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An increasing number of fashion firms face criticism for “greenwashing” due to the industry’s longstanding negative environmental and social impacts. This experimental study, in the fashion industry context, evaluated consumers’ perceptions of hypocrisy, demonstrated by false labeling, vague information and downsizing negative environmental impacts in corporate social responsibility initiatives. This study also investigated how these perceptions influence consumers’ evaluations of the firm’s moral inequity and their likelihood of engaging in complaint behaviors.

An online survey company recruited Chinese consumers to participate in a between-subjects experimental study. Three types of news articles were developed – false labeling, vague information and downsizing of negative aspects – reporting on a fictitious fashion firm’s greenwashing practices. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the stimuli and completed a corresponding survey.

Analysis of the 210 collected responses revealed that false labeling had the highest level of corporate hypocrisy perceptions, whereas the downsizing of negative aspects resulted in the lowest level. Moreover, perceived hypocrisy increased moral inequity, which subsequently influenced consumer complaint behaviors. Specifically, when consumers’ expectations toward a firm’s morality were violated – whether through false labeling, vague claims or selective omission – they felt deceived, leading to perceptions of moral hypocrisy. Upon detecting hypocritical behavior in corporate greenwashing, consumers felt moral inequity and took various complaint actions.

This study’s findings provide valuable insights into greenwashing within the fashion industry, addressing industry-specific issues. Academically, this study suggests new classifications of customer complaint behaviors by relating the current circumstances of customer complaints to previous classifications.

The authors originally explore the factors for blockchain technology (BCT) adoption in agricultural supply chains (ASCs) to enhance circularity and understand the dependencies, hierarchical structure and causalities between these factors.

Based on an extant literature review and expert opinion, the present study identified ten enablers for adopting BCT to leverage the circular economy (CE) practices in the ASCs. Then, using an integrated interpretive structural modeling and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (ISM-DEMATEL) approach, hierarchical and cause–effect relationships are established.

It was observed that traceability is the most prominent enabler from the CE perspective in ASCs. However, traceability, being a net effect enabler, will be realized through the achievement of other cause enablers, such as seamless connectivity and information flow and decentralized and distributed ledger technology. The authors also propose a 12 Rs framework for enhancing circularity in ASC operations.

The paper identifies enablers to BCT adoption that will enhance circularity in ASC operations. The ISM hierarchical model is based on the driving and dependence powers of the enablers, and DEMATEL aids in identifying causal relationships among the enablers.

The study's findings and proposed 12 Rs framework may help the practitioners and policymakers devise effective BCT implementation strategies in ASCs, thereby empowering sustainability and circularity.

This study enriches the literature by identifying and modeling enablers for BCT adoption in ASCs. The study also proposes a new 12 Rs framework to help enhance ASC circularity.

This study aims to provide a more complete picture of blockchain development by combining numerous methodologies with diverse data sources, such as academic papers and news articles. This study displays the developmental status of each subject based on the interrelationships of each topic cluster by analyzing high-frequency keywords extracted from the collected data. Moreover, applying above methodologies will help understanding top research topics, authors, venues, institutes and countries. The differences of blockchain research and new are identified.

To identify and find blockchain development linkages, researchers have used search terms such as co-occurrence, bibliographic coupling, co-citation and co-authorship to help us understand the top research topics, authors, venues, institutes and countries. This study also used text mining analysis to identify blockchain articles' primary concepts and semantic structures.

The findings show the fundamental topics based on each topic cluster's links. While “technology”, “transaction”, “privacy and security”, “environment” and “consensus” were most strongly associated with blockchain in research, “platform”, “big data and cloud”, “network”, “healthcare and business” and “authentication” were closely tied to blockchain news. This article classifies blockchain principles into five patterns: hardware and infrastructure, data, networking, applications and consensus. These statistics helped the authors comprehend the top research topics, authors, venues, publication institutes and countries.

Since Web of Science (WoS) and LexisNexis Academic data are used, the study has few sources. Others advise merging foreign datasets. WoS is one of the world's largest and most-used databases for assessing scientific papers.

