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Organizations are moving beyond the gender binary in the workplace and are implementing diversity management practices, making Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) inclusion increasingly important as they continue to remain a disadvantaged group. This paper aims to look into the factors that affect job and life satisfaction among LGBTQ employees in India.

Data were collected from 348 LGBTQ employees and analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results showed that psychological safety has a positive impact on psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Additionally, inclusive climate and inclusive leadership were found to have a significant moderating effect on the relationships. The study also revealed that psychological empowerment plays a mediating role between psychological safety and life satisfaction.

The study stands pioneers among the works that discuss workplace inclusion among LGBTQ employees in Indian context since LGBTQ acceptance in normal social system is still in nascent stage in Indian scenario. The findings can be used to improve LGBTQ inclusion and promote social development and well-being in organizations and society, as the inputs from the study can be taken up for inclusive leadership development and wellbeing of the employees.

In today’s fast-paced and interconnected market, companies must adapt to the evolving demands of their customers. Therefore, it is essential to examine the impact of online reviews on potential customers' intent to purchase. This study seeks to identify the characteristics of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) that influence a buyer’s intention to purchase goods and services.

We used the snowball sampling method to collect data using a pre-tested survey instrument with a five-point Likert scale. We received 696 usable responses. We conducted assumption tests to ensure that we could use covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) for data analysis. The collected data were analysed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to compute the latent variables. We then tested our research hypotheses using CB-SEM.

Eight latent constructs – perceived persuasion, perceived information, image aesthetics, ease_of_experience, eWOM_credibility, eWOM_usefulness and eWOM_adoption – have been identified, which determine the influence of eWOM on purchase intent (PI) for both tangible and experiential products. Though the structural model emerged relatively similar, the constructs had differential impacts on PI for commodities and services. The perceived information quality and source trustworthiness had a greater impact on eWOM credibility in the case of services than in the case of commodities, while image aesthetics played a more crucial role in determining the eWOM credibility for commodities than services. In both cases, credible eWOM was found useful, but a persuasive eWOM influenced its perceived usefulness more in the case of commodities. The likelihood of adopting a useful eWOM and converting it to positive PI is present in the case of both services and commodities, but the impact is much higher in the case of services.

The study has examined the interplay of three theoretical consumer behaviour models: elaboration likelihood model (ELM), stimulus-organism-response model (SOR), and information adoption model (IAM). Thus, it adds to the existing literature on the characteristics of eWOM that influence the PI of online buyers.

This study’s findings demonstrate how eWOM influences consumers' perceptions of the utility of goods and services, impacting their intention to purchase. It also provides valuable insights into marketing and consumer behaviour in the Indian market. Thus, this study assists marketers in adjusting their digital marketing strategies to ensure the effective use of eWOM characteristics to positively influence the PI of the target audience in the Indian market.

This research study examines the relationship between eWOM characteristics and PI for both goods and services sectors. Most existing literature is skewed towards specific service sectors, such as hospitality and health care. A generalised comparative study is what makes this research work unique.

Integrating digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain make the agri-food supply chain (ASCM) transparent, resilient and flexible. However, its adoption is quite complex due to various anticipated barriers. So, the presented research purposes to explore and investigate the barriers.

This study employs hybrid approach including Best-Worst Method (BWM) and Graph Theoretic Approach (GTA). Data were collected from industry experts employed in the agri-food sector and analyzed by means of standard operating procedures.

GTA results show that Technological barriers have the highest barrier intensity. Moreover, BWM results show that “Increased operational complexity” is the topmost barrier to adopting blockchain in ASCM. “Lack of interoperability” ranks second among the identified barriers.

The results benefit the managers, practitioners and researchers to understand the anticipated barriers so that necessary strategies can be developed, and organizations can become more resilient, agile, transparent and traceable.

The presented work is the first to develop a mathematical model and assess the industry’s eagerness to adopt blockchain in ASCM. The proposed framework will greatly benefit the stakeholders working in agri-food sector.

In the existing era, international trade is boosted by maritime freight movement. The academicians and Government are concerned about environmental contamination caused by maritime goods that transit global growth and development. Digital technologies like blockchain help the maritime freight business to stay competitive in the digital age. This study aims to illuminate blockchain technology (BCT) adoption aspects to alleviate early industry adoption restrictions.

