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After reading and analyzing the case study, the students will be able to recognize the role of the mega environment in shaping business strategy, explore the challenges and opportunities in a mature industry (Foam), understand the business context of a family-owned firm and assess the implications and recommend managerial strategies.

In July 2019, Unifoam, a leading foam manufacturer, found itself at a crossroads as the company leadership grappled with diverging vision and future course of action. The newly appointed chief executive, Mr Faraz Khalid Shaikh, had overseen significant investments in expanding production capacity, and the time had come to reap the rewards. However, a series of unexpected events had unfolded, presenting the company with a unique set of challenges. Unifoam relied heavily on imported raw materials from China. Unifoam had high hopes of capitalizing on the opportunities presented by the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. However, the newly formed government had made significant policy changes regarding currency valuation and borrowing rates. This had increased the company’s working capital cost by 40%. This unexpected development had divided the board on the future direction and had forced the leadership to confront a crucial question: Should they hit the brakes or accelerate their growth strategies? This case study explored into the dynamic interplay between external factors, internal divisions and the family-owned nature of Unifoam. The analysis recognized the influence of the mega environment on the company’s strategy, exploring the challenges and opportunities within the mature foam industry and assessing the implications of conflicting approaches. This case study also offered valuable insights and managerial recommendations to guide the company’s path forward. Through embracing discomfort and confronting strategic dilemmas head-on, Unifoam sought to navigate uncharted waters and emerge as a resilient player in the evolving foam industry.

This is suitable for BBA or at the very start of MBA in the strategy courses, mainly business strategy and strategic management, and the case study can be positioned during the initial weeks in the course to provide a quick review of the basic analysis frameworks used in strategic decision-making.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The purpose of the article is to contribute to the body of research on digital transformation among members of the supply chain operating in an emerging economy. This paper researches the digital transformation trends happening across Vietnamese supply chains, by investigating the current adoption rates, predicted impact levels and financial investments being made in key Industry 4.0 technologies.

By using a semi-structured online survey, the experiences of 281 supply chain professionals in Vietnam were captured. Subsequently, statistical techniques examining variances in means, regression analysis and Monte Carlo simulation were applied.

The findings of this study offer a comprehensive understanding of Industry 4.0 technology in Vietnam, highlighting the prevalent technologies being prioritized. Big data analytics and the Internet of things are expected to have the most substantial impact on businesses over the next 5–10 years and have received the most financial investment. Conversely, Blockchain is perceived as having less potential for future investment. The study further identifies several technological synergies, such as combining advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and the Internet of things to build effective and flexible factories, that can lead to more comprehensive solutions. It also extends diffusion of innovation theory, encompassing investment and impact considerations.

This study offers valuable insights into the impact and financial investment in Industry 4.0 technologies by Vietnamese supply chain firms. It provides a theoretical contribution via an extension of the diffusion of innovation theory and contributes toward a better understanding of the current Industry 4.0 landscape in developing economies. The findings have significant implications for future managerial decision-making, on the impact, viability and resourcing needs when undertaking digital transformation.

This paper responds to several calls for a cross-national comparative study of immigrant entrepreneurship throughout the longstanding discourse of this phenomenon. This study aims to comparatively analyze the nature of immigrant enclave entrepreneurship among one immigrant community across three different jurisdictional contexts (UK, Denmark and Norway) based on comparative ethnographic methods of inquiry.

The data was collected in person from April 2022 to June 2023 by the researchers to identify the similarities and differences of migrant entrepreneurial activities in three immigrant enclaves (Manchester, Oslo and Copenhagen). Comparative ethnographic narrative analysis methods and template analysis approaches were combined to analyze interviews, observations and secondary published data.

This study examines spatiality, sectoral occupation and market orientation for comparative analysis. Through detailed analysis, it uncovers the spatiality and nuances in market demands and sectoral similarities across diverse regulatory environments. Notably, it identifies traditional migrant sectoral occupations shared across regions and its relevance to immigrant enclaves.

