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This study aims to explore how coping strategies (CS) mediate the relationship between job insecurity (JI) and subjective well-being (SWB) leading to presenteeism among millennials. This study has been tested based on the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001) and the transactional theory of stress and coping (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). In India, employees in the information technology (IT) and business process management sectors have been facing increased job insecurity over the last couple of years. The advent of technology has increased job insecurity among millennials, specifically in the IT sector. The Indian IT and information technology–enabled service (ITES) sector witnessed mass retrenchments by companies in 2016–2017. Instead of reskilling, the companies decided to lay off their employees. During the pandemic, the IT and ITES industries witnessed a massive culture shift in terms of technology and work engagement. Postpandemic, the recession is looming large on these industries. In 2022, tech layoffs have witnessed 135,000 employees impacted globally and many may lose their job in the coming year. This study chose Indian millennials because they form a large part of the Indian workforce, especially in the IT and ITES sector.

In this study, cross-sectional design is used where different individuals are part of the study at the same point in time. A sequential mixed method of research is adopted for this study, owing to the kind of research questions and the requirement to include critical realism. A qualitative study was carried out post the quantitative study, to corroborate the results from the quantitative study. Quantitative methodologies address questions about causality, generalizability or magnitude of outcome, whereas qualitative research methodologies explore why or how a phenomenon occurs, describe the nature of an individual’s experience during the study relevant to the context and/or develop a theory (Fetters et al., 2013). Because the study is about the millennial workforce in IT and the ITES sectors, the sample population comprised employees in Delhi and the national capital region (NCR) of Delhi in northern India. Out of a total of 374 ITES companies listed in the national association of software and service companies (2018), 103 are based out of Delhi/NCR; hence, companies from Delhi/NCR were chosen for the study. The other reason for opting for companies based in Delhi/NCR was that many millennials from second- and third-tier cities also are employed in these companies bringing in varied cultural perspectives. This study included 588 employees working in ITES organizations based in the National Capital Region of India. Mediation analysis for statistical verification was carried out with regression-based analysis in SPSS macro process (version 4).

The impact of job insecurity on the positive and negative affects of the subjective well-being of millennials was found to be substantial. Coping strategies moderated the relationship and it was seen that both engaged and disengaged strategies of coping had an impact on the positive affect of subjective well-being but did not have any impact on the negative affect of subjective well-being. The positive affect of subjective well-being was negatively related to presenteeism, and the negative affect of subjective well-being was positively related to presenteeism.

This study is carried out only in the ITES industry and on millennials. With the advent of technology, other industries are going through challenges concerning layoffs even though the severity of the same might be less. In times to come, for strategizing employee engagement, it is necessary to understand how the workforce copes with various work-related stress factors. The positive affects and negative affects of well-being and responses have been studied from an employee perspective only. Further research should be conducted to explore responses from both employers and employees to establish presenteeism and the antecedents of presenteeism in conjunction with positive and negative affects of well-being. There is further scope to study the impact of job insecurity on adaptive presenteeism in older generations and various industries given the current job scenario and talent-reskilling issues.

This study brings forth original insights into the impact of constant job threats on millennials employed in the IT and/or IT service sectors. The key findings contribute to literature knowledge and help managers recognize the unfavorable consequences of continuous job threats on the well-being of employees. There is an immediate need for managers to recognize the problem and devise various policies and communication strategies to enable millennial employees to cope with the constant changes in the organization, owing to various technological, political and environmental factors. Organizations should be mindful of this impact, which can subsequently have serious consequences on the productivity of the employees, resulting in decreased overall performance and health of the organization.

This study of job insecurity as a job stressor, triggering coping strategies in Indian millennials working in the ITES and IT industry, presents original insights. This study explores and presents how the impact of job insecurity may increase presenteeism as a result of coping. This study brings value to practitioners and this study may help organizations improve the overall well-being of their employees, thus improving productivity. On the contrary, it also opens opportunities for exploring the impact of job insecurity as a challenge stressor.

Bottom of pyramid market (BOP) has gained attention of researchers and marketers in recent years. The BOP market comprises many segments, however, little is known about purchase behaviour in BOP market or segments therein. The purpose of this paper is to investigate youth's intentions of seeking microcredit in the post-war era that are an integral part of BOP market.

The sample comprised 1,250 youth aged 18 and above from Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Surveys were administered for data collection. After testing measurement model, a structural model was run to test hypotheses.

Positive affect, subjective norms and entrepreneurial desire enhanced intentions of seeking microcredit, whereas perceived deterrents negatively influenced those intentions. Perceived benefits, perceived behavioural control and knowledge of microcredit did not have significant effects on these intentions.

