Researchers establish that the current challenges of human resources management to attract and retain talent are based on fostering and increasing the participation of relationships with employees and sustainably managing the organization and teams. The objective of this article is to evaluate the effect that sustainable human resource management has on social capital, and employee retention and loyalty programs. The information required to carry out the empirical analysis was obtained from an online survey to Spanish universities. Data processing was conducted by using the PLS-SEM technique. The results obtained show that social sustainability actions influence the social capital perceived by employees significantly and that social capital influences their loyalty and retention significantly. However, we found that social sustainability actions influence employee loyalty and retention significantly and positively only when it mediates between social capital. This research contributes to the management of organizations and suggests human capital managers to have a greater relational management of human resources in the connection, involvement and transparency of their social sustainability actions in order to achieve greater loyalty and retention ratios, better performance of the organization and, in general, a greater benefit for society.

The article aims to analyze the cause–effect relationship between Brand Ethicality Perception (CPE), legitimacy and purchase intention during the COVID-19 first wave, taking into consideration the mediation effect of the country of residence. Data collection was based on a survey launched during the COVID-19 lockdown in Madrid and New York. To analyze the established hypotheses and to test the multigroup analysis, we applied a structural modelling with SmartPLS. The research contributes to the field of brand management, and specifically of ethical branding, since it will analyze how stakeholders’ expectations fulfillment is key to build a consistent and valued brand meaning in crisis’ situations, demonstrating that ethical behaviors are key for gaining corporate legitimacy and, therefore, for improving business performances.

Higher education institutions operate in a highly competitive sector where attracting resources has become a complicated task. Intangible assets such as image, legitimacy, and reputation have been considered as crucial elements for the survival and success of organizations. Within the literature, authors have highlighted their relevance; however, the differences and relationships between these variables remains unclear. Under these circumstances, the aim of this paper is to measure the relationship between image, legitimacy, and reputation in the Public University as part of a sustainable strategy. This evaluation will be made considering students’ and professors’ perceptions to compare the results because many authors have highlighted the complexity of managing the relationship with these groups and obtaining positive assessments due to their diverse characteristics. To meet this objective, a review on the literature will be carried out, followed by analysis of the results obtained through a survey distribution. To treat the data, PLS-SEM (Partial Least Square) was used, and the corresponding measurement invariance of composite method (MICOM) and multigroup analysis (MGA) was carried out. The results confirm the proposed hypotheses on the relationship between the three variables; however, the moderating effect of the stakeholder group was not confirmed. The findings provide additional empirical evidence on the relationship between the considered variables as well as on considering more than one stakeholder group for the analysis. Managers could apply this information to improve their university´s image, reputation, and legitimacy.

In both the public and private sectors, gender equality is a major issue faced by modern management. It is also a primary concern for the global sustainable development defined by the UN 2030 Agenda. Gender equality, as a research topic, has been explored from many different social, economic and political sides; nevertheless, gender equality in business economics is still a very promising research field since the everchanging global organisational environment requires frequent updates and polysemic approaches. The aim of this study is to identify and visualise the intellectual structure and dynamics of gender equality research on business economics literature through a bibliometric quantitative literature analysis. Our results found 12 main lines of research. They also identify the trending topics, sources of knowledge, and literature dissemination paths along these lines between 2001 and 2020. This work contributes to the field of gender issues by showing its intellectual structure and providing a research agenda and identifying future research lines and gaps in the area.

According to political science, modern societies can separate the state function and the politicians’ mission. However, the existing relationship between political disaffection and state legitimacy indicates the contrary. The interest held by the European Union inhabitants in their politicians has been decreasing, and the closeness to a specific political party or political leader has been weakening. Many European countries have a great degree of polarity in their political parties’ system, which augments the complexity of forming governments or even makes it impossible. Citizens have been affected by corruption, the economic situation, migratory crisis, or the European project weakness. They feel that politicians have forgotten their role as the people’s representatives and their responsibility to behave according to society’s general interest. Through its institutions, the state must ensure the country’s performance and maintain it despite the change in the political leaders. Moreover, its legitimacy will depend on the level of social support received by these institutions. This research aims to quantify if the current political disaffection influences the European Union states’ social support level or state legitimacy. It also expects to demonstrate which sociodemographic and psychographic variables influence on governments’ fragility and the dilution of state legitimacy, which is critical for countries’ stability. For this purpose, we used the available data from the European Social Survey for 2016, and we developed a statistical analysis through variation and regression analysis. The results highlight the strong effect that political disaffection, as well as variables such as religion, immigration perception, citizenship, or emotional state have on state legitimacy and reveal the need for changes in the political parties’ performance and behavior to maintain the countries’ stability.