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This study aims to critically evaluate resource dependence theory’s (RDT) assumptions and explanations about dependence and the dependent firm’s strategic options. The authors argue that RDT’s perception of dependence is problematic because it evaluates dependence as a purely negative situation in which all firms, by definition, seek to develop strategies to change the power structure of such relationships. On the contrary, the authors argue that there are situations in which dependent firms are in agreement with dependence and, therefore, develop strategies that do not aim to change the balance of power in the relationship, but rather to strengthen their position within the relationship.

The research is designed as a theoretical discussion. The authors critically evaluate and discuss current understanding and assumptions about RDT’s dependence explanations. Drawing on insights from the strategic management literature, the authors offer a new perspective on the problematic areas in the dependence explanations of the RDT.

Drawing on insights from the strategic management literature, the authors argue that dependent firms enjoy certain advantages due to the dependence relationship to gain sustainable competitive advantages over their rivals and potential competitors. These advantages include factors such as increasing growth potential, developing capabilities and competencies, building relationships of trust with powerful firms and leveraging their reputations and references that contribute to the sustainable strategic advantages of dependent firms. The authors believe that this study has the potential to spur new research that further challenges the assumptions of the RDT and empirically tests its propositions.

The authors propose a research framework on dependence as a strategic option that has the possibility of expanding RDT’s current dependence explanation.

The PICCH research project contributes to opening a dialogue between cultural heritage archives and users. Hence, the users are identified and their information needs, the search strategies they apply and the search challenges they experience are uncovered.

A combination of questionnaires and interviews is used for collection of data. Questionnaire data were collected from users of three different audiovisual archives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two user groups: (1) scholars searching information for research projects and (2) archivists who perform their own scholarly work and search information on behalf of others.

The questionnaire results show that the archive users mainly have an academic background. Hence, scholars and archivists constitute the target group for in-depth interviews. The interviews reveal that their information needs are multi-faceted and match the information need typology by Ingwersen. The scholars mainly apply collection-specific search strategies but have in common primarily doing keyword searching, which they typically plan in advance. The archivists do less planning owing to their knowledge of the collections. All interviewees demonstrate domain knowledge, archival intelligence and artefactual literacy in their use and mastering of the archives. The search challenges they experience can be characterised as search system complexity challenges, material challenges and metadata challenges.

The paper provides a rare insight into the complexity of the search situation of cultural heritage archives, and the users’ multi-facetted information needs and hence contributes to the dialogue between the archives and the users.

This aim of this study is to identify the ways of helping public authorities bring about change to environmentally sustainable household food practices.

The authors identified the practices involved in this concept from the consumer perspective and measured their diffusion among French households. The analyses were conducted following two successive data collection campaigns comprising 571 and 501 respondents in France. The methodology involved two complementary scaling techniques: factor analysis and item response theory.

The results show that consumers understand sustainable food through five food practices: buying and cooking products with sustainable attributes, anti-waste storage, self-production, plant protein consumption and anti-waste cooking.

The findings suggest that while at the individual level people appear to have incorporated anti-waste practices into their daily lives, at the household level, there is still work to be done for improving diets and stimulating the production of home-grown food. It is also worth noting that the emerging vision typically involves sustainable foods that are organic, locally grown, seasonal, based on fair trade and packaging-free.

Since the end of the 1990s, the Algerian public authorities have implemented research and innovation policies in order to build a solid National Innovation System (NIS) and improve industrial and economic performance. Today, the NIS remains immature, which hinders the learning and innovation processes. Our objective here is to analyze under a broad vision the Algerian NIS by examining its various components, to evaluate the capacities of training and innovation, and to measure the production of the innovation and the economic performances. Our research question is the following: How could the Algerian public authorities build a solid NIS in order to improve economic performance? To answer this question, we use a research methodology that mobilizes three types of complementary indicators in order to analyze the processes of learning and innovation from a systemic and interactive perspective. We also use economic performance indicators in order to put the analysis into a broader perspective. At the end, we propose action policies in favor of the construction of a complete Algerian NIS to improve economic performance.

Building on construal level theory and applying the hypothetical distance dimension, this cross-cultural study (individualistic vs collectivistic culture) aims to explore the effects of cause familiarity on individuals' attitudes toward a brand and how cause–brand fit mediates this relationship. Furthermore, this study explores how perceived betrayal moderates the relationship between cause–brand fit and attitude toward a brand.

A quantitative research design was adopted. Data collection was performed through snowball sampling of French and Turkish participants (N = 455). The collected data were then analyzed using the PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The results reveal a significant effect of cause familiarity on attitude toward the brand, wherein one's attitude toward fit in a cause–brand alliance serves as a mediator in this relationship. The results also indicate that perceived betrayal moderates the relationship between cause–brand fit and attitude toward a brand. However, when it comes to facing a global pandemic, culture has no significant effect on consumers' perceptions and attitudes toward cause–brand alliances.

This research investigates the enhancement of attitudes toward a brand through an alliance with a familiar cause and explains this relationship via attitudes toward fit in such an alliance. Moreover, it provides novel insights into perceived betrayal as a variable that can lead to a more pronounced relationship between attitude toward fit and attitude toward a brand.

