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This study examines how and under what conditions jobs involving surface acting as key employee performance requirements induce work–family conflict (WFC) and thus negatively impact employees' family lives. Drawing from stress theories, the authors modeled emotional exhaustion as a mediator and trait anxiety and education level as moderators in the surface acting–WFC relation.

Applying the time-lagged design, the authors collected data from 203 service sector employees whose jobs involved frequent interactions with customers. The authors assessed surface acting, trait anxiety and level of education at time 1, emotional exhaustion at time 2 and WFC at time 3 with a three-week time lag between each wave.

The study results confirmed that surface acting drained the emotional energies of the employees who on reaching homes were not able to attend to their family needs, thus experiencing WFC. The authors also found that employees who were high in trait anxiety and education level suffered most from emotional exhaustion and WFC.

To mitigate the harmful effects of surface acting, organizations should ensure that their employees who must perform surface acting have sufficient time off from their roles, such as regular breaks, free evenings and vacations to prevent emotional exhaustion. The authors further recommend hiring only those customer care candidates who have low tendencies to be anxious while interacting with customers.

This study integrates and extends both the emotional labor and WFC literature. This research answers the earlier calls for research on the effects of personality on WFC. Contrary to the expectation, the study reveals that a higher level of education does not buffer the impact of emotional exhaustion on WFC; it rather intensifies the harmful effect of emotional exhaustion on WFC.

This study explores the under-researched phenomenon of workplace bullying against women in male-dominated Pakistani society, highlighting its severe impacts and bridging the research gap on intersectional effects of gender and cultural dynamics in developing countries.

Using a mixed-method research approach, we conducted two-wave surveys with 308 female workers in Pakistan's educational and health sectors. Data analysis examined relationships between workplace bullying and job outcomes like productivity and satisfaction, complemented by insights from in-depth interviews with 18 female workers.

The study reveals that workplace bullying significantly undermines job productivity, increases emotional exhaustion mediated by job anxiety and decreases job satisfaction among female workers. Bullying persists due to weak institutions and inadequate law enforcement, with perceived social support found to be an insignificant moderator.

The study findings underscore the economic implications of workplace bullying, as it drives female workforce attrition, hindering economic development. The study recommends conflict resolution strategies, effective HR policies, national law enforcement and supportive social networks to combat bullying and create a conducive work environment.

This study aligns with the UN's SDG goals #5 (gender equality) and #8 (decent work and economic growth), addressing pertinent issues related to workplace bullying in pursuit of these global objectives.

This study represents a unique attempt to address the intersectional dynamics of gender and culture concerning workplace bullying in Pakistan.

The aim of the current study is to empirically assess the effects of organizational flexibility on project portfolio (PP) performance, with the mediating role of innovation and moderating effects of environmental dynamism (ED) and absorptive capability (AC).

Data were collected from 173 manufacturing firms and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with the help of a partial least squares (PLS) approach.

Results show that innovation partially mediates the relationship between organizational flexibility and PP performance. Furthermore, the moderating effect of ED between organizational flexibility and innovation was analyzed. Additionally, AC also observed as a moderator between innovation and PP performance.

Based on the resource-based view, this study contributes to the literature by addressing the roles of innovation, ED and AC in the relationship between organizational flexibility and PP performance. Implications for managers also discussed in the end; for example, to be more competitive, they should incorporate flexibility into the firm to encourage innovation. It also emphasizes to select new innovative opportunities that correspondingly have effects on the PP performance.

This study examines the mechanisms and conditions that influence how transformational leadership affects project success through the lens of social information processing theory.

A dual-stage moderated mediation model was proposed wherein the effect of transformational leadership on project success is mediated by team building, and empowering climate moderates the direct and indirect effects at both the first and second stages. The model was tested based on 370 survey responses of project management practitioners from Pakistan's IT industry. The measurement model was analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Moderated mediation analyses were conducted using Hayes' PROCESS macro.

