Search results

Since the 1980's, diversity management (DM) has been regarded as a relevant scholarly and practical endeavour laden with different and often contrasting rationales and conceptualisations. In this regard, the current literature on DM largely differentiates between two overarching approaches – the instrumental and the critical approach with varying conceptualisations and underlying understandings of DM. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how a paradox lens can be utilised to bridge existing understandings of diversity management.

The authors aim to discuss the current state of DM literature and reconceptualise DM from a paradox lens.

The authors argue that the use of a paradox lens on DM allows for challenges to be brought forward instead of ignored or hidden away by illuminating and actively acknowledging both the liberating but also the challenging and oftentimes constraining experiences for the actors involved. Thus, a Paradox lens offers space for embracing and utilising paradoxes when working with diversity.

Diversity management is no new concept in the field of human resource management and several scholars argue that the longstanding divide between the instrumental and critical approach remains problematic and limiting for the practice of DM. Hence, the value of reconceptualising DM from a paradox lens lies in bridging the two approaches in order to give way to viewing DM as a nuanced, dynamic and multifaceted practice that can accommodate complexity and contradictions in new and potentially beneficial manners.

Accounting scandals and earnings management problems at large firms such as Global Crossing and Enron have resulted in lots of wealth loss not only to corporate investors but also led tremendous damage to societies. Hence, policymakers and academic researchers have started to explore mechanisms to prevent improprieties in financial reporting and further enhance firm value. Using data from United States (US)-listed companies between 2000 and 2018, this article explores the effect of ex-military executives on earnings quality, the role of financial analysts in their interplay and the firm value implication of earnings quality driven by ex-military executives.

This study employs a firm fixed-effects model to validate the main conjecture and adopts the weighted least squares, Granger causality analysis, instrumental variable approach, propensity score matching, entropy balancing approach and dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to address robustness and endogeneity issues.

Authors reveal that companies run by ex-military senior executives exhibit lower levels of accruals-based and real earnings management than those without. The effect of management military leadership on constraining earnings management is more prominent for companies with low analyst coverage, suggesting that the military experience of executives could be a substitute for external monitoring. Authors also find that these ethical managers alleviate the negative impact of earnings management on firm value and that companies managed by these managers exhibit higher firm performance.

This study highlights the importance of the intrinsic motivation behind the effect of military experience on senior managers' personalities and offers essential stakeholder-related implications regarding the effect of military experience. The military experience of senior managers helps facilitate the attainment of broader corporate governance and economic objectives.

This article adds new insights to the literature on the role of managerial military experience in decision-making processes, financial reporting outcomes and firm performance by employing the upper echelons and imprinting theoretical perspectives.

In light of the key role attributed to the board of directors as a monitoring tool to constrain earnings management practices, this study aims to examine the effect of some board attributes on accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) context, whose institutional, economic and legal environment is markedly different from that of most organization for economic cooperation and development countries.

The authors selected a sample of 161 nonfinancial companies from nine MENA countries between 2014 and 2021 (corresponding to an unbalanced data panel of 486 observations). The authors used the generalized least squares regression test to examine the relationship between board attributes and earnings management.

The authors found that three board attributes (size, independence and gender diversity) have no effect on both types of earnings management practices, while CEO duality has no effect on accrual-based earnings management but has a significant and negative effect on real earnings management. Overall, the results suggest that most board attributes do not play a crucial role in reducing earnings management.

The results provide valuable insights into the universal role of corporate governance mechanisms and raise questions about the role of the board of directors in improving reporting quality in the MENA context.

Regulators should adapt corporate governance mechanisms to the characteristics of the institutional context in which they are inserted.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the effect of various board characteristics on both types of earnings management practices in the MENA context. It also provides the first empirical evidence of the relationship between board gender diversity and earnings management in the MENA region.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainability performance and earnings management in emerging East Asian economies.

The authors base on the triple bottom line approach to measure corporate sustainability performance. In terms of earnings management, two models are applied to detect real activities manipulation and discretionary accruals. The authors use panel data analysis of 410 listed non-financial firms in emerging East Asian economies from 2016 to 2020 that are collected from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database.

The authors find a negative influence of corporate sustainability performance on real activities manipulation and discretionary accruals. The findings highlight the long-term perspective of sustainable development strategies in relation to earnings management. The authors conclude that sustainable firms in emerging East Asia are less likely to engage in earnings management.

