Purpose: – Despite the claim that internal corporate social responsibility plays an important role, the understanding of this phenomenon has been neglected. This paper intends to contribute to fill this gap by looking into the relation between CSR and employee engagement.Design/methodology/approach: – A survey research was conducted and three different groups of respondents were faced with three different CSR scenarios (general, internal, external) and respondents' employee engagement was measured.Findings: – The results show that there are no statistically significant differences in levels of engagement between employees exposed to external and internal CSR practices. Nevertheless, employees exposed to internal CSR are more engaged than those exposed only to external CSR practices.Research limitations/implications: – The use of scenarios, although a grounded approach, involves risks, including the difficulty of participants to put themselves in a fictional situation. Also, the scale used to measure employee engagement puts the emphasis on work rather than on the organisation.Practical implications: – Although this study is not conclusive it raises the need for companies to look at their CSR strategy in a holistic approach, i.e. internal and external.Originality/value: – This paper represents a contribution to understand CSR strategic status and the need to enlighten the impact that social responsible practices can have on employees' engagement.

Although burnout is a widely studied topic, there is still much to learn about this symptom during a pandemic crisis like the one caused by COVID-19. Moreover, and according to the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, the relation between personal resources and burnout is still an understudied topic. The main goal of this research is to understand the influence of mental resilience on the three dimensions of burnout-emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal achievement-among healthcare workers when exposed to a pandemic situation. A cross-sectional study was conducted based on the administration of an online survey to a sample of 196 healthcare workers (nurses and doctors) during the second wave of COVID-19 in Portugal. Hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares. The results show that during a pandemic situation, higher levels of resilience associated both with lower levels of emotional exhaustion (Emotional Exhaustion: −0.17; 95% Confidence Interval–CI: −0.38, 0.04) and depersonalization (Depersonalization: −0.17; 95% CI: −0.31, −0.03), and higher levels of personal achievement (Personal Achievement: 0.50; 95% CI: 0.40, 0.61). Resilience should be considered an important asset for reducing levels of burnout when facing highly stressing situations. The main contribution of this research is related to the role of personal resources as an inhibitor of negative consequences of job strain, such as burnout. The findings add new knowledge to the topic of fighting (not just understanding) burnout in deeply stressful situations, like the COVID-19 pandemic, reinforcing the importance of developing personal resources. Resilience skills may be developed, thus reducing the risk of burnout.

Framed by the consumer-brand relationship theory, this paper investigates the path from the brand-consumer behaviour interaction to the relationship durability and stability, through brand relationship quality. Specifically, it examines brand experience as an antecedent of brand love, and customer loyalty and satisfaction as outcomes in the retail setting. Based on 560 customers’ responses to a face-to-face questionnaire administered in a fashion brand retail store, research hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model. The findings suggest that brand experience influences brand love, with a higher incidence of sensory and affective dimensions. Brand love, in turn, influences customer loyalty, both directly and indirectly through customer satisfaction. This research contributes to the still understudied relation between brand experience and brand love in the retail context and to the need to understand the satisfaction-loyalty relation involving other variables as predictors. Nevertheless, results are limited to one specific retail fashion brand and generalizations should be taken carefully.

Based on a retail fashion brand, this article investigates how brand experience affects brand equity when it is mediated by brand love. Actual consumers are well-informed, demanding, and prefer brands that can surprise them over time. As such, offering emotional signals, meaning development, and strategic planning are critical to success when it comes to building strong and enduring relationships with customers. Based on 560 responses to a survey conducted in-store, this study tests the influence of brand experience on overall brand equity, through brand love, using a model of structural equations. The findings imply that brand experience dimensions play a different role in eliciting emotional reactions, such as brand love, which helps to reinforce brand equity. Research on the paths to consumer-based brand equity in the retail environment is still scarce. Exploring this pathway using the customer-brand relationship theory and integrating brand experience and brand love has fascinating potential, but it is still unexplored. Finally, another strength of this research is the test of brand experience dimensions (sensory, intellectual, affective, and behavioral), thus offering more operational insights for theory and practice. The results are based on the study of one brand in one specific country, which limits generalizations. Managers should pay special attention to the emotional impulses provided by a brand to its customers. Building on these triggers via experiences strengthens strong emotional reactions like brand love, which contributes to brand equity.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most workers had to work from home due to the successive lockdowns across European countries. This constraint posed significant challenges to many workers and companies regarding working conditions and work–life balance. Framed by the job demands–resources model (JD–R), the goal of this paper is to examine the association of perceived organizational support (POS) and individual resilience (IR) with work–life balance (WLB) during the COVID-19 pandemic across European countries. This goal is complemented by assessing the role of work-from-home (WFH) as a mediator. Based on a quantitative approach, data were extracted from the second round of the survey “Living, Working, and COVID-19” from Eurofound. A series of regressions using SEM-PLS tested the hypothesis. Findings reveal that WFH negatively influences WLB. POS positively influences WFH and negatively influences WLB when mediated by WFH. IR negatively influences WFH and positively influences WLB when mediated by WFH. These results have essential theoretical implications related to the relations between individual and organizational resources and WLB and practical implications for the management of WFH, namely, the importance of providing adequate organizational resources and promoting the development of individual resources.

Previous research on work engagement has sought to understand the drivers, as well as the consequences, of engaging people at work. The drivers of engagement have been found mainly within the work domain. However, working life is not detached from personal life, which has been demonstrated by research on work-life balance. The goal of this research is to understand the relation between life satisfaction and work engagement. Data were collected from a sample of 571 employees from major Portuguese companies using a questionnaire. The results confirmed the constructs used, and the regression model showed that life satisfaction is related to work engagement. The main conclusion was that work engagement can be explained by factors external to the organization, which are an integral part of employees’ lives. Being a psychological and emotional state, work engagement can be related to other aspects of employees’ lives besides their organizational and job roles.