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The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the significance of safeguards in digital ecosystems and their role in generating trust among participants. This paper argues that the right mix and number of safeguards are crucial for an ecosystem’s growth and success. It offers ecosystem orchestrators concrete guidelines for how to implement and monitor safeguards.

This research is based on both consulting experience and publicly available information on several digital ecosystems.

This research conceptualizes safeguards as precautionary mechanisms that mandate or promote desirable behavior in an effort to engender trust among ecosystem participants. Safeguards can take various forms, including passwords, escrow, user privacy controls, ratings and reviews and policies and contracts. Striking the right balance of safeguards – neither too few nor too many – is crucial for ecosystem orchestrators. This paper identifies the factors that determine the optimal mix of safeguards, including the power asymmetry between sellers and buyers, the sophistication of participants, the nature of transactions, the cost of negative outcomes and the cost-benefit tradeoff.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to illuminate the relationship between safeguards and trust in the context of digital ecosystem. It is also one of the few attempts to provide managerial guidance for ecosystem designers trying to structure their platform for trust.

Technological innovation, digitalisation and the Industry 4.0 revolution radically changed business management and contributed to the achievement of sustainability goals. While many studies analyse technological innovation, and Industry 4.0 in particular, the technical aspects of its contribution/impact on sustainability remains partially analysed, especially in relation to Industry 4.0 enabling technologies. This study investigates the contribution of Industry 4.0 enabling technologies on sustainability in innovative firms.

The sustainability reports of the 50 most innovative companies based on Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s 2022 raking is analysed through a content analysis. In the reports, enabling technologies are analysed in relation to their contribution to sustainability.

The results shed light on the application of Industry 4.0 enabling technologies in sustainability practices based on the communication in the firms' sustainability reports. The results indicate that enabling technologies support the three pillars of sustainability in different business processes.

The results have theoretical and managerial implications that broaden the study of enabling technologies and sustainability while also suggesting a future research agenda.

This study aims to address the gap in the literature regarding the contribution of Industry 4.0 enabling technologies to sustainability.

We explore the effect of selective schooling, where students are assigned to different schools by ability, on adult health, well-being and labour market outcomes. We exploit the 1960s transition from a selective to a non-selective secondary schooling system in England and Wales. The introductio3n of mixed-ability schools decreased average school quality and peer ability for high-ability pupils, while it increased them for low-ability pupils. We therefore distinguish between two treatment effects: that of high-quality school attendance for high-ability pupils and that of lower-quality school attendance for low-ability pupils, with mixed-ability schools as the alternative. We address selection bias by balancing individual pre-treatment characteristics via entropy balancing, followed by ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. Selective schooling does not affect long-term health and well-being, while it marginally raises hourly wages, compared to a mixed-ability system, and school aspirations for high-ability pupils. Cognitive and non-cognitive abilities measured prior to secondary school are significantly and positively associated with all adult outcomes.

This research aimed to explore the commonalities and differences in the type of information provided on corporate websites in relation to their employment brand equity.

Mixed methods of content analysis, ANOVA and regression analyses were employed to answer the research questions. The data were collected from multiple sources, including the websites of a sample of forty companies listed as the US Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work in 2012 and information presented on Fortune’s website as well.

Employment brand equity hardly showed any significant impact on either company’s job growth or reputation in the ranking as an “employer of choice”.

The results indicated some practices to make a company’s employment brand outstanding and how its web presence reflected its “brand” and presence for potential employees. They are useful for HR practitioners concerned with building an employee brand. For example, the more highly ranked companies in the Fortune 100 tend to provide more forms of online support related to employment opportunities.

Using brand equity theory from the marketing arena and applying this within the human resources management area, this study suggests that “employment brand equity” became a major factor that many companies and organizations should focus on to enhance their standing with job seekers, particularly talented ones. Nearly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, the best companies to work for in the US had paid attention to digitalization via websites and social media, to attract talent (and support employees).

There has been an explosion of interest in “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” (EDI) – also referred to as DEI among other acronyms. On the one hand, this management trend has the potential to draw attention to the ways in which organizational practices and climates can be transformed to have a positive impact on the underrepresentation of women and other marginalized and excluded groups in the workplace. On the other hand, there may be real consequences for women as EDI replaces other concepts such as women's rights, gender equality, affirmative action, employment equity, gender discrimination, etc. This chapter applies a gender lens to the EDI concept and management policy and practice. It juxtaposes EDI's emergence with the lack of progress on gender equality that is observed and measured in many regions of the world and highlights several critiques that may explain this lack of progress. It also identifies what EDI policies and practices need to take into consideration to better address gender inequality in the workplace. Legal approaches are discussed along with a list of potential areas of research on EDI and gender equality to determine the best path forward for making concrete progress on true equality for women in the workplace.

