Organizational and vocational behavior in times of crisis: A review of empirical work undertaken during the COVID‐19 pandemic and introduction to the special issue: International Review of Applied Psychology

The challenges faced by individuals and organizations during the COVID‐19 crisis have significantly changed how businesses operate. In response, how we think about organizational and vocational behavior research has shifted. Questions of how leaders manage their workforce, how workers manage their daily work demands, and how workers consider their career options during and post the pandemic have attracted scholars' interest to assist businesses with recalibrating to a “new normal.” Presented in this special issue are 10 original articles that seek to propel the organizational and vocational behavior fields forward, addressing questions important in the context of crises, on working life. In our introduction to the special issue, we set the scene for this new research by reviewing the organizational and vocational behavior literature published over the first 2 years of the pandemic that has explored the impact of the COVID‐19 crisis on organizations and workers. This existing body of research covers emotions, work attitudes and behaviors, health and well‐being, and team and career‐related outcomes in the context of the crisis. The special issue also reflects on the enduring challenges for organizational and vocational behavior scholars conducting research during times of crisis to provide a roadmap for future research.

Perceived overqualification, felt organizational obligation, and extra‐role behavior during the COVID‐19 crisis: The moderating role of self‐sacrificial leadership: International Review of Applied Psychology

Past research has found that employees who view themselves as overqualified for their jobs tend to hold negative job attitudes and be unwilling to go beyond the call of duty. In challenging situations such as during the COVID‐19 crisis, when having “all hands‐on deck” may be important to an organization's survival, mitigating the negative tendencies of these employees becomes important. Adopting a sensemaking perspective on crisis management, we examine whether supervisors' self‐sacrificial leadership can mitigate these negative tendencies. First, we propose that employee perceived overqualification is associated with lower levels of felt obligation to the organization and thereby lower levels of extra‐role behaviors (i.e., helping and proactivity). We next propose that supervisors' self‐sacrificial leadership during the COVID‐19 crisis can evoke, especially when COVID‐19 more strongly impacts the organization, a sense of collectivism toward the organization, which mitigates the negative association of perceived overqualification with felt obligation and thus extra‐role behaviors. We tested our theorizing in samples from the UK (n = 121, pilot study) and US (n = 382, main study) in studies with a multi‐wave, time‐lagged design. Findings from both studies provide support for our theorizing. We discuss implications for research and practice concerning perceived overqualification during a crisis.

Fakery as a process of negotiation: understanding the information assessment and sharing behaviours of the marginalized elderly on social media: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

Transcending the binary of misinformation and truth, this study proposes a new theoretical approach to comprehend fakery as a negotiation process encompassing information access, exploration and comparison, and sharing. Grounded in the theory of intersectionality, this approach enables the capturing of dynamics embodied in this process which is shaped by the intersectional forces at the individual, digital, social, and national levels. Through this approach, this study gives voice to the largely underrepresented group of low-income female elder adults in China, mapping their negotiation concerning the definition of fakery in COVID-19 at the interplay between structural constraints and agentic response. On the one hand, the intersections of cognitive declines, gender inequalities, socio-economic restrictions, and information surveillance and control, restrain their understanding of the ongoing situation to a partial landscape. On the other hand, they are engaged in the enactment of contextualized strategies to develop an increasingly critical perspective for news assessment and integrate the social and emotional needs to the decision-making processes of information-sharing.

Consumer Sentiment, Cognitive Attitudes, and Behavior Patterns toward Delivery Apps

Despite the relevance of consumer sentiment, cognitive attitudes, and behavior patterns toward delivery apps, only limited research has been conducted on this topic. In this article, I cumulate previous research findings indicating that behavioral intention and continuance usage of contactless delivery services can shape consumer perception, purchase decision, experience, satisfaction, and loyalty. I contribute to the literature on consumer experience with online food delivery apps by showing that such services satisfy customers' increasing requirement of purchasing items and maintaining physical distance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout January 2022, I performed a quantitative literature review of the Web of Science, Scopus, and ProQuest databases, with search terms including "delivery app" + "consumer sentiment," "cognitive attitude," and "behavior pattern." As I inspected research published in 2021 and 2022, only 146 articles satisfied the eligibility criteria. By eliminating controversial findings, outcomes unsubstantiated by replication, too imprecise material, or having similar titles, I decided upon 26, generally empirical, sources. Reporting quality assessment tool: PRISMA. Methodological quality assessment tools include: AXIS, Dedoose, Distiller SR, and MMAT.

THE USE OF THE STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS BY JAPANESE SMES

The purpose of the study is to analyze the usage of the statement of cash flows (SCF) by Japanese SMEs from the perspective of preparers. The paper analyzes how institutional mandates have shaped organizational behavior, and how these mandates reflect the country's social and cultural values. We analyze this premise in respect to the usage of the statement of cash flows by Japanese SMEs. The study relies on institutional theory and cultural values to help explain the results obtained from a survey questionnaire. We focus on financial reporting behavior when the SCF is a noncompulsory disclosure under SMEs general guidelines. We analyze different variables including intent to make a public offering and the number of professional accounting staff, and find firm size to be significantly associated with the recognition and production of the statement of cash flows. We believe that our findings will be useful to the Japanese government in designing SME economic guidance for capital growth to improve capabilities and ensure sustainability.

