Search results

This study aims to explore how managers exercise agency in strategic investment decisions (SIDs) by drawing on their knowledgeability of the strategic context. Specifically, the authors address the role of position–practice relations and irresistible causal forces in this conduct.

The authors examine SID-making (SIDM) practices in four case organisations operating in highly competitive markets, conducting interviews with managers at various levels and analysing company documents. Drawing on strong structuration theory, the authors show how managerial decision makers draw upon their knowledge of organisational context when exercising agency in SIDs.

The authors provide insights into how SIDM behaviour, specifically agents’ conduct, is shaped by a combination of position–practice relations and the agents’ comprehension of their organisation’s context.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice.

The authors extend the SIDM literature by surfacing the issue of how actors’ conjuncturally-specific knowledge of external structures shapes the general dispositions they draw on in exercising agency in practice. Particularly, the authors contribute to this literature by identifying irresistible causal forces and illuminating why actors might not resist in SIDM processes, despite having the potential to do so.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the critical role of strategic human resource management in attracting and retaining top talent amidst the intensifying war for skilled workers. The key battlegrounds in the talent wars and the strategic HR levers organisations can use to gain a competitive edge are also highlighted.

The author draws upon previous studies, expert and industry insights to provide an overview of the challenges and strategies related to winning the war for talent. The findings from various sources are synthesised to identify the most critical issues and effective approaches in talent acquisition, employer branding, employee retention and the evolving role of chief human resources officers (CHROs).

This paper finds that innovative recruiting strategies, such as tapping into neurodiverse talent pools and leveraging remote work models, can help companies access new sources of skilled workers. Developing a compelling employer brand and value proposition is crucial for attracting top candidates. Retention strategies, including job crafting, frequent feedback, tailored benefits and a strong learning culture, are essential for engaging and retaining employees. This paper also highlights the increasing strategic importance of CHROs in driving talent management and organisational success.

This paper offers a timely overview of the war for talent by synthesising insights from various sources to offer actionable strategies for HR leaders. It emphasises the critical role of strategic HR in attracting and retaining top performers and underscores the importance of adapting talent management practices to the rapidly evolving world of work. This paper can be used as a source of information for HR professionals and executives, address some of the challenges of the talent wars.

The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the business environment and severely affected the morale and performance of the employees. Further, the Indian automobile industry witnessed major setbacks and drastically impacted sector in COVID-19. Talent agility is an emerging concept in the field of HRM that will foster innovations and productivity in the automobile industry. Thus, this study aims to explore the barriers to building in-house agile talents in the Indian automobile industry in the new normal.

The barriers of talent agility were identified through a literature review and validated through experts’ opinions. This study used a hybrid approach, which combines Interpretive Structural Modelling-Polarity (ISM-P) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to develop a hierarchical structural model of the barriers, followed by classification into cause and effect groups.

The result of the multi-method approach identified that shortage of skills and competencies, lack of IT infrastructure, lack of ambidextrous leaders, lack of smart HRM technologies and practices, lack of attractive reward system/career management, poor advanced T&D, poor industry, institute interface and financial constraints are the critical barriers.

It can provide a strategic roadmap for automobile manufacturers to promote talent agility in the current wave of digitalization (Industry 4.0). This study can help the managers to address and overcome the barrier and hurdles in building talent agility.

This study is unique in that it addresses the contemporary issues related to talent agility in the context of the Indian automobile industry in the current rapidly changing environment. This study developed a holistic integrated ISM(P)-DEMATEL hierarchical framework on the barriers of talent agility indicating inner dependency weights, i.e., the strength of interrelationship between the barriers.

This study investigates the association between board gender diversity and multiple directorships, two board characteristics representing human, social and relational capital and the extent to which corporate reporting (using the double materiality principle) explains value creation for the organization, environment, society and the economy, which we define as total value reporting.

This study uses a disclosure index developed based on the Integrated Reporting Framework and the Global Reporting Initiative (G4) guidelines to analyze disclosures made using the double materiality principle and reflect the value created by companies. The sample includes corporate reports of 102 Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) companies in the Health Care sector. Ordinary least squares regression analyses test the relationship between board gender diversity and multiple directorships and the quality of total value reporting (and its subcomponents) with appropriate control variables.

Findings reveal that human, social and relational capital formed through multiple directorships and gender-diverse boards is positively related to the quality of total value reporting. Results hold for alternative measures and sensitivity tests of gender diversity and multiple directorships.

Our study reveals that (1) the <IR> Framework, when combined with the GRI Framework, effectively measures connected information quality under a double materiality perspective for total value reporting; (2) enhancing board effectiveness for total value reporting is achievable by increasing female directors and those with multiple directorships; (3) limitations in accessing experienced directors, particularly women, do not disadvantage countries like Australia and (4) directors holding multiple board positions are pivotal in disseminating best practices in corporate governance and reporting across various companies and industries.

Our research reveals that gender diversity on corporate boards transcends mere representation, significantly enhancing how firms articulate their value to stakeholders. This finding underscores the urgency for public policies to advocate for increased female board representation. Additionally, our findings indicate that board diversity, encompassing gender, experience, industry background and cultural perspectives, can elevate transparency in reporting, crucial for attracting global investors, particularly in emerging markets.

Our study is an early attempt to examine total value reporting – underpinned by double materiality – which reports on how companies create value for themselves, the environment and society. It is one of the first to identify drivers of reporting based on double materiality.

This study aims to investigate the influences on the digitalization of management control and the effects of this digitalization on management control tasks performed, management control instruments used and the organization of management control.

This empirical analysis is based on a survey of 189 management accountants and managers responsible for management control in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Logistic regression analyses were used to test the investigated effects.