The findings suggest that team-building partially mediates the effect of transformational leadership on project success. Furthermore, the conditional indirect effect of transformational leadership on project success via team-building is strengthened at both the first and second stages at higher levels of empowerment climate.

It is recommended that project managers and project-intensive organizations should strive to cultivate an empowerment climate to fully realize the beneficial effects of transformational leadership behaviors in enhancing positive team outcomes and, consequently, overall project performance.

This study broadly contributes to the literature on the influence of project managers' leadership styles on project outcomes. Specifically, we elucidate the role of empowerment climate as an important boundary condition that enhances the beneficial effects of transformational leadership. Furthermore, we extend the application of social information processing theory to the context of projects.

Building on the conservation of resources theory, this research explored the processes underlying the association between perceived workplace incivility and deviant behaviors. Specifically, we tested a mediating mechanism, an interpersonal conflict that has received less consideration in the workplace incivility literature. The authors also tested the organizational climate (i.e. a resource) as a moderator in the perceived workplace incivility–employees’ deviant work behavior relationship.

Time-lagged research design was followed to explain the relationship of variables. Survey data were collected at time 1 and time 2 from 220 service sector working professionals to test the proposed model.

The findings suggest that intrapersonal conflict partially mediates the workplace incivility–deviant work behavior relationship. Further, the authors found that the harmful effects of workplace incivility on employees’ deviant work behavior attenuate in the presence of organizational climate as a resource. The results shed light on the beneficial consequences of organizational climate on employees’ work behavior by attenuating workplace incivility and mitigating their deviant work behaviors.

Overall, the study contributed to understanding the mediating role of interpersonal conflict and the moderating role of organizational climate in explaining the workplace incivility–deviant work behavior relationship.

The study aims to understand the challenges of effective employee utilization in construction projects during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in a developing country and to develop mitigation strategies for post-pandemic workforce management.

We used a qualitative research design to conduct semi-structured interviews with elite informants of various construction firms and analyze the data using thematic analysis.

The results showed that numerous factors, including supply chain issues, inadequate worker healthcare, ineffective knowledge management and job losses, have negatively impacted the construction industry. The prominent outcomes of the study are a conceptual framework for effective workforce management post-pandemic and beyond, including recommendations for managers and executives and future research.

The workforce management framework with knowledge management developed in this study provides a new theoretical view of post-pandemic mitigation strategies through the theoretical lens of dynamics capabilities and knowledge management. The findings cover industrial insights, particularly from the stakeholders’ perspective, and provide a solid foundation for future research in this domain.

This study contributes to the leadership literature by examining how and when despotic leadership jeopardizes employees' performance. Specifically, we examine whether employees' job performance could be harmed by despotic supervision through employees' work withdrawal behaviour. Moreover, we investigate whether the quality of work-life (QWL) helps in toning down the harmful effects of despotic supervision on work withdrawal.

We used a multi-wave research design with data collected from 195 employees and their supervisors working in Pakistan's manufacturing sector. At time 1, we measured the independent variable (i.e. despotic leadership) and moderator (QWL), whereas, at time-2, the mediator (work withdrawal) was tapped by the same respondent with a time interval of three weeks between them. At time 3, the outcome (supervisor-rated job performance) was assessed directly by the supervisors.

The results support the mediating effect between despotic leadership and employees' performance through an enhanced level of work withdrawal behaviour. The effect of despotic leadership on job performance via work withdrawal behaviour was found to be weaker among employees with a higher level of QWL.

For individuals, QWL serves as an enhancement of personal resources to deal with despotic leaders at the workplace; for organizations, our study results alert managers and leaders at the workplace to address employees' need for QWL as this positive resource may discourage work withdrawal behaviour and stimulate employees to perform well in their jobs despite facing despotic supervision.

