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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of political connections on the association between firms' business strategy and their tax aggressiveness in an emerging economy such as China.

The authors study a large sample of Chinese public firms from 2011 to 2017 using a panel regression model. In addition, a change analysis, an instrument variable test and alternative measures/samples are implemented as robustness tests.

Firms adopting innovative business strategy are more tax aggressive overall. However, innovative firms with political connections are less tax aggressive compared to those without political connections.

This paper contributes to the understanding of firms' tax behaviors in an emerging economy setting. It suggests that there are costs associated with political connections, such as foregone tax saving opportunities, which are understudies in the prior literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of sustainability governance through the unfolding hybridisation process between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility and the implications of this for understanding patterns in sustainability reporting over time.

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident is an extreme case study undertaken to examine its implications on the organisational legitimacy of British Petroleum (BP) and the latter’s response to the incident and beyond. The paper draws on Suchman’s legitimacy framework (1995) to understand sustainability governance as an organisational practice that evolved post the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to manage BP’s legitimacy. It draws on archival records and documentation from 2008 to 2017, as key sources for data collection, using interrogation by NVivo software.

Sustainability governance is a sound practice that was socially constructed to manage the re-legitimatisation process following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is characterised by broadness (the interplay between the corporate governance and corporate social responsibility disciplines), dynamic (developing the tactics to repair and maintain legitimacy), agility (conforming to the accountability for socially responsible investment and ensuring steps towards geopolitically responsible investment) and interdependence (reflecting composition and interactions).

This paper has practical implications for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s constitution, mechanism and characteristics.

This paper has implications not only for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s characteristics, but also for policy-makers, regulators and accounting education. However, the present paper’s insights are achieved through an in-depth and longitudinal case study.

This paper has problematized the concept of sustainability governance and elaborated its evolution (the emergence, enactment, deployment and interplay) process. The sustainability governance showed an otherwise organisational response that moves our understanding of the deployment of disclosure for complex organisational change as a way to discredit events.

This study aims to investigate current deglobalization against globalization and to hypothesize reasons and drivers of deglobalization. In addition, the study suggests an empirical model to test whether deglobalization exists in the world economy. The consequences of deglobalization are discussed.

Various measures for deglobalization are introduced for monitoring the deglobalization of a country, and statistical measures are reported. The research framework for deglobalization and empirical models are suggested. The relationship between deglobalization and globalization is being modeled using three KOF globalization indexes: economic, political and societal. This study used panel data from 1970 to 2017 for developed and developing countries to determine the degree of deglobalization.

Deglobalization has been found empirically since the global financial crisis. Deglobalization is estimated by the decreasing trend of import share in a country's gross domestic product and is influenced by manufacturing imports, country's income divide and political globalization. Both economic and societal globalizations have negative influence on deglobalization. Deglobalization is more apparent in developed countries than in developing countries, and the deglobalization trend will continue in diverse formats.

This study limits the use of few variables to test the antecedents of deglobalization. Another study can be done to extend preceding variables and estimate the consequences of deglobalization, which may segregate the globalization effect. The international business executive should understand the complexity of deglobalization and consider business benefits and risks to be encountered.

This study used panel data from 1970 to 2017 for developed and developing countries to determine the degree of deglobalization.

This paper aims to explore experiences of poverty in the enterprise amongst people with a disability or long-term health challenges. This paper departs somewhat from established wisdom about economic or financial drivers of enterprise by exploring why a disabled individual would start and continue to operate in a business where that business is providing income-poverty. In so doing, it subscribes to the idea that the enterprise involves reflexive engagement of an agent in context where value(s) of the enterprise other than financial may be prioritised.

The research draws from a larger qualitative study of self-employment and poverty in which half the sample (21 individuals) identified as experiencing disability or poor health. Semi-structured interviews were conducted these participants and a thematic analysis with specific reference to Theory of Venturing, which proposes that the value of enterprise is reflexively and idiosyncratically understood and morphogenetic, was used to explore itinerant issues, experiences and challenges.

