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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.

Considering the potential economic losses this might bring about, researchers have begun to explore ways to mitigate procrastination. Drawing on the job demands-resources model and the spillover-crossover model, this study aims to investigate the association between harmonious passion and procrastination at the intra- and interpersonal levels.

This study used a two-wave multisource questionnaire survey to acquire 256 cases nested in 128 coworker dyads from two hotels in Shanghai. Multilevel analysis and the actor–partner interdependence model were adopted to examine the hypotheses.

The results indicate that employees’ harmonious passion is indirectly negatively associated with procrastination (i.e., cyberslacking and soldiering) through workplace well-being at the intrapersonal level; employees’ harmonious passion is indirectly negatively associated with their coworkers’ procrastination (i.e., cyberslacking and soldiering) through the coworkers’ workplace well-being; and the crossover influence of employees’ harmonious passion on coworkers’ workplace well-being is contingent upon interpersonal conflict at the dyadic level, such that the crossover influence is stronger in condition of low rather than high interpersonal conflict.

Hotels are suggested to provide training programs to employees for enhancing their capabilities to maintain harmonious passion and promote their communication skills to decrease the likelihood to experience interpersonal conflict.

This study offers a comprehensive insight into the association between harmonious passion and procrastination in hospitality employees, which extends the understanding of the outcomes of harmonious passion and the profit of harmonious passion at the interpersonal level.

New developments in concepts and approaches to job stress should incorporate all relevant types of resources that promote well-being and health. The success resource model of job stress conceptualizes subjective success as causal agents for employee well-being and health (Grebner, Elfering, & Semmer, 2008a). So far, very little is known about what kinds of work experiences are perceived as success. The success resource model defines four dimensions of subjective occupational success: goal attainment, pro-social success, positive feedback, and career success. The model assumes that subjective success is a resource because it is valued in its own right, triggers positive affect and emotions (e.g., pleasure, cf., Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), helps to protect and gain other resources like self-efficacy (Hobfoll, 1998, 2001), has direct positive effects on well-being (e.g., job satisfaction, cf., Locke & Latham, 1990) and health (Carver & Scheier, 1999), facilitates learning (Frese & Zapf, 1994), and has an energizing (Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002) and attention-directing effect (Carver, 2003), which can promote recovery by promoting mental detachment from work tasks in terms of absence of job-related rumination in leisure time (Sonnentag & Bayer, 2005).

The model proposes that success is promoted by other resources like job control (Frese & Zapf, 1994) while job stressors, like hindrance stressors such as performance constraints and role ambiguity (LePine, Podsakoff, & LePine, 2005), can work against success (Frese & Zapf, 1994). The model assumes reciprocal direct effects of subjective success on well-being, health, and recovery (upward spiral), and a moderator effect of success on the stressor–strain relationship. The chapter discusses research evidence, measurement of subjective occupational success, value of the model for job stress interventions, future research requirements, and methodological concerns.

This research paper aims to investigate the effects of internal audit’s (IA) use of data analytics and the performance of consulting activities on perceived IA quality.

The authors conduct a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment among upper and middle managers where the use of data analytics and the performance of consulting activities by internal auditors are manipulated.

Results highlight the importance of internal auditor use of data analytics and performance of consulting activities to improve perceived IA quality. First, managers perceive internal auditors as more competent when the auditors use data analytics. Second, managers perceive internal auditors’ recommendations as more relevant when the auditors perform consulting activities. Finally, managers perceive an improvement in the quality of relationships with internal auditors when auditors perform consulting activities, which is strengthened when internal auditors combine the use of data analytics and the performance of consulting activities.

From a theoretical perspective, this research builds on the IA quality framework by considering digitalization as a contextual factor. This research focused on the perceptions of one major stakeholder of the IA function: senior management. Future research should investigate the perceptions of other stakeholders and other contextual factors.

This research suggests that internal auditors should prioritize the development of the consulting role in their function and develop their digital expertise, especially expertise in data analytics, to improve perceived IA quality.

