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Stemming from the resource-based view (RBV) approach, this article overcomes the limits of the conventional strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, setting the basis for the model actual–potential, positive–negative, internal–external (APPNIE). This paper enacts a new framework demonstrating how strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of SWOT can be replaced by actual or potential, positive or negative elements, considered in a dynamic way.

The traditional SWOT analysis provides only a partial view of the environment and adopts incorrect terminology that can confuse the user, preventing a clear understanding of the factors affecting the organisation’s situation. The authors developed a new tool to help managers in their decision-making processes.

This study proposes a new tool for assessing the quality of management, resources and environment, which is useful in understanding the economic and social scenario in which a firm is embedded. From a practical point of view, the new tool is applied in the case study, and it shows how managers and students can use it while choosing between alternative options (different strategies, markets, technologies, etc.).

The APPNIE model introduces a new dimension that the SWOT analysis does not consider. Moreover, for each element of the new matrix, the authors propose a plan of action, which is another valuable benefit of the APPNIE model.

The aim of this paper is to explore the implementation of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in meat industry for environmental performance and examine a proposed conceptual framework by capturing insights from lean and ISO 14001 experts in New Zealand (NZ).

Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a group of consultants (lean and ISO 14001) to evaluate the suitability of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in the meat industry for environmental performance. A conceptual framework from literature has guided this study leading to its further development based on the empirical evidence collected.

Findings have illustrated a synergistic positive impact of lean and ISO 14001 implementation as an integrated approach for sustaining environmental performance in the meat industry. A joint implementation program provides more clarity in aligning ISO 14001 operational procedures with lean tools and techniques for an enhanced environmental performance outcome.

The application of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 framework is proposed in this paper, which can help industry practitioners and academia in developing a joint implementation strategy and conducting future research.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to assess the effective implementation of lean and ISO 14001 as an integrated approach in the NZ meat industry.

This study aims to analyze how sustainability, through an efficient knowledge management (KM) system, can serve as a driving force with respect to corporate culture and reputation. The research questions that guided this study are mainly the following: Are KM and sustainability related? Can culture strengthen the link between KM and sustainability? Can the link between KM and sustainability be affected by reputation?

The methodological approach adopted corresponds to qualitative research of analysis on the reference literature in the international field, also supported by empirical analysis.

In this study, the authors show that there is no explicit correlation between sustainability and KM. This relationship, in fact, is not underlined in nonfinancial reporting because it is absent or because it is not considered relevant. Too often sustainability is reduced to a mere relational and reputational tool, ignoring the fact it must be considered a consequence and not the main goal to improve companies’ culture.

The sample studied by the authors refers to the top 40 companies listed on the Italian market, not allowing to generalize the findings across the international context.

The practical implications that could result from making explicit the relationship between sustainability and KM are multiple: the substantial benefits of the reputational aspect, an increase in the economic value related to sustainability; to ensure the going concern of the company and implement its ability to produce and share value in the long term.

The social benefits of a stronger relationship between sustainability and KM are related to the possibility to improve the wealth of all the stakeholders.

This paper analyzes the links between sustainability and KM to understand the influence of these factors on corporate culture and reputation.

Organisational strategy becomes reality by connecting organisation’s resources and capabilities in daily operations, and physical workspace is one of the environments in which this takes place. This study aims to explore to what extent factors required for successful strategy implementation are considered when designing, using and managing workspaces of knowledge-intensive organisations.

For the study, managers in 25 large and medium-sized knowledge-intensive organisations were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews focused on organisation’s strategy, strategy implementation practices and workspace design and management. To form a comprehensive framework of strategy implementation success factors for the study, the factors of 11 frameworks were analysed, grouped and renamed.

Current workspace design, usage and management mainly support human-related strategy implementation factors. However, both organisation- and human-related factors are needed for the strategy implementation to be successful. Therefore, the organisations studied may have unused potential in their workspaces to ensure strategy-aligned operations and behaviour.

Due to the potential imbalance between organisation- and human-related strategy implementation factors, a more holistic, organisational-level approach to workspace design, usage and management is recommended to ensure the success of strategy implementation.

Workspaces have extensively been studied from individual strategy implementation factors’ as well as employees’ perspectives. Prior to this work, there are only few studies exploring workspace in the holistic, strategy implementation context.

This study investigates the relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and the time to Initial Public Offering (IPO), which stands as an entrepreneurially risky choice, particularly challenging in family firms. We also investigate the moderating role of family ownership dispersion (FOD).

