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Work-life balance (WLB) policies have become a popular topic in both academic literature and organizations. However, previous studies in this area have provided mixed results, and the impact of WLB policies on various indicators of organizational financial performance remains unclear. There has been no comprehensive review that synthesizes the current state of knowledge and indicates future research directions. This review addresses this gap and provides a systematic review of published papers investigating the relationship between WLB policies and organizational financial performance.

The review follows the PRISMA-ScR guidelines for scoping reviews. An analysis of 421 relevant records in Web of Science and Scopus databases identified 22 original empirical studies that focused on the relationship between WLB policies and financial performance at the level of the organization.

Most reviewed studies indicated a weak positive relationship between WLB policies and financial performance. There was the strongest support for the effectiveness of flexible working hours and job sharing, while there was mixed support for the policy of working from home. There were a higher proportion of positive results in studies conducted in Western countries compared to Asian countries, which indicates a potential moderating effect of culture. This review also describes the primary limitations of previous studies, namely, low test power and insufficient evidence about causality.

This review summarizes the growing body of quantitative research on the relationship between WLB policies and organizational financial performance. It presents a model that includes moderators and mediators of this relationship and indicates potentially fruitful areas for future research.

Previous literature on sustainable supply chain management has largely adopted an instrumental view of stakeholder management and has focused on understanding the effect of powerful stakeholders who have a more decisive influence on an organization's supply chain decisions. Social enterprises have emerged as organizations that often aim to create impact by integrating marginalized stakeholders into their operations and supply chains. This study examines the trade-offs that social enterprises experience due to their moral stance toward stakeholder engagement, evidenced in their commitment to serving marginalized stakeholders, as well as the responses adopted to these trade-offs.

The study follows a theory elaboration approach through a multiple case study design. The authors draw on insights from stakeholder theory and use the empirical insights to expand current constructs and relationships in a novel empirical context. Based on an in-depth analysis of primary and secondary qualitative data on ten social enterprises, the authors examine how these organizations integrate marginalized stakeholders into various roles in their operations.

When integrating marginalized customers, suppliers and employees, social enterprises face affordability, reliability and efficiency trade-offs. Each trade-off represents conflicts between the organization's needs and the needs of marginalized stakeholders. In response to these trade-offs, social enterprises choose to internalize the costs through slack creation or vertical integration or externalize the costs to stakeholders. The ability to externalize is contingent on the growth orientation of the organization and the presence of like-minded B2B (Business-to-Business) customers. These responses reflect whether organizations accept the trade-offs at the expense of one or more stakeholders or if they avoid the trade-offs and find mutually beneficial solutions.

Building on the empirical insights, the authors elaborate on stakeholder theory with a focus on the integration of marginalized stakeholders by emphasizing a moral justification for stakeholder engagement, identifying the nature of the underlying trade-offs which can arise when various stakeholder needs are in conflict and examining the contingencies affecting organizational responses to these trade-offs.

The growing number of people with multiple problems in different areas of life means that cross-domain interprofessional collaboration is becoming increasingly important. This study aims to focus on interprofessional collaboration between professionals from social work and financial and employment service organizations in The Netherlands. This type of cross-domain collaboration is still mostly superficial, and limited empirical knowledge is available about its beneficial factors.

The interprofessional collaboration model of Mulvale et al. (2016) was used as theoretical background for the research methodology and to reflect on the findings of our study. Data was collected through a qualitative study among professionals (N = 18) from social work and financial and employment service organizations in three different Dutch municipalities.

Similar team-level collaboration mechanisms of Mulvale et al.’s (2016) model were seen within this study. Joint client meetings were very beneficial for the interprofessional collaboration. Further beneficial factors include the decision-making process, team vision, client as an equal member, open communication and the appointment of a coordinator.

Further special attention is needed to determine how best to allocate co-ordinating tasks, and how organizational and policy contexts affect the functioning of interprofessional collaborative teams.

This study offers an empirical view on a cross-domain collaboration between social work and financial and employment service organizations, by using Mulvale et al.’s (2016) model. In addition, this study also offers special attention to the role of the client in interprofessional collaborative teams.

