Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between knowledge-hiding behaviors (evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding) and employees’ silence (defensive silence, relational silence and ineffectual silence). Besides, this paper investigates the relation mediated by psychological contract breach. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected with three-time lags (40 days each) through a structured questionnaire from 389 employees of registered software houses in Pakistan. The structural equation modeling (partial least squares) approach is used for data analysis. Findings The findings of this study confirm that knowledge-hiding behaviors have a significant and positive relationship with employees’ silence, and psychological contract breach significantly mediates the relationship between knowledge-hiding behaviors and employees’ silence. Practical implications The implications of this study are very supportive to the knowledge-intensive organizations, i.e. software houses. The management should increase the knowledge sharing and trust culture among employees to discourage the knowledge-hiding behaviors among employees. Moreover, supervisors should develop trust among employees, motivate them to avoid knowledge hiding and encourage the employees to raise their voices against their problems in a formal way. Originality/value The present study highlights the impact of different dimensions of knowledge hiding on employees’ silence and the role of psychological contract breach as a mediator in this scenario.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to answer two questions. What is the impact of ethical leadership on followers’ creativity and organizational innovation? What are the mechanisms through which ethical leadership influences creativity and organizational innovation? Design/methodology/approach Considering a market-oriented criterion to measure organizational innovation, the data were collected from 322 small-sized information technology firms working in Pakistan. Multilevel modeling and hierarchical regression analyses were used to explore the direct and indirect effects of ethical leadership on creativity and innovation, respectively. Findings The results show that ethical leadership is an important predictor of both individual and organizational creativity. For the individual level, the results of multilevel modeling indicate that there is a positive link between ethical leadership and employee creativity. Furthermore, ethical leadership affects employee creativity through knowledge sharing and psychological empowerment. At the organizational level, the results reveal that ethical leadership is positively associated with organizational innovation directly. Practical implications The findings imply that ethical leadership is an important tool to promote creativity and for the advancement of innovation for developing countries as well as for newly developed industries. Originality/value This study is first to highlight the role of ethical leadership for organizational innovation. The main contribution of the study is to explore creativity as potential mediator for ethical leadership–organizational innovation nexus; where a market-oriented criterion is taken as proxy of organizational innovation.

This study aims to examine the impact of ethical leadership on employees' job satisfaction, job performance, and turnover intention. A conceptual framework is developed which integrates job satisfaction as a mediating mechanism in explaining the nexus among ethical leadership, employee job performance, and turnover intention. The proposed model is tested by using the data collected from a sample (n = 196) of tourist companies in Pakistan. The results reveal that ethical leadership has a positive effect on employees' job satisfaction, job performance and negative effect on employees' turnover intentions. Further, job satisfaction mediates the effect of ethical leadership on employees' job performance and turnover intentions. The findings recommend that the demonstration of ethical leadership behaviours by managers at the workplace increases the likelihood of employees' job satisfaction and performance, while reducing their intention to leave the job. This study elucidates that, in Pakistani tourism sector, ethical leadership plays a key role in achieving performance goals. Future research could analyse the said nexus in different sectors and across different cultures while considering other measures of individual performance. The originality of this study is theorizing as well as empirically testing the intervening mechanism of job satisfaction in probing the linkages among ethical leadership, job performance, and turnover intention in Pakistani workplace context.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential role of innovativeness in determining supply chain (SC) integration and to foster the SC performance of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study also proposes that the SC integration–performance relationship is contingent to the degree of environmental uncertainty (EU). Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from 321 manufacturing SMEs working in Pakistan. Respondents were owners/CEOs/managers of the firms. Considering the formative nature of indicators of SC efficiency and effectiveness, partial least square-based structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the data. Findings The results indicate that innovativeness positively influences the dimensions of SC integration which in turn affects SC efficiency and effectiveness. The results support the presence of moderation for the relationship between the dimensions of both SC integration and performance. The findings suggest that firms should endeavor to accomplish innovativeness and SC integration, as they jointly promote SC performance. Practical implications SMEs can use innovativeness as an important tool to increase SC integration and SC performance. For SMEs with a highly volatile and dynamic environment, managers should achieve SC integration and include external integration orientation at the strategic level in order to reap the greatest advantages from SC integration. Originality/value This study contributes to the SC literature by exploring the effect of the nascent determinant (innovativeness) of SC practices and performance to expand and deepen current understanding of the potential role of innovativeness in the SC context. Furthermore, considering EU as a moderator opens up new avenues of research to elucidate the SC integration–performance nexus in the emerging market context.

