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The purpose of this paper is to examine the life and work, both fiction and nonfiction, of the American author Upton Sinclair, for the purposes of better understanding his impact on management theory and practice.

Critical biography is a historiographical approach that analyzes aspects of an individual’s life events and the context that surrounds those events to better understand the contributions of an individual. In this case, this paper analyzes Sinclair’s biography, his work-related fiction and nonfiction and his interactions with business leaders and management thinkers of the day, including scientific management founder Frederick Winslow Taylor, auto industry leader Henry Ford and safety razor magnate King Gillette.

This paper identified four themes which are related to management and workplace history that pervade his fiction and nonfiction writing and link these events to the events of his life as well as the context of the times.

Although others have cited certain aspects of Sinclair’s work for specific purposes, this paper presents a systematic review of Sinclair’s broad oeuvre and its relevance to management and workplace history using a critical biography approach.

This paper aims to investigate the concept of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) in the field of cross-cultural management.

The related literature has been analysed from various paradigmatic lenses.

As the VUCA world concept originates from business circles, several key articles were published in non-academic journals. Two distinct groups of publications can be identified: consulting literature and academic literature on the VUCA world. While both consulting literature and academic literature about the VUCA world can be associated with functionalism, alternative research paradigms can easily accommodate new studies in connection with the VUCA world: interpretive, critical and postmodern works would fit the features of the VUCA world, along with multi-paradigm studies.

It is advisable to investigate emergent contemporary issues, often labelled VUCA, according to multiple paradigms and to conduct multi-paradigmatic research.

While consulting literature on the VUCA world implicitly assumes functionalist paradigms, academic literature might provide alternative assumptions. Interpretative, critical and postmodern paradigms more accurately address the issues raised by VUCA.

This study aims to explore the ways in which management scholars affiliated with Peruvian universities navigate the tensions between global expectations and local realities in their research practices, drawing on their capitals and habitus.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, the authors analyse 25 in-depth interviews and a unique database of academic publications in the business and management field from 2000 to 2022. The analysis identifies the positions scholars occupy within the Peruvian management field and examines the factors influencing their research practices.

The authors find that the Peruvian management field is complex and unequal, where actors have different positions and interests, but are all influenced by a logic of academic dependency on the Global North. The authors identify three main positions held by scholars: transnational dominators, who accumulate greater resources and ignore local debates; dominated adaptors, who unsuccessfully try to imitate the dominant logic; and isolated innovators, who critique the dominant model but lack institutional support to develop alternatives.

This research presents an analysis of the Peruvian management field, a site often overlooked in international business studies. By examining scholarly practices, the authors reveal how academic inequalities are reproduced by the forces of globalization. The study underscores the urgent need for greater acknowledgement of regionally informed research, advocating for a more inclusive and diverse understanding in the field of management research.

Formulating strategic decisions poses a significant challenge for construction organizations, profoundly impacting their overarching strategic management. The success of an organization’s strategy relies on how information is managed and decisions are executed. However, the literature has a limited understanding of the connection between information quality and strategic decision-making, particularly in construction business performance. This study aims to bridge this gap by exploring how information quality mediates the relationship between strategic decision-making and the performance of construction businesses in New Zealand.

This quantitative study aims to fill this gap by assessing how information quality shapes strategic decision-making practices, impacting construction organizations’ performance. Analysing 102 viable responses through partial least squares structural equation modeling structural equation modelling offers partial support to the research framework.

The study used statistical analysis to gauge the impact of adopting strategic management practices on construction business performance, considering the mediation of the quality of information within New Zealand’s context. It affirmed a positive correlation between strategic decision-making management and construction business performance, underpinned by the mediation of quality of information.

This study underscores the critical role of information quality in evaluating strategic decisions for bolstering construction business performance. In essence, it affirms that enhancing the performance of construction organizations via strategic decision-making is intrinsically linked to the quality of information.

This study makes a noteworthy contribution by establishing connections between decision importance, process effectiveness, information quality, intuition in decision-making and model development, providing valuable insights to the field.

This study investigates the role of supply chain knowledge management in enhancing pharmaceutical supply chain resilience.

This study focusses on the Middle East region, where semi-structured online interviews were conducted with 38 professionals from the pharmaceutical supply chain to collect empirical data.

The study reveals that supply chain knowledge management is a crucial value-adding practice that improves pharmaceutical supply chain resilience. Effective supply chain knowledge management enables organisations to develop agility, change, adaptability, problem-solving, response and innovation capabilities that support supply chain resilience. However, challenges related to supply chain management practices, people, processes and technology hinder the effective promotion of supply chain knowledge.

This study reminds managers that knowledge management is critical for building resilience in supply chains.

The study highlights the importance of a resilient pharmaceutical supply chain for organisations and society. The study advocates that effective supply chain knowledge management can help ensure a sustained supply of high-quality pharmaceutical products and services during crises.

The study offers novel insights by examining pharmaceutical supply chain resilience from a knowledge management perspective and highlighting the potential of knowledge capabilities to enable supply chains to recover from crises and adapt to the new normal. This study also highlights the key strategic considerations for managing knowledge effectively throughout the supply chain.

Leveraging upper echelon theory and knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper aims to explore how chief executive officers’ (CEO) sustainability orientation influences explorative and exploitative knowledge management practices, which in turn influence incremental and radical sustainable innovation under boundary conditions of CEOs’ temporal focus and regional affiliation in the home country.

