary to enhance it.

This is one of the few theory-driven primary studies that examine the serial mediating roles of organisational justice and affective commitment in the transformational leadership – OCB relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine simultaneously multiple mediating mechanisms through which transformational leadership affects innovative work behaviour (IWB). Specifically, the authors test job autonomy, affective commitment and supportive management as the three mediating paths through which transformational leadership predicts innovative wok behaviour.

Data were collected from 358 employees working in large retail banks in Accra, the capital of Ghana. A partial least squares structural equation modelling technique was used to estimate the measurement and structural models.

Job autonomy and supportive management rather than affective commitment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and IWB. In addition, transformational leadership positively relates to job autonomy, affective commitment, supportive management and IWB.

By adopting leadership behaviours that seek to offer employees freedom on the job, a feeling of attachment to the organisation and positive perception of leadership support, managers and HR professionals can potentially foster employee innovation. This could stimulate organisational innovation and business success in the financial sector.

Although it is important to understand the mechanisms or processes through which transformational leadership behaviour promotes IWB, research in this area is scanty and scarce. This study theorises and empirically examines job autonomy and support management as novel mechanisms through which transformational leadership behaviour translates into workers’ innovative behaviour in formal banking institutions.