The study would be of interest to investors who need more detailed assessments of financial reporting quality to facilitate their investment decision-making and to policymakers who need more understanding of business practices and reporting behaviors of East Asian firms.

The study has shed light on the role of corporate sustainability performance in constraining earnings management and the role of corporate ethics in providing transparent and reliable financial reporting in emerging East Asian economies.

Existing research on how professionals manage after-hours connectivity to work has been dominated by studies on the strategies/practices individuals develop. In these studies, mobile technology is perceived as a tool or an enabler that supports otherwise human-centric connectivity decisions. This view sees technology as separate or external to the organisation, missing out on its nuanced role in shaping connectivity decisions. Our study aims to bring technology back into the sociomaterially imbricated context of connectivity and to unpack its parameters.

Drawing on data collected from documents and semi-structured interviews, we adopt the framework of “sociomaterial imbrications” (Leonardi, 2011) to understand the social and material parameters that influence connectivity management practices at two different academic institutions in Saudi Arabia.

The study identifies a set of social and material parameters (organisational, individual, technological and situational) that imbricate to shape, collectively and not individually, professionals’ connectivity management practices. Connectivity decisions to change practice (such as decisions of where, when or why to connect) or technology (how to connect) are not as distinct as they appear but originate from, and are founded on, imbricated sociomaterial parameters. Our study further suggests that connectivity decisions are shaped by individuals’ perceptions of sociomaterial imbrications, but decisions are not solely idiosyncratic. The context within which connectivity decisions are taken influences the type of decisions made.

Connectivity management emerged from sociomaterial imbrications within a context constitutive of four interacting parameters: organisational, technological, situational and individual. Decisions around the “how” and the “what” of connectivity – i.e. the practice of connectivity and its underpinning technology – originate from how people perceive sociomaterial imbrications as enabling or constraining within a context. Individual perceptions account for changes in practice and in technology, but the context they find themselves in is also important. For instance, we show that professionals may perceive a certain technology as affording, but eventually they may use another technology for communications due to social norms.

The ascendancy of modular offsite construction (MOSC) over traditional construction methods is well known. Despite the known potential of this construction approach, its adoption is minimal in New Zealand construction industry. This article investigates the potential benefits of using MOSC for delivery of high-rise buildings in New Zealand, underlying factors responsible for its low uptake and the measures that can facilitate its improved uptake.

This study utilised a mixed research approach. An empirical questionnaire survey was carried out with New Zealand construction industry professionals with expertise in MOSC. Factor analysis of survey data was carried out using SPSS software. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with subject matter experts to get further insights and expand the survey findings. Interview data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Study identified benefits of MOSC, thus establishing potential of its uptake for high-rise building construction. Constraining factors were investigated, most pronounced being low level of skills in construction industry to design, manufacture and integrate supply chain of MOSC, high initial investment, high cost of importing modules and negative perception about offsite manufactured buildings. This study also highlighted the enablers to improve uptake of MOSC. These enablers included; loan and mortgage policies to suit MOSC paradigm, building regulations to support OSC industry, increased support from the government and awareness and acceptance of standardised building designs among the clients.

Originality of this paper harps from little to no research carried out to investigate use of MOSC for high-rise buildings in New Zealand context.

We explore how NGO’s local entrepreneurial initiatives to empower women entrepreneurs can compensate for weak state policies for women in a context of male-dominated socio-cultural norms.

We use the case of a local entrepreneurial initiative launched in the Atlas region of Morocco, the Empowering Women in the Atlas Initiative (EWA). We collected data through 51 semi-structured interviews of women entrepreneurs in three cooperatives which exploit the natural resources of their region to establish a social venture. Our data are longitudinal as they were collected at two time periods: before and after the initiative.

The findings of this study suggest that local entrepreneurial initiatives can have a significant impact on rural women entrepreneurs’ empowerment. The improved perception of empowerment has not only helped them develop capacities to leverage the business opportunities linked to the natural resources of their region, but it has also increased their status and role within their family and community.

We make recommendations for policymakers to encourage this type of initiative to compensate for the absence of supporting policies geared toward women.

