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Although officially ended in July 2020, China’s dispute about its non-market economy (NME) status at the World Trade Organization (WTO) is far from being resolved. The NME status enables China’s counterparts to disregard Chinese prices in antidumping proceedings and instead use the so-called surrogate country methodology. This paper aims to structure and analyze the complex debate, which emerged with the disputes China has filed against the European Union and the USA at the WTO, and therefore provide a point of reference for future analysis of and debates about China’s NME status.

The analysis is based on the existing academic literature on the topic and on the legal WTO-related documents (e.g. multilateral agreements, China’s Accession Protocol, legal findings of the WTO dispute panels).

Four different interpretations of the respective legal documents about China’s NME status are discussed and strong and weak aspects of these interpretations are pointed out. Also, several misunderstandings and mistakes appearing in the debate are clarified.

As the question of China’s position at the WTO and its NME status has not been resolved yet and some authors believe that China will pursue its case again once the WTO Appellate Body revives its functionality, the analysis of the debate can serve as a point of reference for the academic debate and the future research on this topic. Moreover, it offers an introduction to China’s NME position at the WTO for the newcomers to this topic.

Although China’s NME status has been much discussed, there is no literature review that would structure the debate and point out some of the (dis)advantages of the respective arguments and interpretations. Rather than adding to the large corpus of literature about the NME status, this study takes this corpus as the object of its analysis.

The purpose of the paper is to produce new knowledge about the positions that public libraries both take and are given in the conflicts over politics and identity that play out in contemporary cultural and library policy debates. Using conflicts over drag story hour at public libraries as case, the study seeks to contribute to an emerging body of research that delves into the challenges that public libraries as promoters of democracy are confronting in the conflictual political landscape of today.

The paper presents an analysis of debates reported in news articles concerning Drag story hour events held at Swedish public libraries. Utilizing the analytical lenses of discourse theory and plural agonistics, the analysis serves to make visible the lines of conflicts drawn in these debates – particularly focusing on the intersection of different meanings ascribed to the notion of the reading child, and how fear is constructed and used as an othering devise in these conflicts.

Different imaginings of the reading child and the construction and imagination of fear and safety shapes the Drag story hour debates. The controversies can be understood as a challenge to the previous hegemony regarding the direction and goals of Swedish cultural and library policy and the pluralistic democratic society these policies are meant to promote.

The paper offers new insights into the consequences of the revival of radical right politics, populism and societal polarization, and the different responses from public libraries.

In this study, the authors examine the push and pull effects of extreme weather events on migration among governorates in Egypt.

To estimate the effect of extreme weather events on internal migration, the authors use migration gravity models and data from the 1996 and 2006 Population and Housing Censuses. The authors measure weather extremes by the number of months in the past 36 months with temperatures or precipitation of a governorate below the 5th percentile and above the 95th percentile of the distribution of monthly temperatures or precipitation of the corresponding governorate during the period 1900–2006.

This study’s results suggest that high temperatures in the origin area act as a push factor. High-temperature extremes have a positive effect on out-migration. A 1% increase in the number of months with high-temperature extremes in the original governorate results in a 0.1% increase in the number of out-migrants.

The study suggests that people may respond to weather extremes through migration. However, climate migrants in Egypt may encounter several significant risks that authorities must address.

This study is one of the first attempts to measure the push and pull effect of weather extremes on migration in Egypt.

The purpose of this study is to empirically test how problem-solving lean practices, along with leaders as learning facilitators in an action learning approach, can be transferred from a production context to a knowledge work context for the purpose of becoming a learning organization while enhancing performance. This is important to study because many organizations struggle to enhance efficiency in the short term while still trying to be long-term learning oriented (i.e. learning organization development).

The authors draw on theory on learning interventions to show how lean practices for problem-solving can foster learning and help an organization to become adaptive. This study’s subject is a non-production department of 100 employees at the LEGO corporation. The authors applied survey results from a natural experiment lasting 18 months between a pre-measurement survey and a post-measurement survey. The results were compared to a control department of 50 employees who were not exposed to the lean practices intervention. The authors’ focus was on the individual level as individuals have different perceptions of lean practices, performance, and learning.

Using repeated-measures tests, difference-in-difference regressions analyses, and structural equation models, the authors find that a package of contemporary lean practices for problem-solving, along with leaders who function as learning facilitators, significantly improved learning organization dimensions while also enhancing efficiency and quality and that learning organizations positively mediate the relationship between the lean intervention and quality-related performance, while efficiency is directly affected by the lean interventions. Data from LEGO's key performance indicators (KPIs), benefit trackers, on-site observations and more than 40 interviews with managers provided results that were consistent with the survey data. A detailed description of the lean practices implemented is provided to inspire future implementations in non-operations environments and to assist educators.

