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This chapter provides an introduction to the world of family companies and family constitutions from a legal perspective. It first studies the legal types of business organizations that family firms have chosen across time and jurisdictions. It then illustrates how early predecessors of family constitutions evolved in the late Middle Ages and what modern family constitutions look like in different countries today. Further considerations are devoted to the governance framework of family firms. The chapter concludes by exploring the potential legal effects of family constitutions under German company and contract law.

To co-create value through dynamic collaborations, enterprises and their suppliers need to orchestrate the integration of complementary resources when providing business services. As such enterprises' strategic decision to apply a plural sourcing strategy to establish dynamic collaborations with their suppliers implies that both in-house and outsourced business services should be bundled into a business services portfolio. However, the antecedents that affect a business services portfolio have rarely conceptually been identified.

Drawing on resource orchestration theory, the authors theoretically developed and empirically validated a business services portfolio conceptual model. The model aims at explaining the critical antecedents to a business services portfolio based on a unique data set, comprising 121 international enterprises with variation in the degree of outsourcing, size, geographies and maturity. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to examine the relationships among the antecedents and a business services portfolio.

The findings show that the antecedent, i.e. plural sourcing strategy, modularised business processes and customer orientation have a direct and significant effect on the enterprises' business services portfolio orchestration. The results of the mediation test indicate that modularised business processes fully mediate the relationships between three independent variables with the orchestration of business services portfolio.

This study is the first to analyse the impact of plural sourcing strategy, modularised business processes and customer orientation on the business services portfolio orchestration from a plural sourcing context. Additionally, it examines the mediating role of modularised business processes in the relationship between the antecedents and business services portfolio orchestration.

This study aims to investigate a systematic approach to the production and use of additively manufactured injection mould inserts in product development (PD) processes. For this purpose, an evaluation of the additive tooling design method (ATDM) is performed.

The evaluation of the ATDM is conducted within student workshops, where students develop products and validate them using AT-prototypes. The evaluation process includes the analysis of work results as well as the use of questionnaires and participant observation.

This study shows that the ATDM can be successfully used to assist in producing and using AT mould inserts to produce valid AT prototypes. As a reference for the implementation of AT in industrial PD, extracts from the work of the student project groups and suitable process parameters for prototype production are presented.

This paper presents the application and evaluation of a method to support AT in PD that has not yet been scientifically evaluated.

System dynamics has several applications in the built environment, and few studies indicate that it has potential in evaluating sustainability. Sustainability in the built environment involves numerous entities and multiple trade-offs. Hence, a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method is ideal for promoting sustainability-based decision-making in the built environment. Therefore, this study integrates system dynamics with an MCDM method to enable the sustainability assessment by capturing the time-induced dynamic changes affecting long time sustainability performance of buildings.

Conventional sustainability assessment tools in the built environment lack a comprehensive evaluation that balances the needs of the society, economy and environment. This study develops a system dynamics-based framework to enable sustainability-conscious decision-making and policy analysis in the built environment.

Various material, technology and water-related policies specific to the buildings are investigated for a case study building. It is found that the effect of penetration of renewable energy technology to the tune of 80% and above in the energy mix is a much superior policy in sustainability improvement in comparison to material and water-related policies. The study also demonstrates the effect of weights assigned for the different indicators on sustainability-based decisions.

The study provides a methodological framework for a sustainability-based decision support system for the built environment that enables dynamic performance evaluation by coupling system dynamics with the MCDM. This coupling further strengthens system dynamics as a decision-making and policy analysis for sustainability evaluation in the built environment.

Drawing on embodied cognition theory, this study examined the impact of midair, gesture-based somatosensory augmented reality (AR) experience on consumer delight and stickiness intention. The mediating effects of three psychological states for body schema (i.e. natural symbol sets, vivid memory and human touch) on the relationships between somatosensory AR and consumer delight/stickiness intention are determined. By filling gaps in the research, we hope to provide guidance on how to drive delightful somatosensory AR marketing.

Two experiments were conducted (Study 1 and Study 2) to test the research model and hypotheses. These experiments compared the effects of the “presence” (midair, gesture-based) and “absence” (mouse-based traditional website) conditions in somatosensory AR on consumer body schema and the creation of a delightful virtual shopping experience (i.e. consumer delight and stickiness intention).

The consumer delight and stickiness intention created in the presence condition was much higher than those in the absence condition. Consumers appeared to prefer engaging in a midair gesture-based somatosensory AR experience and exploring an augmented metaverse reality to interacting with a mouse-based traditional website. We also found that giving online consumers more somatosensory activities and kinesthetic experiences effectively inspired three psychological states of body schema in online consumers.