This study aims to investigate how organizational culture (OC) and transformational leadership (TL) affect corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance (environmental performance and social performance) and financial performance (FP) in the context of the Italian manufacturing sector. Grounded in resource-based view theory, this study explores how these factors influence sustainable firm performance.

Data gathered from 260 employees were analyzed to examine the multidimensional aspects of CSR, encompassing social and environmental sustainability.

The findings highlight the pressing need for sustainable firm performance in the existing environment, supporting the hypothesis that firms achieve sustainable and FP through the recognition of TL and OC. Moreover, a positive and significant relationship between CSR performance and FP was established, underscoring the strategic importance of integrating CSR initiatives into core business practices. This study offers valuable insights for both academia and firms, providing theoretical and practical implications that underscore the importance of cultivating a robust OC to drive performance enhancements.

This study is novel because it is one of the first, to the best of the author’s knowledge, to analyze the relationships between TL, OC and performance components associated with CSR.

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationship between intellectual capital (IC) and its components on financial performance of banks within the selected eight countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The study utilizes the balanced panel data of 37 publicly listed banks from eight leading ASEAN economies for the period of 2017–2021. In this sense, the authors applied the Ante Pulic's typology, i.e. value-added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) to evaluate the efficiency of intangible and tangible assets. While, investigating the dynamic nature of relationship, the authors employed the generalized system method of moments because of its power to account for the problem of endogeneity and heteroscedasticity.

The results of the study demonstrate that banks in ASEAN countries shed a varied degree of a spotlight on VAIC™ and its components to create value. The findings revealed that structural capital efficiency is significantly associated with earning per share (EPS), return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE), compared to human capital efficiency (HCE) and capital employed efficiency of ASEAN banks. These results endorse the importance of resource- and knowledge-based views of organizations to leverage the financial performance of banks. However, contrary to theoretical expectations, this study found no positive relationship between HCE with ROA and ROE. Whereas, the relationship of VAIC™ is positive and significant with EPS and ROE but it remains statistically very marginal.

There are some inherent limitations in this study that could be opportunities for future research. The current study uses the VAIC™ typology, but future researchers can use the modified value-added intellectual coefficient (MVAIC) or triangulation approach to enhance the validity and reliability of the study. Additionally, future research can investigate the similarities and differences among countries in terms of their cultural backgrounds and regulatory frameworks regarding the disclosure of intangibles. Furthermore, future research can increase the length and sample size of the study to enhance its generalizability.

The robust empirical findings extend the academic debate on IC by unveiling the dynamic nature of relationship between IC and financial performance in context of ASEAN banking sector. The findings provide plausible recommendations for policy makers (managers, regulators and stakeholders) to understand how to increase the IC efficiently, especially human capital as a source to evaluate the firms’ ability in determining value-added and financial performance. Further, findings of this study also suggest that how can policy makers get the benefit by investing more on structural capital as a valuable strategic source to guarantee the optimal performance returns.

Prior studies on IC have been country- and firm-specific, utilizing cross-sectional research designs. However, this research contributes to the limited literature by investigating the dynamic nature of the relationship between IC and financial performance of banks in the context of ASEAN countries using micro-panel data.

This study aims to investigate why anti-corruption statutes are not efficient in Nigeria’s upstream petroleum industry.

This study is a doctrinal legal research that embraces a point-by-point comparative methodology with a library research technique.

This study reveals that corruption strives on feeble implementation of anti-corruption legal regime and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention. Finally, this study finds that anti-corruption organisations in Nigeria are not efficient due to non-existence of the Federal Government’s political will to fight corruption, insufficient funds and absence of stringent implementation of the anti-corruption legal regime in the country.

Investigations reveal during this study that Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) operations are characterised with poor record-keeping, lack of accountability as well as secrecy in the award of oil contracts, oil licence, leases and other financial transactions due to non-disclosure or confidentiality clauses contained in most of these contracts. Also, an arbitration proceeding limit access to their records and some of these agreements under contentions. This has also limited the success of this research work and generalising its findings.

