Purpose – With Industry 4.0 and the extensive rise of smart technologies, we are seeing remarkable transformations in work practices and workplaces. Scholars report the phenomenal progress of smart technologies. At the same time, we can hear the rhetoric emphasising their potential threats. This study focusses on how and where intelligent machines are leveraged in the workplace, how humans co-working with intelligent machines are affected and what they believe can be done to mitigate the risks of the increased use of intelligent machines.
Design/methodology/approach – We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 respondents working in various leadership capacities associated with intelligent machines and technologies. Using NVivo, we coded and churned out the themes from the qualitative data collected.
Findings – This study shows how intelligent machines are leveraged across different industries, ranging from chatbots, intelligent sensors, cognitive systems and computer vision to the replica of the entire human being. They are used end-to-end in the value chain, increasing productivity, complementing human workers’ skillsets and augmenting decisions made by human workers. Human workers experience a blend of positive and negative emotions whilst co-working with intelligent machines, which influences their job satisfaction level. Organisations adopt several anticipatory strategies, like transforming into a learning organisation, identifying futuristic technologies and upskilling their human workers, regularly conducting social learning events and designing accelerated career paths to embrace intelligent technologies.
Originality/value – This study seeks to understand the emotional and practical implications of the use of intelligent machines by humans and how both entities can integrate and complement each other. These insights can help organisations and employees understand what future workplaces and practices will look like and how to remain relevant in this transformation.

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to theoretically and empirically explore the issue of well-being (WB) of female administrative employees who work on managerial positions at higher education institutions (HEIs).
Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on both literature studies and explorative empirical research conducted in Poland with the use of snowball sampling. It adopted a questionnaire authored by Parker and Hyett and covered 121 respondents.
Findings – Literature studies show that invisibility of work, low level of empowerment, increased stress, workload and expectations, reduced resources, high level of anxiety, fatigue and low level of vitality negatively impact the WB of HEIs’ administrative staff. The presented research provides insight into the internal structure of the administrative staff’s WB. Both the main construct (i.e. employees’ WB) and its subconstructs are on moderate level. Respondents’ age and tasks performed are correlated only with the subconstruct of WB in the form of intrusion of work into private life.
Research limitations/implications – Although the research is not based on large sample, it provides both practical and theoretical implications.
Originality/value – Most of studies discuss the issue of WB of scholars. The paper fills the research gap in terms of examining female administrative employees who work on managerial positions at HEIs.

Purpose –This paper aims to investigate the interplay between international migration, soft skills and job and life satisfaction after returns.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses the dataset of Human Capital in Poland 2010–2014 representative surveys with 4040 return migrants, who worked temporarily abroad and returned to an origin in comparison with almost 70,000 stayers, who never worked abroad. In this study, Poland is treated as a strategic research site for the labor migration processes, which happened after the biggest European Union enlargement in 2004.

Findings – This study discovered that working abroad had a positive relation with cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies, as well as job and life satisfaction. However, the relations differ depending on the key destination country.

Practical implications – This study discusses the implications for future research and practice, offering recommendations to organizations on how to embed employees with these resources in companies and how to support return migrants and their potential employers with the use of migratory informal human capital in personnel management and counseling.

Originality/value – This paper brings quantitative arguments about the hidden impacts of international migration on human capital by uniquely comparing the migrant population with the non-migrant population.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to determine the effects of emotional intelligence (EI) on job satisfaction and to examine whether ethical climate has a mediating role in this effect.

Methodology: The study was conducted among employees of sales organizations in the automotive industry. Relationships between variables were determined by correlation and bootstrap regression analysis with data from 127 participants.

Findings: The results revealed that emotional intelligence shows statistically positive and significant relationships with job satisfaction and ethical climate. Moreover, positive correlation was determined between ethical climate and job satisfaction. The most important result is the decrease of the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction in the triple relationship that includes ethical climate. The findings indicated that the relationship between emotional intelligence levels and employees’ perception of organizational ethical climate weakened their impact on job satisfaction.

Implication: Ethical climate has a mediating effect on the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction. The relationship between emotional intelligence levels and job satisfaction is indirectly strengthened by ethical climate. However, the triple relationship of variables weakens the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction.

Purpose: Gratitude is an interdisciplinary concept frequently explored in positive psychology, which recognizes gratitude as one of the seven transcendent character forces that promote well-being and life satisfaction. The purpose of the conducted research was to develop the concept of gratitude toward the organization and prepare a tool to study this phenomenon.

Methods: The study was cross-sectional. Participants were 802 employees from various organizations.

Results: The Gratitude Toward the Organization Scale has a good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α was 0.91). Factor analysis confirmed the two-factor structure of this tool. The dimensions of gratitude toward the organization are distinguished as: (1) gratitude as a commitment to reciprocity and (2) gratitude as a moral norm. The construct validity of this measure was confirmed. Gratitude toward the organization correlated positively with job satisfaction, affective commitment to the organization, organizational justice, and perceived organizational and supervisor support, while being negatively correlated with intent to leave the organization.

Conclusions: The obtained results confirm very good psychometric properties of the Gratitude Toward the Organization Scale as a valid and reliable measure for studying the gratitude of employees, which can be successfully used by researchers in Poland.

Purpose: This study primarily aims to provide insight into the role of deep acting and surface
acting effects on customer satisfaction, with job satisfaction as the mediating and mentoring as the moderating variable.

Methodology: The study employs SPSS 21 for the analysis of data gathered with a survey questionnaire. The survey involved a sample of 291 employees of Jordanian service firms.
Findings: Obtained findings indicate significant direct relationships, with surface acting negatively related to both job satisfaction and customer satisfaction and deep acting positively related to both. The results support the mediating role of job satisfaction on the relationship between surface acting and customer satisfaction, along with deep acting and customer satisfaction. Moreover, the outcome substantiates the moderating role of mentoring on both acting types with job satisfaction.

Implication: This is the first study to empirically examine the mediating role of job satisfaction on the employee emotional labor relationship with customer satisfaction in service companies of a developing country.