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While servant leadership is widely recognised as a key factor in driving employee performance and various psychological outcomes, there remains a notable gap in understanding how it influences employee embeddedness through fostering harmonious relationships, particularly within energy-centric social enterprises. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating how servant leaders’ behaviours can effectively cultivate harmonious relationships, ultimately leading to increased employee embeddedness within organisations. Additionally, this study introduces a novel aspect by examining how an individual psychological trait, specifically a propensity for risk-taking, may influence the indirect effect of servant leadership on employee embeddedness.

To test this model, data from 309 respondents was collected through a three-wave survey design. The simple mediation analysis was performed using the PROCESS macro-Model 4, and the moderated mediation analysis was performed using the PROCESS macro-Model 8.

The findings indicate that harmonious passion serves as a significant mediator between servant leadership and employee embeddedness. Notably, this relationship is amplified among individuals with higher levels of the risk-taking trait.

The study addresses the research gaps in the interplay between individual traits and the psychological effectiveness of servant leadership in inducing harmonious passion, leading to socio-emotional outcomes such as employee embeddedness. Further, by addressing the issues related to employee retention in social enterprises, this research helps social entrepreneurs create a desirable societal impact without experiencing human resource hurdles. By doing so, this investigation significantly contributes to the research community, practitioners and society at large.

Drawing on psychological contract (PC) theory and platform labor research, the purpose of our study was to explore gig workers’ reactions to perceived PC violation. Our study was set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought workplace health and safety issues into much sharper focus, even in nonstandard employment arrangements like gig work.

This study employed a mixed-methods design. In Study 1, we tested a conceptual model of US-based ride-hail drivers’ (n = 202) affective and cognitive reactions to Uber’s (lack of) commitment to safe working conditions. In Study 2, we conducted interviews with 32 platform workers to further explore an unexpected finding from Study 1.

In Study 1, we found that drivers’ perceptions of PC violation were related to decreased trust in Uber and higher intentions to leave this line of work; however, cynicism toward Uber only predicted withdrawal intentions for those drivers who did not believe that they had job alternatives available outside of gig work. We explored this further in Study 2, where we found that workers with low economic dependence on gig work could afford to be casually cynical toward the platform, while high-dependence workers felt “trapped” in this line of work.

We contribute to the social/relational theoretical approach to gig work more broadly and to the literature on PC in platform work more specifically. We also add to the emerging literature on how economic dependence shapes workers’ experience of platform work. Our findings around low-dependence gig workers experiencing a more indifferent form of cynicism – which we have termed casual cynicism – highlight the importance of treating the context of gig work as unique, not merely an extension of traditional management research.