This study was conducted in one war-affected country, Sri Lanka. Also, data were cross-sectional. Hence the model needs replication amongst youth in other post-conflict contexts and with longitudinal data.

Findings of this study would be of use to market microcredit to youth in post-conflict era and other segments of BOP.

A unique purchase behavioural model is suggested to enhance youths’ intentions of seeking microcredit in the post-war era, a segment within the BOP market. This study can contribute to purchase behaviour literature in identified contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and empirically test a model that examines subjective well-being (SWB) components (affect balance and life satisfaction, colloquially referred to as “happiness”), as the intervening variables between resilience and organizational commitment (OC), drawing on appraisal theory and job demands‒resources model.

Based on an employee sample (n=345) from Indian organizations, this study uses structural equation modeling to confirm the differential mediating mechanism for OC dimensions.

The results suggest that resilience can create a pathway for positive emotions and increase life satisfaction, which, in turn, can help an employee to stick to the organization. Notably, findings indicate that affect balance fully mediates the linkages between resilience and affective commitment, whereas life satisfaction fully mediates the relationship between resilience and continuance commitment.

Besides making useful contributions to the concerned literature, the findings also have useful messages for managers and organizations trying to develop a committed workforce by building employee resilience.

Although previous studies have supported the relationship between resilience and OC, to date, no study has analyzed the motivational and cognitive process through which resilience relates to each dimension of OC (i.e. affective, normative and continuance).

Based on the referent cognitions theory (RCT), individuals compare their outcomes to a given reference point. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of centrality bias in subjective performance evaluation on two employees’ work behaviors; willingness to exert work effort and retaliation intention.

A 2  ×  2 × 2 between-subject real-effort task experiment was conducted on 162 Accounting and Management students. Centrality bias and level of task difficulty were each manipulated into two groups. Meanwhile, the level of performance was divided based on the average score of the real-effort task.

The experimental data were examined using MANOVA and PROCESS macro regression. It reveals that centrality bias negatively affects willingness to exert work effort through perceived procedural fairness and positively affects retaliation intention. These findings align with the RCT in explaining the perceived procedural fairness psychological mechanism and the work behavior resulting from an unfair evaluation procedure.

This study is the first of its kind to investigate the effect of centrality bias in subjective performance evaluation on positive and negative employee behaviors concurrently, which refers to the real-effort experimental task. The study demonstrates the significant impact of centrality bias on unwillingness to exert effort and adverse behavior.

The leading multinational companies tend to expand their marketing activities to bottom of pyramid (BOP) market. The BOP market comprises many segments, however, little is known about the purchase behaviour of BOP market or segments therein. Microcredit provides credit access to customers in BOP market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate youth’s intentions of obtaining microcredit in the post-war era, which could be a segment of BOP market.

The sample comprised 1,250 youth aged 18-27 selected from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Surveys were administered for data collection. After testing measurement model, two structural models – full model and non-mediated model (direct effects model) were run to test hypotheses.

Positive affect, subjective norms, entrepreneurial desire and self-identity enhanced intentions of obtaining microcredit, whereas perceived deterrents reduced those intentions. Additionally, self-identity mediated the association between positive affect, entrepreneurial desire, perceived behavioural control and knowledge of microcredit, and intentions of obtaining microcredit.

This study was conducted amongst youth in one country. Also, the data were cross-sectional. Hence, the model needs testing with youth and adults in other post-war contexts and with longitudinal data.

The findings of this study inform how effectively microcredit can be marketed to youth in post-war contexts and to the other segments of BOP market.

A unique purchase behavioural model is suggested with the mediating role of self-identity, to enhance intentions of obtaining microcredit in BOP markets, such as youth in post-war contexts. This study contributes to literature relating to purchase behaviour and self-identity, with particular reference to BOP market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread rapidly around the world and Portugal is no exception. Positive and negative effects are extremely important in individual's life experiences and in particular in the context of the quarantine, in which it is important to maintain the balance between favorable and unfavorable situations. The purpose of this paper is to study in depth the intensity of the affect during the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal and to validate a scale of positive and negative affect in the context of quarantine and confinement.

The methodology used is of a quantitative nature, based on a questionnaire survey to measure the intensity of the affects and to analyze some sociodemographic variables. The sample consists of 726 individuals of age 18 years or older, who were in Portugal during the quarantine of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results show that respondents were concerned, anxious, well-disposed and impatient. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis applied to affects produced a latent structure with two factors: negative affect and positive affect. The affect scale has adequate convergent and discriminant validity and good internal consistency, with negative affect being experienced by individuals with greater intensity compared to positive affect.

