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The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical model elaborating on the type of conditions that can inhibit (or at least temporarily hold back) “reactive conformance” in the wake of an increasing reliance on quantitative performance evaluations of academic research and researchers.

A qualitative study of a research group at a Swedish university who was recurrently exposed to quantitative performance evaluations of their research activities.

The empirical findings show how the research group under study exhibited a surprisingly high level of non-compliance and non-conformity in relation to what was deemed important and legitimate by the prevailing performance evaluations. Based on this, we identify four important qualities of pre-existing research/er ideals that seem to make them particularly resilient to an infiltration of an “academic performer ideal,” namely that they are (1) central and since-long established, (2) orthogonal to (i.e. very different from) the academic performer ideal as materialized by the performance measurement system, (3) largely shared within the research group and (4) externally legitimate. The premise is that these qualities form an important basis and motivation for not only criticizing, but also contesting, the academic performer ideal.

Extant research generally finds that the proliferation of quantitatively oriented performance evaluations within academia makes researchers adopt a new type of academic performer ideal which promotes research conformity and superficiality. This study draws upon, and adds to, an emerging literature that has begun to problematize this “reactive conformance-thesis” through identifying four qualities of pre-existing research/er ideals that can inhibit (or at least temporarily hold back) such “reactive research conformance.”

Governments and organizations worldwide are concerned over the declining number of young people choosing to study Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), especially after the age of 16. Research has foregrounded that students with positive attitudes toward science are more likely to find it relevant and aspire to a science career. This study aims to understand the factors shaping students’ attitudes as these are pivotal in promoting science learning.

This study uses the framework of science capital to understand what shapes young people’s engagement with or resistance to science. The authors conducted four Computational Thinking making-based workshops with 106 children aged 15–16 years, of which 58 filled in a questionnaire and 22 were interviewed. Statistical and content analyses were performed respectively.

The results indicate that children who are more exposed to science-related activities and contexts are more likely to have higher self-efficacy, and that those with higher prior coding experience scored higher in their self-efficacy and science capital. Six themes emerged from the content analysis, highlighting the diverse factors shaping students’ attitudes, such as teaching methods, stereotypes and the degree of difficulty encountered while engaging with science in and out of school.

By combining qualitative and quantitative methods with the use of science capital, the authors found a number of aspects of the school experience that shape students’ attitudes to science learning in and out of school, as well as their science career aspirations.

A great deal of literature exists for leadership educators related to programs design, delivery, and student learning. However, little is known about leadership educators, who have largely been left out of contemporary leadership education research. We looked to teaching and teacher education literature to derive a model for leadership educator professional identity development. The four spaces of identity development are exploration, experimentation, validation, and confirmation. We propose that an individual can move forward and backwards through the model as a result of both ongoing influences and positive or negative critical incidents. We discuss implications for professional development and future research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how project portfolio selection (PPS) methods have evolved and which approaches are more suitable for radical innovation projects. This paper addressed the following research question: how have the selection approaches evolved to better fit within radical innovation conditions? The current literature offers a number of selection approaches with different and, in some cases, conflicting nature. Therefore, there is a lack of understanding regarding when and how to use these approaches in order to select a specific type of innovation projects (from incremental to more radical ones).

Given the nature of the research question, the authors perform a systematic literature review method and analyze 48 portfolio selection approaches. The authors then classified and characterized these articles in order to identify techniques, tools, required data and types of examined projects, among other aspects.

The authors identify four key features related to the selection of radical innovation projects: dynamism, interdependency management, uncertainty treatment and required input data. Based on the content analysis, the authors identified that approaches based on different sources and nature of data are more appropriated for uncertain conditions, such as behavioral methods, information gap theory, real options and integrated approaches.

The research provides a comprehensive framework about PPS methods and how they have been evolving over time. This portfolio selection framework considers the particular aspects of incremental and radical innovation projects. The authors hope that the framework contributes to reinvigorating the literature on selection approaches for innovation projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how first-tier suppliers in multi-tier supply chains adapt their vertical and horizontal relationships to reduce the risk of slavery-like practices.

Using Archer’s morphogenetic theory as an analytical lens, this paper presents case analyses adduced from primary and secondary data related to the development of relational anti-slavery supply capabilities in Brazilian–UK beef and timber supply chains.

Four distinct types of adaptation were found among first-tier suppliers: horizontal systemisation, vertical systemisation, horizontal transformation and vertical differentiation.

This study draws attention to the socially situated nature of corporate action, moving beyond the rationalistic discourse that underpins existing research studies of multi-tier, socially sustainable, supply chain management. Cross-sector comparison highlights sub-country and intra-sectoral differences in both institutional setting and the approaches and outcomes of individual corporate actors’ initiatives. Sustainable supply chain management theorists would do well to seek out those institutional entrepreneurs who actively reshape the institutional conditions within which they find themselves situated.

Practitioners may benefit from adopting a structured approach to the analysis of the necessary or contingent complementarities between their, primarily economic, objectives and the social sustainability goals of other, potential, organizational partners.

A range of interventions that may serve to reduce the risk of slavery-like practices in global commodity chains are presented.