This study used a nonprobability convenience sampling strategy. Using survey-based research, the authors tested the study hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling on a sample of 298 CEOs from Indian small and medium enterprises. This study also tested the reliability and validity of the study variables by using internal consistency tests and convergent and discriminant validity procedures.

The study finds that CEO sustainability orientation affects incremental and radical sustainable innovation via the mediating effect of explorative and exploitative knowledge management practices. Furthermore, CEOs’ past temporal focus increases the influence of orientation on exploitative knowledge management. In contrast, future temporal focus increases the influence of CEO sustainability orientation on exploratory knowledge management practices. Finally, CEOs from the southwest, west and northwest regions of India increase the influence of exploratory knowledge management on radical sustainable innovation.

This study has significant implications for understanding upper-echelon factors that drive knowledge management practices. CEO temporal focus (time orientation) and demographic aspects (regional affiliation) influence CEOs’ investment in different knowledge management and, hence, sustainable innovation management practices. However, this study does not explore cross-cultural differences and the role of the entire top management team in influencing sustainability values on sustainability innovation via knowledge management practices.

This study comprehends upper-echelon factors that drive investment in knowledge management and sustainable innovation practices. Findings imply that CEOs with past and future temporal focus can influence sustainable innovation, but their investment in knowledge management strategies differs. Past temporal-focused CEOs invest more in exploitative and future temporal focus more in explorative knowledge management for influencing sustainable innovation.

The study provides novel insights into the influence of upper-echelon traits on knowledge management and sustainable innovation practices. Extant literature has largely explored firm-level factors such as organizational culture influencing a firm's knowledge management practices. However, by integrating the upper echelon with the knowledge-based view of the firm, we explain how the traits of the CEO, especially the temporal perspective, influence knowledge management and sustainable innovation practices of firms.

The purpose of this study is to understand how critical care pharmacists (CCPs) coped during the COVID-19 crisis by investigating what sense-making and leadership processes were evident during the crisis.

Data from ten semi-structured interviews of lead CCPs across different National Health Service organisations in the UK was analysed through a thematic process.

The findings identified that strong pre-existing relationships and high levels of trust play a significant role in successfully navigating a crisis. Four sense-making processes seem important to building and maintaining these relationships and trust, namely, identifying cues for change; authoring and labelling; interpretation and storytelling; negotiation and deliberation.

The research also highlights the need for organisations to acknowledge the leadership roles undertaken by CCP teams and leverage this role by investing in leadership training, thereby increasing resilience and preparedness for future storms or crises on the horizon.

This paper aims to critically examine how dual-listed multinational enterprises (MNEs) that are embedded across multiple national contexts interact with other actors to shape the diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) narrative, outcomes and the associated dynamics of social change in the mining industry.

The authors use data from the publicly available sustainability reports of two global mining conglomerates with dual-listing structure, Rio Tinto and Anglo American, alongside prevalent DEI regulations in the UK, Australia and South Africa to understand how DEI discourse and practice and the corresponding role of key actors have evolved since 2015. The authors combine a case study approach with topic modelling and qualitative content analysis to critically analyse the linkage between actors’ stated posture and actions in their DEI field and their impact upon various exchange relationships within the mining industry exchange field over the period 2015–2021.

The analysis revealed three broad phases of evolution in the DEI involvement of the MNEs emphasizing on diversity, equality and inclusion, respectively. Both firms progressed at a different pace across the three phases highlighting the need for a systemic perspective when addressing DEI concerns.

This paper is one of the earliest to adopt an issue and exchange field perspective towards examining the complexity of DEI. Taking a critical performative stance, the authors argue that for improving convergence between MNEs’ DEI rhetoric and reality and to advance DEI in new ways organizations and policymakers must devise structural interventions in the DEI field that substantively impact MNEs’ industry exchange field relationships.

This study aims to develop an overall project success (OPS) model by investigating the mediation impact of value management (VM) implementation between VM critical success factors (CSFs) and OPS as well as the moderation impact of VM CSFs between VM implementation and OPS.

In total, 335 structured questionnaires were administered to relevant stakeholders in the study area. The research used a partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to model the relationship among VM implementation, CSFs and OPS.

The results revealed that there is an indirect positive and significant correlation among the variables. The model prediction analysis also significantly impacted with 59.9% on OPS by setting VM implementation as a mediator variable and 61% by setting VM CSFs as a moderation variable.

This research work will serve as a guide or benchmark for decision-makers who want to use VM to improve the success of their building projects.

This study fills the knowledge gap by identifying and emphasizing the impact of VM CSFs and activities on OPS.

This study aims to identify the effect of soft skills as a driver of audit quality and their moderating role in the relationship between stress and the propensity for auditors to engage in reduced audit quality practices (RAQP).

This study uses a sample of 130 auditors, whose data were collected through an electronic questionnaire. The results were derived from the partial least squares-structural equation modelling method.

The findings show that the propensity to incur RAQP increases when auditors are under job stressors but decreases when individuals have resilience and time management skills. Moreover, the results suggest that the moderating effect of these two soft skills can effectively reduce the auditors’ propensity to engage in dysfunctional actions and judgments in auditing. Emotional intelligence and self-efficacy skills are shown not to affect RAQP.

This study adds to previous research on auditors’ drivers for supplying audit quality, by providing evidence of auditor characteristics as a critical input to audit quality. The results emphasize the importance of researchers including in models the moderating effect of soft skills on the relationship between audit quality and determinants associated with audit firms, clients or the regulatory framework.