The digital transformation of workplaces has fundamentally altered the nature of employee learning, development and human capital formation. Rapid technological change, evolving job requirements, digital collaboration and changing organisational structures require employees to continuously acquire, update and apply knowledge and skills. Workplace learning is therefore increasingly moving beyond traditional training programs toward more continuous, technology-enabled, experiential, social and self-directed forms of development. This paper theoretically examines workplace learning and employee development as interconnected processes through which organisations renew and strengthen human capital in the digital era. Drawing on contemporary literature, the discussion examines the changing nature of workplace learning, digital learning environments, employee adaptability, knowledge sharing, organisational support, leadership, learning culture, career development, technological capabilities and the relationship between learning and employee performance. The paper argues that employee development should no longer be viewed as a periodic organisational intervention but as an ongoing strategic process embedded within everyday work. Digitalisation creates significant opportunities for personalised and flexible learning while simultaneously generating challenges related to technological readiness, unequal access, employee autonomy, work intensification and the changing relevance of skills. The paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of human capital by positioning continuous workplace learning as an essential mechanism for maintaining employee capabilities and organisational adaptability.

While the growth of FinTech and online payment systems in India has revolutionized financial transactions, it is not just about the technology's capabilities, but also about the emotional aspects, like trust and anxiety. The aim of the study is to compare the gender differences in terms of trust and anxiety and impact on behavioural intention towards online payment system among consumers in the state of Karnataka. Also, the study reveals whether trust or anxiety has a greater impact on female users. A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional design was used and the data used were obtained from 200 active digital payment users, 100 of which were males and 100 females, who were selected using convenience and snowball sampling. A 27-item questionnaire with a Likert type response scale was used to collect data, and descriptive statistics, independent-samples t-tests, Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and multi-group SEM were performed to analyse the data. Results indicate that the trust level of males is significantly higher while the anxiety level of females is significantly higher. Both trust and anxiety had significant effects on behavioural intention, with trust having a positive effect and anxiety having a negative. These relationships were significantly moderated by gender, being stronger for men and more influential for women. The study concludes that for a more inclusive digital payment adoption, FinTech strategies which are gender sensitive, safe and anxiety reducing should be of paramount importance.

Abstract: Brand authenticity has functioned for roughly two decades as marketing's dominant trust-building vocabulary, yet a growing body of consumer research suggests that authenticity itself has become a manufactured, performable claim that sophisticated consumers increasingly discount, shifting their trust instead toward the narrative surrounding a brand, its founder story, its perceived struggle, its documented process, rather than toward the brand's institutional identity as such. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature underlying this shift, tracing the consumer authenticity construct from its origins in existential and object-based authenticity theory through the branding literature's operationalization of authenticity as a strategic asset, before examining the narrative transportation and self-brand connection literature that explains why a well-told story can generate consumer trust independent of and at times despite, skepticism toward the branded institution telling it. The review synthesizes foundational authenticity-in-consumption research, brand trust theory, narrative processing research and the more recent influencer and social-media literature documenting how manufactured authenticity performances have measurably eroded consumer confidence in brand-level authenticity claims specifically. Particular attention is given to the paradox this literature identifies: the same audiences who report high skepticism toward corporate authenticity claims simultaneously report strong trust in individual creators and story-based content, a pattern this paper terms post-authenticity marketing. The paper concludes that this shift does not represent the abandonment of authenticity as a consumer concern but its relocation from the brand as institution to the narrative as artifact and identifies longitudinal research tracking how quickly narrative-based trust itself becomes subject to the same skepticism cycle as brand-based authenticity claims as the central future research prospect.