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With the rapid low-carbon transformation in China, the industrial approach and labor structure of mining enterprises are undergoing constant changes, leading to an increasing psychological dilemma faced by coal miners. This study aims to reveal the relationship and mechanism of factors influencing the psychological dilemma of miners, and to provide optimal intervention strategies for the safety and sustainable development of employees and enterprises.

To effectively address the complex issue of the psychological dilemma faced by miners, this study identifies and constructs five-dimensional elements, comprising 20 indicators, that influence psychological dilemmas. The relational mechanism of action of factors influencing psychological dilemma was then elucidated using an integration of interpretive structural modeling and cross-impact matrix multiplication.

Industry dilemma perception is a “direct” factor with dependent attributes. The perceptions of management response and relationship dilemmas are “root” factors with driving attributes. Change adaptation dilemma perception is a “susceptibility” factor with linkage attributes. Work dilemma perception is a “blunt” factor with both dependent and autonomous attributes.

The aforementioned findings offer a critical theoretical and practical foundation for developing systematic and cascading intervention strategies to address the psychological dilemma mining enterprises face, which contributes to advancing a high-quality coal industry and efficient energy development.

A growing body of literature suggests that unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks – ranging from natural disasters to public health crises and beyond – require the firm to respond adaptively. However, how firms do so remains largely undertheorized. To contribute to this line of literature, the authors borrow from the conservation of resources (COR) theory of stress and the dynamic capabilities perspective to introduce the concept of firm stress – a state of reduced and irregular readiness firms enter into following unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks. Our theoretical model illustrates that firms must punctuate the stress state to adapt by first deploying a retrenchment response, thereby conserving resources and allowing the firm to consider how to best redeploy its dynamic capabilities to adapt. Subsequently, the firm can redeploy its capabilities and adaptively respond in one of three ways: exiting (reconfiguring resources for alternative use), persevering (reconfiguring resources for better use), or innovating (developing new resources). Overall, the authors offer a process model of firm stress and adaptive responses following an unpredictable, resource-depleting shock that paves the way for future research on stress in the strategy literature.

Strategic management is traditionally seen as an exclusive managerial task rather than inclusive where accountability is reserved for top managers. However, contemporary strategy management practices increasingly pay attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) by engaging with broader internal and external stakeholders via more open business models such as ecosystems. Hence, central to our examination is the concept of openness disposition, which in the context of strategic management refers to the tendency of individuals, collectives, and managers to make strategy transparent, participatory, and/or inclusive, or look for closure. While openness in strategy is regarded as a positive means of contemporary management, fostering diversity, creativity, innovation, and empowerment, there are some researched downsides too. The purpose of this chapter is to address the openness puzzle in strategy and gain a deeper understanding of the dilemmas of bottom-up strategy initiatives, and investigate the associated dilemmas, if any in the context of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We contribute to addressing the performative effects of the dynamic expansion and contraction in openness within the SME strategy process while using the concept of openness dilemmas, tensions, and disposition. Using the Management Control Theory, this chapter will combine theory with SME practitioners’ experiences of bottom-up strategy initiatives to increase EDI in their organisations. Based on findings that emerged from a four-year longitudinal multiple case study research with 10 European SMEs, we found that bottom-up strategy exercises are more interactive. They consider a greater number of views, increase legitimacy, and EDI at the workplace, and yield more process benefits, but are time-consuming and difficult to organise that require special attention to the capability, reciprocity, and credibility dimensions.

Stakeholder theory understands business in terms of relationships among stakeholders whose interests are mainly joint but may be occasionally conflicting. In the latter case, managers may need to make trade-offs between these interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of managerial decision-making about these trade-offs.

This paper draws on the ordonomic approach which sees business life to be rife with social dilemmas and locates the role of stakeholders in harnessing or resolving these dilemmas through engagement in rule-finding and rule-setting processes.

The ordonomic approach suggests that stakeholder interests trade-offs ought to be neither ignored nor avoided, but rather embraced and welcomed as an opportunity for bringing to fruition the joint interest of stakeholders in playing a better game of business. Stakeholders are shown to bear responsibility for overcoming the perceived trade-offs through the institutional management of social dilemmas.

For many stakeholder theorists, the nature of managerial decision-making about trade-offs between conflicting stakeholder interests and the nature of trade-offs themselves have been a long-standing point of contention. The paper shows that trade-offs may be useful for the value creation process and explicitly discusses managerial strategies for dealing with them.

This study aims to answer the question of how incumbent firms cultivate dynamic capabilities through knowledge management so that they can efficiently adapt to the changing external environment.

This study adopts a case study approach and collects data through interviews and secondary public information on the lighting industry and two lighting firms in Lin'an, China. It qualitatively examines the challenges and strategic recommendations for incumbent firms in the context of discontinuous technological change from a knowledge management perspective.

