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Despite the established relationship between the public's trust in government and their adoption of preventive behaviour, lesser is known about the underlying mechanism that explains trust in government—preventive behaviour nexus. This study adopted the health belief model to propose five types of health perceptions as a mediator between trust in government and the public's voluntary adoption of recommended preventions for COVID-19.

To collect primary quantitative data, a web survey was conducted using snowball sampling from Malaysia (N = 343) and Pakistan (N = 321). Measures were adopted from the existing studies. Structural equation modelling-partial least square through SmartPLS was used to analyse the proposed framework and hypotheses testing.

Results revealed that trust is a significant predictor of perceived barriers, benefits and self-efficacy in both countries. Mediation analysis indicated that perceived benefits and self-efficacy to be mediators in both samples. In the Pakistani sample, perceived barriers were also a mediator. Importance-performance analysis showed that the Malaysian public has a greater trust in their government to tackle the pandemic issue, while the trust was a relatively more important predictor of voluntary precautionary behaviour in Pakistan. A full mediation model depicted that coping health belief are an imperative link between trust and prevention.

Although developing the public's trust is related to good governance and public opinion, during a health crisis, authorities can effectively utilize the communication media and design interventions to influence health appraisals leading to higher adoption of prevention.

Purpose – To advance narrative and context-based organizational research.

Approach – We detail how a research design can dynamically unfold and be adjusted based on feedback from multiple sources, with three components to this process: requisite conceptual openness, methodological adjustment, and acknowledgement of prescient issues. Three examples in existing literature are analyzed, demonstrating how this process can facilitate the development of novel lines of inquiry.

Research implications – Our framework and the practical guidelines we advocate here are a resource for scholars to allow new conceptualizations to blossom and grow in perhaps unexpected directions, which may not otherwise have been charted without this exploratory process.

Originality/Value – The process of discovery is a contribution toward research methodology and design, as a helpful method for maximizing richness in contextual research. This approach may be particularly important in emerging markets and other settings with unexplored organizational processes.

Purpose – To consider why, although it does maintain a distinct presence, ethnography still remains very much on the fringes of international business (IB) studies.

Methodology/Approach – This chapter involves a literature review comparing ethnography in IB studies with its position in the related disciplines of industrial relations and Japanese studies, in both of which the ethnography of business is much more prominent, and both of which have close relationships with mainstream anthropology.

Findings – The author argues that a crucial factor in achieving greater prominence for ethnography in IB studies is in fact to encourage more studies of international organisations in mainstream anthropology.

Research limitations/Implications – The review of literature is necessarily brief and should be expanded to include more disciplines to test its conclusions; however, developments in the anthropology of China and India may add further data.

Practical implications – There are a number of ways in which the three disciplines can learn from, and contribute to, each other through the medium of ethnography, which are discussed.

Originality/Value – The value of the chapter is in considering ways in which IB studies and industrial relations can learn from each other and can make more effective use of ethnography, and how mainstream anthropology can benefit from incorporating perspectives from business-focused disciplines.

This article takes stock of interdisciplinary research on Multinational Corporations (MNCs) by elucidating paradigmatic shifts in the world of MNCs in the new millennium and analysing more recent developments in the disciplines of International Business (IB) and Organization Theory (OT). The article also introduces the altogether 14 individual contributions of this 49th volume of the Research in the Sociology of Organizations series. It closes by looking into the questions of where interdisciplinary OT/IB research on MNCs is now and where it is likely to go in the future.

Over the past 2 decades CEO surveys have consistently identified a shortage of global leadership capability as a limiting factor in global expansion. At the same time, business schools have also come to recognize the need to develop global leadership in their graduates. The Global Leadership Expertise Development (GLED) model proposes a framework and process for developing global leadership competencies in a corporate setting. We describe how we applied this model in a higher education context, in the process transforming a more common approach to international business (IB) education into an experientially-intensive global leadership development program. Adopting elements of Kolb’ experiential learning theory (ELT) as well as concepts of instructional scaffolding and “red threads,” the program emphasizes personal development. Early analysis of the program’s impact points to substantial progress in developing global leader competencies in undergraduate business students.

