Search results

The purpose of this study is to reveal important insights by examining the relationships of two different field managers’ monitoring styles with performance through salespersons’ engagement.

Data was collected from 318 salespersons’ from 20 pharmaceutical firms. Given the performance-driven nature of the pharmaceutical sales profession, field managers seek to adopt the best monitoring style, which can optimize individual’s performance while providing a healthy work environment.

The results from multivariate analysis show the evidence of positive relationship between interactional monitoring and salespersons’ engagement. The results also confirm that engagement partially mediates the proposed relationships.

Authors assimilate and extend research and theory on field managers’ monitoring, salespersons’ performance and salespersons’ engagement to advance a model of salespersons’ reactions to different monitoring styles based on self-determination theory. Perhaps in no other field, the salespersons-field managers’ relationship is as important as in the field of pharmaceutical selling. The study offers insights about the important consequence of two different monitoring styles; also the study is one of the exceptional efforts to provide evidence regarding the role of engagement in the relationship between two different monitoring styles and salespersons’ performance.

This study aims to investigate the direct effect of the behavior-based sales control system on job outcomes: salesperson’s performance and turnover intentions. The current study also intends to integrate these two streams by conceptualizing work engagement as a mediating variable between behavior-based sales control systems and salespersons’ job outcomes in the pharmaceutical sales context.

Data was collected through multi-stage stratified random sampling from a sample of 619 salespersons working in 20 pharmaceutical firms (multinational and national) through self-administered questionnaires.

The structural equation model yielded results indicating that the behavior-based sales control system was positively related to salespersons’ work engagement and negatively to turnover intentions while the relationship between the behavior-based sales control system and salespersons’ job outcomes was mediated by work engagement.

Two relatively separate lines of investigation have appeared in academic literature. The first line centered on sales force control systems and salespersons’ related consequences, whereas the second line of investigation emphasizes work engagement and its consequences. Although both lines are important, a diminutive research effort has been made to join these two different lines of investigation in sales management, specifically, in the pharmaceutical context. Focusing on this, the current research explores the role of an unexplored construct of work engagement in a pharmaceutical sales context. Second, it addresses the need to identify additional mediating variables to clarify the inconsistent relationship between sales control systems and job outcomes, such as job performance and turnover intentions.

This chapter investigates the presence of a difference in the systemic risk level between Islamic and conventional banks in Bangladesh. The authors compare systemic resilience of three types of banks: fully fledged Islamic banks, purely conventional banks (CB), and CB with Islamic windows. The authors use the market-based systemic risk measures of marginal expected shortfall and systemic risk to identify which type is more vulnerable to a systemic event. The authors also use ΔCoVaR to identify which type contributes more to a systemic event. Using a sample of observations on 27 publicly traded banks operating over the 2005–2014 period, the authors find that CB is the least resilient sector to a systemic event, and is the one that has the highest contribution to systemic risk during crisis times.

The authors examined how employee led exchange benefits the organizations. Specifically, the authors aim at investigating the mediating role of family supportive supervision between employee performance and taking charge behavior. The authors further examined leader-member exchange (LMX) as a boundary condition between employee performance and family supportive supervision.

The authors collected data from 295 employees and their supervisors working in various public sector organizations of Pakistan on a convenience basis. Specifically, data on family supportive supervision and LMX was collected from employees; whereas, data on employee performance and taking charge was collected from their supervisors between June–September 2021.

The statistical analysis reveals that high-performing employees are reciprocated by the high family-supportive supervision which increases their work-life balance and they further reciprocate by showing a propensity to take charge. In addition, LMX is noted to strengthen the association between employees' performance and family supportive supervision.

This study explains how managers can extend the stream of employees' performance by highlighting the role of family-supportive supervision and LMX. The managers through high LMX and provision of family-supportive supervision can boost the employees' outcomes from job performance to extra-role performance (i.e. taking charge).

This study adds value to the existing body of knowledge by considering performance as a predictor of various organizational-level consequences. Recent studies have considered the negative consequences of employees' performance, while the positive aspect has been called for an investigation.

The purpose of this study was to produce yarns from three different spinning techniques, i.e.Murata Vortex Spinning (MVS) ring spinning and rotor spinning. Those yarns were then used to produce fabrics. Then, the effect of silicone softener on tactile comfort of fabric was investigated.

Three different yarns, i.e. Ring, Rotor and MVS yarns, were used to make fabrics using CCI sample loom which were then subjected to post treatments like desizing, scouring and bleaching. After the completion of the dyeing process, silicone-based softener was used to improve the hand feel of fabrics. The structures of three yarns were evaluated using Scanning electron microscopy. The fabrics were evaluated against compression, bending and surface properties using Kawabata evaluation system.

The fabric made of MVS yarn depicted more geometrical roughness, coefficient of friction and bending rigidity but less compressibility as compared to fabrics made with other yarns. It was observed that softener concentration has a direct relationship with thickness and bending rigidity of the fabric, and inverse relationship with coefficient of friction and geometrical roughness of the fabric.

MVS yarn has some superior properties over rotor and ring spun yarn like high production rates, high resistance to pilling, clear appearance and stability against deformation but has disadvantage that it has less compressibility. Therefore, softener is applied on the fabric, to address this issue, so that it could also be used for apparels application.