It is hoped that this study contributes to an increase in the scientific knowledge in the field of the affects in the context of delicate situations such as the pandemic COVID-19 so that health professionals can intervene to improve individual’s well-being. This is an important way to provide better health policy that considers in more depth individual wellbeing and emotions during times of crisis. Limitations and suggestions for future research are also stated that highlight the importance of understanding emotional states of individuals during crisis events.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of an exploratory investigation of the behavioral factors in relation to virtual knowledge sharing among Multimedia University students, Malaysia, based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA).

A search and review of the existing literature was followed by an empirical test of the proposed model in the pilot study (number of participants: n=50) and the main study (n=250).

Trust, anticipated reciprocal relationship and willingness to share knowledge as an individual's attitude; while identification and organizational culture acting as subjective norms, indirectly have an impact on individual's intention to share knowledge virtually. No positive relationship was discovered between the degree of competition and an individual's attitude to share knowledge; nor between collectivism and subjective norms.

The results may have been influenced by self‐selection bias, as only one university was sampled.

This study encourages academic researchers and service providers in educational institutions to focus on an individual's attitude and institutional subjective norms to comprehend students’ behavior in virtual knowledge sharing and to improve the knowledge sharing activities among them, allowing scholars to benefit from better results in their routine academic tasks.

The results indicate that trust, anticipated reciprocal relationship and willingness to share knowledge were significant predictors of an individual's intention to share knowledge indirectly through their attitude toward knowledge sharing. Therefore, lecturers interested in developing and sustaining knowledge exchange through virtual communities should develop strategies or mechanisms that encourage the interaction and strength of the relationships among students. Lecturers can encourage reciprocity by using extrinsic motivators such as assigning rewards for knowledge sharing activities among students. Also, lecturers can facilitate the factor of “trust” among student relationships by enhancing the norm of reciprocity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine differences in work interferes with family (WIF) and family interferes with work (FIW) conflicts, their antecedents and their outcomes throughout the parenting life cycle. The following parenting stages were compared: parenthood to preschool-age children, parenthood to school-age children, parenthood to adolescents, parenthood to offspring at the launching stage and parenthood to offspring at the empty-nest stage.

The sample included 549 working parents in Israel (270 fathers and 279 mothers). The criterion for inclusion was fulfilling the dual roles of parent and paid worker. The research questionnaires were distributed in workplaces in diverse organizations: high-tech companies, government ministries, factories and business organizations.

Levels of WIF and FIW conflicts are highest during the early parenthood stages. Overload peaks during parenthood to adolescents and during the empty-nest stage. The later stages in the parenting life cycle (the launching and empty-nest stages) benefit parents: WIF and FIW conflicts are relatively low, mental well-being is relatively high and the number of roles that parents perform is higher than in earlier stages. Along the entire parenting life cycle, fathers experience higher levels of WIF conflict than mothers, but no gender differences were found in FIW conflict.

Public policy should encourage employers to develop a family-friendly approach and consider the needs of both parents, based on the understanding that in addition to being breadwinners, fathers and mothers today both participate in housework and in raising children.

From a theoretical perspective, the research conclusions may provide understandings for how to integrate the parental stage as a key variable in theorizing about the experience of stressors in the work–home interface.

I present a framework for thinking about personal happiness. Ideas from philosophy are combined with research on happiness from various scientific traditions. But treatments in philosophy tend to be atomistic, focusing on one narrow approach at the exclusion of others; treatments in psychology tend also to be circumscribed, emphasizing specific hypotheses but at the neglect of overarching theory. My approach posits a far-reaching theoretical model, rooted in goal-directed action, yet mindful of nonpurposive sources of happiness as well. The heart of the theory is self-regulation of desires and decisions, which rests on self-conscious examination and application of self-evaluative standards for leading a moral life in the broadest sense of guiding how we act in relation to others. Seven elements of happiness are then developed and related to the conceptual framework. These encompass love and caring; work as a calling; brain systems underpinning wanting, liking, and pleasure; the need to deal with very bad and very good things happening to us; the role of moral concerns and emotions; the examined life and its distractions; and finally spirituality and transcendental concerns. The final section of the chapter sketches everyday challenges and choices academics face.

This chapter attempts to elucidate the important role that divergent thinking plays in organizational creativity, innovation, and change. We define brainstorming as a systematized method of divergent thinking, review this literature, and advocate for the strategic use of brainstorming to enhance creativity and innovation. We identify contradictory findings in the research literature that have led practitioners and researchers to disregard brainstorming techniques. We suggest that cultural forces embedded in organizations may prevent divergent thinking and brainstorming from becoming established normative organizational processes, thus hampering organizations’ potential for change and innovation. The chapter closes by putting divergent thinking and brainstorming in perspective and provides guidelines for its use.