Michelle Chin Chin Lee

Contemporary workplaces are often characterised by the presence of emotions in daily interactions, which can affect employees’ well-being and job performance. However, emotional labour research has primarily focused on employee–customer interactions or work in general, leaving the equally influential supervisor–subordinate relationship underexplored. Using Conservation of Resources theory, this study aims to examine the relationships between emotional labour strategies (i.e., deep and surface acting), work engagement, emotional exhaustion, and job performance in supervisor–employee interactions on a daily basis. A total of 104 participants from the United States working under customer service sectors participated in the 5-day diary study, resulting in 422 data points. Multilevel analyses using Mplus found that, at the within-person level, daily surface acting was associated with lower job performance through lower work engagement, whereas daily deep acting was associated with higher job performance through higher work engagement. At the between-person level, higher average surface acting was associated with lower job performance through higher emotional exhaustion. These findings highlight differences in the mechanisms underlying the associations between supervisor-directed emotional labour and job performance at the within- and between-person levels. This underscores the importance of examining both levels when investigating how supervisor-directed emotional labour relates to employees’ internal processes and work outcomes.

Emotional labour (EL) has become a serious concern in the modern workplace due to the rapid development of the service‐oriented economy. Existing literature reviews of emotional labour studies leave many questions unexplored. This study addresses these questions by conducting a holistic review of 143 high‐impact empirical articles published in peer‐reviewed journals from APA PsycInfo, EBSCO Academic Search Premier, Scopus, and Web of Science using the TCCM framework (Theory‐Context‐Characteristics‐Methodology). The document search process is visualised with a PRISMA diagram. We point out several future directions for scholars who are interested in emotional labour. For example, emotional labour research needs to transition from cross‐sectional designs to multi‐wave designs. Most importantly, this study serves as a roadmap for scholars to navigate the complexity of emotional labour research and provides practitioners with evidence‐based strategies to mitigate the negative influence of emotional labour.

High-involvement work systems (HIWSs) have been an important organisational aspect in increasing employee job performance. However, the high-involvement work system is often looked at collectively using one dimension instead of through the individual dimensions of the work system. Using the power, information sharing, rewards, and knowledge (PIRK) model, the present cross-lagged study aims to examine the influence of the individual dimensions of the PIRK model on employees’ opportunities for skill development and emotional job demands, subsequent quality of work (QoW) and the processes involved. This quantitative cross-lagged study involved 120 New Zealand (NZ) employees (80.8% female; mean age = 32.4 years) from various industries. The results showed a significant positive effect of opportunities for skill development on employees’ QoW. In addition, the four dimensions of the PIRK model had significant positive effects on opportunities for skill development. However, only the information-sharing and knowledge dimensions produced a significant negative effect on emotional job demands. Opportunities for skill development mediated the relationship between the four dimensions of the PIRK model and employees’ QoW, whereas emotional job demands only mediated the relationship between the information-sharing and knowledge dimensions of the PIRK model and employees’ QoW. This study contributes to the limited cross-lagged and longitudinal research on human resource work systems and provides empirical evidence on the role of the organisational work system in supporting employee QoW through opportunities for skill development and emotional job demands.

Nurses in under-resourced settings frequently report high levels of musculoskeletal (MSK) discomfort, which significantly affects their mental well-being. While workplace strain is well documented, the combined impact of physical burden and institutional neglect remains underexplored in these environments. The study aims to examine the prevalence of MSK discomfort and its association with psychological well-being among nurses in under-resourced healthcare environments in Northeast India, and to explore the experiential and structural factors contributing to these occupational health risks. A sequential mixed-methods study design was employed, following an explanatory approach. The study commenced with a survey to gather quantitative data. Quantitative data were collected from 216 nurses using the Extended Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire (Extended-NMQ) and the WHO-5 Well-Being Index, the results of which informed the development of subsequent interview questions. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with 11 nurses to capture experiential and structural factors. This structure enabled deeper contextual understanding and facilitated triangulation across data types. Among the participants, 47.2% reported experiencing lower back pain, followed by discomfort in the knees (27.3%) and upper back (25%). Higher levels of MSK discomfort were significantly associated with employment in the public sector and more than ten years of work experience. A strong negative correlation was observed between MSK discomfort and mental well-being. Thematic analysis revealed key stressors: physical depletion, emotional exhaustion, organizational apathy, and limited healthcare access. In response to these challenges, nurses often relied on self-management due to insufficient institutional support. Triangulated findings underscored how structural deficiencies intensified both physical and psychological strain among nurses. There is an urgent need for evidence-based occupational health interventions to address ergonomic, psychosocial, and institutional challenges, particularly in low-resource healthcare settings, to safeguard the well-being of frontline nursing staff. This study offers novel understanding from a high-need yet under-researched geographic context, namely the northeastern states of India, bridging empirical gaps in MSK health literature through the integration of experiential and structural factors. Not applicable.