Incumbent firms often face a variety of challenges when responding to discontinuous technological change. These challenges include identifying opportunities, overcoming path dependence and dealing with employee resistance to change. To overcome these difficulties, three strategies have been proposed to enhance the dynamic capabilities of incumbent firms through knowledge management: cross-border search helps firms improve their knowledge acquisition capabilities and better understand their environment to identify opportunities; building strategic leadership overcomes path dependence and improves knowledge integration capabilities; organizational learning deepens employees’ understanding of change and enhances organizational knowledge application capabilities.

Previous research attributes a firm's ability to cope with discontinuous technological change solely to its general resources, which weakens the importance of knowledge management in this context. This study emphasizes the importance of knowledge as a crucial strategic resource in developing the essential dynamic capabilities for incumbent firms to cope with discontinuous technological change.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of incumbent firms' coping strategies in the new context of discontinuous technological change and further promotes cross-disciplinary research.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of coping strategies in the new context of discontinuous technological change, furthermore theoretically advancing the interdisciplinary research of firm transformation and knowledge management. Meanwhile, it is crucial to identify the preconditions for cultivating dynamic capabilities, especially from a knowledge-based view, which enhances the depth of knowledge management research.

This study aims to delve into the perspectives of educators on integrating ChatGPT, an AI language model into management education. In the current research, educators were asked to talk as widely as possible about the perceived benefits, limitations of ChatGPT in management education and strategies to improve ChatGPT for management education. Also, shedding light on what motivates or inhibits them to use ChatGPT in management education in the Indian context.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis commonly uses purposive sampling. In this research, the purpose is to delve into educators’ perspectives on ChatGPT in management education. The data was collected from the universities offering management education in Uttarakhand, India. The final sample size for the study was constrained to 57 educators, reflecting the point of theoretical saturation in data collection.

The present study involved educators discussing the various advantages of using ChatGPT in the context of management education. When educators were interviewed, their responses were categorized into nine distinct sub-themes related to the benefits of ChatGPT in management education. Similarly, when educators were asked to provide their insights on the limitations of using ChatGPT in management education, their responses were grouped into six sub-themes that emerged during the interviews. Furthermore, in the process of interviewing educators about potential strategies to enhance ChatGPT for management education, their feedback was organized into seven sub-themes, reflecting the various approaches suggested by the educators.

In the qualitative study, perceptions and experiences of educators at a certain period are captured. It would be necessary to conduct longitudinal research to comprehend how perceptions and experiences might change over time. The study’s exclusive focus on management education may not adequately reflect the experiences and viewpoints of educators in another discipline. The findings may not be generalizable and applicable to other educational disciplines.

The research has helped in identifying the strengths and limitations of ChatGPT as perceived by educators for management education. Understanding educators’ perceptions and experiences with ChatGPT provided valuable insight into how the tool is being used in real-world educational settings. These insights can guide higher education institutions, policymakers and ChatGPT service providers in refining and improving the ChatGPT tool to better align with the specific needs of management educators.

Amid the rising interest in ChatGPT’s educational applications, a research gap exists in exploring educators’ perspectives on AI tools like ChatGPT. While some studies have addressed its role in fields like medical, engineering, legal education and natural sciences, the context of management education remains underexplored. This study focuses on educators’ experiences with ChatGPT in transforming management education, aiming to reveal its benefits, limitations and factors influencing adoption. As research in this area is limited, educators’ insights can guide higher education institutions, ChatGPT providers and policymakers in effectively implementing ChatGPT in Indian management education.

Waste management is a crucial aspect of sustainable development, but is it economically sustainable for marginalized informal firms? The study tries to answer this question by revisiting the Porter–Wagner dilemma about the association between environmental management (EM) and firm performance (FP). The study looks into the various liquid waste management practices (LWMPs) adopted by them and the overall impact of LWMPs on firms' economic performance.

The study uses the latest available cross-sectional data source on Indian informal firms by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), 73rd survey round 2015–16. First, ordered logistic regression was used to analyse the factors that impact a firm's adoption of a particular LWMP. Subsequently, to capture the heterogeneity among the firms based on productivity and size, a quantile regression (QR) was employed to analyse the impact of LWMPs on firm productivity. Additionally, the propensity score matching technique was used to address endogeneity concerns.

The authors find that bigger, urban-located and female-owned firms adopt cleaner LWMPs that positively impact their economic performance. Furthermore, the QR analysis observed that the most productive firms could extract higher returns from adopting cleaner LWMPs, indicating the relevance of the Porter–Wagner dilemma, i.e. environmental and economic sustainability are possibly symbiotic, thus having a feedback mechanism.

