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The research frontier concerning the relationship between Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and supply chain performance (SCP) in manufacturing is currently lacking in a comprehensive examination. This study examines the relationship between I4.0 adoption and SCP. Additionally, the study examines the mediating effects of supply chain traceability (SCT), supply chain visibility (SCV) and supply chain resilience (SCR), both individually and sequentially.

The data were garnered from 510 managers of manufacturing firms, and PLS-SEM was applied to examine the sequential mediation effect of SCT, SCV and SCR between I4.0 and SCP.

Results indicate a statistically significant direct relationship between I4.0 adoption and SCP. Furthermore, SCT mediates the impact of I4.0 on SCP. Similarly, results showed that SCV mediates the impact of I4.0 on SCP and SCR mediates the impact of I4.0 on SCP. Moreover, the relation between I4.0 adoption and SCP is substantially influenced by the sequential effects of SCT, SCV and SCR. The study provides novel empirical evidence by investigating the sequential mediation roles of SCT, SCV and SCR between I4.0 adoption and SCP through the lens of the resource-based view (RBV) perspective.

Policymakers must prioritize the promotion of I4.0 integration to strengthen the performance of manufacturing supply chains (SC). This can be achieved by improving traceability, visibility and resilience within these SCs.

The originality of this study lies in its use of the sequential mediation effect of SCT, SCV and SCR between I4.0 and SCP under the theoretical lens of RBV.

Organisational cynicism (OC) is a growing trend in contemporary organisations. However, its impact on employee performance (EP) remains understudied. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating its effect on EP. The study also investigates the moderating effect of employee engagement (EE) on the relationship between OC and EP.

Primary data are collected through questionnaire from employees (N=200) of various health organisations in Pakistan by employing a convenient sampling technique. Hierarchical multiple regression is employed by using SPSS.

The findings of correlation and regression analyses reveal that OC has significant negative relationship with EP. Hence, the patient care is compromised in sampled organisations due to poorer performance of employees. Moreover, findings also reveal that EE has a moderating effect on relationship between OC and EP. Therefore, hospital management needs to increase EE to reduce the cynicism and improve performance. In addition, organisations and managers need to consider their role and actions creating the conditions that lead to cynicism among employees and should take trustworthy steps to increase employee retention and engagement and, ultimately, their performance. Moreover, the findings of the study indicate that the majority of respondents are not happy with their organisations. They also feel that the organisation is not fulfilling its promises and betraying them in several ways. This breach of contract becomes the reason for OC among employees and badly affects their performance. Most of respondents give importance to their career development and the findings reveal that organisations are not focussing on career development of their employees.

The study has some limitations and implications. The organisational culture can mitigate the negative effect of OC and enhance performance by promoting EE. It is recommended that employee cynicism can be reduced by providing a supportive environment, EE and fairness. Nevertheless, the findings of this study still help supervisors to inhibit this harmful effect by reducing the level of psychological contract violation and organisational politics that will reduce the level of cynicism among employees and improve their performance.

It is found that OC has a major impact on the behaviour and attitude of employees, supervisors and representatives on the one hand and, ultimately, the organisation, on the other hand. These effects have specific susceptibilities due to the vicinity of the employees. It is recommended that employee cynicism can be reduced by providing a supportive environment.

The study also helps psychologists to understand employees’ attitudes and improve personnel selection to ensure they recruit the right people. Leaders need to communicate honestly, effectively and frequently to address cynicism in order to ensure ample staffing and resource levels that result in good patient care and positive work attitudes at hospitals.

According to the researchers’ best knowledge, only few studies tried to investigate the relationship between organisational cynicism and EP by employing the moderating effect of EE. Therefore, it will be a good contribution in existing literature to understand consequences of cynicisms.

Organizational cynicism is a growing trend in contemporary organizations. However, its impact on employee performance remains understudied. The purpose of this study is to address this gap by investigating the effect of three dimensions of organizational cynicism (cognitive, affective and behavioral cynicisms) on employee performance. The study also investigates the moderating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between three types of organizational cynicism and employee performance.