The results contribute to the AR experience and somatosensory marketing literature by revealing the role of natural symbol sets, vivid memory and the sense of human touch. This research breaks through the long-developed research paradigm on consumer delight, which has been limited to traditional entities and web contexts. We also extend embodied cognition theory to the study of somatosensory AR marketing.

Much prior work involving director incentives and corporate behaviour has been focussing on their absolute dollar value or the intrinsic value and generated mixed findings. Comparison theories, however, suggest that the relative value of an incentive may be the main drive for individual performance. This study attempts to investigate the role of director relative pay in promoting the board’s intervention with unrelated diversification decisions.

The analysis uses data from firms operating in more than one segment during the period from 1999 to 2019. Data were obtained from WRDS databases. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis and the two-stage system generalized method of moments (GMM) were run to test the hypotheses. To test the robustness of the findings, alternative proxies for the key independent variables were used in separate analyses.

The results support the hypothesis that unrelated diversification negatively impact firm performance, while higher director relative pay will help reduce unrelated business diversification. The absolute director pay, however, has no significant impact on corporate strategic choices. The results also highlight the moderating effect of director overcompensation. Director overcompensation will cancel out the impact of relative director pay on unrelated diversification.

This study takes a fresh theoretical perspective by framing the investigation using the dimensional comparison theory to address the single untended comparison framework in the director pay structure – the intra-individual framework. It is the first to investigate the role of director relative pay in corporate strategic choices. The findings support the contention that the relative value of the incentive is an important indicator of the effectiveness of the pay.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had major impacts on the performance of construction projects that have adopted social distancing measures. This study examines the effect of social distancing measures on project schedule performance through job reorganization on construction project sites.

Responses were obtained through a survey of 154 construction projects and analysed using the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique.

The findings established that social distancing has a negative effect on schedule performance, social distancing has a positive effect on job re-organization and job re-organization has a positive effect on schedule performance. Additionally, the results indicate that job re-organization partially mediates the relationship between social distancing and schedule performance, while social distancing moderates the relationship between job re-organization and schedule performance with low social distancing having the stronger positive effect.

This study contributes theoretically to a greater understanding of the impact of adopting COVID-19 safety measures such as social distancing on the schedule performance of construction projects. The study also shows how social distancing could lead to schedule performance through job reorganization.

As every day work is central to people's lives and events serve as significant contextual factors, examining what impact the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic restrictions had on knowledge workers warrants further investigation. The author's research question investigated how employees in the London Insurance Market had made sense of their work identities during a period of mandated remote work and isolation from co-workers, leaders and others, amidst a turbulent environment. To address this enquiry, this research drew on Goffman's institutional, dramaturgical and stigma theories.

Data used in this research are from an ongoing PhD study of how individuals conceive, construct and conduct their careers in this field. As individuals and their social worlds are interwoven, a qualitative methodological approach was employed in this research.

Participants were thrusted into a position where they had no prior knowledge what identity they should adopt in a situation which had totalising characteristics. The loss of clear boundaries between work and home setting caused a deterioration of participants' work identities whilst physical separation from their institutions and co-workers posed a risk of disconnecting their past work identities from the present. Moreover, participants' experiences of deterioration and disconnection were intertwined with their demographic and occupational identities.

This study aligns with existing research on identity work, emphasising the crucial role of social interaction in the formation of work identities. However, it also highlights that the establishment and sustenance of work identities is also reliant on individuals having separate frontstage and backstage settings to understand and interpret their conduct and those of their significant others.

Brand crowdfunding, launched through brands’ social media platforms, can provide a myriad of crowdfunding and branding benefits, such as strengthening brands’ social networks, validating product launches, generating mass exposure and enabling cocreation. Gamification positions brand crowdfunding as an exciting and joyful activity that more deeply engages prosumers. Anchored on resource-based theory, theory of planned behavior and service-dominant logic, this paper aims to develop a brand crowdfunding framework for established brands with insights from two emerging markets: China and India.

A deductive cross-sectional design is used to gather data from an established brand’s (e.g. Xiaomi) social media followers in China (n = 826) and India (n = 358), which is analyzed through PLSc-SEM.

The results reveal that social media brand engagement is an antecedent of brand crowdfunding participation, brand crowdfunding intention is a predictor of brand loyalty and gamification is a significant moderator in technology-oriented societies.

The paper develops a brand crowdfunding framework that provides insights on how established brands can leverage crowdfunding to enhance their new product development process. The results contribute to the social media brand engagement, crowdfunding, gamification and emerging markets literature.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.