In line with the theory, findings include that disability and poor health are observed to be both prompters and shapers of an enterprise and that the value of enterprise is not always primarily associated with financial wealth for the participants in the sample. Flexibility and autonomy are attractive features of self-employment for some in the face of an inflexible and sometimes hostile labour market.

This paper demonstrates that engaging in enterprise is motivated by an agent's reflexive evaluation of value(s) and how that enables them to navigate their structural condition(s); this contribution enhances theoretical approaches to enterprise and business creation by illuminating some of its diversity. This paper also contributes some much needed data about a group who are under-represented in the enterprise literature despite being over-represented in practice. There are implications and recommendations for policy and practice in the exposure and analysis of the issues emerging.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how professionals who are continuing their education rate a higher education quality management course with an emphasis on reflective learning and real problem-solving. The audited course consists of module-based teaching, while students work on an improvement project at their workplace between course sessions. This study has a twofold aim: to contribute to the design of quality improvement courses based on doing as we learn and to offer insight into the use of a final grading method that consist of a folder with reports from the intermediate work steps and a final report.

After completing the course, students received a survey with questions and statements about the course content, delivery and final grading methods. They answered these questions on a seven-point Likert scale and also answered open-ended questions.

It is clear that professional students value the interweaving of theory with real-life training, and they value module-based teaching in which theory is reviewed and applied to practical problems. Reflective learning was achieved through feedback from both teachers and fellow students on various interim reports. Students’ employers benefit from the course, as students gain experience with quality improvement. The grading of a final report on the improvement project based on three sub-assignments was highly appreciated.

Developers in courses in quality improvement benefit from learning how this course is structured, assessed and how participants perceived its components.

The course design with modules and intermediate work steps, where the students apply theory in quality improvement to a real project at their workplace, is an original concept. The modules correspond to the plan, do, check and act (PDCA) methodology.

Being acquainted with both lean and action learning in theory and in practice, this study finds that the theoretical complementarity of these two research streams has traditionally been underexploited. In this conceptual paper, this study aims to advance the theoretical understanding of lean by exploring the complementarity of lean thinking and action learning leading to a proposed integrated theory of these two research streams. Target audience is the operations management research community.

By deliberately adopting a process of theorising, this paper explores, reflects upon and combines individual experiences of researching, teaching and engaging in lean and action learning as operations management scholars.

Having taken a gemba walk through the literature and practices of lean and action learning, this study views and notices a systematic and complementary relationship between the two domains. The overlapping theoretical and practical complementarities of lean and action learning suggest that these two research streams are ripe for synthesis into an integrated theory. This finding provides an opportunity to (1) progress towards an integrative design of interventions leading to more sustainable lean system adoptions and (2) add new depth to our theoretical explanation of the success and failures of lean system adoptions.

This paper contributes an original integrated theory perspective on lean and action learning.

The paper explores processes associated with the adoption of corporate sustainability communication in a B2B context. It employs a combined action research and sensemaking approach to document moments that precede the initiation of external sustainability communication.

The paper is the outcome of an action research project, where we examine the case of one industrial company that was silent on its multiple sustainability-related practices, but recently decided to become more transparent to the outside world. A processual approach to sensemaking is adopted to show how organisational and non-organisational members actively participated in meaning co-construction.

Corporate silence can be disrupted by triggering events that cause moments of sudden realisation for organisational members, eventually leading to the initiation of sensemaking processes inside the organisation. Once this occurs, the possibility of externally communicating sustainability appears a feasible and strategic approach to pursue. We document how different actors are involved in meaning co-construction and how the entire process of sensemaking unfolds.

A sensemaking approach sheds light on the complexity of sustainability communication, where multiple actors are involved. This is a useful approach to consider in order to couple sustainability with other organisational practices. Moreover, sensemaking opens a window of opportunity for various societal actors' interventions to shape the role and content of sustainability communication.

The paper offers an original, theoretically informed methodological contribution to the literature on sustainability communication by coupling a sensemaking approach with action research. The approach is employed to examine the role of internal organisational actors in sustainability reporting processes, an area that has received scant attention.