We draw on an integrated theoretical framework bringing together the upper echelons theory and the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective and on hand-collected data on a sample of Italian family IPOs that occurred in the period 2000–2020. We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and alternative model estimations to test our hypotheses.

BGD positively affects the time to IPO, thus, it increases the time required to go public. FOD negatively moderates this relationship. Our findings remain robust with different measures for BGD, FOD, and family business definition as well as with different econometric models.

The article develops literature on family firms and IPO and it enriches the academic debate about gender and IPOs in family firms. It adds to studies addressing the determinants of the time to IPO by incorporating gender diversity and the FOD into the discussion. Finally, it contributes to research on women and outcomes in family firms.

Supplier codes of conduct are amongst the most widely used practices in sustainable procurement programs. While there are limitations and risks involved in using supplier codes of conduct (including the risk of greenwashing, a weak link to action and the inability of supplier to comply), there is only a modest amount of research on the topic, other than content analysis. We aim to contribute to research both lessons learned, over a two-decade period, about the implementation and use of a supplier code of conduct from a case study, as well as, to suggest further research that can support the industry and enrich insight into the effective adoption of supply codes of conduct.

Thanks to the support of our co-author from Bayer we are able to share lessons learned by the global procurement team of Bayer and use these as a basis for suggesting questions for further research. The approach of this paper centres on the adoption and implementation of the supplier code of conduct in an effort to complement existing research on supplier codes of conduct that is largely focused on code of conduct content, less on the implementation of codes of conduct. The collaboration with our co-author from Bayer enables direct access to experiences and managerial perspectives. By considering the two-decade journey towards more sustainable supply chain management at Bayer, we are able to achieve a longitudinal perspective on adoption and implementation aspects.

Bayer ensures personal and community engagement in its sustainable procurement program in order to drive action and improve decision making along the value chains. The company regularly updates its code of conduct to stay aligned with its maturity and complements the code of conduct with a continuous improvement focus, supported by both generic and industry-specific consortia. The company has not yet been able to establish direct visibility into the conduct of tier 2 and up suppliers.

This paper helps close a gap in the literature and provides input into industry efforts in one of the most widely used practices in sustainable procurement. We hope that the research questions that we developed based on the first 20+ years of Bayer’s learning journey towards sustainable procurement will inspire research that can impact industry efforts towards creating a more sustainable future.

The data for this case were obtained primarily through a series of in-person interviews in Penang between the authors and Pete Browning (a pseudonym) from 2017 to early 2019. The authors also consulted secondary data sources, including publicly available material on BMax and “Company B”.

This case examines a key decision, or set of decisions, in the life of a small- to medium-sized management consultancy group, namely, whether they might expand their operations in Southeast Asia, and if so, where. These key decisions came in the wake of their having already established a very modest scale presence there, with an operating base on the island of Penang just off the north western coast of Peninsular Malaysia. The initial establishment of a Southeast Asian branch had been somewhat spontaneous in nature – a former colleague of one of the two managing partners in the USA was on the ground in Malaysia and available: he became the local partner in the firm. But the firm had now been eyeing expansion within the region, with three markets under particular consideration (Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand) and a further two (Vietnam and China) also seen as possible targets, though at a more peripheral level. The questions facing the decision makers were “was it time they expand beyond Malaysia?” and “if so, where?”

This case could be used effectively in undergraduate courses in international business. The key concepts on which the case focuses are the factors affecting market entry, particularly the choice of market and the assessment of potential attractiveness such markets offer.

This study of job advertisements for internal communication practitioners aims to investigate the signals that organisations are sending the profession about what is required of these roles. The concept of corporate voice – the “voice” of the organisation – is problematised to explore tensions in vocality. The aim is to support communication practitioners to navigate multi-vocality in the evolving professional context of digital communication technologies and changes in the workplace.

This qualitative study considers the role of voice in corporate communication practices and offers insights into “digital disruption” and the discursive pressure of employers' priorities on the profession and its practices. Job advertisements for internal communication practitioners were examined during 6-month periods in 2018, 2020 and 2022, which was a significant time of change for the profession with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Qualitative content analysis of 514 internal communication job advertisements identifies that control and consistency are valorised, and continue to dominate descriptions of internal communication skills and responsibilities. The digital affordances that communication practitioners rely on has not changed significantly and a preference for “broadcasting” is evident.

This study provides insights into how Australian organisations shape and sustain univocal corporate communication practices, and the incompatibility of narrow configurations of voice with emerging organisational challenges such as social connectedness.

