Management and Labour Studies

This study aimed to develop and validate a workplace spirituality (WPS) scale tailored to a South Asian context. The scale’s initial item pool was generated by combining insights from a qualitative study and extant WPS scales. The item pool was subjected to face validity checks, member feedback and expert evaluation. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a 29-item WPS scale with six dimensions: altruism, interpersonal positivity, duty orientation, self-regulation, interconnectedness and mindfulness. The scale exhibits good internal consistency reliability, composite reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, predictive validity and nomological validity. This study addresses concerns regarding construct validity and the scale-construction process. It is the first to develop a WPS scale in a South Asian context using an emic approach, thereby opening the door for future validation studies and continued refinement and contributes to indigenizing the predominantly Western conceptualizations of WPS.

This study investigated the factors influencing the social licence to operate (SLO) for new wind-farm installations, focusing on the roles of community attitudes, regulatory environment and local cultural values and beliefs. Using survey data collected from 226 community members across Australia, multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to examine how these factors influence community acceptance of wind energy development. The findings reveal that positive community attitudes towards wind energy and trust in the regulatory environment significantly enhance the SLO. In contrast, local cultural values and beliefs were not significant predictors. The findings suggest that acceptance of wind energy projects is driven more by perceptions of regulatory fairness and individual attitudes than by cultural norms. Interestingly, community members appear to base their support primarily on perceived economic and social benefits, underpinned by strong trust in the regulatory environment rather than cultural values and beliefs. Theoretically, the study refines SLO frameworks by empirically demonstrating the context-specific nature of cultural influences and the dominant role of attitudinal and regulatory factors. Practically, the study highlights the need for transparent governance and proactive community engagement strategies to strengthen public confidence and foster renewable energy transitions.

End-of-term course evaluations often use multiple-choice questions asking students to evaluate their experience with the class. Students are also asked to give an overall score to the instructor and to the course. To help instructors interpret the scores and work to improve their evaluations, we looked at 16 descriptive statements in 2,048 evaluations of course sections over a span of 4 years. Cluster analyses revealed that the course score related the most to Cluster 2 statements (feedback and challenge) and the instructor score to Cluster 4 statements (clear and stimulating presentations). We then analysed these specific clusters in more detail to provide specific recommendations to faculty on how to improve their student evaluation of teaching scores using this output.

Overall, our study revealed several critical benefits of student evaluations of teaching effectiveness. Key findings include: (a) clear and informative teaching helps decrease student stress; (b) encouraging students to set and achieve challenging goals promotes personal and academic growth, and the fact that (c) students want to feel challenged, so they can grow.

We discuss the implications of our findings and offer suggestions for future research.

This article explores how marginalized urban consumers navigate multilayered vulnerabilities to enhance their psychological capital and transcend economic constraints amid systemic barriers. Socio-economic inequality intensifies vulnerabilities, fostering powerlessness, social alienation and perpetuating stigma. Drawing on positive psychology, the study examines how marginalized consumers cultivate resilience amidst dire adversity. Employing a case study approach, the research moves beyond socio-economic indicators to uncover participants’ everyday struggles and adaptive market-mediated strategies. This methodological integration enables the study to capture the transformative potential of psychological capital to address structural inequalities. Case studies, we argue, generate nuanced insights into human behaviour that often elude reductionist models of causality. Despite its multidisciplinary applicability, case study methodology remains underutilized in consumer research—a gap this study addresses through abductive inference. By linking empirical observations with theoretical constructs, this approach enables an optimal framework when alternative models fail to address the complexity of marginalized consumer experiences.

Although entrepreneurs with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are overrepresented in entrepreneurial careers, the link between ADHD and entrepreneurial success (ES) remains contested. Drawing on person–environment (PE) fit theory, we disentangle the effects of ADHD’s two core symptom dimensions, inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, on ES, integrating entrepreneurial resilience as a mediator and social support as a moderator. Using survey data from entrepreneurs in the United States and the United Kingdom, we find that inattention negatively predicts both resilience and ES, with resilience partially mediating this relationship. By contrast, hyperactivity/impulsivity positively predicts resilience but has no significant direct effect on ES; its indirect effect through resilience is positive and important. Social support attenuates the negative influence of inattention on ES and dampens the positive indirect effect of hyperactivity/impulsivity via resilience. These findings reconcile contradictory results in prior ADHD–entrepreneurship research by demonstrating that ADHD is not a uniform predictor of performance; its impact depends on which symptom dimension dominates and how personal tendencies interact with environmental resources. The study advances theoretical understanding of cognitive diversity in entrepreneurship and offers practical guidance on tailoring support mechanisms to enhance the performance and sustainability of entrepreneurs with distinct ADHD profiles.

As the Management and Labour Studies (MLS) commemorates its golden jubilee, this review presents a historically grounded account of its engagement with uninterrupted management thought and scholarship. This honorary review chronicles 50 years of intellectual evolution, consolidation and pragmatic orientation of the journal from 1975 through 2025. The journal is examined along three dimensions: thematic analysis, methodological orientation and theoretical evolution. The findings from the thematic analysis map the journal’s intellectual development and dominant debates during this period, while identifying themes that respond to economic reforms, policy shifts and global challenges. The review of methodological orientation examines the journal’s research paradigms and epistemological stances, as well as their integration with behavioural realism, responsible management, corporate social responsibility, digitalization and societal relevance. The analysis of the theoretical evolution of MLS reveals a distinctive trajectory marked by successive phases of early conceptualization, contextual integration and a progression towards value-driven inquiry. The subsequent sections on country collaboration and co-citation analysis offer structural and epistemic interpretations of the journal’s intellectual maturation. This commemorative review seeks to illuminate the journal’s impactful journey, marked by sustained efforts to bridge theory and practice within the broader landscape of global management research.

This article presents a systematic review of the theoretical and experimental literature on incentive mechanisms for environmental protection when agents are guided by social preferences, in particular preferences for social image and reputation. We first briefly discuss the traditional mechanism design models, based on the Homo economicus assumption, which leads to the second-best solution in the presence of asymmetric information as agents with private information extract rents. We then move on to the design of cost-effective mechanisms with social preferences. Individuals and firms who value a ‘green’ social image may be willing to forego economic gains to maintain or enhance their reputation, creating opportunities for regulators to save public funds by leveraging such behaviour. These mechanisms can also help address the classic crowding-out effect—as mechanisms focusing only on monetary incentives can erode such social preferences. Our synthesis suggests that hybrid mechanisms—combining monetary transfers, public recognition and facilitation services—can harness social preferences to achieve higher environmental protection at lower fiscal cost. We identify key research gaps and outline directions for future work, including the dynamic interaction between incentive mechanisms and evolving social norms.