Background:This prospective double-blind trial was undertaken to analyze the role of perioperatively administered dexmedetomidine on the occurrence of chronic pain in cases undergoing surgery for breast cancer.Subjects and Methods:Eighty-six cases were randomly assigned to two groups to receive either dexmedetomidine (2 μg/ml) in group D or saline in group C, in a loading dose of 0.5 ml/kg, intravenous (IV), 30 min prior to induction, followed by a continuous infusion of 0.25 ml/kg/h IV till the completion of surgery, and then the dose tapered to 0.1 ml/kg/h for up to 24 h. The standardized questionnaires that measured chronic pain (Brief Pain Inventory, BPI; Short Form McGill Pain Questionnaire, SF-MPQ2) and quality of life (Quality of Life Scale, QOLS) were gathered after 3 months of surgery as a primary outcome. Pain (verbal numerical score, VNS), sedation scores (Ramsay scoring), and analgesic requirements were also assessed for 72 h postoperatively.Results:In total, 84 cases (n=42) were analyzed for acute pain and 69 (34 in group D and 35 in group C) for chronic pain. The consumption of isoflurane/fentanyl intra-operatively and paracetamol postoperatively was significantly lower in Group D. The sedation scores were non-significant between the groups. The VNS at rest and after movement was significantly lower in group D at corresponding times (except at 60 min) throughout the assessment period. The BPI and SF-MPQ2 scores were significantly lower in group D in most of the factors. The QOLS score was significantly better in group D in all items except for relationships, friends, and learning.Conclusion:The perioperative infusion of dexmedetomidine has a pivotal role in attenuating the incidence and severity of chronic pain and improving the quality of life in cases undergoing breast cancer surgery.

No abstract

Purpose The aim of this study is to examine the influence of workplace ostracism on deviant behaviour and testified the mediating roles of organisational identification, burnout and organisation-based self-esteem (OBSE) by using a parallel mediation model. Then, the moderating role of ingratiation in the interrelation between ostracism, the mediators and deviant behaviour is examined. Design/methodology/approach A survey questionnaire was used to collect data from nurses working in public sector hospitals in Pakistan. Nursing context is appropriate for the study because this occupation involves a greater extent of social interaction among peer nurses, doctors and administration in the provision of health services. A total of 417 nurses provided complete responses, and the study hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings The study findings show that ostracism is positively related to deviant behaviour of nurses, indicating that workplace ostracism is an important predictor of deviant behaviour. Ostracised nurses experienced higher job burnouts and low OBSE as well as organisational identification. Results also show that ostracism promotes deviant behaviour by reducing OBSE and organisational identification. Moreover, results provide evidence that high ingratiation overcomes the detrimental effects of ostracism on both deviant behaviour and mediators. Originality/value The present study integrates the literature on ostracism and its attitudinal and behavioural outcomes and submits that ostracism negatively affects the attitudes of victims which in turn results in negative behavioural outcomes (i.e. deviant behaviour). This study also suggests ingratiation as a tactic to control the negative effects of ostracism.

The overarching purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of teacher motivation on teaching behavior and student motivation. The notion of teacher motivation refers to teachers' interests, self-efficacy, and mastery goals orientation. Teaching behavior comprises of mastery-oriented and cognitively activating instructional practices, however, student motivation represents students' interest in subject matter and student mastery-goals orientation. Data were collected from students (n=434) from pub