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Roadmapping has been used as an approach to support market, product and technology-integrated planning, resulting in a document commonly known as a roadmap. Despite the gains made in relation to the technique, recent studies indicate that most users leave or have difficulties in sustaining the process (i.e. maintaining the updated roadmaps). This paper aims to present a framework for continuous roadmap updating that incorporates principles from agile management fields.

The framework was developed through action research in a manufacturing firm in the construction industry.

The results demonstrate a positive impact on the degree of continuous information monitoring, roadmap credibility and use of the roadmap during innovation strategy decisions.

The key contribution of this framework is the demonstration of a new strategy for carrying out the maps in which information is internalized by the organization itself, using agile teams, without commissioned specialists and as part of the work standards.

While agile methods have been adapted to different industries, agility depends on the alignment between the practices and project environment. Nevertheless, it is unlikely to find the best combination without a diagnosis of these variables. This paper proposes a project management agility diagnostic tool (PM/ADT), aimed at diagnosing the project environment, management practices and agility performance to find the right balance between them.

The tool was developed by combining multiple techniques during a three-year research program, including an extensive systematic literature review, exploratory case studies, a survey and three case studies involving 25 projects from information and communications technology, software development and technology-based companies.

The results indicate potential discrepancies between environmental factors, management practices and agility performance that affect project management in organizations, allowing the diagnosis and analysis of the situation for the development of better management solutions.

The study reinforces the hypothesis that it may not be possible to adopt pure agile models or methods in most projects, except in specific cases, as with some projects in the software industry. This is in line with the hybrid models. However, further testing is needed with a larger sample of projects and organizations.

The tool can be useful to assess different types of projects from different industry sectors to improve the management process, allowing the development of agility beyond the software industry.

The article discusses agility beyond measurement, assessing the most appropriate environment for using practices from one approach or another.

Key forces shaping higher education drive institutions to make strategic choices to locate themselves in niches where they can make use of their resources effectively and efficiently. However, the concepts of strategy and strategic positioning in higher education are contested issues due to the nature and complexity of the sector and the university. As an industry facing increasing pressure toward marketization and competition, this study calls for an analysis of higher education, as an industry, in a more business-oriented framework. This chapter makes a contribution to scholarly research in higher education by applying Porter’s five forces framework to medical education. In doing so, it provides a foundational perspective on the competitive landscape, its environment, its organizations, and the groups and individuals that make up the higher and medical education sector.

Knowledge regarding the importance of the psychosocial work environment for health and well-being in the workplace is extensive. However, more knowledge is needed about how the managers’ organizational conditions are related to what occupational health and safety management (OHSM) is actually conducted and how this relates to the work-related health of employees. The aim of this study is therefore to investigate if managers’ organizational conditions are associated with the conducted OHSM, and if the conducted OHSM is associated with the psychosocial work environment and well-being of the employees.

An electronic questionnaire was sent to managers and their employees working in 10 different organizations in Sweden, resulting in 1,097 valid responses. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the results.

The SEM analysis showed that managers’ conditions were related to employee well-being via OHSM and psychosocial work environment (job demands and job resources).

This study contributes to the existing literature in the field of OHSM by placing explicit focus on the role of organizational conditions for conducting OHSM. By studying not only the link between work environment and health, but also focus on the underlying organizational structures for OHSM, provides additional possibilities for prevention of the increasing work-related illness. As such, this paper contributes to a more holistic perspective in the field of OHSM.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

The development and progressive refinement of the concept of academic freedom has generally occurred without material participation by the American business school. Whereas the business school looms large as a component of higher education in the twenty-first century, most believe that it is indifferent or perhaps hostile to the concept of academic freedom. For the most part, business school faculty fail to share the liberal political leanings of their colleagues from across the university, and therefore are less likely to find themselves to need academic freedom protection from those who would like to squelch opinions that run contrary to government and establishment elites. This chapter recognizes the fundamental alignment of what is taught in the business school and what business faculty research. However, that does not gainsay prospects for academic freedom protection when such is not the case. The chapter explores public interest dimensions of being a faculty member in a business school and how these might be manifested. Examples of controversial work are offered for each of the major business disciplines.

The purpose of this study is to examine factors contributing to family firms’ survival in the ongoing COVID-19 crisis; in this endeavour, the study espouses the underpinnings of social exchange theory and entrepreneurial resilience.

The views of 128 Italian family micro and small-sized firm owners/managers operating in different industries were gathered through an online questionnaire.

The analysis uncovers 12 fundamental factors contributing to firms’ survival; these are encapsulated in three dimensions and presented in two theoretical frameworks. The “beneficiary” dimension stresses the support from various internal and external stakeholders, while the “benefactor” dimension illustrates the commitment to extend the family tradition and be responsive to stakeholders. Finally, the “immersion/embeddedness” dimension denotes firms’ entrepreneurial behaviour, agility, decision-making and drive.

Firstly, and from a practitioner perspective, this study addresses recognised knowledge and research gaps in contemporary family business research, including how family firms are confronting the current unprecedented crisis. This response to current extant gaps provides first-hand empirical findings that could be primarily considered by industry stakeholders. Secondly, and from a theoretical angle, the aforementioned dimensions revealed through the analysis, coupled with the development of a theoretical framework, contribute to conceptual rigour and, therefore, a deeper understanding of family firms’ journey through an unprecedented event.

Many publications emphasize the importance of product vision and its contribution to successful product development. However, the current literature lacks a definition. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that unites and organizes the definitions of product vision, the construct’s latent components, and demonstrates the relationship of product vision to the existing theories.

The study conducted two exploratory literature reviews to find the initial key concepts, and a systematic literature review to define the product vision construct and identify its components.

This paper proposes a framework that defines product vision through two main elements (textual and visual) and four main properties (concise, challenging, aligned with strategy, and collectively obtained).

While the proposed framework constructs a more precise definition of product vision, more research is required to validate the construct in practice.

This paper reduces the ambiguity around the definitions of product vision employed in areas such as design management, project management, and product development by proposing an operational definition. This common and useful construct could support the communication and complementarity between these theories.