This study contributes to the leadership literature by introducing work withdrawal as an underlying mechanism to explain the despotic leadership – job performance relationship. Further, we examined how the harmful effects of despotic leadership can be toned down through the moderating variable of QWL thus having practical implications for both employers and employees.

This study examines how project leaders’ knowledge hiding influences project performance via project employee creativity, employing the conservation of resources theory. Further, we investigate how mastery motivational climate (MMC) moderates the project employee creativity and project performance relationship.

Employing purposive sampling design, two-wave data (N = 245) was collected with a gap of three weeks from employees working in R&D departments in private software development project-based organizations located in Lahore, Pakistan.

Results suggest that leaders’ knowledge hiding does impede project employee creativity and negatively influence project performance. In addition, MMC was found to accentuate the relationship between project employee creativity and project performance.

This study offers notable insights into the knowledge hiding literature from a top-down perspective within the project management domain relating to IT projects. This study’s findings pose implications for practitioners and project-based organizations who are interested in counteracting the adverse effects of knowledge hiding on project performance.

This study proposes a novel approach to job design by considering resource scarcity caused by a leader’s knowledge hiding as a job demand, along with the achievement goal perspective driven by a mastery or goal orientation. To understand these two perspectives, we rely on the conservation of resources (COR) theory to describe how a leader’s knowledge hiding affects project performance through project employee creativity, moderated by mastery motivational climate.

Drawing on social cognitive career theory (SCCT), this study aims to examine how university students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship education (ATEE) consists of affective, cognitive and behavioral components influences their entrepreneurial intentions. It further examines the role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) as a mediator and social norms as a moderator in the ATEE – entrepreneurial intentions and – ESE relationships, respectively.

A sample of 428 university students from the new generational cohort entering workforce now (i.e. generation Z) from the four main cities of the province of Punjab, Pakistan, were considered using an online administered questionnaire. The study analyzes data using SPSS v25 and AMOS v22 and presents descriptive statistics, reliability, validity analysis and linear regression analysis. Furthermore, to test mediation and moderation hypotheses, Hayes’ PROCESS macro v3.0 was used.

The results confirm that individuals’ ATEE based on affective, cognitive and behavioral components have significant influence on entrepreneurial intentions. The findings also confirm the strong mediating role of ESE between the components of ATEE and entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, the conditional effects results confirm that social norms strengthened the positive relationships between the affective, behavioral and cognitive components of ATEE – ESE at three levels (low, medium and high).

This study is the first of its nature to unlock the missing link between ATEE’s components and entrepreneurial intentions using the theoretical foundations of SCCT. Furthermore, this study provides theoretical and practical implications specifically considering a developing country – Pakistan.

The extant research on emotional labor (EL) has focused on positive and negative outcomes observed in the workplace; however, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. The research has yet to consider what factors buffer the negative outcomes of EL. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between workload job demand and employee well-being with mediating effects of surface acting (SA) and moderating effects of emotional intelligence (EI) in service organizations.

The authors used two wave data from a sample of 207 emergency medical technicians to test the hypotheses.

By integrating SA, EI and employee well-being with the conservation of resource theory, the authors found evidence of an indirect effect of workload job demand on emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction via SA. The results of moderated mediation show that the negative relationship between SA and job satisfaction was low when EI was high and the positive relationship between SA and emotional exhaustion was low when EI was high.

A major limitation of the present study is that all the participants were male and drawn from a single profession within the same organization. Another limitation is that the data were collected through self-reports.

This research has important theoretical and practical implications for service organizations wishing to buffer the harmful effects of SA on employees. This study presents key theoretical implications for the EL and well-being literatures. An important practical implication is that EI is a good resource for managing SA’s negative outcomes.

The current study contributes to the extant research by showing that workload job demands have negative effects on employee well-being via SA resulting in reduced job satisfaction and increased emotional exhaustion. Further, the negative outcomes of SA on employee well-being can be buffered through EI by taking EI as an emotional resource. High level of EI helps employees to mitigate the harmful effects of SA.