This study has several uses and benefits. First, key concept discoveries can help academics understand blockchain research trends so they can prioritize research initiatives. Second, bibliographic coupling links academic papers on blockchain. It helps information seekers search and classify the material. Co-citation analysis results can help researchers identify potential partners and leaders in their field. The network's key organizations or countries should be proactive in discovering, proposing and creating new relationships with other organizations or countries, especially those from the journal network's border, to make the overall network more integrated and linked. Prominent members help recruit new authors to organizations or countries and link them to the co-authorship network. This study also used concept-linking analysis to identify blockchain articles' primary concepts and semantic structures. This may lead to new authors developing research ideas or subjects in primary disciplines of inquiry.

Based on the stressor-detachment theory, this study aims to investigate the effect of daily customer mistreatment on proactive service performance and ego depletion, mediated by psychological detachment inhibition during the evening. Additionally, this study endeavors to investigate the dual moderating role of prosocial motivation.

A time-lagged, diary daily survey involving 74 participants over 8 consecutive workdays was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that the psychological detachment inhibition during the evening of Day t mediates the impact of Day t’s customer mistreatment on Day t + 1’s proactive service performance and ego depletion. Furthermore, although prosocial motivation was found to intensify the impact of customer mistreatment on psychological detachment inhibition, it alleviated the negative association between psychological detachment inhibition and proactive service performance.

When employees experience customer mistreatment, hospitality managers should not only provide emotional reassurance and resolve any related issues promptly but also encourage employees to engage in activities that distract them and help them to relax and recharge, especially for those who exhibit high prosocial motivation. Moreover, hiring employees with high prosocial motivation is recommended for hospitality organizations to enable them to maintain high service performance.

This study focuses on psychological detachment inhibition during the evening linking within-person design and daily spill-over impact, enriching the mechanisms through which the repercussions of daily customer mistreatment extend beyond the immediate workday and affect individuals’ outcomes. This study also expands upon the existing literature by clarifying the dual aspects – both detrimental and beneficial – of prosocial motivation.

Lack of access to finance is a major constraint to the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurship in developing countries. The recent proliferation of mobile phone services, access to the internet and emerging technologies has led to a surge in the use of FinTech in Africa and is transforming the financial sector. This paper aims to examine whether FinTech developments heterogeneously contribute to the growth of digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in 47 African countries from 2013 to 2020.

The paper uses a novel method of moments quantile regression, which deals with heterogeneity and endogeneity in diverse conditions for asymmetric and nonlinear models.

The empirical results reveal that the rise of FinTech companies offering services in Africa heterogeneously increases digital finance for SMEs and entrepreneurship in their different stages of growth. FinTech developments have a strong and positive impact in countries with higher levels of digital finance than those with lower levels. FinTech developments and digital finance positively and significantly influence entrepreneurship in Africa, particularly in the nascent and transitional development stages of entrepreneurship. Institutional quality has a considerable positive moderating effect when used as a control rather than an interaction variable.

The results suggest the need to promote FinTech developments in Africa: to provide a wide range of alternative digital finance schemes to SMEs and to promote entrepreneurship, especially in countries where entrepreneurship is in the nascent and transitional development stages. The results also underscore the need to promote FinTech development through supportive regulations and institutional quality to reduce risks related to FinTech and digital financing schemes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first attempts to account for the often overlooked heterogeneity effects and show that the influence of FinTech developments is not homogenous across the varying development stages of digital finance and entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to examine the level of awareness and determinants of the actual adoption of fintech services. This paper further focuses on how usages of different kind of fintech services fulfills the business needs of the micro-entrepreneurs of urban slum dwellers of Uttarakhand.

The research investigated the predictive significance of actual adoption of fintech services using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and prospect theory framework. Data was collected from 80 micro-entrepreneurs of urban slum areas of Uttarakhand, using an adapted semi-structured questionnaire. For analysis of data partial least square structural equal modeling has been used.

This paper finds that different fintech services have different levels of awareness whereas payment, regulation and market provision-related fintech services have high awareness. The main drivers for adopting fintech are services trust (ST) and behavioral intention (BI). BI significantly influences fintech adoption, while ST positively impacts BI, actual usage and facilitating conditions; perceived risk, however, negatively affects ST. The widely used fintech services are payment-based fintech (unified payments interface), followed by regulatory fintech (Khatabook app). Fintech effectively serves the business needs of micro-entrepreneurs in the urban slums of Uttarakhand with innovative product solutions.

The findings of this study are valuable for various fintech providers. These results can serve as a roadmap to strengthen fintech services in the broader population, including niche market segments.