Our study is one of the first to look at empowerment as a policy instrument to develop women entrepreneurial activities in rural areas of developing countries. Our paper uses a unique hierarchical perspective and a multidimensional framework for analyzing social cooperative ventures and rural women entrepreneurs’ empowerment. Our paper unravels interesting insights for women entrepreneurs’ narration strategies.

Digital platforms increase their function and scope by leveraging boundary resources and complementary add-on products from third-party developers to interact with external entities and producers. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are essential boundary resources developers use to connect applications, systems and platforms. This notwithstanding, previous API studies tend to focus more on the technical dimensions, with little on the social and cultural contexts underpinning API innovations. This study relies on the new (neo) institutional theory (focusing on regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars) as an analytical lens to understand the institutional forces that affect API integration among digital firms.

The study adopts a qualitative case study methodology and relies on phone calls and a semi-structured in-depth interview approach of a Ghanaian digital music platform to uncover the institutional forces affecting API integration.

The findings reveal that regulative institutions such as excessive tax regimes mostly constrained API development and integration initiatives. However, other regulative institutions like the government digitalization agenda enabled API integration. Normative institutions, such as the growing use of e-payment options, enabled API integration in digital music platforms. Cultural-cognitive institutions like employee ego constrained the API integration process in music digital platforms.

This study primarily contributes to deepening understanding of the relevant literature by exploring the institutional forces that affect API integration among digital firms in a developing economy. The study also uncovered a new form of an institution known as motivational institution as an enabler for API development and integration in digital music platforms.

While past research has explored how opting-out enables mothers to break free from masculinist organizational cultures, less attention has been given to how they resist disciplinary power that constitutes and governs their subjectivities. This paper aims to add to the discussion of opting-out as a site of power and resistance by proposing the concept of “constructive resistance” as a productive vantage point for investigating opted-out mothers' subversive practices of self-making.

This Malaysian case study brings together the notion of constructive resistance, critical narrative analysis and APPRAISAL theory to examine the reflective stories of eighteen mothers who exited formal employment. These accounts were collected through an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured email interviews.

The mothers in the sample tend to construct themselves in two main ways, as (1) valuable mothers (capable, tireless, caring mothers who are key figures in their children's lives) and (2) competent professionals. These subjectivities are parasitic on gendered and neoliberal ideals but allow the mothers to undermine neoliberal capitalist work arrangements that were incongruent with their personal values and adversely impacted their well-being, as well as refuse organizational narratives that positioned them as “failed” workers.

Whereas power is primarily seen in previous opting-out scholarship as centralized and constraining, this case study illustrates how the lens of constructive resistance can be beneficial for examining opted-out mothers' struggles against a less direct form of power that governs through the production of truths and subjectivities.

The purpose of this study is to define and investigate the governance requirements of supply chain finance (SCF).

A qualitative analysis of 849 news articles published in UK newspapers (2000–2022) using the Gioia method.

SCF governance relies on developing capacities for reflexive scrutiny at two stages: (1) prior to entering into an SCF relationship and (2) during its operation. Based on the notion of SCF as a complex adaptive system, we theorise SCF governance requirements as a dual-layered semipermeable boundary. The semipermeability of the two layers allows for a dynamic exchange between the SCF system and its environment. The first layer is the capacity to selectively enable or control the entry and access of certain actors and practices into the SCF system. The second layer is a capacity for ongoing scrutiny of the SCF operation and its development. Further, we identify five aspects of governance to be enabled, i.e. enhancing adaptability, building confidence, improving efficiency, advancing technology and promoting transparency; and four aspects to be controlled, i.e. preventing abuse of power, curbing fraud risk, constraining operational risk and restricting risky extensions to SCF practices.

Our dynamic framework can guide supply chain (SC) members in making decisions about whether to participate, or continue to operate, in an SCF relationship. Moreover, the findings have implications for policymakers and authorities who oversee entry/access and the involvement of SCF providers, particularly, fintech firms.

The study contributes to both the SC and governance literature by providing a systematic analysis of what SCF governance has to accomplish. Our novel contribution lies in its analysis of SCF governance based on a complex adaptive system approach, which expands the existing literature where SCF is described in rather static terms. More specifically, it suggests a need for a dynamic duality of SCF governance through the semipermeable boundary that selectively enables and controls certain SCF actors and practices.