To the authors’ limited knowledge, this is the first study analysing the relationship between EM and FP among the informal sector firms, which are away from any regulations or obligations. Since sustainability is a two-way process, policies should be devised that incentivise sustainable business practices.

Based on the perspective of knowledge management, this study aims to discuss how to build cross-city emergency management collaboration mechanism in major emergencies and explore the important role of knowledge management in emergency management collaboration.

Based on the theoretical analysis of knowledge management and the typical case study of cross-city emergency management collaborative rescue, this study provides an in-depth analysis of how these cities achieve high emergency management performance through multidimensional and multilevel knowledge collaboration, thus revealing the mechanism of knowledge transfer, integration and sharing in achieving high emergency management performance.

Through analyzing typical cases, this study finds that building a smooth mechanism for multichannel emergency rescue information can promote the diversification of knowledge transfer methods, building a platform-based integration mechanism for emergency rescue information can enhance knowledge integration capabilities and building a linkage mechanism for emergency rescue materials between cities can promote knowledge-sharing level, thereby improving emergency management performance level.

This study has great significance for how to build cross-city emergency management collaboration mechanism in the digital era. In the future, the authors need to further discuss the following two aspects in depth: research on the impact of cross-city emergency management collaboration mechanism on improving the knowledge management capabilities of government emergency management departments; and research on the impact mechanism of knowledge management capabilities on city resilience.

Through case analysis of cross-city emergency management collaborative rescue for major emergencies in China in recent years, this study proposes three specific strategies for cross-city emergency management (smooth, integration and linkage mechanisms) and reveals that these three strategies are essentially aimed at improving the government’s knowledge management level.

This case study is designed to enable students to analyze the competitive landscape of a business impacted by technological disruption; evaluate the viability of an organic growth strategy using stakeholder analysis; evaluate the revenue and cost structure of Apollo 24/7 and decide on the future investment strategy; and analyze funding strategies of traditional hospitals versus pure digital players.

To extend its reach, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise (Apollo Hospitals), a leading private sector brick-and-mortar hospital chain in India known for using state-of-the-art technology, launched a unified virtual mobile platform Apollo 24/7 in February 2020, 45 days into the COVID-19 pandemic. The management believed that the digital platform had a unique ecosystem that could not be replicated. The analysts were optimistic about the impact of the decision on the future performance of Apollo Hospitals, as it was expected to lead to higher penetration and increased revenue. They also anticipated the unlocking of value, as and when the venture capitalist (VC) would invest in Apollo Hospitals. However, with increasing operating expenses on account of burgeoning technological and marketing expenses, things did not seem to go going as planned. Three years later, in February 2022 after the Q3 of financial year 2023 results. Suneeta Reddy, the company’s managing director found herself pondering whether the digital platform could boost Apollo Hospitals’ profitability in addition to expanding its reach and increasing affordability when the company missed the analyst estimates. In India, which was then the second most populous country, “incremental access” and “affordability” were what mattered to the patients, However, for the investors and analysts, it was quarter-on-quarter performance. The change in the macroeconomic environment stalled the company’s plan of raising money from VCs.

Furthermore, the financing dilemma also plagued Reddy. She knew there was a difference between financing for conventional businesses that for digital businesses. She also had to take decide between short-term profitability with which investors were obsessed versus long-term sustainability, which involved taking care of stakeholders’ interests.

This case study is basically aimed at postgraduate courses and executive management courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS11: Strategy.

Upon completion of the case study, students are expected to identify the characteristics that differentiate a family business from other businesses, understand the life cycles of family businesses and evaluate the significance of succession planning and leadership development in a family business.

In May 2023, when the sultry afternoon had settled down, Bijan Dam, a first-generation entrepreneur and a septuagenarian, was in a pensive mood. Introspecting life events, he ruminated that if he could rewind the tape of life, go back in space and time, would things be different. “I wish life gave me a second chance,” he lamented! Perhaps he could have planned better. Since founding the printing business in 1985, Ruby Art Press had scaled up significantly from letter press to full-fledged computer printing technology unit. The press had made inroads in job orders, government contracts and screen printing. Its client base was large. It also attracted repeat clients from adjoining states. With a successful business history of three and half decades, he had assumed the business would thrive perpetually. Today the business he had built, sustained and raised was practically gone. Why had he not anticipated the future potential of the business? Why had he not dwelled upon the successful business progression? Regardless of impeccable client service and personalized vendor management, what were the missing cues in the business? Deep agony and heavy burden of remorse were mentally excruciating. This had pestering effect on his health condition. Given these challenges, how could Dam ensure business continuity?

This case can be used in entrepreneurship, family business management and human management courses. The dilemma can be explained as part of the courses for undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.