This study uniquely contributes to the literature that addresses the issues of entrepreneurs of the lower strata of society through the use of fintech services.

Agriculture innovation systems (AIS) examine the complex socio-technical and institutional aspects affecting sustainable agriculture. However, it is predominantly constrained to the formal sector activities in the high-income countries (HICs). The informal sector actors play a major role in the agricultural sector of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as India, by innovating and disseminating grassroots innovations (GI). This study aims to explore the role of different GI, both by the informal and formal sectors, within an emerging AIS focused on seabuckthorn in Ladakh, India.

This study used a qualitative methodology, using semi-structured interviews and focused group discussions to gather data from the stakeholders involved in seabuckthorn value chain. The data was analysed using the AIS framework’sa priori themes and was validated through data triangulation with secondary sources.

This study reveals the existence of GI, by both the formal and informal sector actors, and their complex interaction within the seabuckthorn value chain. It highlights the importance of co-existence of these GI to make it a sustainable seabuckthorn AIS.

This study offers noteworthy perspectives for governments, policymakers and agricultural practitioners with respect to the assimilation of GI into AIS. These insights could help improve agricultural sustainability and viability, particularly in LMICs where the informal sector plays a significant role.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the role of GI within AIS and opens up research avenues for further inquiry in both LMICs and HICs.

Drawing upon compensatory ethics theory, this study explored the underlying mechanisms through which gossipers engaged in helping behavior as a form of compensation after initiating negative workplace gossip.

Through a two-wave field study of 394 Chinese employees, this study tests theoretical hypotheses using path analysis and bootstrapping methods.

The findings suggested that negative workplace gossip positively influenced the gossipers’ helping behavior through moral self-image and guilt. Moreover, moral reflectiveness not only positively moderated the impacts of negative workplace gossip on moral self-image and guilt but also positively moderated the mediating effects of moral self-image and guilt in the relationship between negative workplace gossip and helping behavior.

These results enrich the theoretical research on negative workplace gossip, offer new perspectives for studying this phenomenon and provide a theoretical basis and decision-making reference for management practices.

This paper aims to identify types of robot service failure stressors and explores its impact on emotional labor and recovery work engagement from the employees’ standpoint.

The research adopted a mixed-method approach in the hospitality industry in China, which included 25 hospitality workers participating in semi-structured interviews and 435 hospitality employees participating in a two-stage questionnaire survey.

Three types of robotic service failure stressors – illegitimate tasks, customer mistreatment and robotic instability – were identified. These stressors significantly influence emotional labor strategies in employee subsequently shaping their recovery work engagement through dual pathways. The sequential mediation effect of deep acting and service empathy serves to enhance recovery work engagement, whereas the sequential mediation effect of surface acting and workplace depersonalization diminishes this engagement. Human–robot collaborative climate moderates these effects in this context.

The findings from this study yield several implications for hospitality managers in managing employees and service robots to perform human–robot collaboration tasks.

Current research has primarily delved into how robot service failures impact customer experiences, leaving the effects on employees less explored. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first empirical study to explore the relationship between robot service failure and employee emotional responses and behaviors, enriching the literature on service robots in the hospitality industry and also proposing new directions and frameworks for future human–robot interaction research.

Currently, many studies have shown an increasing interest in owner-dynamic capabilities (ODCs). Existing studies mainly focus on the dynamic capability basis and capability development within the owner organization, whereas they rarely analyze the capability mobilization within the network of participants in megaprojects. Therefore, this study aims to explain the interaction and evolution of the mobilization strategies of ODCs and the cooperative strategies of other participants.

This study develops a tripartite evolutionary game model to analyze the evolutionarily stable strategy of the owner, the reciprocal participants and the general participants. Results are numerically simulated with a validation case. The asymptotic stability of multiple group strategies is discussed under the replicator dynamic system.

This study suggests that resource complementarity significantly reduces the difficulty of mobilization. Moreover, these strategies are only effective with sufficient ODCs. The results indicate that reciprocal participants are more sensitive to the change in resource complementarity.

This study provides strategic guidance for mobilizing ODCs in megaprojects to better embrace uncertainty and stress, contributing to the dynamic capability literature with an evolutionary game approach. And new insight for the study of reciprocity preference in megaprojects is also provided.