The field of supply chain management (SCM) needs to attract and retain workers to solve the current talent shortage. The purpose of this research is to identify and evaluate factors that influence career advancement in SCM and compare male and female supply chain experts' perceptions of the importance of those factors.

First, 32 factors perceived as affecting career advancement in SCM were identified by conducting a literature review and consulting 36 experts. Those factors were grouped into four categories: “environmental and structural”, “human capital”, “individual” and “interpersonal”. Those factors were validated via the Delphi method, and ten factors were retained for further study. Second, the voting analytical hierarchy process was used to determine the priority weights experts assigned to these factors. The weights assigned by male and female experts were compared to determine if there were differences between the women's and men's perceptions of the factors' importance.

The findings reveal that the category of human capital factors is the most important, followed by individual factors and the least important is interpersonal factors. The experts consulted for this research emphasized “skills”, “a good fit between an individual and an organization” and “self-confidence” as important factors for career advancement. There were two unexpected results. First, the experts rejected all the environmental and structural factors. Second, no significant difference was found between the male and female groups' evaluations.

Prior to this study, no integrated approach to identify and evaluate the factors perceived which affect career advancement in SCM had been developed. This research is a single empirical and integrative study in France that provides valuable insights for academics and practitioners.

Often linked to the New Public Management (NPM) doctrines, agencification has been on the priority list of policy makers for over two decades. This article proposes an analysis of the role of agencies in the French health system and the impact of government agency reform on physicians and the public.

The research analyzes the perceived implementation of a re-concentration of decision-making powers within public agencies as the declared goal of agencification at the French health care system, specifically primary care providers and hospitals. The assessment relies on secondary sources from ministerial bodies such as the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, the Social Security and the General Accounting Office, and specialized French technical agencies.

Decentralization in France and the subsequent rise of public health care agencies had outcomes below expectations. Hence, a re-concentration of decision-making powers within the larger Regional Health Agencies; a streamlining of the public administration; and a re-appropriation of decision-making powers by the Ministry of Health are needed. The monitoring of health providers allows central health authorities to govern at a distance.

The analysis of health care agencies in France and of their use of efficiency-enhancing techniques may trigger a change of values within the medical profession.

This exploratory research aims to identify the types of social networks established by German and French expatriates.

The authors use the concepts of social capital and social networks, as well as the societal and cultural approaches, to investigate the way expatriates develop their social networks. The authors' empirical study is based on 40 semi-structured interviews conducted with German and French expatriates.

The authors' findings show that German expatriates mainly establish professional networks, whereas their French counterparts also focus on personal networks. They further indicate that managing social capital lies within the individual responsibility of German expatriates, whereas it is part of higher education institutions in France.

The authors highlight the way German and French expatriates manage their social networks and provide novel insights into the role played by higher education systems and the cultural characteristics of their home country context.

This article aims to better understand how empowered middle manager engage in change translation? Relying on the notions of building and dwelling strategizing, the authors analyze the micro-practices of middle managers during organizational change, when middle managers are freed from time-consuming administrative activities.

This empirical study relies on a qualitative embedded case study approach that involves comparing two banking units belonging to a large French bank. The qualitative data were collected from three different sources: exploratory and semi-structured interviews, observations and secondary data. The coding analysis enables to distinguish middle managers' dwelling and building strategizing during organizational change.

The study’s findings show how managers translate organizational change relying on both building and dwelling strategizing. By doing so, managers enable to adapt the prescribed strategy to local circumstances and foster front-line empowerment.

Even though the findings are based on the analysis of a single organization, the authors provide several theoretical insights. First, the authors contribute to the recent academic debate in strategy-as-practice literature by showing the recursive relation between building and dwelling strategizing. The authors also shed a new light on middle managers' strategizing by emphasizing the idea that middle managers are not only passive change “translators” but that middle managers enact a real agency in the organizational change process.

From a managerial perspective, the study’s findings enable to enlight what empowering middle managers means in practice. Indeed, the authors show clear empirical illustrations of how middle managers can be empowered by both organizational structure and top-management support. The results also reveal how empowering middle managers enable to empower their team by three different activities: (1) federate the team spirit to facilitate collaboration; (2) develop employees' capabilities and (3) adjust managers' activity according to employees' needs.

While multiple current new ways of organizing encourage to transform organizations from inefficient bureaucracies into flatter and more dynamic project-based teams, calling into question the importance of middle managers' strategic role, this study provides an original case study of an organization that chose to run against the tide and created an additional middle management level.

This chapter examines representations of gender in online modafinil markets. While gender has often been absent from scholarship on online drug markets, our analysis demonstrates the ubiquity of gender in representations of modafinil users and sellers. The analysis draws on visual images, blogs, and marketing emails relating to three websites selling modafinil, discussed pseudonymously. We describe the range of ways that notions of gender are represented in advertising. Although women represent around 40% of that buying modafinil online, websites and communications tended not to feature women. Although sexist stereotypes of women were rarely present (in contrast to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising), the ways that modafinil was imagined tended to focus narrowly on corporate spheres of work and productivity. We contrast this narrow imaginary with female journalists’ own accounts of using modafinil to manage illness and enhance creativity. Thus, we conclude that the ways that modafinil has been imagined reflects working assumptions as to who is considered the ‘normal’ participant in online modafinil markets.