This scholarly contribution explores immigrant entrepreneurship in various national contexts, emphasising their engagement in neglected and low-value sectors within immigrant enclaves. The study addresses the influence of the host economy’s conditions on immigrant entrepreneurs, impacting their strategic orientation and the extent of their “embeddedness”. It responds to the theoretical gap in immigrant entrepreneurship literature by conducting a cross-national investigation across countries, extending the comparative dimension to Norway and Denmark. The research employs a unique design focusing on a specific immigrant group and emphasizes spatial contexts, sectoral proliferation and market orientation within immigrant enclaves, offering insights into the mixed embeddedness perspective and the broader environmental forces shaping migrant entrepreneurial activities in the UK and Scandinavia.

To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and how they support their assessments by drawing on evidence acquired from diverse sources of information.

Descriptive quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 128 reports written by the fact-checkers of Snopes – an established fact-checking organisation – during the period of 24 February 2022 – 28 June, 2023. For the analysis, nine evaluation grounds were identified, most of them inductively from the empirical material. It was examined how the fact-checkers employed such grounds while assessing the validity of claims and how the assessments were bolstered by evidence acquired from information sources such as newspapers.

Of the 128 reports, the share of assessments indicative of the invalidity of the claims was 54.7%, while the share of positive ratings was 26.7%. The share of mixed assessments was 15.6%. In the fact-checking, two evaluation grounds, that is, the correctness of information and verifiability of an event presented in a claim formed the basis for the assessment. Depending on the topic of the claim, grounds such as temporal and spatial compatibility, as well as comparison by similarity and difference occupied a central role. Most popular sources of information offering evidence for the assessments include statements of government representatives, videos and photographs shared in social media, newspapers and television programmes.

As the study concentrated on fact-checking dealing with political information about a specific issue, the findings cannot be extended to concern the fact-checking practices in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterise how fact-checkers employ evaluation grounds of diverse kind while assessing the validity of political information.

Patriotism is often described as the “love of country” that individuals display in the acclamation of their national community. Despite the prominence of this sentiment in various societies around the world, organizational research on patriotism is largely absent. This omission is surprising because entrepreneurs, human resource (HR) divisions, and firms frequently embrace both patriotism and patriotic organizational practices. These procedures include (among other interventions) national symbol embracing, HR practices targeted toward military members and first responders, the adulation of patriots and celebration of patriotic events, and patriotic-oriented corporate social responsibility (CSR). Here, the authors argue that research on HR management and organization studies will likely be further enhanced with a deeper understanding of the national obligation that can spur employee productivity and loyalty. In an attempt to jumpstart the collective understanding of this phenomenon, the authors explore the antecedents of patriotic organizational practices, namely, the effects of founder orientation, employee dispersion, and firm strategy. It is suggested that HR practices such as these lead to a patriotic organizational image, which in turn impacts investor, customer, and employee responses. Notably, the effect of a patriotic organizational image on firm-related outcomes is largely contingent on how it fits with the patriotic views of other stakeholders, such as investors, customers, and employees. After outlining this model, the authors then present a thought experiment of how this model may appear in action. The authors then discuss ways the field can move forward in studying patriotism in HR management and organizational contexts by outlining several future directions that span multiple levels (i.e., micro and macro). Taken together, in this chapter, the authors introduce a conversation of something quite prevalent and largely unheeded – the patriotic organization.

Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing forced labour are influenced by institutional logics. The emerging supply chain efforts of social enterprises offer particularly intriguing approaches, as their social mission can spur creative new approaches and reshape widely adopted management practices.

The authors study supplier relationships in the smartphone industry and compare the evolving practices of two cases: the first, a growing novel social enterprise; and the second, a high-profile commercial firm that has adopted a progressive role in combating forced labour.

The underlying institutional logic influenced each firm's willingness to act beyond its direct suppliers and to collaborate in flexible ways that create systematic change. Moreover, while both focal firms had clear, well-documented procedures related to forced labour, the integration, rather than decoupling, of forced labour and general supply chain policies provided a more effective way to reduce the risks of forced labour in social enterprises.

As authors’ comparative case study approach may lack generalizability, future research is needed to broadly test their propositions.

The paper identifies preconditions in terms of institutional logics to successfully reduce the risk of forced labour in supply chains.

This paper discusses how social enterprises can provide a learning laboratory that enables commercial firms to identify options for supplier relationship improvement.