Primary data are collected through questionnaire from employees (N = 200) of various health organizations in Pakistan by using a convenient sampling technique. Hierarchal multiple regression models are used by using SPSS.

The findings reveal that all three types of organizational cynicism (i.e. cognitive cynicism, affective cynicism and behavioral cynicism) have a significant negative relationship with employee performance, while employee engagement moderates this relationship. Moreover, the findings indicate that the majority of respondents are not happy with their organizations. They have the feeling that their organizations are not fulfilling their promises, in fact, are betraying them in different ways. This breach of contract becomes the reason for organizational cynicism among employees and negatively affects their performance at work.

The study has a large population size and it is quite difficult to address the whole population and collect data from a large sample because of time and limited budget.

The organizational culture can mitigate the negative effect of organizational cynicism and enhance performance by promoting employee engagement. The study helps psychologists to understand employees’ attitudes and improve personnel selection to ensure they recruit the right people. Openness, honesty and early communication can increase predictability and controllability of future events.

The job insecurity and lack of adequate compensation are assertive factors towards low productivity and negative attitude toward organization.

According to the researchers’ best knowledge, only few studies tried to investigate the relationship between organizational cynicism and employee performance by using the moderating effect of employee engagement. Therefore, it will be a good contribution in existing literature to understand consequences of cynicisms.

There has been a dramatic rise in the use of online food delivery apps (FDAs) services since the COVID-19 pandemic. Though online FDAs have contributed significantly to the rise in demand for products from the gourmet industry, little is known regarding the factors that inspire customers to order from online FDAs, subsequently influencing customers’ satisfaction. Considering the knowledge gap, this study utilizes the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to conceptualize the factors: stimuli (eWOM, online reviews and online deals as external stimuli, and late-night craving and convenience as internal stimuli) that determine the organism level (i.e. customers’ inspiration) to subsequently generate the response (i.e. customers’ satisfaction).

We collected the data from 388 users and analyzed it via partial least squares – structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The results reveal that online reviews, deals, late-night food cravings and convenience positively determine customers’ inspiration and satisfaction. In contrast, eWOM fails to impact customers’ inspiration directly and indirectly, affecting customers’ satisfaction through inspiration. Besides, customers’ inspiration positively mediates the relationship between stimuli (e.g. online reviews, online deals, late-night cravings and convenience) and customers’ satisfaction.

This study is novel in that it explores the impact of internal (late-night craving and convenience) and external (eWOM, online reviews and online deals) stimuli on customer inspiration and subsequently predicts customer satisfaction. We also expand prior studies on food delivery apps by studying customer inspiration as a mediating mechanism between internal and external stimuli and customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of trade and financial sector openness and their simultaneous openness on financial development of South Asia.

To serve the purpose, a panel data set of four South Asian economies, namely, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, was constituted for the period spanning from 1996 to 2015. Along with the conventional panel unit root test and co-integration test, pooled mean group estimations were used to formulate the empirical findings.

The findings suggested a significant negative impact of financial openness and significant positive impact of trade openness on the financial development of South Asia. The empirical evidence did not support simultaneous openness of trade and financial sector for the studied region.

The study contributes to the existing literature by analyzing the effect of trade and financial openness on financial development of South Asia. The study provides substantial evidence to the stakeholders for formulating policies that can boost financial development of the region.

This study aims to investigate consumer brand loyalty toward halal cosmetics using the theory of planned behavior through repurchase intention, which is primarily relying on the consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics. Important predictors such as trust on halal cosmetics, quality of halal cosmetics and religious beliefs of millennial Muslim female consumers shape consumer attitude.

The present study used the quantitative research design and deductive approach to collect the data from 275 halal cosmetics users in Pakistan by using a judgmental sampling approach.

