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This paper aims to illustrate how service ecosystem governance may provide a suitable ground to pursue holistic resilience to “wicked” socio-economic and ecological problems, for enhancing “place-based” sustainable performance outcomes through an organizational, interorganizational and context setting.

This work suggests the use of “place-based” collaborative ecosystem platforms driven by a dynamic performance governance approach as a setting where facilitated performance dialogue is carried out among networked stakeholders. This fosters a holistic view of performance sustainability where intangibles, inertial, cultural and behavioral factors play a key role in policy analysis.

The paper illustrates how different research streams framing stakeholder relationships under a business, hybrid organization and public sector perspective converge toward the “service ecosystem” construct, as a common field for sustainable “place-based” value creation. This performance governance perspective frames accountability for achieving sustainable outcomes through interconnected viewpoints, i.e. (1) time (short vs long-term), (2) subject (single organization, “theme-focused” service ecosystem and “place-based” service ecosystem) and (3) field (socio-economic, cultural and ecological).

This work has an interdisciplinary track. It recommends feedback and “stock-and-flow” modeling to enhance framing counterintuitive patterns of behavior of dynamic complex socio-economic, cultural and ecological subsystems within “place-based” collaborative ecosystem platforms. Combining an inside-out with an outside-in view triggers sustainable outcome-based dynamic performance governance through an organizational, interorganizational and context setting.

This study seeks to develop an Environmental Sustainability Balanced Scorecard (ESBSC) articulated through a strategic map for collaborative implementation by municipalities by municipalities. In addition, it aims to elucidate the architecture of this tool.

The research uses qualitative methodology, initiating with document analysis, followed by municipal-level surveys and an interview with the Norte Portugal Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N).

The study constructs an ESBSC that adopts an integrative approach to sustainability, focusing on municipal joint action. The tool fosters synergies and enhances cooperation. By incorporating a strategic mix, the tool contributes to improving the environmental management performance of the participating municipalities.

This study introduces a tool designed for municipalities that aspire to incorporate environmental sustainability into their strategies. This tool facilitates the implementation and management of a long-term environmental strategy, with potential implications for organization and its culture. In addition, it highlights critical environmental factors that should serve as a starting point in future studies or applications of this tool.

Involving both an academic institution and multiple municipalities, this research identifies critical environmental factors that enhance environmental awareness within municipalities and designs a tool that, when consciously adopted, can influence the culture dynamics of the population involved. Furthermore, it proposes a structured and systematic research method for creating an ESBSC for joint municipal action.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this research constitutes the first exploratory attempt to devise an environmental strategy for joint municipal action. Although the tool emphasizes the environmental component, it promotes an integrated vision of sustainability. Despite the extensive application of balanced scorecards in various organizational contexts, their utilization in fostering environmental sustainability at a municipal level remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by developing a tailored strategic tool that operationalizes environmental priorities within municipal governance frameworks.

This article examines the strategy formation in the Finnish government’s pandemic management during the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing a research gap by exploring the possibilities for strategy formation in guiding government policy formation.

Utilizing perspective of strategic planning and emergent strategies influenced by the authorizing environment, the article emphasizes the importance of strategy development in government. The management of COVID-19 pandemic serves as a case study for investigating public strategies in policy formation, underscoring the significance of the authorizing environment in integrating predefined strategic plans with emergent strategic avenues.

The management of pandemics has led to changes in legislation and modes of government decision-making, resulting in learnings for coordinating subnational governments and allocation of resources. The government actions evolved from extracting components from predefined strategic plans and drawing on the experiences of other countries. The emergent properties emerged from amalgamating these elements into an umbrella strategy with a variety of new responses.

The examination focuses on the view from the nexus of government. Although, informed by the subnational developments and stakeholder responses, the study adopts a bird’s eye view on the COVID-19 management.

The examination raises needs for legislative changes, improvement of cross-sectoral coordination within central government and improvement for the decision-making capability within subnational government.

By focusing on the Finnish government’s measures in pandemic management, this article contributes to the discourse on pandemic management. The findings provide insights for strategic crisis management in the public sector.

This paper investigates the relationship between prior planning and the practical adaptation and improvisation conducted by organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic through a qualitative case study of Norwegian Public Health Institutions.

This paper draws on a unique set of qualitative data, interviews and field observations, gathered from organizations during an ongoing crisis. Through this access it becomes possible to examine how organizations practically navigated the complex relationship between structured plans and the situational, short term forms of crisis communication.

The paper finds that prior plans played a key role as points of reference, and as a prior set of principles that could be drawn on during a crisis. Organizations did however have to adapt and respond to the crisis in ways that could not have been designed in advance. In order to do so employees would deliberate and discuss in search of a fitting response that could help them in reaching their goals.