This study finds that digital competencies, standardization of processes and data management contribute to the digitalization of management control. This study further finds that digitalization significantly increases the coverage of strategic and operational management control tasks and the use of operational management control instruments but not of strategic instruments.

This study investigates the influence of digitalization in management control on strategic and operational management control tasks, instruments and organizations. In contrast, prior research has focused on single aspects of management control or analyzed the impact on the entire company. This is also the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to systematically identify potential influences on the digitalization of management control and analyze them empirically.

This study explores the work practices of managers who increased working from home during the pandemic to determine what, if any, impact there was on the conditions for vertical leadership development.

The project utilized a survey approach. Each of the participants completed an anonymous online questionnaire using Google Forms. The questionnaire included four sections. The first section included informed consent and required participants to agree before completing the questionnaire. Participants provided general demographic information in the second section, including gender, age, race, job title, company size, average project team size and industry. The third section asked if there had been any change in their work location following the pandemic. The last section asked participants about their work practices.

This study demonstrates that managers continued to be engaged in vertical leadership development activities while working from home. It also suggests that managers faced challenges working from home following the COVID-19 pandemic, which were prime vertical leadership development opportunities.

To capitalize on these opportunities, organizations can more intentionally support the development of their remote staff.

This paper aims to examine the consistency between firms’ stakeholder-friendly responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and their environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings. Consistent firms are those with high prior ESG ratings that actively support stakeholders during the COVID-19 crisis.

The authors use data from JUST Capital, which tracks Russell 1000 firms’ actions in response to the pandemic, to examine the relationship between pre-pandemic ESG ratings and their COVID responses towards employees, customers and communities. The authors also analyse the impact of firms’ consistency between pre-pandemic ESG ratings and stakeholder-friendly COVID responses on ESG ratings and stock returns.

This study finds that firms with higher pre-pandemic ESG ratings are more likely to support their stakeholders during the pandemic. The authors also find that firms with high ESG ratings before the pandemic experience a decline in their ESG ratings if they do not actively support their communities during the COVID-19 crisis, although insufficient employee/customer support does not impact their ESG ratings. Finally, the authors find that firms with higher pre-pandemic ESG ratings that continue to uphold their ESG commitments through community assistance during the pandemic achieve higher stock returns compared to inconsistent firms.

The results reveal gaps in how comprehensively ESG agencies assess firms’ crisis responses, highlighting areas for rating improvements. The findings contribute to sustainable development by revealing the importance of firms upholding their ESG commitments during crises to maintain stakeholder trust and drive long-term value creation.

The findings underscore the need for responsive, transparent ESG rating processes to support the integration of sustainability considerations into corporate practices and investment decisions, particularly during evolving societal expectations during crises.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate how pre-pandemic ESG ratings explain firms’ stakeholder-friendly responses during the COVID-19 pandemic and analyse the integration of these responses and pandemic risks into ESG ratings during the crisis.

This paper aims to examine the existing literature on firms’ power through the lens of the supply chain and highlights some gaps that could be covered by future research.

This study uses a systematic framework-based review combining the insights of the antecedents, decisions and outcomes (ADO) and theories, contexts and methods (TCM) frameworks. The review was carried out using a sample of 108 articles published between 1984 and 2022 in 25 prestigious journals.

The ADO framework maps out the state of the art of the antecedents of power (i.e. sources and types of firm power), the decision to use power and the effect that exercising power over other firms may have on firm performance and the quality of inter-firm relationships. In addition, this framework highlights factors that mediate or moderate the decision to exercise power and the factors that mediate or moderate the outcomes of exercising power or power asymmetry. The TCM framework provides insights into the theories, contexts (i.e. countries, industries, level of analysis and sources of data) and methods used by the existing literature. The content analysis using the aforementioned frameworks provides the basis to elaborate propositions for future research on power in the supply chain from the perspective of gender differences.

This systematic literature review offers a comprehensive guide for researchers to understand the antecedents, decisions and outcomes of firm power in the supply chain, as well as the TCM used in the literature. The content analysis using frameworks provides a road map to investigate the proposed factors that might moderate the decision to exercise power and the outcome of exercising power or power asymmetry from the perspective of gender differences. In addition, based on content analysis, the authors make propositions about TCM that could be applied in future research.

From a practical perspective, this systematic literature review may help managers to better understand the sources and consequences of their firm’s power. This would allow managers to make better decisions when negotiating with their supply chain parties, which could potentially lead to better performance for their firms and the whole supply chain.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to conduct a comprehensive systematic literature review of the different dimensions of firms’ power in the supply chain.

In business-to-business interactions, conflicts are inevitable, and conflict-handling strategies that consider different variables improve the decision-making process of actors. This study aims to reveal the role of power and criticality in conflict-handling research in logistics service networks.

A 2 × 2 between-subject experimental design with four different scenarios was used. One hundred sixty logistics service actors completed an online questionnaire. Data were analyzed with ANOVA and paired sample t-tests using the SPSS 28.0 program.

In comparative scenarios involving high and low power dynamics, individuals with high power and high criticality situations are more inclined to favor the dominating strategy compared to low-power and low-criticality contexts. However, when faced with specific circumstances characterized by both high power and high criticality, actors tend to prioritize the integrating strategy initially, followed by the dominating and obliging strategies in that order. Notably, the statistical analysis revealed no significant interaction effect between criticality and power concerning the integrating, obliging and dominating conflict-handling strategies.

This study used an experimental approach to investigate criticality and power as contextual elements in determining conflict-handling strategies in an inter-firm environment within logistics service networks. This study is particularly groundbreaking in its knowledge of the relationship among power dynamics, conflict criticality and conflict-handling strategies.