Donald Trump portrayed himself as a crusader against corrupt elites, claiming he would “drain the swamp.” Corporate elites generally depicted themselves as either trying to work with him or as directly opposed to him. Yet a closer analysis of Trump's policies and their outcomes in key issue areas, from taxes to immigration to the environment, shows continuity with previous pro-corporate policies. Furthermore, by positioning Trump as opposed to the elite, Trump and commentators on his presidency created a “radical flank” effect that made status quo, pro-corporate policies appear as progressive victories. This analysis suggests that a focus on the personal characteristics of politicians is misleading, and that the focus of political discourse needs to be on the power structure that shapes policy outcomes.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged most countries, their societies, economies, organizations, and individual citizens. Focusing on both more and less successful country-specific initiatives to fight the pandemic and its multitude of related consequences, this chapter explores implications for leadership and effective action at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. As international management scholars and consultants, the authors document actions taken and their wide-ranging consequences in a diverse set of countries, including countries that have been more or less successful in fighting the pandemic, are geographically larger and smaller, are located in each region of the world, are economically advanced and economically developing, and that chose unique strategies versus strategies more similar to those of their neighbors. Cultural influences on leadership, strategy, and outcomes are described for 19 countries. Informed by a cross-cultural lens, the authors explore such urgent questions as: What is most important for leaders, scholars, and organizations to learn from critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What types of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How can we accelerate learning processes globally? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This chapter invites readers and authors alike to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges. It is not definitive; we are all still learning.

This chapter overviews organizational neuroscience (ON), covering the past, present, and future of this growing field of inquiry. First, we define ON and clarify the boundaries of the field. Second, we describe the evolution of ON by starting with early papers that tended to discuss the potential of ON to benefit both research and practice. Throughout its development, debates have abounded about the value of ON. Such debates are often related to challenges in collecting, integrating, interpreting, and using information from the brain-level of analysis. It is time for the field to move beyond these debates to focus on applying neuroscience to further theory development and reveal more comprehensive answers to research questions of importance to both academics and practitioners. Third, we propose and describe future research directions for ON. The research directions that we propose are merely a sample of the many paths along which ON inquiry can move forward. Fourth, we outline potential practical implications of ON, including: training and development, job design, high-performance assessment, motivating communications, and conflict prevention. Finally, we draw conclusions about ON as it stands today, address challenges in developing ON, and point out opportunities. We conclude with takeaways and highlight the importance of ON for both academics and practitioners.

Purpose – The present chapter discusses how qualitative research can assist in rethinking and transcending the limitations of the notion of one-way knowledge transfer, which is still a dominant ontological paradigm of organizational learning in China.

Approach – The authors first present their critiques of the dominant knowledge transfer research paradigm. Then, using a recent case example, they illustrate how qualitative research, coupled with the alternative ontological paradigm of knowledge translation can provide context-sensitive insights into how cultural barriers and other knowledge boundaries can be crossed and how breakthroughs in knowledge transfer can be achieved.

Findings – Qualitative methods are highly appropriate for understanding complex social processes involving political and cross-cultural dynamics. They are ideal for gathering and making sense of the various perceptions, feelings, assumptions, aspirations, motives, and attributions that are held by members of different groups. They can track the sequence of key events and critical choices, and they can provide insights into the anatomy of social networks and power structures.

Originality/Value – The present chapter highlights the areas where qualitative designs can generate novel and fascinating insights regarding organizational learning in China. The authors argue that if researchers are interested in the diversity of conditions, in knowledge creation, and in the emergence of new practices within unique contexts, then they would be well advised to adopt qualitative designs.

Purpose – As a well-recognized qualitative research method, storytelling can help to explain the multilevel and dynamic perspectives in management studies. The authors purposefully chose sustainability stories in the Western context, leadership stories in the Eastern context, and entrepreneurship stories in the West-meets-East context to highlight the benefits of using storytelling in conducting strategy and management research.

Design/Method/Approach – Qualitative research, field research, and comparative analysis.

Findings – Looking through cultural and philosophical lenses, the authors argue that scholars need to pay attention to research contexts when applying storytelling in their fieldwork. Storytelling can help to unpack the contextual factors, especially to disclose dynamics and complexity issues of strategic management phenomena.

Research implications – While storytelling has been widely used in the Western management context, the authors believe we are among the first to suggest that storytelling can become an insightful and fruitful research method in Eastern management and in combined cultural contexts, and hence, they are attempting to potentially help to advance theory development.

Originality/Value – Two applicable conditions for storytelling are discussed, namely, the multilevel/systems perspective and the dynamic perspective, which are illustrated by sustainability, leadership, and entrepreneurship research in both Western and Eastern contexts.