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This article considers how digital technologies are informed by, and implicated in, the systematic and interlocking oppressions of colonialism, misogyny, and racism, all of which have been identified as root causes of the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis in Canada. The authors consider how technology can facilitate multiple forms of violence against women including stalking and intimate partner violence, human trafficking, pornography and child abuse images, and online hate and harassment and note instances where Indigenous women and girls may be particularly vulnerable. The authors also explore some of the complexities related to police use of technology for investigatory purposes, touching on police use of social media and DNA technology. Without simplistically blaming technology, the authors argue that technology interacts with multiple factors in the complex historical, socio-cultural environment that incubates the national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. The article concludes with related questions that may be considered at the impending national inquiry.

The emergence of technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) has led to calls for increased collaboration across and among sectors. Growing recognition of the need for multistakeholder collaboration (MSC) between industry, civil society, government, and academia reflects the number of moving parts involved, the need for specialized knowledge and skills in relation to certain issues, and the importance of recognizing the ways in which interlocking systems of subordination can lead to very different experiences with and impressions of social justice issues (Crenshaw, 1991). Numerous financial, professional, and personal factors incentivize MSC. Notwithstanding growing opportunities and incentives for TFVA-related MSC, collaborative efforts bring with them their own set of challenges. This chapter integrates elements of the literature on MSC, particularly those focusing on risks, benefits, and ways forward, with excerpts from a dialogue between an academic and community organization leader who are collaborating on a research partnership encompassing TFVA against young Canadians.

When complex social-ecological systems collapse and transform, the possible outcomes of this transformation are not set in stone. This paper aims to explore the role of social imagination in determining possible futures for a reformed system. The authors use a historical study of the Luddite response to the Industrial Revolution centred in the UK in the early-19th century to explore the concepts of path dependency, agency and the distributional impacts of systems change.

In this historical study, the authors used the Luddites’ own words and those of their supporters, captured in archival sources (n = 43 unique Luddite statements), to develop hypotheses around the effects on political, social and judicial consequences of a significant systems transformation. The authors then scaffolded these statements using the heuristics of panarchy and basins of attraction to conceptualize this contentious moment of British history.

Rather than a strict cautionary tale, the Luddites’ story illustrates the importance of environmental fit and selection pressures as the skilled workers sought to push the English system to a different basin of attraction. It warns us about the difficulty of a just transition in contentious economic and political conditions.

The Luddites’ story is a cautionary tale for those interested in a just transition, or bottom-up systems transformation generally as the deep basins of attraction that prefer either the status quo or alternate, elite-favouring arrangements can be challenging to shift independent of shocks. While backward looking, the authors intend these discussions to contribute to current debates on the role(s) of social innovation in social and economic policy within increasingly charged or polarized political contexts.

Social innovation itself is often predicated on the need for just transitions of complex adaptive systems (Westley et al., 2013), and the Luddite movement offers us the opportunity to study the distribution effects of a transformative systems change – the Industrial Revolution – and explore two fundamental questions that underpin much social innovation scholarship: how do we build a just future in the face of complexity and what are likely forms those conversations could take, based on historical examples?

An increasing demand of agricultural intensification and value addition necessitates the use of improved inputs such as improved seed. Smallholder farmers contribute about 70% of agricultural production in Tanzania. Agriculture sector in Tanzania contributes about 24.1% of the GDP, 30% of exports and 65% of industrial raw materials. Thus, agriculture development, economic growth and industrialization are inseparable. Due to the nature of the product, smallholder farmers cannot judge the overall excellence of seed at the time of buying. This paper assessed quality uncertainty in maize and vegetable seed and its implication for market exchange between farmers and seed sellers in Kilolo district, Iringa Tanzania. The study used a random sample of 130 smallholder farmers and representatives from ten seed companies. Asymmetric information prevails between the two trading sides, i.e. sellers and buyers, leading into quality uncertainty. Moreover, product augmentation is profoundly overlooked whereby most of seed companies have not augmented their products. Because an improved seed is a quintessential example of an experience good, quality uncertainty of some crop varieties under field conditions favored some seed brands to be used more by farmers compared to others. This paper offers a thorough deduction on quality uncertainty under farmers' field condition and its implication on market exchange. It adds information in the body of knowledge on how an improved seed can contribute to sustainable production of food and industrial raw materials, which is a step towards desired industrialization agenda in Tanzania.

The present study aims to examine the scope and contribution of behavioural investigative advice (BIA) reports from the National Crime Agency (NCA).

The 77 BIA reports reviewed were written between 2016 and 2021. They were evaluated using Toulmin’s (1958) strategy for structuring pertinent arguments, current compliance with professional standards, the grounds and backing provided for the claims made and the potential utility of the recommendations provided.

Consistent with previous research, most of the reports involved murder and sexual offences. The BIA reports met professional standards with extremely high frequency. The 77 reports contained a total of 1,308 claims of which 99% were based on stated grounds. A warrant and/or backing was provided for 73% of the claims. Most of the claims in the BIA reports involved a behavioural evaluation of the crime scene and offender characteristics. The potential utility of the reports was judged to be 95% for informative behavioural crime scene analysis and 40% for potential new lines of enquiry.

