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The paper’s purpose is to consider, using a transaction cost economics (TCE) framework, the mechanisms used by space agencies to encourage private investment in the commercial spaceflight sector.

The authors conducted a content analysis of 554 pages of news articles, relating to issues pertaining to partnerships between national government-based space agencies and private space travel providers, published over a 20-year period. Leximancer was used to initially screen the data and then the authors manually analysed the content to identify themes.

The data analysis revealed three themes, relating to: the uncertainty of space travel; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) stimulating innovation in the private sector; and risk, insurance and regulation. These themes informed by TCE reveal the “hierarchical” organisational forms used to achieve human spaceflight and then the “hybrids”, insurance and regulations used to stimulate private sector investment and innovation.

This paper contributes to the accounting literature by answering the calls of Alewine (2020) and Tucker and Alewine (2022a, b) for more research into accounting in the space context. Specifically, the paper contributes by identifying mechanisms used by NASA to stimulate private investment in the space travel sector, as well as issues that have affected the implementation of these mechanisms. The paper also contributes to the literature by, based on the analysis, identifying a series of reflections designed to stimulate further management accounting research in the space context.

This study aims to analyse the position of women in public relations (PR), using Bourdieu's habitus. The study also draws from works on women in journalism on the ‘bloke-ification’ or a situation where women have to behave like men to succeed, thus becoming one of the boys due to masculine habitus in mass communications organisations.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 26 women practitioners asking questions about their experiences of working in the PR industry. The triple coding was conducted holistically and cross-referencing against answers on early socialisation of interviewed women. Thematic analysis was used to analyse and present data.

The findings show acceptance of masculine habitus with women not always challenging the usual order of things and recognising only direct sexism but not every day (masculine) practices. Women who demonstrate feminine behavioural styles are more likely to have negative working experiences than women who demonstrate masculine behavioural styles. Findings show a link between early socialisation and organisational behaviour with women who were socialised with boys reporting more masculine behavioural traits as expected for career progression as opposed to women socialised with girls who report feminine characteristics. The findings also signal that women work in a masculine culture in which they are often ostracised, and the profession as a whole is ridiculed by male managers and senior officials despite women being the majority of the workforce in the PR industry, thus showing that women also work in what Bourdieu calls a (masculine) habitus.

This study remains limited regarding its qualitative aspect of 26 interviewed women. Whilst this is a relatively large sample for a qualitative study, these findings show trends in data that can be explored in further research but cannot be generalised. In addition to that, phone interviewing presents a limitation of the study as face-to-face interviews could have enabled a better rapport and a more in-depth conversation as well as an observation of non-verbal communication, which could have led to additional sub-questions. Also, the findings are based on perceptions of interviewed women, which are personal and do not necessarily need to present the reality in the whole of the industry, however, the thematic analysis revealed common patterns which point towards the direction of a wider issue in the industry, which can be explored in further research.

Organisations should implement HR policies that regulate internal office behaviour so that no staff member or department feels unappreciated and has less influence over the organisational work. A greater focus on treating employees fairly is needed, and this change needs to include structural problems that are often hidden, such as remarks in offices and internal practice and the dynamic between different departments bearing attention to departments where senior roles are traditionally given to men (e.g. finance) and those where senior roles also have women managers (e.g. PR).

The paper contributes to studies of cultural masculinities in organisations from a sociological perspective and uses a case study of the PR industry. The paper further extends the bloke-ification framework and contributes towards the conceptualisation of this framework from the PR perspective and using a sociological approach. In addition to that, the paper drew from works conducted in journalism and advertising and showed that issues women face are very similar across industries, thus opening a question of a wider social problem, at least when mass communications industries are in stake.

This study presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of the interdisciplinary literature on drones in last-mile delivery (LMD) to extrapolate pertinent insights from and into the logistics management field.

Rooting their analytical categories in the LMD literature, the authors performed a deductive, theory refinement SLR on 307 interdisciplinary journal articles published during 2015–2022 to integrate this emergent phenomenon into the field.

The authors derived the potentials, challenges and solutions of drone deliveries in relation to 12 LMD criteria dispersed across four stakeholder groups: senders, receivers, regulators and societies. Relationships between these criteria were also identified.

This review contributes to logistics management by offering a current, nuanced and multifaceted discussion of drones' potential to improve the LMD process together with the challenges and solutions involved.

The authors provide logistics managers with a holistic roadmap to help them make informed decisions about adopting drones in their delivery systems. Regulators and society members also gain insights into the prospects, requirements and repercussions of drone deliveries.

This is one of the first SLRs on drone applications in LMD from a logistics management perspective.

The expected learning outcomes are to understand the complexities involved in the integration of two carriers with different business strategies and approaches, the merger of two brands with distinct personas and identities and the confluence of two different cultures; figure out the strategic options in front of the Tata Group and how it can deal with various macro- and micro-level business challenges, defy the financial hiccups and manoeuvre the operational complexities to accomplish mission Vihaan.AI; and develop a pragmatic approach to macro and micro business environmental scanning for making strategic business decisions.

In November 2022, Tata Group, the salt to software conglomerate, announced the merger of Air India (AI) and Vistara. This would lead to the formation of the full-service airline under the brand name “Air India”. The obvious reason behind this was the higher recognition, salience and recall of the brand AI as compared with Vistara in the global market. The Tata Group envisaged the brand AI to be a significant international aviation player with the heritage, persona and ethos of the brand Vistara in the renewed manifestation of AI. To realise these goals, Tata Group laid down an ambitious plan called “Vihaan.AI”, which was aimed at capturing a domestic market share of 30% by 2027.

This case study can be taught as part of undergraduate- and postgraduate-level management programmes.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.