This study adopts a two-stage approach comprising of structural equation modeling (SEM) with artificial neural networks (ANN) to analyze critical factors influencing the adoption of BCT in the sustainable maritime freight industry.

The SEM findings from this study illustrate that social, organizational, technological and infrastructual and institutional factors affect BCT execution. Furthermore, the ANN technique uses the SEM data to determine that sustainability enabled digital freight training (S3), initial investment cost (O5) and trust over digital technology (G1) are the most essential blockchain deployment factors.

The hybrid approach aims to help decision-makers and policymakers examine their organizational blockchain adoption goals to construct sustainable, efficient and effective maritime freight transportation.

The objective of the study is to shed light on the notion of quality investing in the Indian stock market. The study also attempts to combine the value and quality metrics to test their ability to generate a higher risk-adjusted return.

The paper employs asset pricing models to examine the excess risk-adjusted returns and panel regression model (random estimates) to determine the price of quality in the cross-section of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) listed stocks from 2003 to 2020.

The results indicate that the quality-only strategy failed to produce substantial risk-adjusted returns in the Indian stock market. The returns to long/short hedging strategy quality-minus-junk (QMJ) are significantly positive with the majority of the returns attributable to the short leg of the stock portfolio. The findings further discovered that the explanatory effect of quality on prices is limited. In particular, a strategy that combines value and quality investing generated positive and significant alphas as well as a higher Sharpe ratio.

The study provides investors and portfolio managers with valuable insights for navigating undervalued high-quality equities in the Indian stock market.

This is the first research of its kind to examine the performance of quality (Q score indicator) combined with value investing in the Indian stock market. As majority of research have concentrated on developed economies, this study offers out-of-sample evidence to validate the strategy’s success in an emerging market.

The goal of this article is to provide an overview of healthcare entrepreneurship, both in terms of its current trends and future directions.

The article engages in a systematic review of extant research on healthcare entrepreneurship using the scientific procedures and rationales for systematic literature reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) as the review protocol and bibliometrics or scientometrics analysis as the review method.

Healthcare entrepreneurship research has fared reasonably well in terms of publication productivity and impact, with diverse contributions coming from authors, institutions and countries, as well as a range of monetary and non-monetary support from funders and journals. The (eight) major themes of healthcare entrepreneurship research revolve around innovation and leadership, disruption and technology, entrepreneurship models, education and empowerment, systems and services, orientations and opportunities, choices and freedom and policy and impact.

The article establishes healthcare entrepreneurship as a promising field of academic research and professional practice that leverages the power of entrepreneurship to advance the state of healthcare.

The article offers a seminal state of the art of healthcare entrepreneurship research.

The short/fast-food and perishable food supply chains (PFSC) have similar characteristics of lower lifespan and variable demand, leading to significant waste. However, the global population surge and increased health awareness make it impossible to continue wasting food because it is responsible for the loss of economy, resources, and biodiversity. A sustainable transition in short and PFSC is necessary; thus, addressing challenges is critical to explore the best strategy for redesigning PFSC.

An extensive literature review helped to identify 40 challenges, while a Delphi study highlighted 21 critical challenges. The fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method establishes a causal relationship between sustainable development (SD) challenges to help redesign PFSC.

From a strategic development perspective, frequent transportation disruption is the main critical challenge. Lack of supplier reliability is the most substantial cause of independence, with a causal value of 2.878. Overhead costs and lack of green maintenance strategies are part of the performance-oriented challenges. As it belongs to the driving zone, the second quadrant requires control while transforming PFSC for better sustainable development.

The study has several implications, such as lack of supplier reliability and frequent transportation disruption, which have the most robust causal value used as short-term strategy development. For short- and fast-food supply chains, it is necessary to study market and consumer behavior patterns to optimize inventory and customer service. Combating transportation disruption and supplier reliability challenges is vital in both PFSC and short and fast-food supply chains to reduce waste and promote sustainability.

The study’s findings are unique and put value toward the sustainable transition of PFSC by revealing critical challenges and their impact.