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Companies are concerned about the well-being of workers in their supply chains, but conventional audits fail to uncover critical problems. Yet, if the happy worker – productive worker thesis is correct, it would benefit factories in fast-developing countries, particularly China which is key to many global supply chains, to ensure the well-being of their workers. The authors set out to better understand the relationship between well-being and performance in four Chinese factories.

Over 12-months the authors collected digital diaries from 466 workers in four factories, and monthly data about the performance of their factories. The authors used this data to gain insights into the well-being of workers in these factories; to design experimental interventions to improve this; and to consider any effects these had on factory performance.

The experiments showed that training interventions to improve workers' well-being through their work relationships and individual skills improved not just a factory's general worker well-being, but also some aspects of its performance and worker retention. Thus, it brought benefits not only for the workers but also for the factory owners and their client companies.

While there is a significant body of research investigating the happy worker – productive worker thesis, this was not conducted in Chinese factories. The authors’ work demonstrates that in this and similar environments, workers' eudaimonic well-being is more important than might be assumed, and that in this context there is a relationship between well-being and performance which can be practically addressed.

The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

This paper aims to respond to the response pieces by Burmester (2024) and by Dindial and Voss (2024) to the original paper on “Taming wicked problems through international business policy: recommendations for addressing modern slavery”. Beyond engaging with the issues raised by Burmester (2024) and Dindial and Voss (2024), the follow-up helps further clarify the key difference between so-called “grand challenges” and “wicked problems” for both international business (IB) policymaking and multinational enterprise (MNE) research.

In response to Burmester (2024), the paper juxtaposes key literature on grand challenges and wicked problems to show the theoretical value of applying a wicked problem lens to modern slavery. In engaging with some of the issues raised by Dindial and Voss (2024), this paper further builds on the most current review papers on navigating control and coordination issues within MNEs and the literature on global value chains (GVCs).

The paper operationalises the field of IB policy of relevance to modern slavery research and proposes an augmented conceptual model of MNEs’ control and coordination mechanisms to address modern slavery under conditions of distributed responsibility in their GVCs.

This paper problematizes the grand challenges’ label imposed on modern slavery and leverages a wicked problem theoretical toolkit that can help better guide modern slavery’s global and multi-level governance nexus. The proposed augmented conceptual model also provides a significant attempt to address some of the key theoretical gaps in GVC and MNE control−coordination literature.

The aim of this study is to explore how women in Sri Lanka cultivate entrepreneurial personae to navigate the various gendered roles they situationally enact, as they attempt to secure legitimacy and acceptance and overcome their otherness. Drawing on Goffman's theorisation of symbolic interaction, this study investigates how gender informs the performance of entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka. In this way, the study engages with the challenges women in the Global South navigate while undertaking entrepreneurship, and it contributes to the critical entrepreneurship literature on the intertwined nature of gender and entrepreneurship.

Following feminist standpoint epistemology (FSE), this qualitative study focuses on women entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka by examining the performance of entrepreneurship through 44 life history interviews (LHIs) and 40 Field Observations conducted over a seven-month period.

The findings reveal that women carefully cultivate entrepreneurial personae by striking a balance between entrepreneurial ideals and patriarchal social expectations around womanhood. The findings of the study present how the entrepreneurial personae are constructed by way of appearance, mannerism and setting, which presents opportunities for future research to explore the dramaturgical aspect of gender and entrepreneurship.

This study contributes to the growing body of feminist research surrounding women entrepreneurs, by drawing on insights from the lived experiences of women entrepreneurs in the Global South. This study also expands Goffman's theorisation of audience segregation and shows that a subject's understanding of the audience shapes their personae. A further contribution of this research is how space becomes an extension of the personae at play.

This study aims to analyse how multinational corporations (MNCs) organise value chain activities to penetrate new market segments. It contributes by expanding traditional decisions regarding the vertical fine-slicing of value chain activities (whether performed internally or externally) and the consideration of resource-sharing decisions (integration or separation) for each value chain function.

