Purpose The study aims to examine how leaders who explicitly embrace happiness and well-being as core values practice leadership during the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). It investigates how such happiness-based leaders interpret and enact their roles and how employees experience these practices in terms of motivation, trust, psychological safety and mental health. Design/methodology/approach Adopting a qualitative, interpretivist design grounded in abductive logic, the study draws on narrative interviews with top, middle and frontline leaders, complemented by semi-structured interviews and focus groups with employees across four organizations undergoing active AI implementation. Observations of town halls, change workshops and team interactions further inform the analysis. Combining narrative and thematic analysis enables interpretation of both leaders’ meaning-making stories and their enacted micro-practices in daily AI-related work contexts. Findings The study develops the concept of happiness-based digital leadership as a multidimensional configuration of practices comprising: (1) meaning-framing of AI, linking technology to organizational purpose and human values; (2) emotional containment, acknowledging fear and fatigue while modelling realistic optimism; (3) inclusive involvement, embedding participation and ethical safeguards in AI-related decisions; and (4) boundary work, protecting time, workload and human decision zones within AI governance. Three distinct leadership regimes – deep, rhetorical and instrumental – are identified, differing in the degree to which happiness practices are authentically integrated into AI governance or deployed as compliance mechanisms. Deep happiness-based digital leadership sustains trust, psychological safety and well-being; rhetorical and instrumental regimes risk turning happiness discourse into a soft form of technocratic control. Originality/value This research extends happiness management and positive leadership scholarship into AI-intensive contexts, explicating how happiness management principles can be enacted at the leadership level in AI governance. It offers conceptual and empirical insights into the emotional, ethical and governance dimensions of digital transformation, introduces a theoretically grounded typology of happiness-based leadership regimes and enriches understanding of psychological safety and emotional climate during technological change.
Purpose This study aims to synthesize how scientific literature defines and operationalizes blue innovation and to explain the context-dependent mechanisms linking blue innovation to ecological transitions and blue economy outcomes. The study also examines how geographical asymmetries in knowledge production limit the external validity of dominant blue economy models, particularly for Latin America, Africa and the South Atlantic. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a systematic literature review supported by semiautomated computational screening and realist synthesis. The review follows preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses logic and uses the sample, phenomenon of interest, design, evaluation and research type framework to define the research question and search strategy. Bibliometric mapping, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and a context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) realist synthesis were applied to a final corpus of 120 studies selected from 11,465 unique records consolidated from 20,082 database hits. Findings The literature on blue economy and blue innovation is rapidly expanding, but remains conceptually fragmented, methodologically heterogeneous and geographically concentrated in the Global North and Indo-Pacific. The review identifies three recurrent mechanisms associated with blue innovation: regulatory innovation, interorganizational coordination and institutional learning. These mechanisms are not universally activated. Their outcomes depend on state capacity, governance arrangements, knowledge-network density, monitoring systems and socio-environmental vulnerability. The underrepresentation of Latin America, Africa and the South Atlantic is therefore not only a geographical gap, but also a limitation for theory development and policy transfer. Research limitations/implications The reliance on international databases may underrepresent regional publications, gray literature and non-English outputs. The use of titles, abstracts and keywords for computational screening and topic modeling may also miss conceptual nuances available only in full texts. Future research should test and refine the proposed CMO framework through comparative, longitudinal and implementation-oriented studies in underrepresented coastal regions. Practical implications The findings suggest that blue innovation agendas should begin with institutional diagnosis rather than technological optimism. Policymakers and international organizations should assess regulatory capacity, monitoring systems, coordination arrangements, scientific networks and participatory mechanisms before transferring blue economy instruments across contexts. Originality/value This study offers a theory-informed realist synthesis of blue innovation. Rather than treating blue innovation as a unified concept or as a synonym for the blue economy, the study positions it at the intersection of socio-technical transition theory and institutional theory. Its core contribution is a CMO framework explaining how regulatory innovation, interorganizational coordination and institutional learning operate as context-dependent mechanisms. Its supporting contribution is methodological, demonstrating how computational mapping and realist synthesis can be combined to review fragmented interdisciplinary policy domains.
