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The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated a shift to remote working for previously office-based employees in South Africa, impacting employee outcomes such as well-being. The remote work trend is expected to continue even post the pandemic, necessitating for organizational understanding of the factors impacting employee well-being. Using the Job Demands–Resources model as the theoretical framework, this study aims to understand the role of job demands and resources as predictors of employee well-being in the pandemic context.

A self-administered online survey questionnaire was used to gather quantitative data about remote workers’ (n = 204) perceptions of specifically identified demands, resources and employee well-being. Descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and moderated hierarchical regression were used to analyse the data.

This study found that job demands in the form of work–home conflict were associated with reduced employee well-being. Resources, namely, job autonomy, effective communication and social support were associated with increased employee well-being. Job autonomy was positively correlated to remote work frequency, and gender had a significant positive association to work–home conflict. Social support was found to moderate the relationship between work–home conflict and employee well-being. Findings suggest that organizations looking to enhance the well-being of their remote workforce should implement policies and practices that reduce the demands and increase the resources of their employees. The significant association of gender to work–home conflict suggests that greater interventions are required particularly for women. This study advances knowledge on the role of demands and resources as predictors of employee well-being of remote workforces during COVID-19 and beyond.

This paper provides insight on employee well-being during COVID-19 remote work. Further, the findings suggest that organizations looking to enhance the well-being of their remote workforce should implement policies and practices that reduce the demands and increase the resources of their employees. The significant association of gender to work–home conflict suggests that greater interventions are required particularly for women. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study carried out to explore the employee well-being during COVID-19 pandemic and will be beneficial to stakeholders for understanding the factors impacting employee well-being.

This paper aims to reinforce the arguments for applying the social support concept in social marketing.

This paper aims to conceptually outline the potential positive contribution of social support for social marketing practice as a tool to induce behavior change.

This paper focuses on the philosophical principle of social exchange, highlights the consumer-centered perspective of social marketing, which implies the natural evaluation of the social networks of influence and support and presents social support as a mechanism to induce long-term behavior change.

No empirical (qualitative or quantitative) investigations were used to test the application of the concept in practical interventions.

This paper provides significant insights for intervention developers that can be used to program and theoretically justify future social marketing interventions applying the social support concept.

Empirical research concluded for a positive relation between social support and human health and well-being. Thus, increasing the use of the concept in social marketing can serve to attain these social goals.

The concept of social support has gained considerable interest in the areas of behavioral medicine and health psychology. Despite such interest, it is still not clear how it can be approached in social marketing as there is a lack of conceptual literature discussing social support from a social marketing perspective, the number of social marketing interventions operationalizing the concept is limited and, till date, no research has focused in comprehensively establishing a theoretical rationale to operationalize the concept in social marketing.

The novel coronavirus (nCoV) pandemic, and the challenges of social distancing, proffer a unique opportunity to re-explore the role of social network support in entrepreneurship. Applying social support theory and gender schema theory, this study aims to examine the gender-based differences in prospective entrepreneurs' reliance on their social networks in their entrepreneurial journey amid social turmoil.

The authors collected two-stage primary survey data of prospective entrepreneurs within the pandemic's timeframe from Science and Technology Parks in Iran, one of the first countries to deal with the first, second and third waves of the 2019-nCoV virus.

The findings demonstrate that female entrepreneurs rely more strongly on their social network support for guidance and encouragement, which positively affects their opportunity intention. While this effect is also seen in men, the effect size is smaller. Also, prospective female entrepreneurs were generally more dissuaded from opportunity intention by the severe perceived environmental uncertainty of the crisis than were men.

Prior research on the interaction between social network support and opportunity intentions has been examined in the context of socio-economic normalcy. The authors test whether, how and why these interactions hold in times of crisis, with especial attention to the mechanisms of experienced stress, perceived environmental uncertainty and idea innovativeness.

An empirical study investigated the antecedents to perceived usefulness (PU) and its consequences in the context of smoking cessation online health communities (OHCs).

To validate a research model for perceived informational support, perceived emotional support and perceived esteem support, the authors conducted a partial-least-squares analysis of empirical data from an online survey (N = 173) of users of two smoking cessation OHCs. The proposed model articulates these as antecedents to PU from a social support perspective, and knowledge sharing and continuance intention are expressed as consequences of PU.

The empirical study identified that the PU of smoking cessation OHCs is influenced by perceived emotional support and perceived esteem support, and perceived informational support indirectly affects PU via these factors. In turn, PU exerts a positive influence on both knowledge sharing and continuance intention. Also, knowledge sharing positively affects continuance intention.

The study contributes to scholarship on users' postadoption behavior in the context of smoking cessation OHCs by disentangling the antecedents to PU from a social support perspective and pinpointing some important consequences of PU. The research also has practical implications for managing smoking cessation OHCs.

The purpose of this paper is to share the learning concerning how services and the paid carers working in them can support people living with dementia (PLWD) and their unpaid carers to overcome social isolation. This learning comes from the key findings from a Social Return on Investment (SROI) evaluation of a Shared Lives (SL) Day support service, known as TRIO.

SROI is a form of cost-benefit analysis that captures and monetises stakeholder outcomes. The SROI evaluation included a rapid evidence review, an interview study and a questionnaire study. The learning shared is drawn from the interview and questionnaire data that explored the reported outcomes relating to social connection, which included data related to participating in meaningful activities, confidence and independence.