This study recommends, among other reforms, soft law technique and stringent execution of anti-corruption statutes. This study also recommends increment in financial appropriation to Nigeria’s anti-corruption institutions, taking into consideration the finding that a meagre budget is a drawback.

This study reveals that corruption strives on feeble implementation of anti-corruption legal regime and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention. Corruption flourishes due to poor enforcement of anti-corruption laws and the absence of political will in offering efficient regulatory intervention by the government.

The study advocates the need for enhancement of anti-corruption agencies' budgets taking into consideration the finding that meagres budgets are challenge of the agencies.

Literature reveals ongoing debates around the role of business analysts in agile software development (ASD) teams. This can be attributed, in part, to a knowledge gap concerning how business analysts contribute to overall team capabilities, particularly those which are essential in enabling teams to respond to fast-paced environmental changes. The purpose of this study was to address this gap by investigating how business analysts (BAs) contribute to the dynamic capabilities of ASD teams.

Through a deductive approach, this study adapted and applied a research model based on the team dynamic capabilities (DC) theory to explore the contributions of BAs in agile teams. The study was executed using a qualitative, single case study research strategy directed at an ASD team in the financial services industry. Moreover, data were collected through face-to-face, semi-structured interviews; a focus group; non-participant observation and physical artefacts review. The thematic analysis technique was used to analyse the data.

The study contributes to teams DC theory through four theoretical propositions centred on the role of BAs. The proposition highlights how BAs relationship management, tacit knowledge sharing, task mental models and transactive memory are key contributors of ASD teams' DC. The study also found that BAs contribute to ASD teams' ability to embrace agile principles 2, 4, 6 and 12. This study can inform the design of capacity development programmes for individual team members and BAs and thus help managers curate teams that will best promote DC.

This study can inform the design of capacity development programmes for individual team members and BAs and thus help managers curate teams that will best promote DC.

This study builds on the relatively few studies which focus on DC within software development (SD) teams and ASD project teams. Moreover, the study explores how an individual (i.e. a BA) can contribute to the DC of a team.

This research investigates the Islamic banks’ intermediation role (e.g. branches and deposits) in financing. It also examines how financing contributes to the regions' economic growth and poverty alleviation as a predictor and mediator variable.

A total of 297 observations were extracted from 33 Indonesian districts and 14 Islamic banks during the period 2012–2020. Fixed-effect regression analysis was used to examine variable’s interactions.

The empirical results indicate that Islamic banks have adopted a channelling role towards redistributing capital from lender to borrower. Besides, there are crucial roles in developing economies and reducing poverty at the district level. This study also reinforces the critical role of financing in mediating the relationship between branches and deposits as predictor variables and GDP and poverty as outcome variables.

The current study was limited to Indonesian Islamic banks and the district’s perspective. Future research needs to cover sub-districts and other poverty measurements (e.g. human education and development perspectives), including conventional and Islamic banks. It can help practitioners, regulators and researchers observe the dynamic behaviour of the banking sector to understand its role in the economic and social fields.

Bank managers and regulators should promote branches, deposits and financing. It also enlightens people about the essential role of Islamic banks and their fundamental operations in business and economics.

This study contributes to economic literature, bank managers and local governments' decision-making processes by developing and testing an economic growth and poverty model.

This study provides theoretical and empirical insights into how firms can enhance their performance strategically and financially by integrating learning and transformational capabilities into research and development (R&D) activities based on the dynamic capabilities approach. To achieve this, the authors propose that transformational capabilities in R&D mediate the relationship between learning capabilities in R&D and competitive advantage.

Using a purposive sampling technique and standardized questionnaires, data were collected from 118 R&D and senior managers. To analyze the data, multiple regression analysis, along with SPSS PROCESS macro (Model 4), was used.

The results support the theoretical assumption that there are direct and indirect positive and significant effects between learning capabilities in R&D and competitive advantage as mediated by transformational R&D capabilities.

This study explores R&D from a dynamic capabilities perspective and suggests that learning capabilities should come first to enhance businesses’ competitive advantage. Furthermore, transformational R&D capabilities can explain the relationship between learning capabilities in R&D and competitive advantage. The authors recommend that researchers should investigate the contributions of R&D to promote competitive advantage.