This study examines the interplay between media-induced emotional crisis framing (anger vs sadness) and message sidedness of crisis response on publics’ attribution of crisis responsibility as well as subsequent company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention.

A 2 (emotion: anger vs sadness) x 2 (crisis response: one-sided vs two-sided) online experiment was conducted among 161 participants in the USA.

Results showed that anger-inducing media framing of the crisis elicited higher levels of crisis responsibility attribution and more negative company evaluation, compared with sadness-inducing media framing. One-sided message response was more effective than two-sided message response in lowering attribution of crisis responsibility when sadness was induced, but no difference was found under the anger-induced condition. Attribution of crisis responsibility fully mediated the effects of emotional crisis framing on company evaluation and supportive behavioral intention toward the company.

This study is among the first to examine the interaction effect between emotional media framing and response message sidedness in an ambiguous crisis. Drawing on the interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, this study integrates the situational crisis communication theory, appraisal-tendency framework and message sidedness in persuasion literature. As such, it contributes to theoretical development in crisis communication and offers communication managers guidance on how to effectively address emotionally framed crises.

This paper aims to highlight how the six sigma methods helped the medical equipment manufacturing company in finding and analysing the root causes that lead to the reduction in production rate, rejection rates, quality and other major causes that lead to the reduction in productivity of the blood bags manufacturing unit.

Given the critical nature of blood bag manufacturing Six Sigma was chosen as the primary methodology for this research since Six Sigma’s data-driven approach provides a structured framework to identify, analyse and rectify inefficiencies in the production processes. This study proposes the Six Sigma DMAIC (D-Define, M-Measure, A-Analyse, I-Improve, C-Control) encompassing rigorous problem definition, precise measurement, thorough analysis, improvement and vigilant control mechanisms for effectively attaining predetermined objectives.

The paper demonstrates how the Six Sigma principles were executed in a blood bag manufacturing unit. After a detailed and thorough data analysis, it was found that a total of 40 critical-to-quality factors under the five drivers such as Machine, Components, Inspection and Testing, People and Workspace were influential factors affecting the manufacturing of blood bags. From the study, it is identified that the drivers such as inspection and testing, components and machines contribute significantly to increasing productivity.

The paper offers valuable strategic insights into implementing Six Sigma methodologies within the specific context of a blood bag manufacturing unit. The Six Sigma tools and techniques used by the project team to solve issues within the blood bag manufacturing unit can be used for similar healthcare organizations to successfully deploy Six Sigma. The insights from this research might not be directly applicable to other manufacturing facilities or industries but can be used as a guiding reference for researchers and managers.

The current state of scholarly literature indicates a significant absence in the examination of Six Sigma methodologies designed specifically to improve production output in healthcare equipment manufacturing. This paper highlights the application of Six Sigma principles to enhance efficiency in the specific context of blood bag manufacturing.

This paper seeks insights into how multinational enterprises restructure their global supply chains to manage the uncertainty caused by geopolitical disruptions. To answer this question, we investigate three significant geopolitical disruptions: Brexit, the US-China trade war and the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

The study uses an inductive theory-elaboration approach to build on Organisational Learning Theory and Dunning’s eclectic paradigm of international production. Twenty-nine expert interviews were conducted with senior supply chain executives across 14 multinational manufacturing firms. The analysis is validated by triangulating secondary data sources, including standard operating procedures, annual reports and organisational protocols.

We find that, when faced with significant geopolitical disruptions, companies develop and deploy supply chain structural ambidexterity in different ways. Specifically, during Covid-19, the US-China trade war and Brexit, companies developed and deployed three distinct types of supply chain structural ambidexterity through (1) partitioning internal subunits, (2) reconfiguring supplier networks and (3) creating parallel supply chains.

The findings contribute to Dunning’s eclectic paradigm by explaining how organisational ambidexterity is extended beyond firm boundaries and embedded in supply chains to mitigate uncertainty and gain exploration and exploitation benefits. During significant geopolitical disruptions, we find that managers make decisions in tight timeframes. Therefore, based on the transition time available, we propose three types of supply chain structural ambidexterity. We conclude with a managerial framework to assist firms in developing supply chain structural ambidexterity in response to geopolitical disruptions.