PLWD who accessed the SL Day support service experienced better social connection, a sense of control over their activities (including their social activities) and community presence. A key foundation of these outcomes was the meaningful relationship that developed between the PLWD, their unpaid carer and the paid carer.

This evaluation was a pilot study with a small, albeit representative sample size.

The learning suggests feasible and effective ways for paid carers to support the social connection of PLWD and their unpaid carers with their wider community.

There has been little exploration of how community-based short breaks (like SL Day support) can enhance social connection. The authors drew on a social relational model lens to illustrate how this service type had supported successful outcomes of community and social inclusion for PLWD.

The purpose of this paper is to explore health- and work-related outcomes of cyberbullying behaviour and the potential mediating role of social organisational climate, social support from colleagues and social support from superiors.

Altogether 3,371 respondents participated in a questionnaire study.

The results of this study indicate that social organisational climate can have a mediating role in the relationship between cyberbullying behaviour and health, well-being, work engagement and intention to quit. Contrary to earlier face-to-face bullying research, the current study showed that cyberbullying behaviour had stronger indirect than direct relationships to health, well-being, work engagement and intention to quit.

Communication through digital devices in work life is becoming more prevalent, which in turn increases the risk for cyberbullying behaviour. Organisations need therefore to develop occupational health and safety policies concerning the use of digital communication and social media in order to prevent cyberbullying behaviour and its negative consequences.

Cyberbullying behaviour among working adults is a relatively unexplored phenomenon and therefore this study makes valuable contribution to the research field.

This study aims to analyse whether and when victim incivility may be related to work-to-family conflict and then burnout among emergency workers.

A total of 304 Italian emergency workers from five firehouses and six emergency rooms completed questionnaires, examining: victim incivility, work-to-family conflict, social support seeking and burnout symptoms. Descriptive analyses, confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation models were conducted.

Victim incivility was positively associated with burnout symptoms, both directly and indirectly, as mediated by work-to-family conflict. Additionally, social support seeking exacerbated (rather than mitigated) the impact of work-to-family conflict on burnout symptoms.

Organisations can greatly benefit from implementing family-friendly practices and providing their workers with training programmes on how to deal with difficult victims.

This study contributes to the existing literature on workplace incivility and work–life interface by supporting for the first time the notion that victim incivility can spill over into emergency workers' family domain and by clarifying how and when victim incivility is related to burnout symptoms.

This study aims to test the role that organizational sociopsychological variables may play in influencing job stress and work engagement in an organizational identity change scenario.

On a sample of 118 employees of an Italian company in the personnel training services sector, multivariate statistical analysis tests a pattern where organizational variables such as work support (by supervisors and coworkers, independent variables) – moderated by corporate identification (moderating variable) – and mediated by organizational trust (mediating variable) – boosts employee work engagement and lowers psychosocial risks (dependent variables).

The mediating effect of “organizational trust” is significant in the relationships of “supervisor social support” and “coworker social support” with the “absence of psychosocial risks.” Moreover, an increase in supervisor social support can lead to a statistically significant increase in work engagement. This occurs only for employees with low or medium identification and not in highly identified individuals.

The findings from the analysis on moderation are of primary importance because they show us a new perspective that can play the role of a guiding and practical principle on how to act on an organization’s human resources, specifically targeting those with lower or medium corporate identification.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a process model for the role transformation of vulnerable consumers through support services.

The study is based on four years of participant observation at a community-based support service and in-depth interviews with the consumers. Visual ethnography was used to document the process of the consumers' role transformation through service exchanges.

The main outcome of this study is a consumer transformation model, describing consumers' role transformation processes, from recipients to generic actors. The model demonstrates that vulnerable consumers will transform from recipients to quasi-actors before becoming generic actors.

Vulnerable consumers' participation in value cocreation can be promoted by providing social support according to their dynamic roles. By enabling consumers to participate in value cocreation, social support provision can become sustainable and inclusive, especially in rural areas affected by aging and depopulation. Transforming recipients into generic actors should be a critical aim of service provision in the global challenge of aging societies.

Beyond identifying service factors, the research findings describe the mechanism of consumers' role transformation process as a service mechanics study. Furthermore, this study contributes to transformative service research by applying social exchange theory and broadening service-dominant logic by describing the process of consumer growth for individual and community well-being.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the prevalence of depression and to determine the association between social support and depression among transgender women in Bangkok, Thailand.

A cross-sectional study was conducted among 280 transgender women in Bangkok, Thailand between March 2019 and May 2019 using the snowball sampling method. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included demographic questions and measures of social support (MSPSS) and depression (CES-D). Multivariable logistic regression analysis was employed to explore the association between social support and depression.

The prevalence of depression among transgender women was 58.2%. Multivariable logistic regression analysis indicated that depression was significantly associated with perceived low social support (OR: 9.55, 95%CI: 2.10–43.39) and moderate social support (OR: 2.03, 95%CI: 1.19–3.46) after being adjusted for religion, sufficient income and alcohol drinking.

Transgender women were prone to experience a higher prevalence of depression than the general population. Social support would reduce the risk of depression among transgender women. Therefore, social support service systems for transgender women should be embedded into organizations concerned.