This research tests the impacts of the use of data analytics and the performance of consulting activities on perceived IA quality holistically, by testing Trotman and Duncan’s (2018) framework using an experiment.

Negotiators are offered limited advice on how to overcome adverse events. Drawing on resilience and coping literatures, this study aims to test the impact of three cognitive processing strategies on negotiators’ subjective and economic value following adversity.

Participants completed two negotiations with the same partner. The difficulty of the first negotiation was manipulated and tested how cognitive processing of this experience influenced subjective and economic outcomes in the second negotiation.

Subjective and economic outcomes were predicted by negotiators’ affect, their cognitive processing strategy and negotiation difficulty. In difficult negotiations, as positive affect increased, proactive processing decreased self-satisfaction. As negative affect increased, affective processing increased satisfaction with relationship and process.

Cognitive processing of adversity is most effective when emotions are not running high and better able to protect relationship- and process-oriented satisfaction than outcome-oriented satisfaction. The findings apply to one specific type of adversity and to circumstances that do not generate strong emotions.

This research tests which of three cognitive processing strategies is best able to prevent the aftermath of a difficult negotiation from spilling over into subsequent negotiations. Two forms of proactive processing are more effective than immersive processing in mitigating the consequences.

The purpose of this study is to examine the nature of the relationship between emotional intelligence and materialism by exploring how subjective well-being mediates this link.

Data was collected from surveying 1,000 Lithuanians within random sampling, and structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques using SmartPLS were used to analyze the data.

The results show that emotional intelligence not only has a negative indirect effect on materialism but also a positive impact on both dimensions of subjective well-being (satisfaction with life and affect balance). In addition, the findings indicate that both satisfaction with life and affect balance predict a decrease in materialism. Finally, the SEM analyzes show that the path between emotional intelligence and materialism is partially mediated by both satisfaction with life and affect balance.

The results of this study expand the understanding to what extent and how emotional intelligence is able to assist in adjusting materialistic attitudes, which have become more prevalent with the respective growth of consumerism and consumer culture worldwide. In the light of unsustainable consumption patterns threatening the survival of humankind and nature, the opportunities that could reverse this trend are presented for marketers and policy makers. This study gives insight into the potential pathways for diminishing consumer materialism, which is considered detrimental to subjective well-being and mental health.

The relationship between emotional intelligence and subjective well-being has been well documented, as has the link between materialism and subjective well-being. However, the simultaneous examination of the relationship between emotional intelligence, subjective well-being and materialism is lacking. The current study adds to the understanding of materialism not only by examining the effect of under-researched antecedent such as emotional intelligence but also by explaining the underlying mechanism of subjective well-being by which emotional intelligence connects to materialism.

This study aims to explore how and why self-discrepancy affects materialism and impulsive buying and the extent to which subjective well-being mediates the relationship between self-discrepancy, materialism and impulsive buying.

The authors have tested the hypothesis with a convenience sample (N = 434) from Lithuania. Descriptive analysis, principal components analysis (PCA), serial mediation hypothesis tested with model 81 from regression-based path analysis modeling tool PROCESS Macro for IBM® SPSS® Statistics 24.7 statistical software.

The serial and parallel mediation analysis results indicated that greater self-discrepancy was related to poorer life satisfaction, which was related to greater materialism centrality, which promoted greater impulsive buying. Also, the greater the self-discrepancy, caused more occurrence of negative affect, which relates to increased materialism happiness, which triggers impulsive buying. Self-discrepancy was negatively associated with the frequency of positive affect, which was positively related to materialism, which stimulates impulsive buying.

The study was dominated by younger respondents. The survey was conducted during the lockdown of the Covid-19 virus pandemic.

There is little empirical evidence to support the reasoning behind why self-discrepancy predicts a higher degree of materialism, which increases impulsive buying. This study suggests the mechanism of how subjective well-being affects relationships of self-discrepancy on materialism and impulsive buying.