Trust is an integral team component for establishing communication between team members and ensuring higher task performance. Importantly, the literature has not suggested how higher trust and lower mistrust in teams are established within organizations. The investigation of mistrust, proposed as being distinct from trust, is lacking in the current literature. Hence, this study proposes that trust climate and leader–member exchange are positively correlated with trust (but negatively correlated with mistrust), communication and job performance; that trust and mistrust mediate the relationships of trust climate and leader–member exchange with communication; and that communication mediates the relationships of trust and mistrust with task performance. For this study, 343 full-time white-collar employees (males = 56.3%) were recruited from 76 teams across various organizations. The study’s findings supported all hypotheses, indicating the importance of the effects of both trust climate and leader–member exchange on team members in terms of trust, mistrust, communication and job performance. The findings also supported the view that trust and mistrust are integral team components between the leader and team members in achieving organizational objectives as a team.

Trust in leaders plays a central role in shaping how teams function and perform. While prior research has explored leadership styles and outcomes, the mechanism by which trust in leaders influences team dynamics remains underexplored; particularly from a multilevel, longitudinal perspective. The current study investigated the role of trust in team members as a mediator in the relationship between trust in the leader and team cooperation, and team cooperation as a mediator in the relationship between trust in team members and team performance. Drawing on social contagion theory, this study develops and tests a cascading trust model in which trust in the leader fosters trust among team members, enhances team cooperation, and ultimately improves team performance. Data were collected in two waves over three months from 307 employees across 71 teams in Malaysian private-sector organizations. Using multilevel modelling, the results showed that trust in the leader had a positive relationship with trust in team members, team cooperation, and team performance. Trust in team members also mediated the relationship between trust in the leader and team cooperation, while team cooperation mediated the relationship between trust in team members and team performance. This study extends existing trust and leadership literature by uncovering the affective processes through which trust flows within teams and by highlighting the leader’s role in cultivating a high-trust, high-performing team environment, particularly salient in collectivist, relationship-focused contexts. Practical implications for cultivating high-trust, high-performing teams are discussed.

Work engagement, a key driver to job performance, has been highly researched in the literature, yet most studies have looked at it from a job demands-resources perspective. In addition, research has rarely tapped into the social aspect of resources, which are important in work relationships. In this era of globalization, employees come from various backgrounds making the workplace more diverse than ever. From the perspective of social capital theory, the current study hypothesized that leadership can be the driver of social capital, specifically that employees’ perceptions of their leader’s cultural intelligence would be related to a stronger sense of inclusivity among employees, which then would be related to higher levels of perceived work meaningfulness and work engagement. This study used a two-wave multilevel approach where three hundred and seven employees from 71 teams in Malaysian organizations participated. As hypothesized, employees’ collective perceptions of leaders’ cultural intelligence at Time 1 were positively related to employee perceptions of inclusivity, work meaningfulness, and work engagement at Time 2. Perceptions of inclusivity also mediated the relationship between collective perceptions of leaders’ cultural intelligence and work meaningfulness while work meaningfulness mediated the relationship between inclusivity and work engagement. The findings clarify that leaders who are seen as culturally intelligent can provide social capital for employees by increasing inclusivity in the workplace, indirectly making work more meaningful which can result in higher work engagement.

Occupational health and safety researchers and policymakers often rely on organisational theories and evidence to provide valuable information for effective policy making and understanding. Yet, most traditional and contemporary organisational theories are developed within a single nation, often in high‐income countries. Therefore, cross‐national validation is required for generalisable worldwide use. The current study focuses on an antecedent to workplace health and safety, that is, the psychosocial safety climate (PSC), and aims to investigate if PSC is an etic (i.e., universally applicable) or emic (i.e., nationally/context specific) theory. Across nations, we investigate the construct meaning of PSC by testing PSC measurement invariance and the invariance of a nomological network of PSC relationships, (1) PSC to co‐worker to work engagement (PSC extended Job‐Demands Resources (JD‐R) motivational pathway), (2) PSC to co‐worker support to psychological distress (PSC extended JD‐R health erosion pathway), and (3) the moderation of PSC on the co‐worker to outcomes relationship. A total of 5854 employees from four nations (Australia = 1198, New Zealand = 2029, Malaysia = 575, Japan = 2052) participated in the study. Multi‐group structural equation modelling suggested that there was measurement invariance in a four‐factor PSC model across the four samples. Findings from multigroup analyses support both the PSC extended motivational and health erosion pathways across nations, as well as the moderation effect of PSC in the Australian and Japanese samples. Together, the results largely support the etic nature of PSC construct and theory, with a few national nuances.

Entrepreneurs are the backbone of most small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), yet they have received little attention regarding how they prepare for organisational change readiness (OCR), especially in the current uncertain business environment and the disruption of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0). This study sought to understand how entrepreneurs’ decision-making logic (i.e., effectuation and causation) mediates the relationship between the different types of resources (i.e., financial and government resources, social capital) and OCR. A total of 119 participants (91 males), who were entrepreneurs, participated in this cross-sectional study. After controlling for age, gender, and education level, the study’s results found that a positive relationship existed between the two types of resources and OCR, mediated by decision-making logic. A positive relationship was also found between both types of decision-making logic and OCR. These results highlight the significant impact of both entrepreneurs’ social capital and financial and, government resources and decision-making logic on OCR.