Underpinned by affective events theory (AET), this paper examines the effect of coworker friendship on coworker incivility in family-style restaurants. Furthermore, this paper seeks the mediation effect of positive workplace gossip.

Using a time-lagged approach, 83 headwaiters and 326 servers at family-style restaurants located in Port Said and Ismailia responded, and their responses were analyzed using AMOS v. 24.

Multigroup analysis findings proved that coworker friendship increased positive workplace gossip in favor of the server sample. At the same time, the latter decreased coworker incivility in favor of the headwaiter sample. Besides, positive workplace gossip partially mediated the coworker friendship–incivility association in favor of the server sample. Furthermore, incivility levels increase between married coworkers and their peers in favor of the server sample.

From the AET lens, this paper offers valuable insights into affective and emotional reactions to closest coworkers' judgmental behavior in the restaurant industry.

This study aims to explore whether the cultural competency training in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services is sufficient to equip Psychological Wellbeing Practitioners (PWP) to support Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) service users.

A qualitative design was adopted using semi-structured interviews with six PWP participants. Reflexive thematic analysis using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step process was used in data analysis.

Three themes revealed evaluations of PWP training, factors supporting PWPs’ cultural competency and points of improvement for PWP training. The training briefly and superficially covered cultural competency content; however, it encouraged PWPs to explore potential personal and cultural biases in therapy. PWP training can also be improved by providing more culturally relevant resources and involving BAME service users.

A small sample size (N = 6) was used, impacting the findings’ generalizability.

PWP training does not sufficiently equip PWPs to support BAME service users. PWPs’ reflection of their own ethnic identity and personal experiences, when combined with training, can improve cultural competency. IAPT training should focus on cultural awareness, knowledge and skills to enhance therapeutic experience. Moreover, PWPs should reflect on their identity, personal biases and experiences when working with diverse communities.

This is one of the few qualitative studies evaluating the cultural competencies of PWPs in IAPT.

The purpose of this study is to develop a precise Islamic securities index forecasting model using artificial neural networks (ANNs).

The data of daily closing prices of KMI-30 index span from Aug-2009 to Oct-2019. The data of 2,520 observations are divided into training and test data sets by using the 80:20 ratio, which corresponds to 2016 and 504 observations, respectively. In total, 25 features are used; however, in model selection step, based on maximum accuracy, top ten indicators are selected from several iterations of predictive models.

The results of feature selection show that top five influencing indicators on Islamic index include Bollinger Bands, Williams Accumulation Distribution, Aroon Oscillator, Directional Movement and Forecast Oscillator while Mesa Sine Wave is the least important. The findings show that the model captures much of the trend and some of the undulations of the original series.

The findings of this study may have important implications for investment and risk management by using index-based products.

Numerous studies proved that traditional econometric techniques face significant challenges in out-of-sample predictability due to model uncertainty and parameter instability. Recent studies show an upsurge of interest in machine learning algorithms to improve the prediction accuracy.

This paper aims to explore whether brand corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives increase consumers’ happiness via a mediating mechanism of emotional brand attachment and to examine how brand CSR’s effect may be moderated by CSR fit (e.g. CSR-brand fit vs misfit) and sense of relatedness (e.g. low vs high).

A series of six studies (including the one that is available online), combining field and experimental data, were conducted to test the hypothesized relationships.

Results support the hypothesis that brand CSR initiatives make consumers happy by increasing their attachment to the brand (Studies 1 and 2). This effect is strengthened both directly and indirectly through emotional attachment when brands engage in CSR fit activities (Study 3), but it is weakened when brands engage in CSR misfit activities (Study 4). Furthermore, the effect is more pronounced when brands choose CSR activities that have a high sense of relatedness, and it is eliminated when brands use CSR activities with a low sense of relatedness (Study 5). Finally, the results indicate that when brand CSR programs make consumers happy, they become more likely to purchase, spread positive word of mouth and pay a premium (Study 6).

This research has several major implications for business-to-consumer companies that are unsure about the value of brand CSR initiatives, want to make consumers happy but are unsure which CSR strategies to focus on and/or have decided to launch CSR initiatives but lack guidance on the specific strategies relevant to their desired performance outcomes.

This paper examines the impact of Russian invasion of Ukraine on the intraday efficiency of four major energy markets, namely, diesel oil, Brent oil, light oil and natural gas.

This study applies the multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MFDFA) to high-frequency returns (30-min intervals) for the period from October 21, 2021, to May 20, 2022. The data sample of 5,141 observations is divided into two sub-samples, before and after the invasion of 24th February 2022. Additionally, the magnitude of long memory index is employed to investigate the presence of herding behavior around the invasion period.

Results confirm the presence of multifractality in energy markets and reveal significant changes of multifractal strength due to the invasion, indicating a decline of intraday efficiency for oil markets. Surprisingly, the natural gas market, being the least efficient before the invasion, turns out to be more efficient after the invasion. The findings also suggest that investors in these energy markets are likely to show herding, more prominently after the invasion.

The multifractal patterns, in particular the long memory property of energy markets, can help investors develop profitable investment strategies. Furthermore, the improved efficiency observed in the natural gas market, after the invasion, highlights its unique traits and underlying complexity.

This study is the first attempt to assess the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on the efficiency of global commodity markets. This is quite important because the adverse effects of the war on financial markets may potentially cause destabilizing outcomes and negative effects on social welfare on a global scale.