The paper builds on prior work that has discussed limitations and challenges to planning and linear approaches in crisis communication and strategic communication, but provides empirical insight into how members of organizations navigate this work in practice. By employing theories from rhetoric it provides a framework for the further study of crisis communication as a practical ongoing activity, and provides some suggested implications for how organizations can prepare increase crisis preparedness.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the impact of directors’ and officers’ (D&O) liability insurance on enterprise strategic change. It also explores the mediating role of litigation risk, the moderating roles of enterprise science and technology level and precipitation organizational slack between them. In addition, it examines the joint moderating roles of the top management team (TMT) external social network and enterprise science and technology level, and enterprise scale and precipitation organizational slack.

Using the unbalanced panel data of A-share listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges of China from 2002 to 2020 as the research sample, this paper uses the ordinary least square method and fixed-effect model to study the relationship between D&O liability insurance and enterprise strategic change. The study also focuses on the mediating mechanism and moderating mechanisms between them.

The authors find that D&O liability insurance has an “incentive effect,” which can significantly promote enterprise strategic change. Litigation risk plays a partial mediating role between D&O liability insurance and enterprise strategic change. Enterprise science and technology level and precipitation organizational slack negatively moderate the relationship between D&O liability insurance and enterprise strategic change. TMT external social network and enterprise science and technology level, and enterprise-scale and precipitation organizational slack have joint moderating effects on the relationship between D&O liability insurance and enterprise strategic change.

This paper confirms the “incentive effect hypothesis” of the impact of D&O liability insurance on enterprise strategic change, which not only broadens the research perspective of enterprise strategic management but also further expands the research scope of D&O liability insurance. Besides, this paper thoroughly explores the influencing mechanisms between D&O liability insurance and enterprise strategic change, providing incremental contributions to the research literature in the field of enterprise risk management and corporate governance. The findings have practical guiding significance for expanding the coverage of D&O liability insurance, promoting the implementation of strategic changes and improving the level of corporate governance of Chinese enterprises.

This study aims to explore the mechanism of boundary-spanning search on firm’s innovation performance under environmental dynamics from the perspective of strategic knowledge integration.

A survey was conducted among Chinese firm managers and R&D personnel, resulting in the collection of 315 valid samples. Hierarchical regression analysis was mainly adopted to demonstrate the hypothesized relationships, while the Sobel test and bootstrap method were used to further validate the mediating effects.

The results demonstrate that boundary-spanning search in different dimensions is a critical factor in the improvement of firm innovation performance (FIP). Two types of strategic knowledge integration are the main factors causing FIP and mediate the influence of boundary-spanning search on FIP. Furthermore, environmental dynamics moderate the relationship among boundary-spanning search, strategic knowledge integration and FIP.

Managers need to strengthen the boundary-spanning search for market and technical knowledge, which will promote firm innovative performance. Managers also need to implement strategic knowledge integration, which specifically includes using planned strategic knowledge integration to compensate for knowledge deficiencies, thereby achieving predetermined objectives; and using emergent strategic knowledge integration to update their understanding of internal and external environments, and to reset strategic objectives. In dynamic environments, managers should emphasize strategic knowledge management activities more.

From a strategic management perspective, this study categorizes strategic knowledge integration into planned and emergent forms. By applying the logic of knowledge acquisition, integration and creation, it explores how boundary-spanning search affects FIP through strategic knowledge integration as the intermediary and the boundary conditions of environmental dynamics. This not only provides a deeper understanding of the nature and effects of boundary-spanning research but also enhances the theory of strategic knowledge management.

Foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate in complex and competitive international environments, implement market and non-market strategies, manage resources and value-added activities and contribute to the overall performance of their parent firms. Thus, the research question on the determinants of MNE foreign subsidiaries’ performance is of interest to managers and academic researchers. The empirical literature has flourished over the recent decades; however, the domains are fragmented, and the findings are inclusive. The purpose of this study is to systematically review, analyse and synthesize the empirical articles in this area, identify research gaps and suggest a future research agenda.

This study uses the qualitative content analysis method in reviewing and analysing 150 articles published in 24 scholarly journals during the period 2000–2023.

The literature uses a variety of theoretical perspectives to examine the key determinants of subsidiary performance which can be grouped into six major domains, namely, home- and host country-level factors; distance between home and host countries; the characteristics of parent firms and of subsidiaries; and governance mechanisms (the establishment modes and ownership strategy, subsidiary autonomy and the use of home country expatriates for transferring knowledge from the headquarters and controlling foreign subsidiaries). A range of objective and subjective indicators are used to measure subsidiary performance. Yet, the research shows a lack of broader integration of theories and presents inconsistent theoretical predictions, inconclusive empirical findings and estimation bias, which hinder our understanding of how the determinants independently and jointly shape the performance of foreign subsidiaries.

This study provides a comprehensive, nuanced and systematic review that synthesizes and clarifies the determinants of subsidiary performance, offers deeper insights from both theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects and proposes some promising avenues for future research directions.

This study examines education for sustainability (EfS) within the Chinese context, to specifically enrich the understanding on how EfS is structured and implemented to nurture citizenship in the policy practices of universities in Mainland China and Hong Kong.

