Journal Press India^®

The dynamically emerging ecosystem of business and society puts up a new set of challenges for decision-makers. The increasing role of generative artificial intelligence across sectors—industry, academia, society, and governance—apparently has unprecedented implications, positive and negative. This underlies the importance of the Industry 5.0 regime, wherein the integration of machine and human intelligence begets a paradigm shift. This emerging paradigm calls upon scholars and managers to collectively explore newer sources of competitive advantage. In this backdrop, this issue of Manthan offers a set of contemporary articles, including empirical and literature review-based articles, as briefed in subsequent paragraphs.

Furthering research on effectuation and causation, Parrey and Gupta develop and validate the reflectively measured multi-dimensional effectuation and causation decision-making logic scale using empirical data from respondents from the retail and manufacturing sectors of Northern India. There is a phenomenal change in the behaviour of organic food consumers, especially in emerging markets, and hence it needs a thorough examination of factors affecting the intention to purchase. So, Kaur, in her article, develops a conceptual model including purchase intention as a dependent variable and consumer involvement, attitude, and self-direction as independent variables. Organic food consumption is influenced by the use of social media to seek health information. So, Tomar, Gupta, and Sood, in their article, use the concepts of Uses and Gratification, Social Influence, and Brand credibility. They investigate the role of social media in health information sourcing.

In developing nations such as India, demand for fashion products is rising at a rapid pace. So, Agarwal and Gera assessed the Purchase Intention of Consumers towards Fashion Products. They examine the influence of fashion consciousness (FC), vanity (TV), need for uniqueness (NoU), and self-identity (SI) on consumers’ attitude (ATT) towards fashion products. Results indicate that NoU and FC are the primary factors influencing ATT towards fashion products.

Adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) has become inevitable for sustainable development, and their promotion is the need of the hour. So, evaluating the relative role of influencer marketing and celebrity endorsements in the promotion of EVs, Pankaj and Yadav observe that consumers establish more profound connections with influencers and place higher trust in their endorsements compared to those by celebrities.

Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and psychological capital are crucial for employees to overcome the difficulties brought on by the nature of the workplace. Sarath, in his article, analysing data collected from IT employees, concludes that OCB is influenced by psychological capital. In addition to industry, higher education institutions (HEIs) work environment is also witnessing issues such as work-life balance. So, Jain and Jain, in their article, explore the influence of Work-Life balance on Employee Engagement in HEIs in the Indian context. Their results indicate that work-life balance has a positive effect on quality of life, which fully mediates the relationship between work-life balance and employee engagement.

FinTech, a digital business model that caters to financial requirements globally, relies heavily on data, and cyber-attacks can severely compromise customer privacy and data security. So, an article by Payeng and Baruah focuses on the security risk perception of financially literate Fintech customers. Further, it investigates the moderating role of gender in evaluating the relationship between financial literacy and security risk perception.

This issue also includes literature review-based articles. A bibliometric analysis by Nadroo and Naqshbandi on ‘Online Purchase Intention’ (OPI) using 1470 articles published in the Scopus database identifies six primary clusters in OPI research: Security, Customer Emotions and Psychology, User Experience, Social Influence, Intention and Consumer Behaviour, eWoM, and behavior. It also identifies potential hot research areas, including the behavioural impact of AI and chatbot integration, customer patience, parasocial interactions, and the relationship between social presence and trust development among consumers. Another review article by Gupta and Jangra presents a bibliometric analysis of green human resource management and employee-level outcomes. Using the published work from 2006 to 2023, their study indicates an increasing trend of studies on green human resource management since 2018. Their future study directions include a focus on employee-level green and non-green variables to gain more valuable insights into the concept of green human resource management.

To conclude, this issue of Manthan offers a set of contemporary research articles—empirical and review-based—that offer deep insights and perspectives from the authors on emerging dimensions in the discipline of management and commerce. I feel delighted to thank all authors, reviewers, and editorial team members at Journal Press India for their support and relentless efforts to have this issue brought out in time.

Prof. (Dr.) Raj K. Kovid
Editor-in-Chief