The reports should serve as a model for the work of behavioural investigative advisers internationally.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically evaluate BIA reports commissioned by the NCA; it adds to previous similar studies by evaluating the largest number of BIA reports ever reviewed, and uniquely provides judgement of overall utility.

Whether by direct or indirect action (or by inaction), multinational enterprises (MNEs) can have both a positive and a negative effect on within-country social and economic inequality. This paper aims to comment on this multifaceted relationship between MNEs and within-country inequality.

Given the absence of either robust theory or evidence in the neglected realm of MNEs and within-countries inequalities, this paper offers some general observations, highlights some of the key issues and illustrates possible avenues for future research studies.

The capacity of MNEs to upgrade economic activity in the host country is a key policy objective. MNEs have arguably contributed to reducing income inequalities between countries. However, the limited evidence available suggests that the gains of FDI are rarely evenly distributed within recipient countries, and many of the underlying dynamics need further investigation.

The authors broaden the engagement with inequality beyond income levels, as this is just one aspect of inequality that shapes or impedes human development. They believe it is necessary – for both MNEs and policymakers – to have a more nuanced understanding of how, and under what circumstances, the presence of MNEs affects inequality in host economies.

This paper relates the large literature on inequality (going beyond the mainstream focus on income inequality) to the mainstream understanding of MNE-assisted development.

Extant research mainly focused on potentially negative customer responses to service robots. In contrast, this study is one of the first to explore a service context where service robots are likely to be the preferred service delivery mechanism over human frontline employees. Specifically, the authors examine how customers respond to service robots in the context of embarrassing service encounters.

This study employs a mixed-method approach, whereby an in-depth qualitative study (study 1) is followed by two lab experiments (studies 2 and 3).

Results show that interactions with service robots attenuated customers' anticipated embarrassment. Study 1 identifies a number of factors that can reduce embarrassment. These include the perception that service robots have reduced agency (e.g. are not able to make moral or social judgements) and emotions (e.g. are not able to have feelings). Study 2 tests the base model and shows that people feel less embarrassed during a potentially embarrassing encounter when interacting with service robots compared to frontline employees. Finally, Study 3 confirms that perceived agency, but not emotion, fully mediates frontline counterparty (employee vs robot) effects on anticipated embarrassment.

Service robots can add value by reducing potential customer embarrassment because they are perceived to have less agency than service employees. This makes service robots the preferred service delivery mechanism for at least some customers in potentially embarrassing service encounters (e.g. in certain medical contexts).

This study is one of the first to examine a context where service robots are the preferred service delivery mechanism over human employees.

Patronage of local footwear have not been encouraging in Nigeria despite recent investments. The purpose of the study is to evaluate celebrity endorsement and customer patronage of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) products in African context, with focus on trustworthiness, expertise, attractiveness, respect and similarity (TEARS) model.

The research was designed as a descriptive survey. An online structured questionnaire was applied for data collection. Cronbach Alpha and content validity were used for reliability and validity, respectively. TEARS model was used to ascertain key dimensions, and Pearson correlation coefficient and logistic regression were applied into the analysis.

The findings reveal that celebrity endorsement is not associated with patronage of local footwears, though TEARS model analysis indicates the direction of consumers rating on celebrity endorsement. Factors such as recommendation and quality impact the consumer willingness to buy local footwear.

The small sample size calls for caution in generalization.

The study suggests that although the TEARs model is viable, all the dimensions are mutually exclusive. However, this depends on the characteristics of the brand. In driving patronage, managers must pay attention to personal and non-personal cues such as price, quality and source of information about their brand.

The originality is buttressed from the value it provides for local product production and patronage. The significant factors are indicated as key to addressing low patronage.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential role that the so-called “toxic triangle” (Padilla et al., 2007) can play in undermining the processes around effectiveness. It is the interaction between leaders, organisational members, and the environmental context in which those interactions occur that has the potential to generate dysfunctional behaviours and processes. The paper seeks to set out a set of issues that would seem to be worthy of further consideration within the Journal and which deal with the relationships between organisational effectiveness and the threats from insiders.

The paper adopts a systems approach to the threats from insiders and the manner in which it impacts on organisation effectiveness. The ultimate goal of the paper is to stimulate further debate and discussion around the issues.

The paper adds to the discussions around effectiveness by highlighting how senior managers can create the conditions in which failure can occur through the erosion of controls, poor decision making, and the creation of a culture that has the potential to generate failure. Within this setting, insiders can serve to trigger a series of failures by their actions and for which the controls in place are either ineffective or have been by-passed as a result of insider knowledge.

The issues raised in this paper need to be tested empirically as a means of providing a clear evidence base in support of their relationships with the generation of organisational ineffectiveness.

The paper aims to raise awareness and stimulate thinking by practising managers around the role that the “toxic triangle” of issues can play in creating the conditions by which organisations can incubate the potential for crisis.

The paper seeks to bring together a disparate body of published work within the context of “organisational effectiveness” and sets out a series of dark characteristics that organisations need to consider if they are to avoid failure. The paper argues the case that effectiveness can be a fragile construct and that the mechanisms that generate failure also need to be actively considered when discussing what effectiveness means in practice.