The authors contribute to the learning literature by showing that a learning-to-learn approach to lean management can serve as an active and deliberate intervention in helping an organization becoming a learning organization as perceived by the individual organizational members. The authors also add to the lean literature by showing how a learning approach to lean, as used by LEGO, can positively affect short-term efficiency and quality and create a foundation for a longer-term competitive advantage (i.e. a learning organization) in a non-production context. By contrast, most of the lean literature streams treat efficiency separately from a learning organization and mainly examine lean in a production context.

The extant literature shows three research streams on lean, learning, and performance. The authors built on these streams by trying to emphasize both learning and efficiency. Prior research has not empirically tested whether and how the application of problem-solving lean practices combined with leaders as learning facilitators helps to create a comprehensive learning organization while enhancing performance in a non-production context.

Lean Thinking is an operation management discipline which aims to identify, map and analyse the activities forming a process to detect “value waste” and outline the most effective flow of activities to execute in sequence. Process mapping is often developed in lean projects through the use of the Value Stream Map (VSM). Like many other management tools, the VSM adopts a static and non-systemic perspective in the representation of an organizational process. This may result in the implementation of Lean projects inconsistent with the overall organizational long-term strategy, thus leading to dysfunctional performance. In order to overcome this limit, the paper suggests combining VSM with System Dynamics (SD) modelling.

The paper is based on a review of the literature on VSM. This review is matched with an analysis of SD modelling principles aimed at explaining the practical and theoretical contribution of this approach to operation and strategic management practices. An illustrative case study is then provided to explore the practical implications of the proposed approach.

Our results show that SD modelling provides robust methodological support to VSM and Lean Thinking due to its inner characteristics, namely: simulation, systemic view, explicit link between system structure and behaviour and effective visual representation.

This research proposes a novel approach to design VSMs aimed at fostering a strategic perspective in Lean Thinking applications. Such an approach connects two fields of research and practice – i.e. VSM and SD modelling – which have traditionally been kept separated or, at least, partially combined for specific organizational sub-systems, thereby neglecting a broader strategic view of the entire process system.

Being acquainted with both lean and action learning in theory and in practice, this study finds that the theoretical complementarity of these two research streams has traditionally been underexploited. In this conceptual paper, this study aims to advance the theoretical understanding of lean by exploring the complementarity of lean thinking and action learning leading to a proposed integrated theory of these two research streams. Target audience is the operations management research community.

By deliberately adopting a process of theorising, this paper explores, reflects upon and combines individual experiences of researching, teaching and engaging in lean and action learning as operations management scholars.

Having taken a gemba walk through the literature and practices of lean and action learning, this study views and notices a systematic and complementary relationship between the two domains. The overlapping theoretical and practical complementarities of lean and action learning suggest that these two research streams are ripe for synthesis into an integrated theory. This finding provides an opportunity to (1) progress towards an integrative design of interventions leading to more sustainable lean system adoptions and (2) add new depth to our theoretical explanation of the success and failures of lean system adoptions.

This paper contributes an original integrated theory perspective on lean and action learning.

Drawing on paradox theory, this study explores how ambidextrous sustainability relates to organisational performance in hybrid organisations represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations, and how this relationship is contingent on the organisational structure of these organisations.

The study relies on the data collected from Swedish municipal housing corporations. These data sources consist of a survey sent to the management team members in Swedish municipal housing corporations, financial and non-financial archival data on these corporations, interviews with the management team and board members, and observations of meetings involving the management team and board of directors at a Swedish municipal housing corporation. Quantitative data of the study were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and linear multiple regression analysis. Qualitative data were analysed employing deductive thematic analysis and were used to illustrate and discuss the results of the quantitative analysis.

The quantitative findings show that ambidextrous sustainability, i.e. the alignment between an explorative orientation and an exploitative orientation towards sustainability, has a weakly positive relationship with financial performance and a positive relationship with social performance in hybrid organisations represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations. The study further shows that a high level of the structural element “connectedness” weakened the relationship between the ambidextrous sustainability and financial performance of the organisation in the study. In contrast, a lower level of connectedness reinforced and strengthened this relationship. Our qualitative material illustrates how the quantitative findings could be explained by the interaction between the board of directors and the management team of these hybrid organisations.

The study shows how ambidextrous sustainability, employed for conceptualisation of the sustainability strategy in hybrid organisations, represented by Swedish municipal housing corporations, can impact on facets of performance (i.e. financial, social and environmental) differently. The study further highlights the importance of organisational structures in these relationships in a hybrid context.