Journal of Workplace Behavior

The Mediating Influence of Risk Tolerance on Behavioral Biases and Investment Decisions: Evidence from Pakistan

Syeda Afshan Gillani — 2026-07-21

The Pakistan Stock Exchange faces persistently low participation of investors in past few years and high market volatility, which hinder its development and stability. To address these challenges, the purpose of this study is to investigate how behavioral factors affect investors’ investment decisions. The study also examines risk tolerance role as a mediator in the relationship between behavioral factors and investors’ investment decisions. Non-probability sampling was used to collect responses from 310 investors. The findings of the study reveal that biases such as herding bias, overconfidence bias and self-control bias significantly and positively impact investors’ decision making while risk tolerance significantly mediates between behavioral biases and investors’ decision making. Discussions, conclusions and implications of the study are presented based on the results.

Inclusive Leadership and Project Success: A Bibliometric Analysis of Global Research Trends

Noor Ul Haya Adnan — 2026-07-21

Many organizations have begun to value inclusive and participative leadership in their workplace, which has led to an increased focus on comprehending the effects that inclusive leadership has on the success of projects. This study mimics as closely as possible the structure of the uploaded benchmark bibliometric article, but uses a different topic and set of data in order to use the same overall logic. In Scopus database, 359 journal articles in English are identified and analyzed between 2011 and 2026. The purpose of the paper is to perform a bibliometric review of the inclusive leadership and project success research, focusing on publication trends, influential authors, journals, countries, affiliations, research themes and the similarity of the most cited documents. Analysis is performed with the Bibliometrix set of performance measures, VOSviewer-based keyword mapping, thematic mapping, trend analysis, and a clustering exercise based on the Pearson correlation of the top cited documents. The results reveal a significant increase in the field since 2021, which can be conceptualized as being centered around inclusive leadership, psychological empowerment, project success, transformational leadership, and psychological safety. The thematic analysis also suggests that the themes of psychological safety, innovation, job satisfaction and authentic leadership are emerging or are evolving rapidly, with project success, psychological empowerment and transformational leadership emerging as motor themes. Finally the study pinpoints the hotspots for the current research, potential for future research and the primary constraints in metadata-based bibliometric analysis.

Do Influencers Enhance or Harm Consumer Well-Being? Implications for Purchase Intention in the Cosmetic Sector

Saira Chughtai — 2026-07-21

This research looks at how a long-term relationship with social media influences the consumer decision-making process to purchase cosmetics and considers consumer wellbeing to be an intermediary between social media influencer exposure and purchase intent. Using a quantitative survey-based approach with 295 participants, research hypotheses were tested through regression and mediation analyses. Results indicate that long-term exposure to influencers significantly affects both consumers' intentions to purchase products and consumers' well-being for cosmetic purposes. Additionally, the results suggest that consumers' wellbeing partially mediates the effect of influencer exposure on purchase intent, indicating that there is both an indirect and direct effect of the influencer on the consumer. Findings indicate that for marketers to shape consumer behavior in the cosmetic industry, they need to develop thoughtful and authentic influencer relationships; rely on trust; maintain consistent linkages between the influencer and the marketer; and ensure that their overall messaging is cohesive. This research extends the existing influencer marketing literature and provides valuable insight into influences on consumer purchasing behaviour and their impact on their well-being when considering how they utilize influencers to make purchasing decisions in the cosmetic industry.

Building Trust in FinTech: How Data Security and Digital Literacy Drive Service Adoption

Faria Arshad — 2026-06-30

The recent brisk of fintech adoption and its extension into economic and business systems in Pakistan has led many users to remain unprepared to adopt digital financial services safely, exposing themselves to growing data security threats and hindering widespread fintech adoption. This research project was designed to investigate how digital literacy moderates the effect of data security on FinTech services adoption, mediated by customer trust. Data was collected through a self-administrated structured questionnaire survey from 100 fintech users. Using SPSS, the data was analyzed to examine the links between data security, customer trust, digital literacy, and fintech services adoption. This study’s results show that perceived data security positively affects fintech adoption and customer trust. Customer trust, in turn, affects the acceptance and use of fintech services positively and serves as a mediator between data security and fintech adoption. However, digital literacy had no moderating effect on the relationship based on data security and customer trust. Policymakers should prioritize data security frameworks and trust-building initiatives. Targeted interventions for undereducated, rural, and older populations can support equitable fintech adoption. Future research should explore why digital literacy's moderating effect was unsupported and examine additional factors affecting fintech adoption in developing countries contexts.

Transformational Leadership in the Digital Workplace: Effects on Workplace Satisfaction and Quality of Work Life through AI Acceptance

Faisal Wali — 2026-06-30

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the nature of work, but the benefits for any individual worker will rely on leadership and employees' acceptance of new technologies. This research investigates the direct and indirect relationship between transformational leadership and satisfaction and quality of work life in the manufacturing and service sectors of Pakistan with the mediation of acceptance of the use of AI in the workplace. A cross sectional design with quantitative approach was used. The respondents were 521 employees who were selected by convenience sampling method and data were obtained by physically using questionnaire and analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results suggest that transformational leadership has a positive effect on both employee satisfaction and quality of work life as well as on employee acceptance of AI. In addition, there are positive impacts on employee outcomes from the acceptance of AI. Additionally, the relationships between transformational leadership and the outcomes of workplace satisfaction and quality of work life are supported by AI acceptance as a mediator in all the proposed hypotheses. Inspirational, supportive, intellectually stimulating, and individually considerate leadership leads to favorable conditions in which employees see the usefulness, manageability, and compatibility of AI in their work. In exchange, robust acceptance allows staff members to access efficiency, autonomy, learning chances, and also work-related health and well-being. This study brings Social Exchange Theory to the field of AI in the work environment and provides empirical evidence in a context from an underrepresented emerging economy. The development of transformational leadership should be integrated with transparent communication of AI to the employees, participation by employees in the implementation process, training employees on AI, and providing employees with technical support.

What Matters Most in Risky Investment Intentions? Financial Phantasy and Mindfulness in an Emerging Market

Hamza Ahmad — 2026-06-30

This study investigates how personality, cultural values, financial phantasy, and mindfulness influence risky investment intention in an emerging market. Using pilot data from 50 Pakistan-based market participants and PLS-SEM, the findings show that power distance and uncertainty avoidance strongly shape financial phantasy, while agreeableness is the strongest direct predictor of risky investment intention. Financial phantasy increases risky investment intention, whereas mindfulness shows a negative direct and moderating tendency. Importance–performance analysis further identifies financial phantasy and mindfulness as key areas for investor education and behavioral risk management. The study extends behavioral finance by identifying not only whether psychology matters in investment decisions, but which psychological and cultural factors deserve the greatest practical attention.