Editorial: Addressing the nurse workforce crisis: a call for greater integration of the organizational behavior, human resource management and nursing literatures

Introduction Nurses comprise the majority of the world's healthcare personnel and have a significant impact on the availability and quality of care received by patients (World Health Organization, 2020). [...]a lack of nursing faculty and educators has limited the number of individuals who can progress through nursing programs (Buerhaus et al., 2009). [...]within the care environment, nurses working overtime in response to personnel shortages can lead to increased medical errors, uncompleted care responsibilities and a general decrease in patient safety, including increased patient mortality rates (Trinkoff et al., 2011). Poor work environments are related to negative patient outcomes as well, which includes increased missed care (Smith et al., 2018), hospital readmissions (Lasater and McHugh, 2016) and patient risk of death (Aiken et al., 2008), the latter of which can dramatically heighten nurses' emotional and psychological distress (e.g. Zheng et al., 2018). [...]nurses who work in poor environments have greater exposure to negative work experiences either directly (e.g. increased burnout) or indirectly (e.g. poor patient outcomes).

Guest editorial: Contemporary managerial issues in the nursing sector

Despite the clear importance of nurses for a healthy community and economy, the nursing sector has been almost entirely ignored in the organizational behavior (OB) and human resource management (HRM) research literature (Harms, 2021) with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Hepburn and Enns, 2013;Koopman et al., 2019;Russo and Buonocore, 2012;Russo et al., 2015;Woolnough et al., 2019;Wu et al., 2019). The goal of this special issue was to highlight the importance of nursing as a critical profession, to provide a forum for work that demonstrates how organizational and nursing scholars might productively integrate their literature, and to shed light on new methods and ideas that might facilitate a better understanding of the nursing profession. [...]Lowman and Harms (2022) offer a broad overview of the state of the nursing profession from an OB and HRM perspective.

Articulated dissent and immediacy: a cross-national analysis of the effects of COVID-19 lockdowns

Purpose>In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study aims to explore how working remotely might impact the superior–subordinate relationship. Specifically, this study examines how immediacy explains articulated dissent, considers how an individual’s attitudes toward online communication predicts immediacy and articulated dissent and compares these relationships in England, Australia and the USA.Design/methodology/approach>Three nations were examined: Australia, England and the USA (n = 1,776). Surveys included demographic questions and the following measures: organizational dissent scale, perceived immediacy measure, computer-mediated immediate behaviors measure and measure of online communication attitude.Findings>The results reveal supervisors’ computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy both positively predict dissent. Some aspects of online communication attitudes positively predict computer-mediated immediate behaviors and perceived immediacy. In addition, attitudes toward online communication positively predict dissent. National culture influences some of these relationships;in each case the effects were substantively larger for the USA when compared to the other nations.Originality/value>This study is the first to cross-culturally analyze dissent and immediacy. In addition, this study considers the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic influences the superior–subordinate relationship.

How Companies Should Manage Their Human Resources to Respond to the Disruptive Innovation Brought About by the Sharing Economy*

In recent years, the sharing economy has become a new buzzword, providing various business opportunities and challenges to conventional businesses. It is characterized by the transformation of conventional business sectors and many companies are already facing the pressure of adapting their operations to the changing conditions. Human resource management, especially when it comes to experts and knowledge workers, is among the affected business activities. In particular, due to the apparent high demand, this type of workforce has the opportunity to share services among many businesses. Therefore, human resource managers should tackle the issue of cultivating employee organizational identification to increase employee retention and achieve the desired performance. In this regard, this paper proposes a model that binds human resource management practices to employee organizational identification, innovative behaviour, knowledge sharing, and finally, employee job performance. The model is estimated using the survey method and structural equation modelling technique for data analysis. The results imply that selective recruiting, participation in decision-making, and rewarding contribute to employees' organizational identification, while training does not directly affect it. The findings, therefore, indicate that adequate human resource management practices, mainly through the simultaneous impact of the critical capabilities examined by this model, can serve as a foundation for business success in the sharing economy.

Examining the determinants of eHealth usage among elderly people with disability: The moderating role of behavioural aspects.

BACKGROUND: Existing studies have demonstrated that behavioural barriers impede eHealth usage among senior citizens. However, thus far, no analysis of how such barriers affect elderly people with disabilities (PwD) has been conducted. Thus, the study investigates the predictors of eHealth usage among elderly PwD. METHODS: Using data from a 2018 nationwide disability survey comprising 14,798 respondents in Australia, multivariate logistic regression models are used to predict the relationship between eHealth usage and the various characteristics of respondents, including access to information and communication technologies (ICTs), socioeconomic status, and level of education. RESULTS: Although most participants (approximately 88%) have access to ICTs, few (only around 9%) have used eHealth services. The results show a number of factors are associated with an increased likelihood of using eHealth services, including higher educational attainment (odds ratio [OR] = 3.12, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.38, 4.24), employment (OR = 1.43, 95% CI: 1.06, 1.94), higher household income (OR = 1.39, 95% CI: 1.00, 1.96), and ICT access (OR = 15.92, 95% CI: 10.51, 27.01). The probability of eHealth use is lower for the oldest-old (OR = 0.35, 95% CI: 0.22, 0.45). In addition, the estimates from interaction effects suggest the effect of ICT penetration on use of eHealth falls by a negligible amount because of resistive attitudinal barriers (OR = 0.01, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.06). CONCLUSION: Given the challenges of ageing populations and pandemics, such as COVID-19, eHealth services are a vital part of an effective, inclusive, and robust health care system. This study demonstrates the presence of a significant digital divide among elderly PwD and suggests that public and private efforts should be made to increase the availability of ICT infrastructure. Training could also increase inclusion in this regard.