Organizations grow and excel with knowledge sharing; on the other hand, knowledge hiding is a negative behavior that impedes innovation, growth, problem solving, and timely correct decision making in organizations. It becomes more critical in the case of teaching hospitals, where, besides patient care, medical students are taught and trained. We assume that negative emotions lead employees to hide explicit knowledge, and in the same vein, this study has attempted to explain the hiding of explicit knowledge in the presence of relational conflicts, frustration, and irritability. We collected data from 290 employees of a public sector healthcare organization on adopted scales to test conjectured relationships among selected variables. Statistical treatments were applied to determine the quality of the data and inferential statistics were used to test hypotheses. The findings reveal that relationship conflicts positively affect knowledge hiding, and frustration partially mediates the relationship between relationship conflicts and knowledge hiding. Irritability moderates the relationship between relationship conflicts and frustration. The findings have both theoretical and empirical implications. Theoretically, the study tests a novel combination of variables, and adds details regarding the intensity of their relationships to the existing body of literature. Practically, the study guides hospital administrators in managing knowledge hiding, and informs on how to maintain it at the lowest possible level.

Managers face challenges in leveraging people as a source of competitive advantage due to advancements in technology and the widespread availability of information, which have rendered other sources of competitive advantage less effective. In this context, social sustainability within an organization refers to the enduring relationships between employees and the organization, as well as their collective contribution to organizational goals. Strengthening social sustainability provides opportunities to achieve desired objectives through the efforts of employees. This study presents empirical findings that support the assumptions that sustainable leadership enhances social sustainability, and that micro-level corporate social responsibility (CSR) moderates this relationship. The data were gathered from a randomly selected sample of 516 employees in the healthcare industry, and regression analysis using structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test the hypotheses. The results demonstrate a significant role of sustainable leadership on the establishment and development of social sustainability, with micro-level CSR positively influencing this relationship as a moderator. These findings hold both theoretical and practical implications. Given the labor-intensive nature of the healthcare industry and the interconnectedness of the three variables examined in this study, no prior research investigating these connections was found in the literature. Therefore, the research model proposed in this study and its subsequent findings represent a valuable contribution to the existing body of knowledge. The findings offer guidance to hospital administrators, emphasizing the importance of focusing on sustainable leadership and micro-level CSR to reduce turnover rates and cultivate long-term relationships with employees, thereby enhancing organizational effectiveness.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how the digital competence of academicians influences students’ engagement in learning activities in the face of the pandemic outbreak. In addition to this, the paper investigates how digital competence influences each dimension of student engagement (cognitive, affective and behavioural). Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional, quantitative and explanatory research design was used to conduct the study. Data were gathered with an adopted questionnaire administered to a randomly selected sample of 500 university faculty members who were not digitally literate prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Apart from the goodness of data tests, inferential statistics were applied to test hypotheses. Findings: Results indicate a significant influence of teachers’ digital competence on student engagement and the pandemic outbreak positively moderates the relationship. Digital competence equally influences all three dimensions of student engagement. Practical implications: The outbreak of COVID-19 made the adoption of digital life more compulsive and the nations with already available digital infrastructure and digital competence effectively minimized the adverse effect of social distancing as a result of the pandemic outbreak. Findings emphasize practitioners to focus on the digital capacity building of academicians and the provision of digital infrastructure to facilitate student engagement. Social implications: Society is transforming into a hi-tech lifestyle and technological advancement is penetrating almost every sphere of life at an unprecedented pace. From the digitalization of day-to-day affairs to e-governance, the adoption of technology is becoming a new normal. The outbreak of the pandemic overtook academic institutions equally. So, the social distancing compelled academicians and other stakeholders of universities to switchover from in-campus classes to online classes. The findings enrich the existing body of literature by explaining how digital competence has a determining role in ensuring student engagement amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Originality/value: This research is a seminal work, as it tests the influence of digital competence on student engagement with the moderating role of the pandemic outbreak. To the best of the author’s knowledge, existing literature does not present this kind of research.

Eunuchs and members of the transgender community are yet to be recognized as an effective human resource and this diversity in the workforce is still invisible. A tiny portion of the transgender community is employed, and they are tagged as purple collar employees. It is generally claimed that coworkers do not accept members of the transgender community in the workplace and are not willing to work with them due to their different personal, social, and work-related characteristics. This study aimed to investigate coworkers’ attitudes towards transgender colleagues and their willingness to work with them in the workplace. We selected the Punjab province of Pakistan as the context for the study where more than five hundred thousand members of the transgender community live. We collected data from 363 randomly selected respondents working in an organization where transgender people also worked. We applied Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the data. Our findings revealed that coworkers do not hesitate to work with transgender people merely based on their biological differences. Coworkers’ willingness was more influenced by social attributes (trust and support) and work attributes (knowledge, ability, and motivation) irrespective of gender differences. The study strongly suggests tapping this invisible human resource and mainstreaming this resource to emancipate transgender people from poverty and to bring a productive diversity in the workforce. Government should frame policies to provide all human rights including national identity, health and educational facilities, and organizations should provide transgender people with jobs to properly utilize this untapped human resource.

A hazardous work environment creates critical concerns, and resultantly, workers may suffer from job-related stress. So, this study aimed at identifying the nature of hazards prevailing in dental hospitals and their role in increasing job-related stress. The study also assumes that awareness of the existence of health hazards and their possible risk will originate the stress. To conduct the study, close-ended questionnaires were administered to 300 workers having more than 1 year of experience in Oral and Dental Health Services provided by the Kingdom of Bahrain. In total, 222 responses with an acceptable level of accuracy were included for statistical treatment. Results confirmed the prevalence of ergonomic, biological, physical, and, to some extent, chemical hazards in the workplace. Results revealed that stress befalls the employees as they know their exposure to these hazards. Ergonomic hazards have the highest prevalence, chemical hazards are the least prevalent, while biological and physical hazards fall in between. This study enriches the related bank of literature by tapping the hazards specifically in the dental hospitals' environment with the degree of intensity of their prevalence within the context at hand. The study of the impact of these workplace health hazards on occupational stress with mediating effect of awareness is also an addition to the existing literature. The findings may help hospital administrators to take correct measures to manage job-related stress that is counterproductive and take remedial steps to mitigate these hazards.