The authors draw on primary data collected from two case study firms operating in the large emerging Chinese market: Volvo Construction Equipment AB and Epiroc AB. In-depth cases illustrate how foreign MNCs expand into new market segments and simultaneously target both the lower-priced mid-market and the premium segments in the Chinese mining and construction industry.

The results reveal that product diversification creates challenges for managers who must oversee new (vertical) value chains, often simultaneously. Beyond geography and modes of governance, managers must decide whether to integrate or separate value chain activities for the new product lines. The study identifies four main strategic choices for firms to address this complexity, focusing on the decision to internalise or externalise (i.e. within or across organisational boundaries) and integrate or separate value chain activities between different product lines.

This study builds upon the internalisation theory and recent international business contributions that focus on value chain configurations to explain MNCs’ product diversification as a growth strategy in a host emerging market. It also sheds light on the choice of conducting new activities in-house or externally and elucidates firms’ managerial decisions to operationally integrate or separate individual value chain activities. The study provides insights into the drivers explaining managerial decisions to configure value chain activities across product lines and contributes to the growing body of literature on MNC activities in emerging economies by highlighting that product diversification impacts entry mode diversity and resource sharing across units.

This paper engages with the important work of Raškovic (2024). The authors agree with Raškovic’s (2024) argument that international business (IB) policy is well positioned to inform and address many of society’s wicked problems, including modern slavery. Beyond supporting this position, the purpose of this paper is to highlight IB’s internal and ongoing debate regarding multinational ownership and control, and how this unresolved theoretical issue can hinder the contribution of IB policy in addressing wicked problems.

By leveraging prior literature, this paper synthesises opposing views on the extent of control that multinational enterprises (MNEs) exert across global value chains (GVCs). The authors then demonstrate why these conflicting perspectives should be resolved to fully realise the task that Raškovic (2024) has laid out for IB policy.

This study argues that IB is steeped in a tradition where ownership has been a proxy for meaningful control. Rising GVCs have complicated this relationship, and while IB recognises this, the field remains short of explicating a set of robust conditions that can detect control in the absence of ownership. Given that responsibility is often based on an assumption of who has control, this ongoing and unresolved debate limits IB’s utility in advancing appropriate policy interventions to tame wicked problems.

This paper makes a contribution by bringing together diverse perspectives on the ongoing debate regarding MNE control in GVC. It demonstrates how this seemingly abstract debate can have significant implications for IB’s role in addressing society’s grand challenges. The authors further suggest that embracing interdisciplinarity and novel analytical tools can assist in demystifying the opaqueness of GVCs and resolving the control “fuzziness” that confuses responsibility boundaries across the GVC.

Recent technological turbulence stemming from Industry 4.0 provides managerial opportunities and challenges simultaneously. In this context, the purpose of this study is to explore the role of technological opportunism on innovativeness and discover the impact of innovativeness on new products performance in international markets.

To empirically test the hypotheses, the authors have collected survey data from 237 Korean exporting firms and applied structural equation modeling.

Empirical results indicate that technological opportunism, which represents technology sensing and responding capability, has a positive and significant influence on both exploratory and exploitative innovativeness. Also, explorative and exploitative innovativeness have positive and significant effects on new product performance in international markets.

This study highlighted the importance of technology sensing and responding capabilities to capture emerging opportunities, which may arise from Industry 4.0 technologies. In addition, sensing and responding capabilities will help a firm create a culture that values innovative proclivity, and in turn, will lead to superior new product performance in international markets.

Despite extensive scholarly interest in Industry 4.0, previous studies have neglected to address the potential impact of Industry 4.0 within the domain of new product development and its performance. Also, there have been several calls from the literature to address the managerial and strategic issues surrounding the Industry 4.0 phenomenon. In this study, the authors attempted to fill the research gaps in Industry 4.0 research studies through empirical examination.

Organisations are investing in systems such as product lifecycle management (PLM) to support product development, collaboration across complex supply chains and to provide a framework for digital transformation. Graduates of apparel programmes would benefit from a knowledge of PLM to help realise the opportunities that PLM offers. The purpose of this paper is to report on an educational research project that used PLM as a context for practice-based learning and as a mechanism to update the learning experience and stimulate the development of future practice.