Cyber-attacks that generate technical disruptions in organisational operations and damage the reputation of organisations have become all too common in the contemporary organisation. This paper explores the reputation repair strategies undertaken by organisations in the event of becoming victims of cyber-attacks.

For developing the authors’ contribution in the context of the Internet service providers' industry, the authors draw on a qualitative case study of TalkTalk, a British telecommunications company providing business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) Internet services, which was a victim of a “significant and sustained” cyber-attack in October 2015. Data for the enquiry is sourced from publicly available archival documents such as newspaper articles, press releases, podcasts and parliamentary hearings on the TalkTalk cyber-attack.

The findings suggest a dynamic interplay of technical and rhetorical responses in dealing with cyber-attacks. This plays out in the form of marshalling communication and mortification techniques, bolstering image and riding on leader reputation, which serially combine to strategically orchestrate reputational repair and stigma erasure in the event of a cyber-attack.

Analysing a prototypical case of an organisation in dire straits following a cyber-attack, the paper provides a systematic characterisation of the setting-in-motion of strategic responses to manage, revamp and ameliorate damaged reputation during cyber-attacks, which tend to negatively shape the evaluative perceptions of the organisation's salient audience.

Policy coherence is a complex and tough task for many developing nations because their capacity to examine and deliver evidence-based inputs to policymaking is limited, and policy dialogue platforms need to be effectively used. Resolving these difficulties is a critical requirement for policy consistency. As a result, the study focuses on the level of policy coherence for climate change adaptation (CCA), disaster risk reduction (DRR) and sustainable development goals (SDG) in Sri Lanka and suggests routes for policy coherence for Resilience. This study aims to investigate the coherent approach of CCA, DRR and SDG; to identify concerns in policy documents addressing the coherence of CCA, DRR and SDG in local context; and to propose policy coherence suggestions for resilience in Sri Lanka.

Methodology comprises a review and content analysis of 17 policy and legal documents in Sri Lanka and a qualitative study. The qualitative approach consists of semistructured interviews that obtained deep and broad expertise knowledge with ten government representatives and stakeholders. Both content analysis and interview data were analyzed by using NVivo.

It was discovered that there are several issues with the coherence of policies in Sri Lanka, including the fragmented approach, lack of integration, inadequate coordination, limited resources and lack of monitoring and evaluation. The policies are inspired by international frameworks, and local implementations are not focused, leading to inadequate implementation of policies. The lack of development cooperation for the use of innovative approaches, such as climate-resilient infrastructure and environmentally friendly solutions for CCA and DRR, further aggravates the situation. Another concern is the lack of land use management and responsibility for the development of physical infrastructure for DRR integration with CCA. It is found that there is a limited community involvement which is vital for the implementation of policies. Local implementations are encouraged to fill the gaps in existing policies/acts. The analytical framework of the study is based on a preliminary examination of policy documents, a review of the literature and discussions with practitioners. The framework reflects the current situation of policy integration which addresses strategic, conceptual, institutional, operational and financial coherence. The research suggests pathways for achieving policy coherence in CCA, DRR and SDG in Sri Lanka, such as enhancing the strategic coherence by improving goals to increase the coherence within CCA, DRR and SDG; improving the credibility of the unified approach for developing DRR and CCA risk assessments; intensifying institutional cooperation and stakeholder management; improving the common monitoring and evaluation; establishing implementation strategies; and increasing the community involvement.

The study on policy coherence in Sri Lanka recommends increasing community and professional involvement, conducting more research, developing a national strategy, increasing capacity building, strengthening international collaboration and fostering multisectoral collaboration. These recommendations can help improve policy coherence between CCA, DRR and SDGs, align policies with national goals and priorities and improve implementation effectiveness. By implementing these recommendations, Sri Lanka can address the challenges of climate change and natural disasters and achieve SDGs.

The study on policy coherence for resilience in Sri Lanka has practical implications, including improved coordination and resource allocation, increased capacity building, improved reputation and sustainability. By integrating CCA, DRR and SDGs, this study can help Sri Lanka become more resilient to climate change and natural disasters, achieve SDGs and become a responsible actor in the international community. These implications can contribute to a more sustainable future and ensure that development goals are achieved in a way that is resilient to climate change and natural disasters.

Increased community participation: the study emphasizes the importance of community involvement in the policy development process. This can help build trust between communities and government agencies, improve transparency and ensure that policies are developed in a way that is responsive to local needs and priorities.

Based on the identified existing loopholes in the policies and pathways to policy coherence, the issues in policymaking could be overcome. It could be used to establish strong linkages between policies based on CCA, DRR and SDGs to achieve long-term resilience.