Findings of the study provide useful insights for both theory and practice. The results support product quality, religious belief and trust on halal cosmetics as predictors of consumer’s attitude toward halal cosmetics that further develop consumers’ repurchase intention, which in turn enhances their overall brand loyalty. Besides, the findings also show that consumer repurchase intention has a mediating effect between consumer attitude toward halal cosmetics and consumer brand loyalty.

The current study helps in advancing practitioners’ understanding of female consumers’ brand loyalty in the halal cosmetics context. This study is considered to be greatly helpful for managers to gain knowledge about how repurchase intention and brand loyalty of millennial Muslim female consumers can be developed in the halal cosmetics segment, especially in the case of Pakistan.

Brand loyalty has been investigated by previous studies through different predictors and antecedents. This study contributes to the literature of brand loyalty by empirically examining and validating the different antecedents of consumer attitude that are accountable for creating consumer brand loyalty in the domain of halal cosmetics within the Pakistani cultural context. The current study also enhances the previous scholarly understanding on halal cosmetics by investigating the mediating role of consumer repurchase intention of halal cosmetics that further extends the discussion for both theory and practice.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of foreign capital inflows and economic growth on stock market capitalization in Pakistan by using the annual time series data from the period of 1976 to 2011.

The autoregressive distributed lag bound testing cointegration approach, the error correction model and the rolling window estimation procedures have been performed to analyze the long run, short run and behavior of coefficients, respectively.

Results indicate that foreign direct investment (FDI), workers’ remittances and economic growth have significant positive relationship with the stock market capitalization in long run as well as in short run. Results of the dynamic ordinary least square and the fully modified ordinary least square suggest that the initial results of long-run coefficients are robust. Results of variance decomposition test show the bidirectional causal relationship of FDI and economic growth with stock market capitalization. However, unidirectional causal relationship is found in between workers’ remittances and stock market capitalization.

It is suggested that in Pakistan, investors can make their investment decisions through keeping an eye on the direction of the considered foreign capital inflows and economic growth.

This paper makes a unique contribution to the literature with reference to Pakistan, being a pioneering attempt to investigate the effects of foreign capital inflows and economic growth on stock market by using long time series data and applying more rigorous techniques.

Higher education institutions are the contemporary embodiment of knowledge-intensive organizations. The role of knowledge sharing among academics in enhancing teaching, research and innovation performance cannot be overlooked. However, a paucity of studies were devoted to uncovering the influencing factors of knowledge sharing among academics in China. This study aims to dig into the factors that influence academics’ knowledge-sharing behaviors in the context of Chinese higher education.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 academics from universities across various regions in China by using a combination of convenience, snowball and purposive sampling methods. Thematic analysis was used where data sets were examined according to the initial categorization of factors based on a review of the literature while new factors were searched based on frequency of re-occurrence.

Perceived loss of power and time and effort significantly hinder knowledge sharing whereas expected self-development and association are major catalysts of knowledge sharing. The organizational climate in higher education is featured by competition and individualism, which is not conducive to knowledge sharing while affiliation and trust are essential for cultivating a pro-sharing environment. Technological tools are perceived as user-friendly and useful in facilitating knowledge sharing, but doubts were raised about the effectiveness of online knowledge sharing compared to face-to-face communication.

Deviating from the conventional quantitative approach, this study provides novelty insights on this topic by revealing some less-investigated factors of knowledge sharing among Chinese academics by taking the qualitative approach.

This study aims to examine the influence of the talent management (TM) process on employee ambidexterity (EA) and the moderating role of learning organizations in Indian IT and ITes organizations.

The study is descriptive and based on empirical data from 390 IT and ITES employees from India. Data were collected using three valid and reliable questionnaires. Data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings show that the TM process significantly impacted EA. The moderating effects of the four dimensions of learning organization (LO) on the relationship between the TM process and EA were also noteworthy, even though no direct association was found to be significant. Regarding demographic variables, male and female employees do not vary considerably in their perception of TM process and EA in LO.

The study’s novelty lies in creating and discussing a synthesis of exploration and exploitation stemming from EA in learning organization.