This paper presents a novel analysis of qualitative empirical data and extends understanding of the agential role played by first-tier suppliers in global, multi-tier, commodity, supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to ease the methodological application of critical realist multilevel research in business marketing. Although there has been plenty of theoretical contributions in this field, it is not always clear how critical realism can be best applied in business marketing settings. Accordingly, this paper addresses this gap in literature. Also, this paper addresses the calls for a multilevel conceptualization for resilience, based on the critical realist laminated systems.

This is a conceptual paper, which uses pre-existing literature to develop a critical realist methodological approach for the purposes of multilevel business marketing research. The contribution is based on literature by combining pre-existing ideas in a new way in the context of business marketing.

This paper makes a methodological contribution by introducing the critical realist “laminated systems” to business marketing as a multilevel research approach. Furthermore, the authors conceptualize a specific laminated model, the Laminated Interactional Model (LIM), that is designed for the purpose of business marketing research. The LIM is a methodological tool that conceptualizes business marketing based on six levels of analysis, easing the methodological application of critical realism in business marketing settings. In addition, to provide an example, the authors apply the LIM to the literature on resilience, providing a multilevel conceptualization. This is a timely contribution, as resilience has emerged as a central concept addressing interorganizational survival during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper makes three main contributions to business marketing. First, this paper provides a methodological contribution by introducing the critical realist notion of “laminated systems” to business marketing. Second, this paper conceptualizes a specific laminated model for business marketing, namely, the LIM. Third, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper will apply critical realism and the LIM to the notion of resilience, addressing the calls for multilevel conceptualizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine mothers’ social media accounts that focus on children’s fashion. The authors probed children’s fashion photo practices as representations of the mothers’ extended self and the kind of childhood representations produced by the social media accounts. They also investigated mothers’ perceptions of children’s privacy when engaging in sharenting – the sharing of information about children or parenting online.

The study is based on 16 semi-structured interviews with Finnish mothers who had Instagram accounts focusing on children’s fashion.

Children’s fashion photos play a diverse role in mothers’ identity work. The photos can be used to express a mother’s taste and aesthetic skills, to express values, to fit into peer groups and to store memories of oneself and the children. Through the photos, representations of the prevailing Finnish childhood ideals, such as authenticity, naturalness and playfulness, are reproduced. The mothers perceived the children as part of their extended self and justified sharenting with mother- and child-centered arguments.

Through shedding light on the practices of social media fashion photography, this paper provides insights into how commercialism and social media shape cultural expectations for both motherhood and childhood. The paper contributes to previous research on sharenting, extending it to the context of fashion photography.

This study revisits the Great Canadian Grain Logistics Crisis of 2013-14 to explore the competitiveness of the country's grain exports. An approach to comprehending the dilemmas of the international grain supply chain and trade, and national logistics policy in an era of multinational corporations, draws upon the literature on global value chain analysis. This analysis identifies both the grain industry's global and local dimensions. An important literature on the 'politics’ of the supply chain is also called into play to discuss who controls what aspects. This task of interpreting the various steps in Canada's grain logistics chain recognizes the key economic actors - producers, grain companies, railway companies, port terminal operators and export buyers - and political struggles between them as they each seek to maximize their self-interest. Policy implications for streamlining logistics operations are drawn from identifying where changes in the supply chain arrangements have gained or lost opportunities in export markets, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

This paper analyzes how public servants who work with young people discursively cope with competing demands on their agency, defined as their orientation toward and capabilities to influence their clients. Previous studies revealed how public servants treat their clients when facing competing demands but paid less attention to how public servants define their agency.

Micro-level discourse analysis is applied to analyze how public servants represent their agency in client relationships, drawing on interviews with nine individuals in a Finnish city who work with young people lacking jobs or school placements.

Instead of describing their agency coherently, the interviewees applied several discourses to represent their agency differently in relation to different demands. This ability to navigate contradictory discourses is discussed as reflexive discursive coping strategy, which enables public servants to maintain a positive image of their agency despite tensions at work.

Although the method does not allow direct generalizations, it reveals discursive strategies likely to be found in many contemporary public organizations.

The study indicates a need to better acknowledge and nurture the multifaceted nature of agency to improve service quality.

The findings deepen the view on tensions in public servants' work and show that diverse discourses not only create anxiety but also help individuals dealing with contradictory work.

Research has shown that science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) self-beliefs and enjoyment are critical factors for predicting female students’ persistence in STEM degrees and careers. Studies have shown the positive effects of informal STEM learning experiences on female students’ self-beliefs. However, with the rise of all-female STEM learning experiences, such as summer camps, considering the potential advantages and disadvantages of co-ed options is important. Further, prior STEM education research has focused on sex differences in students’ self-efficacy and STEM career interests. Our study aims to examine within sex differences in secondary, female students (n = 104) who attend either a co-ed STEM camp or a same-sex STEM camp.

To examine potential differences, we conducted independent sample t-tests.

Results of the study include statistically significant differences in mathematics and science self-efficacy as well as STEM career interest after participating in their respective camps.

Further, prior research in STEM education has focused on between sex differences in students’ self-efficacy and STEM career interest.