Purpose: The manufacturing industry is presently experiencing technological disruption on a global scale. Consequently, to tackle such disruption, firms are identifying a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) scenario and seeking ways to counter it. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate the employee performance through assessing organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) among the shop floor employees of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry where a high-performance work system (HPWS) has been implemented. Design/methodology/approach: A descriptive research design was used in the study, and 395 shop floor employees working in leading multinational firms, with a minimum global turnover of US$1bn, were interviewed. These manufacturing firms were located in three industrial clusters in the northern part of India. Findings: The results indicate that HPWS influences OCB. Most of the dimensions of HPWS and OCB were found to be positively associated. The findings also disprove the labour process theory in the context of the study. Practical implications: The findings report a broad view of the relationship between HPWS and OCB in the Indian manufacturing context. The study offers the practical insights that HPWS is a universally accepted framework and that organizations should focus on the effective implementation of HPWS in a VUCA scenario, which is in line with past studies. The study also provides future directions for research. Originality/value: This paper has established the relationship between HPWS and OCB in the manufacturing sector, especially for shop floor employees.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to establish the link between three constructs, namely, service innovation, corporate reputation (CR), and word-of-mouth (hereinafter WOM). Primarily, the aim is to understand whether innovation in a service firm drives its reputation, thereby resulting in positive WOM where the direct effect of service innovation of a firm on WOM is mediated by reputation. Furthermore, the study also seeks to understand whether the type of service firm has an effect on determining the level of the mediation effect. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts an integrated approach where the measure for the construct service innovation is explored through a qualitative approach, and the conceptual model is estimated through path analysis. The service industry taken for this study is banking, and the through non-probability criterion sampling technique, 252 customers responded to their level of agreement. The PLS-SEM technique was used to estimate the path coefficient by following the two-stage approach. The multigroup moderation analysis is performed to determine whether the type of the bank plays a major role in determining the direct effects and the mediation effect of CR between service innovation and WOM. Findings: The result of this study indicates that there is a strong positive association between the three constructs. Further, the direct relationship between service innovation and WOM is partially mediated by reputation. The result of the multigroup moderation indicates that the type of the bank plays a major role in determining the mediation effect of reputation. Practical implications: The study helps the decision makers and the managers of the bank to understand that frequent innovation within the firm would help to gain reputation, and thereby customers would tend to give a positive WOM. Further, non-reputable firms can still gain a positive WOM if they continuously innovate new services. In the Indian context, it is noted that there is a difference between private and public banks in determining the mediation effect of reputation between service innovation and WOM. Originality/value: The originality of the study is based on the following: development of a unique scale to measure service innovation in the banking industry overcoming the existing scales which are based on goods-dominant logic; estimating empirically the combined effect of service innovation and CR on WOM; the process of evaluating the moderated mediation effect; how the mediating effect of CR varies from private sector banks to public sector banks.

Perceptions of psychological empowerment play a vital role in the way an individual perceives things at the workplace. In spite of this, there is scant research on the antecedents and consequences of psychological empowerment. This study is an attempt to fill this gap by analyzing the mediating role of psychological empowerment on the relationship between its antecedents (leader–member exchange) and its consequences (work engagement and psychological withdrawal behavior). Data were collected from 454 employees working in the Research and Development (R&D) departments of the information technology (IT) and pharmaceutical sectors operating in India. Results suggest that employees who have a high-quality relationship with their leader have high psychological empowerment, they are highly engaged at work, and their psychological withdrawal behavior is also low. In addition to this, high levels of psychological empowerment have a positive impact on their engagement toward work, which further leads to a low psychological withdrawal behavior. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

With the swift developments and improvement in the information and communications technology, everyone is viewing the emergence of another age of the Internet of Things. A smart city is an urban development vision to assimilate numerous technologies with Internet of Things solutions. Therefore, this study explores the antecedents and consequence of Internet of Things in value cocreation of smart cities in an emerging economy like India. Quantitative research approach was used in the current study. Prior research work was analysed to develop a comprehensive research model in context of smart cities in India. Responses were collected from the residents of proposed and selected smart cities by Indian Union Government. Total 1136 questionnaires were circulated using Google Docs and for final analysis 436 were used. The results of the current study render additional considerate in terms of technology adoption regarding Smart Cities in India. Therefore, in this ecosystem of technology the participants like developers, users, lawmakers, and solution providers promotes the solutions in form of Internet of Things among the prospects. The suggestions for policymakers are to deliver a superior experience for the general public and engaging them continuously with the advancement in technology. The study has adopted qualitative research in order the study the antecedents and consequence of Internet of Things while future researcher can use qualitative research approach in order to expand the proposed model.

Purpose: Conventionally, consumers perceive luxury products as a means of displaying their wealth and prosperity. Consumption of luxury products has usually been considered the prerogative of the Western world. Although there are a number of studies capturing the pre-purchase and purchase behaviour of consumers, there is a dearth of quality studies that have been conducted in this field to understand the post-purchase behaviour of consumers towards luxury brands, especially in the context of young shoppers in an emerging market context. Studying the post-purchase behaviour of shoppers is important to understand their experience with the brand. A negative experience could lead to a post-purchase dissonance, which in turn could lead to an unbalanced or distorted attitude towards the brand and other marketing stimuli. Keeping this in consideration, the purpose of this study is to explore the experiences and attitudes of young shoppers in India towards luxury consumption. Design/methodology/approach: The study captured responses from young shoppers of Chandigarh and its satellite cities located in the relatively prosperous northwest region of India. The data were collected from 200 participants through a structured questionnaire that was based on an adapted “Attitude towards the concept of luxury” scale by Dubois and Laurent (1994) and “Brand Experience” Scale by Brakus et al. (2009). The structural equation modeling technique was applied to test the proposed model. Findings: The empirical results indicate that sensory, intellectual, behavioural and affective experience play a significant role in building the attitude of consumers towards luxury brands. Research limitations/implications: The study selected university students from Chandigarh (India) Tricity region as target respondents, which may limit the generalisability of the results to other target respondents in different regions of India or other countries. Practical implications: The study is useful for researchers, academicians, marketers and retailers of luxury brands, as it gives fresh insights into understanding the consumer behaviour of a young segment towards the consumption of luxury brands in the post-purchase scenario, especially in the context of an emerging market. Originality/value: The uniqueness of the study lies in the fact that it examines the post-purchase behaviour of a segment consisting of young, educated and aspirational individuals in one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.

India is amongst the fastest growing markets for smartphones in the world which are driven by a young population. This study seeks to understand the intention to use mobile news applications by students in India. To address this broad objective, an extended technology adoption model has been proposed with the inclusion of news motivation and perceived hedonic value and tested on 384 students at a university in India. Structural equation modeling results reveal that student mobile news app adoption intention is not dependent on the perceived hedonic value; however, this relationship is mediated by attitude. News motivation predicts adoption intention, which indicates that news app adoption is largely seen as utilitarian, this is also proven by the fact that perceived usefulness significantly predicts adoption intention.