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We examined who is more likely to use flexible work arrangements (FWAs) to alleviate work-family conflict (WFC) and under what conditions the use of FWAs actually reduces WFC.

We tested the model using survey data collected at two time points from 217 employees.

Proactive employees are more likely to use flextime to alleviate WFC (b = −0.03; 95% biased-corrected CI: [−0.12, −0.01]) and this mediation relationship is not moderated by their level of low work-to-nonwork boundary permeability. In addition, only when proactive employees have a low work-to-nonwork boundary permeability does their use of flexplace alleviate WFC (b = −0.07, 95% bias-corrected CI: [−0.1613, −0.0093]).

We expand our understanding of who is more likely to utilize FWAs by identifying that employees with proactive personality are more likely to use flextime and flexplace. We also advance our understanding regarding the conditions whereby FWA use helps employees reduce WFC by identifying the moderating role of work-to-nonwork boundary permeability on the relationships between both flextime and flexplace use on WFC.

This study aims to examine the mediating role of audit seasonality on the association between audit fees and audit quality in Nigerian deposit money banks.

The sample comprises 14 banks with annual financial statements between 2008 and 2020. The modified Baron and Kenny’s (1986) causal mediation model by Iacobucci et al. (2007) through the use of bootstrapped partial least square structural equation modelling and Sobel’s (1986) z-test is adopted to achieve this study’s objective.

The results of the causal mediation analysis show evidence of a fully mediating role of c between audit fees and audit quality in the Nigerian banking industry.

This study extends the body of knowledge by demonstrating how audit fees influence audit quality through audit seasonality as a mediator in line with the job demands-and resources and conservation of resources theories. Regulatory authorities should be wary of policies that will further increase the workload of already burdened personnel of audit firms as the uniform fiscal year-end of 31 December introduced in the Nigerian banking system has unintended consequences on audit fees and audit quality.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first studies to provide evidence on the indirect association between audit fees and audit quality.

Given the workplace’s reinvention to accommodate the global pandemic’s novel conditions, knowledge hiding (KH) behaviour in knowledge-intensive organisations must be examined from a fresh perspective. In this context, the relationship between workplace ostracism (WO) as KH’s antecedent and quiet quitting (QQ) as its consequence is undertaken via the mediating role of KH behaviour among knowledge workers (KWs).

Through stratified sampling, data from 649 KWs is obtained to test the model. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) using SMART-PLS 4.0. software establishes a significant influence of WO on KH and QQ. KH significantly mediates the relationship between WO and QQ, highlighting its critical intermediary role PLSPredict evaluates the model’s predictiveness. WO and KH’s effects on QQ are examined using necessity logic by collectively applying PLS-SEM and necessary condition analysis (NCA).

The model wherein WO plays a significant role in increasing KH and QQ, with KH as a partial mediator in the relationship, has high predictive relevance. Moreover, NCA confirms WO as the key predictor variable that provides variance in QQ, followed by KH. The Importance-performance map analysis technique supports the study’s managerial implications.

This study enriches QQ’s emerging literature by empirically identifying its antecedents-WO and KH. Methodologically, this paper gives a model for using PLS-SEM and NCA together in relation to QQ by identifying WO as its necessary condition. Evidence of selected constructs’ interrelationships may help organisations draft leadership programmes to curtail KH and QQ behaviour.

Enterprise social media (ESM) are expressive spaces where users exchange emotional workplace communication. While some studies have explored how positive emotions may be contagious, little research explored the notion that negative communication may accumulate on enterprise social media. This study explores perceived negativity bias and its correlates in the context of ESM.

This study relies on survey data collected from 599 employees of a global organization. The response rate was 18.7%. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

The results contribute to research on ESM by demonstrating that perceived negativity bias is positively related to feelings of accountability and negatively associated with social support. Furthermore, the results indicate that unmet communication expectations on ESM can have implications for perceived social support beyond online contexts and accountability through perceived negativity bias.

The findings demonstrate how employees' unmet expectations about ESM use increase feelings that a digital environment is disproportionately negative, which may create an “unsafe” space for employees and a fear of being held accountable for their contributions. This study highlights how the Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory provides a fruitful framework for studying enterprise social technologies.

This study suggests that work is not merely a rational endeavor, and that emotions and personal feelings (including negative ones) may shape workplace communication on ESM. We contribute to research on ESM use by using the Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory as a lens to study antecedents and implications of perceived negativity bias.

This study examines how employees’ exposure to coworker undermining may lead them to miss work deadlines. It offers a particular focus on the mediating role of diminished organization-based self-esteem and the moderating role of justice sensitivity in this connection.

The research hypotheses are tested with data collected among employees and supervisors who work in various industries.

Purposeful efforts by coworkers to cause harm translate into an increased propensity to fail to complete work on time, because the focal employees consider themselves unworthy organizational members. The extent to which employees feel upset with unfair treatments invigorates this process.

For employees who are frustrated with coworkers who deliberately compromise their professional functioning, diminished self-worth in relation to work and the subsequent reduced willingness to exhibit timely work efforts might make it more difficult to convince organizational leaders to do something about the negative coworker treatment. Pertinent personal characteristics can serve as a catalyst of this dynamic.

This study contributes to extant human resource management research by detailing the link between coworker undermining and a reduced propensity to finish work on time, pinpointing the roles of two hitherto overlooked factors (organization-based self-esteem and justice sensitivity) in this link.

As artificial intelligence technology empowers service robots, they increasingly communicate with consumers in a human-like manner. This study aims to investigate the effect of service robots’ different conversational styles (competent conversational style vs. cute conversational style) on consumer service acceptance and demonstrate the moderating role of consumers’ technology anxiety.

Based on anthropomorphism theory and social presence theory, the authors conducted two scenario-based experiments (restaurant scenario and hotel scenario) to investigate this issue.

The results indicate that service robots’ conversational styles impact consumers’ willingness to accept the use of service robots through perceived social presence and positive emotion. Moreover, consumers perceived social presence and positive emotion play a serial mechanism. In addition, the effect of competent conversational style on consumers perceived social presence is less effective than that of cute conversational style. Finally, the authors demonstrate the moderating role of consumer technology anxiety in the relationship between conversational styles and perceived social presence.

To provide consumers with a positive human–robot interaction experience at the service front line, managers need to make better use of the conversational styles of service robots by comprehensively considering the characteristics of consumer technology anxiety.

This research extends the literature on service robots by integrating consumer characteristics and robots’ conversational styles. These findings highlight the effectiveness of cute conversational style in alleviating consumer technology anxiety.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the interplay of stressor (e.g. fear of missing out, FoMO) and strains (e.g. perceived social overload, communication overload, information overload and system feature overload) in social networking sites (SNS) use can contribute to users’ SNS fatigue from a configurational view.

Data were collected among 363 SNS users in China via an online survey, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was applied in this study to scrutinize the different combinations of FoMO and overload that contribute to the same outcome of SNS fatigue.

Six combinations of casual conditions were identified to underlie SNS fatigue. The results showed that FoMO, perceived information overload and system feature overload are the core conditions that contribute to SNS fatigue when combined with other types of overloads.

The current work supplements the research findings on SNS fatigue by identifying the configurations contributing to SNS fatigue from the joint effects of stressor (FoMO) and strain (perceived social overload, communication overload, information overload and system feature overload) and by providing explanations for SNS fatigue from the configurational perspective.