Purpose The high failure rate – above 80% – in digital transformation projects raises concerns about relying solely on internal digital resources to generate competitive advantage. In this context, digital transformational leadership becomes critical for enabling organizations to respond to rapid technological change. While prior research has largely emphasized intraorganizational outcomes, this study aims to examine the mediating role of inbound open innovation between organizational agility and digital open innovation performance, particularly under conditions of digital transformational leadership. Design/methodology/approach The moderated mediation was tested with survey data from a sample of companies operating in the medium and high digital intensity service and manufacturing sectors. Findings Organizational agility has a strong positive effect on digital open innovation performance. Inbound open innovation plays a statistically significant but limited mediating role, indicating that most of the effect of agility remains direct. However, digital transformational leadership strengthens the relationship between inbound open innovation and digital open innovation performance, reinforcing the indirect pathway and enabling firms to translate collaboration with external partners into improved digital innovation outcomes Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on digital open innovation in three ways. First, it reconceptualizes digital transformational leadership as a boundary-spanning capability orchestrating agility and external knowledge flows. Second, it establishes the theoretical primacy of organizational agility in digital open innovation performance, while theorizing inbound open innovation as a complementary, leadership-contingent mechanism. Third, it conceptualizes digital transformational leadership as a boundary condition for the effectiveness of inbound open innovation, advancing the view that external knowledge flows yield conditional rather than intrinsic value.
Purpose In the aviation industry, although flight crew members face unique stressors, including high workloads and work-family conflict (WFC), limited research addresses how these factors collectively impact well-being. Understanding this dynamic is critical given the safety-sensitive nature of the work. Design/methodology/approach This study examines how WFC mediates the relationship between workload and two key well-being indicators – burnout and engagement – among 180 crew members from a Southern European airline company. Findings Using a quantitative, correlational design with mediation analysis, they found that WFC fully mediates the relationship between workload and both burnout (positive mediation) and engagement (negative mediation). Originality/value These findings are relevant for human resource professionals, aviation managers and organizational psychologists aiming to enhance employee well-being and performance in high-stress, safety-critical environments. Interventions targeting workload management and work-family balance could improve both organizational outcomes and crew member health.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine ethno-racial differences in job expectations within Peru’s diverse workforce. Specifically, the study evaluates whether members of Peru’s four major ethno-racial groups assign different levels of importance to various job characteristics, how their rank-order prioritizations compare and how these patterns inform organizational practices related to recruitment, retention and employee engagement. Design/methodology/approach Using Manhardt’s 25-item job expectations questionnaire, 562 Peruvian respondents (White/European, Mestizo, Indigenous/Native and Afro-Peruvian/African) rated the importance of job characteristics on a five-point Likert scale. Mean importance ratings, rank-order patterns and group differences were analyzed using multivariate analysis of covariance with age, gender and employment status as covariates, followed by analysis of covariances and post hoc comparisons. Spearman rank correlations assessed similarity in value hierarchies. Findings Ethno-racial identity significantly predicted job expectations across 22 of 25 items. Mestizo and Indigenous/Native respondents consistently assigned higher importance to both intrinsic and extrinsic job characteristics than White/European respondents, with Afro-Peruvian/African respondents generally falling between these groups. Despite absolute differences, rank-order correlations indicated moderate-to-strong similarity in how groups prioritized job attributes. Practical implications Organizations operating in Peru should tailor recruitment messages, job design and development opportunities to reflect the motivational priorities of different ethno-racial groups, particularly emphasizing security, growth and meaningful work for Mestizo and Indigenous/Native workers. Social implications Findings highlight how ethno-racial stratification shapes work values in Peru, offering insights for more equitable and culturally informed talent management strategies. Originality/value This study contributes to the limited body of research on within-country ethno-racial variation in job expectations in Latin America by extending the social characteristics model and self-determination theory to Peru’s distinct sociocultural context.