A cross-case analysis is recruited to examine the commonalities and differences between two universities and identify patterns in cultivating sustainability citizenship within higher education institutions (HEIs) in China. Data were collected through reviewing documents, including two universities’ strategic plans, action plans, department meeting memos, program introductions, course outlines and publicity coverage. Observation was also adopted to enrich the data for analysis, covering meetings, speeches by senior management, university events and informal conversations about university operations.

Citizenship and sustainability in university strategic planning, curriculum and instruction, carriers of EfS institutionalization, and resources and impacts of EfS beyond the institutes were analyzed in a comparative manner, offering valuable insights into how EfS can be institutionalized in different universities based on their unique appeals, existing curriculum and management systems.

By exploring these intra-national distinctions in EfS, the study sheds light on the variation within China's citizenship education, which is traditionally seen as highly unified with limited room for differences. The detailed exploration of university strategies and program/course content enriches the literature of sustainability as an educational phenomenon on an international scale and modernized citizenship education in China.

Close inspection of some of the more intricate details of the two most recent planning efforts, the award-winning Amman Plan 2025 and the strategic master plan known as the Amman Development Corridor Study (ADC), particularly in their most direct area of overlap, that is, the Metropolitan Growth Strategy.

Study and interpretation of published documents relevant to the plans in question.

The study reveals that the emerging objectives of accommodating migrant capital within the context of state-wide neo-liberal restructuring, particularly at the city’s eastern and south-eastern edge, have yet to benefit from recent scholarship on productive suburbanization.

Lack of data on Foreign Direct Investment in Amman.

The results have implications for the future urban growth scenario of Greater Amman.

Informal (illegal) building on the fringes of the city continues unabated. It is encouraged by permissive planning practice, a long-standing aspect of local practice dating to the 1970s. The longer that planning action lags, particularly at the eastern fringes, the more intense will be the informal building, and the higher the prospects for social conflict.

There has been only one, rather uncritical, published research on the Amman Plan, but none so far discussing the ADC study and its proposals.

The a priori identification and development of army personnel competencies are necessary to enable effective and efficient responses to rapidly changing climate conditions. Accordingly, this study aims to identify the performance requirements of a military flood responder and the competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities) required to perform it.

Using an abductive approach, the authors conducted both secondary and primary research to generate a validated framework of performance criteria and competencies for army personnel responding to floods. This literature review integrated both the peer-reviewed academic literature and public sector grey literature. Using the critical incident technique, the authors then conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who had previously been tasked with flood response operations. Participants were asked about the tasks required while conducting flood response operations. Interview transcripts were then content analysed to identify themes regarding those tasks, and the competencies needed to perform those tasks were then extracted and contrasted with the literature review findings. Inter-rater reliability for the analysis was established via iterative discussion between the two co-authors.

The primary data reinforced and expanded the list of performance expectations that the authors deductively identified from the integrated literature review, adding granularity to each. It also identified competencies (including both hard and soft skills) and highlighted previously neglected contextual antecedents of military flood response effectiveness.

though knowledge saturation was achieved from the 15 interviews conducted, further research with larger samples could more deeply ground the evidence discovered in this study. Nevertheless, the competencies identified in this paper could serve as a starting guide to staffing and/or training interventions targeted at improving these competencies for personnel responding to flood scenarios.

The theoretical findings also have immediate practical relevance to training for flood response operations. In particular, the subtle challenges in competency crossover from military operations to flood response operations may facilitate not only more efficient, targeted training (that could improve the effectiveness of army personnel involved in humanitarian roles), but could be applied to the selection of army personnel as well. This study may also help provincial/municipal operators and emergency planners by better communicating the strengths and limitations of army personnel in addressing civilian military cooperation for humanitarian operations. Thus, the findings of this research study represent an important first step in prompting attention to the strategic human resource planning studies required to make all responders more efficient and effective in their respective division of labour within the humanitarian domain.

Peering a little beyond these research findings, human-induced climate change is expected to continue increasing the frequency of such events (IPCC, 2021), and a timely, national force is likely to be increasingly required for Canadians impacted by major disasters stemming from natural hazards when local resources become overwhelmed. Yet, there is some concern from the CAF that increasing responsiveness to disaster operations will affect their military readiness (Leuprecht and Kasurak, 2020). One can indeed envision a paradox whereby the CAF is both a “force of last resort” while increasingly becoming a “first choice for domestic disaster and emergency assistance”. The practical implications from this research also suggest that military personnel, while fully capable of successfully conducting flood response operations, may become overburdened and less able to adopt yet greater capacity and training for other additional humanitarian work. Nevertheless, the competencies highlighted by participants can help inform the next flood response operation in Canada.

Most literature in the field of emergency response focuses on cooperation between civilian and military resources and other strategic-level themes. The findings address critical granularity missing at the operational and tactical levels of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief research. The authors also draw implications beyond the military context, including for local/regional governmental players (operators and emergency planners) as well as for volunteers in flood response roles.