Exploring trust's impact on AI project success. Companies can't leverage AI without employee trust. While analytics features like speed and precision can build trust, they may also lower it during implementation, leading to paradoxes. This study identifies these paradoxes and proposes strategies to manage them.

This paper applies a grounded theory approach based on 35 interviews with senior managers, users, and implementers of analytics solutions of large European companies.

It identifies seven paradoxes, namely, knowledge substitution, task substitution, domain expert, time, error, reference, and experience paradoxes and provides some real-life examples of managing them.

The limitations of this paper include its focus on machine learning projects from the last two years, potentially overlooking longer-term trends. The study's micro-level perspective on implementation projects may limit broader insights, and the research primarily examines European contexts, potentially missing out on global perspectives. Additionally, the qualitative methodology used may limit the generalizability of findings. Finally, while the paper identifies trust paradoxes, it does not offer an exhaustive exploration of their dynamics or quantitative measurements of their strength.

Several tactics to tackle trust paradoxes in AI projects have been identified, including a change roadmap, data “load tests”, early expert involvement, model descriptions, piloting, plans for machine-human cooperation, learning time, and a backup system. Applying these can boost trust in AI, giving organizations an analytical edge.

The AI-driven digital transformation is inevitable; the only question is whether we will lead, participate, or fall behind. This paper explores how organizations can adapt to technological changes and how employees can leverage AI to enhance efficiency with minimal disruption.

This paper offers a theoretical overview of trust in analytics and analyses over 30 interviews from real-life analytics projects, contributing to a field typically dominated by statistical or anecdotal evidence. It provides practical insights with scientific rigour derived from the interviews and the author's nearly decade-long consulting career.

This chapter explores the vast array of fintech opportunities. The industry commanded approximately $250 billion in revenue in 2022, which is predicted to grow to $1.5 trillion by 2030. Fintech firms are involved in everything from digital currencies to payment systems, lending platforms, and embedded finance. Firms use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to create personalized financial products. One of the most important benefits to society is that fintech makes finance more inclusive to the traditionally underserved. However, fintech has its challenges. Regulations evolve, making compliance a challenge. Also, the industry is vulnerable to cyberattacks and money laundering. Companies hold large amounts of sensitive data, making them obvious targets for bad actors. As with many industries, governance, compliance, and transparency are essential for fintechs as they transform the financial services landscape.

Certified and non-certified organisations must make strategic decisions regarding ISO 9001 adoption, maintenance, renewal and abandonment. However, the ISO 9001 literature lacks a typology of the strategic options available to these organisations. The purpose of this conceptual study is to develop a framework of the alternative strategies for the stages of the ISO 9001 life cycle (implementation/certification, certification maintenance and recertification/decertification stages).

The research method is based on literature review, selection of relevant variables and synthesis of coherent alternative strategies.

Results include the main variables of relevance for the definition of the ISO 9001 strategies (e.g. life cycle stage, organisational motivations, barriers, benefits, internalisation degree and quality of the certification body), the main situations in which organisations can find themselves (in terms of ISO 9001 certification, maintenance and decertification), the strategic options for each situation (e.g.: certify, maintain certification, try harder, change certification body, intensify learning and experimentation with ISO 9001) and the implications and consequences of such options. Research results are integrated into a strategy framework, composed of three strategy matrices, one for each stage of the life cycle. The matrices present the strategic situations, available strategic alternatives and benefits of the strategies.

This study combines the results of previous research to develop an original strategy framework, which constitutes the main research contribution. As far as the author is aware, there is no such strategy framework in the literature. The framework has relevant implications for theory and practice and helps to identify future research directions.

This chapter focuses on the concept of genderwashing in the context of higher education (HE) in the United States. Using intersectionality as a framework, the authors critically examine gender-based affinity groups, which are used in HE as a common strategy to support diversity and equity efforts. The authors discuss how such efforts often fall short in facilitating meaningful organizational or systemic change and provide questions and considerations for addressing genderwashing that are informed by an intersectional lens.

Financial technology (fintech) refers to using new technology to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. This chapter provides a brief introduction to fintech. It also includes the book's purpose, distinguishing features, intended audience, and structure. A synopsis of Chapters 2 through 23 is offered. The chapter concludes that fintech is constantly evolving and is reshaping finance. Fintechs offer a new paradigm of growth.