Administrative Sciences

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping occupational tasks and skill requirements, creating a human resource management (HRM) challenge around how future employees develop readiness for responsible AI-enabled work. This study examines relationships among perceived AI readiness (PAIR), perceived entrepreneurial AI value (AIV), and future AI-enabled work and entrepreneurial engagement (FAE) among 407 female business students in Kuwait. Five-category ordinal indicators were analyzed using diagonally weighted least squares confirmatory factor analysis, competing measurement models, bootstrap-based latent indirect-effect analysis, and an extended structural model incorporating AI learning exposure, trust in AI task delegation, and job-displacement concern. A three-factor readiness–value–engagement structure was retained, although discriminant validity between AIV and FAE was qualified by a high latent correlation. The retained structure showed mixed robust fit and substantial shared covariance, warranting cautious interpretation. PAIR was positively associated with AIV, which was strongly associated with FAE. The indirect association remained significant after supplementary variables were included, decreasing from β = 0.650 to β = 0.420. Formal AI learning exposure was positively associated with readiness but showed a small negative conditional association with perceived entrepreneurial AI value after readiness was held constant; this exploratory finding requires replication. Trust was positively associated with readiness, value, and engagement, while job-displacement concern coexisted with higher readiness and value. Findings suggest that AI-ready human-capital development should combine exposure with authentic business applications, critical evaluation, calibrated trust, and responsible human–AI collaboration.

Online brand communities distribute brand-related credibility across multiple human actors, yet research typically examines these sources independently or focuses on a single advocacy group. This article introduces the trust portfolio—the configuration of credible human voices within an online brand community—and a framework for how those voices collectively build brand trust. Drawing on source credibility, trust transfer, online brand community, social capital, and employee advocacy research, the framework distinguishes credibility-bearing roles by the mechanisms through which they establish credibility: expertise, lived experience, audience relationships, positional authority, independence, and procedural fairness. These roles are not interchangeable. A portfolio’s value depends on role diversity, role-question fit, and credibility’s distribution across individuals and roles. Organizational governance should be differentiated by role because transparency and oversight can strengthen affiliated actors’ credibility while undermining the independence on which other members’ credibility depends. The framework distinguishes credibility from advocacy, since credible voices may reinforce, qualify, or challenge brand claims. As trust-producing communication, validation, and governance increasingly originate within the community, marketing becomes more effortless, not because work disappears, but because responsibility shifts from the firm to the community. Illustrative cases show how these properties appear in practice and provide a foundation for future empirical research.

This study examines whether the digitalization of tourism consumption is associated with greater access to holidays in Europe and whether this relationship depends on households’ financial conditions. Using publicly available Eurostat data, the analysis combines a 2023 cross-section of 26 European countries with a complementary pooled panel of 133 country–year observations for 2020–2024. Holiday deprivation is measured as the share of the population unable to afford one week of annual holiday away from home. Digitalization is captured through online tourism purchasing in the cross-section and general online purchasing in the panel. Results show a strong negative bivariate association between digital purchasing and holiday deprivation, but this relationship weakens and becomes statistically imprecise after socioeconomic and connectivity differences are considered. By contrast, perceived debt-repayment burden remains positively associated with holiday deprivation across specifications, while aggregate household leverage does not show the expected moderating effect. The findings distinguish digital market accessibility from economic accessibility: digitalization may facilitate transactions, but the capacity to convert these opportunities into tourism participation remains closely linked to financial conditions. This distinction extends responsible tourism marketing towards the distributive consequences of digital transformation.