PurposeExtant research has shown that workplace ostracism (WO) elicits counterproductive work behaviors, such as employee silence (ES), culminating in reduced job performance. However, lesser is known about the factors that buffer against this underlying linkage. With an emphasis on conservation of resource (COR) theory and social identity theory, this study investigates the hitherto unexplored moderating roles of moral identification (MI) and organizational identification (OI) in the relationship between WO and ES.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed a time-lagged design to collect multi-source data from 250 employees working in the service sector organizations in Pakistan. Data are analyzed in SMARTPLS (v 3.3.3) to assess the measurement model and the structural model.FindingsResults reveal that WO is positively correlated with ES and negatively correlated with job performance. At the same time, ES mediates the negative relationship between WO and job performance. In addition, MI and OI buffer against the positive connection between WO and ES. The positive association between WO and ES is less pronounced at high levels of MI and OI and vice versa.Practical implicationsThe findings indicate that there is potential value in developing MI and OI, for which several interventions are discussed.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few efforts to outstretch the boundary conditions of ES. Moreover, this is the first study to investigate the role of identity-based perspective in the relationship between WO and ES.

PurposeTo date, few empirical studies have explored the boundary conditions under which employees may choose to observe silence at work. Drawing on the conservation of resource (COR) theory, the present study bridges this gap by examining the interaction effect of leader-member exchange (LMX) on the relationship between social undermining and employee silence while considering the mediating role of emotional exhaustion.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 327 employees working in Pakistan's service sector through the purposive sampling technique and analyzed using PLS path modeling.FindingsThe findings support the authors’ projections such that social undermining, i.e., supervisor undermining, coworker undermining and customer undermining, are positively related to emotional exhaustion. Besides, emotional exhaustion partially mediates the associations between supervisor undermining and employee silence, coworker undermining and employee silence, and customer undermining and employee silence. Further, the results confirm the interaction effect of LMX. The harmful impact of social undermining is exacerbated in high-quality LMX relationships compared to those at low LMX relationships.Originality/valueThis study is one of the few efforts to understand the conditions under which employee silence is more likely or less likely to occur. The authors’ findings draw the attention of researchers and practitioners to understand the uniqueness of this linkage such that variations in leaders' behavior are more detrimental for “in-group” members than their counterparts (i.e. “out-group” members).

Responsible sustainable consumer behavior might serve as a complex pattern of social and environmental issues, consistent with the perspective of sustainability as a construct with both social and environmental pillars. Anchored on signaling theory and attribution theory, this study seeks to unearth a hitherto unexplored mechanism that might translate sustainability marketing into elevated responsible sustainable consumer behavior through the mediating role of brand image. Besides, this study aims to examine the impact of corporate social responsibility, as an intervening variable, to underpin the association between sustainability marketing and brand image. This study analyzes data from five-star and four-star hotel customers using SmartPLS SEM (v 4.0). The findings support our hypotheses that a hotel’s brand image mediates the relationship between sustainability marketing and responsible sustainable consumer behavior. In addition, hotels’ engagement in corporate social responsibility activities moderates the link between sustainability marketing and brand image, such that the association is stronger (weaker) at higher (lower) levels of corporate social responsibility. This study explores the boundary conditions of the sustainability marketing–responsible sustainable consumer behavior link. Hotels can foster responsible sustainable consumer behavior by executing sustainability marketing and engaging in corporate social responsibility activities.