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Most employees are forced to telework due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which brings novel, disruptive, and critical challenges both in work and life. Based on event system theory and equity theory, this research explores how and when forced teleworking event strength (i.e. novelty, disruption, and criticality) affects employees’ work and life-related outcomes.

We conducted two studies to test the hypothesized moderated mediation model (Study 1: an experiment survey, N = 141; Study 2: a time-lagged survey, N = 243) with employees forced to telework from China.

The results largely support our hypotheses. Study 1 indicates that the manipulation of forced teleworking event strength (high vs low) is effective, and the main effect of forced teleworking event strength on work-family conflict is significant. Moreover, Study 2 shows that work-family conflict mediates the relationship between forced teleworking event strength (i.e. novelty, disruption, and criticality) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Furthermore, perceived overqualification positively moderates the relationship between work-family conflict and CWB. In detail, the relationship between work-family conflict and CWB becomes stronger when perceived overqualification is higher.

This research provides a new perspective on how forced teleworking event strength impacts CWB and advances the literature on the relevant theories.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between positive and negative emotional contagion by supervisors and innovative behavior by employees in the marketing department at China Mobile, as well as investigating the mediating roles of work engagement and surface acting in this path.

The authors analyzed emotional contagion on innovative behavior and investigated the mediation effect of work engagement and surface acting, and used structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses. Subjects in this study comprised 263 dyads of supervisors and employees (131 supervisors and 263 employees) in the marketing department at China Mobile.

The results indicated that positive emotions by employees mediated the positive effect of supervisors’ expression of positive emotions about employees’ work engagement; work engagement mediated the positive effect of employees’ positive emotions on their innovative behavior; and employees’ negative emotions mediated and did not significantly mediate the effect of supervisors’ negative emotions on employees’ surface acting and innovative behavior, respectively.

This study recommends that future studies examine emotional labor by team members and investigate the types of mechanisms (such as psychological safety and team learning) adopted by such teams to increase their members’ levels of emotional contagion.

The authors recommend that enterprises implement courses that are relevant to emotional management for supervisors to enhance their ability to regulate and manage their own emotions. The authors also suggest that organizations offer adequate job resources to employees to inspire work engagement among employees.

This study explored the role of work engagement among employees, which serves as a motivational mechanism between positive emotional labor by supervisors and innovative behavior by employees. In addition, it investigated the role of surface acting by employees, which serves as an energetic mechanism between negative emotional labor by supervisors and innovative behavior by employees.

This study aims to systematically map the state of work on human–machine collaboration in organizations using bibliometric analysis.

The authors used a systematic literature review to survey 111 articles on human–machine collaboration published in leading journals to categorize the theories used and to construct a framework of human–machine collaboration in organizations. A bibliometric analysis is applied to statistically evaluate the published materials and measure the influence of the publications using co-citation, coupling and keyword analyses.

The results inform that the research on human–machine collaboration in the organizational field is targeted at four aspects: performance, innovation, human resource management and information technology (IT).

This work is the first exploratory piece to assess the extent and depth of research on human–machine collaboration.

This study aims to test the relationship between emotional labor and service quality of the frontline employees of Chinese restaurants during the coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19). This study further investigated the mediating role of work fatigue (WF) and the moderating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi (SSG).

The authors used a time-lag approach to gather data from a sample of 365 frontline staff members working in Chinese restaurants. All hypotheses were tested using SPSS and AMOS.

First, restaurant frontline employees’ deep acting was associated with higher service quality, whereas surface acting leads to lower service quality. Second, WF mediated the relationship between emotional labor and service quality. Third, SSG moderated the impact of emotional labor on WF during COVID-19.

All variables measured in this study were self-reported by restaurant frontline employees, which may increase the risk of common-method bias. However, this study enriches the literature on emotional labor, WF and SSG during COVID-19.

COVID-19 has severely affected the hotel, restaurant and catering sector and especially the psychological state and the work performance of frontline employees. Restaurant managers should implement some measures to improve employees’ service quality during COVID-19.

The present findings show that restaurant frontline employees adopted various emotional labor strategies when they were faced with higher than usual job demands and the risk of infection during COVID-19.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between job insecurity and unsafe behaviour in human–machine collaboration, as well as investigating the mediating roles of emotional exhaustion and moderating roles of psychological detachment.

The authors followed the stressor-detachment model to build our research model. The authors selected manufacturing and service industry employees as samples, and designed three independent studies using the time-lagged method for SPSS and AMOS to test the hypotheses.

The results indicated that emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between the two types of job insecurity and unsafe behaviours among service industry employees, while psychological detachment moderated the effect of qualitative job insecurity on emotional exhaustion. In manufacturing, psychological detachment moderated the effect of quantitative job insecurity on emotional exhaustion, while emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between quantitative job insecurity and unsafe behaviours.

The authors enhance understandings of how individual employee characteristics and the work environment jointly influence employees' levels of emotional exhaustion and likelihood of engaging in unsafe behaviours under the stressor-detachment model.

The authors suggest an important role of psychological detachment in human–machine collaboration. The authors also that organisations and managers could encourage employees not to check work-related emails on weekends to achieve full detachment.

This study contributes to both the stressor-detachment model and job insecurity literature. In addition, it investigates the role of detachment and emotional exhaustion by employees in human–machine collaboration.

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated teleworking, which inadvertently led to an impaired communication between supervisors and employees, resulting in abusive supervision. Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory and the social identity theory, this study aims to address this negative association by examining the mediating role of state mindfulness and the moderating role of COVID-19 corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the relationship between abusive supervision and counterproductive work behaviors.

This research employs both qualitative and quantitative research designs. Data collection involved an experimental design with 117 participants (Study 1), a cross-sectional survey with 243 participants (Study 2) and semi-structured interviews with 24 full-time employees (Study 3).

The results reveal that state mindfulness acts as a mediator in the positive relationship between abusive supervision and counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). Furthermore, COVID-19 CSR mitigates the relationship between abusive supervision and CWB within the organization, but not with the supervisor. Additionally, COVID-19 CSR moderates the impact of abusive supervision on state mindfulness.

The results emphasize the crucial role of CSR when employees encounter abusive supervision during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations and managers should adopt appropriate strategies to enhance employees' perception of CSR. Prioritizing the cultivation of state mindfulness is also recommended, and organizations can provide short-term mindfulness training to improve employees' state mindfulness.

This research contributes to the understanding of abusive supervision and CWB in the context of forced teleworking.