This paper reports on the experiences, critical reflections and data from an action research study to establish a learning community through an educational partnership for PLM software within an undergraduate fashion business course. The cohort of the first year of the intervention (n = 28) is the main study population.

The findings indicate that PLM provided a stimulating learning context supportive of a detailed understanding of current industry practice, critical and innovative thinking and the development of a professional identity.

The opportunity for the development of both industry and educational practice is outlined.

A general introduction to PLM provides important information to support and advance Fashion Industry 4.0. Educational partnerships can reduce barriers to the integration of advanced technologies into the higher education curriculum.

Applications of PLM are under researched in textiles and apparel. The paper contributes to the broadening of the knowledge base of PLM and its potential to achieve strategic transformation of the sector.

The postponement principle concerns defining when and where value is added, usually referring to hardware components for physical products. However, in modern supply chains, software’s importance is increasing, impacting the timing and location of value-adding operations. Lacking insights into software-driven implications for postponement, we aim at elaborating on the postponement principle by contextualizing its evolution when integrating different objects (i.e. hardware and software).

We adopted an abductive approach to elaborate on the existing knowledge with original empirical insights. A single-case study with four subcases allowed us to explore postponement dimensions in the context of a global high-tech enterprise offering products that integrate hardware and software objects. As global supply chains involve multiple jurisdictions with heterogeneous regulations, we also analyzed in depth the emerging fiscal and legal implications.

Besides where and when value is added, the study illustrates that deciding who (i.e. what legal entity) is carrying out what operation on what kind of object is highly important. Moreover, fiscal and legal implications for the various legal entities strongly depend on what operations are executed and in which jurisdiction (where). The study identifies critical interrelationships among postponement dimensions when integrating hardware and software objects, highlighting the importance of understanding and managing their reciprocity with the emerging fiscal and legal risks.

We elaborate on the postponement principle by contextualizing its applications when integrating hardware and software objects in global supply chains, which include multiple jurisdictions. By formalizing the impact of the who dimension, the study contributes to developing the interorganizational perspective for postponement. Moreover, it extends the traditional cost perspective for postponement beyond the trade-off between responsiveness and cost-efficiency, suggesting that firms applying global postponement should extend their focus to also examine fiscal and legal risks for all the legal entities involved.

In this paper, we evaluated the impact of the US “Chip Act” on the participation of the Chinese electronics industry in the global value chain based on the dynamic CGE model. This is a meaningful attempt to use the GTAP-VA model to analyze the electronics industry in China.

We employ a Dynamic GTAP-VA Model to quantitatively evaluate the economic repercussions of the “Chip Act” on the Chinese electronic industries' GVC participation from 2023 to 2040.

The findings depict a discernible contraction in China’s electronic sector by 2040, marked by a −2.95% change in output, a −3.50% alteration in exports and a 0.45% increment in imports. Concurrently, the U.S., EU and certain Asian economies exhibit expansions within the electronic sector, indicating a GVC realignment. The “Chip Act” implementation precipitates a significant divergence in GVC participation across different countries and industries, notably impacting the electronics sector.

Through a meticulous temporal analysis, this manuscript unveils the nuanced economic shifts within the GVC, substantially bridging the empirical void in existing literature. This narrative accentuates the profound implications of policy regulations on global trade dynamics, contributing to the discourse on international economic policy and industry evolution.

We evaluated the impact of the US “Chip Act” on the participation of the Chinese electronics industry in the global value chain based on the dynamic CGE model. This is a meaningful attempt to use the GTAP-VA model to analyze the electronics industry in China.

The interaction between policy regulations and global value chain (GVC) dynamics is pivotal in understanding the contemporary global trade framework, especially within technology-driven sectors. The US “Chips Act” represents a significant regulatory milestone with potential ramifications on the Chinese electronic industries' engagement in the GVC.

The significance of this paper is that it quantifies for the first time the impact of the US Chip Act on the GVC participation index of East Asian countries in the context of US-China decoupling. With careful consideration of strategic aspects, this paper substantially fills the empirical gap in the existing literature by presenting subtle economic changes within GVCs, highlighting the profound implications of policy regulation on global trade dynamics.