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This paper explores attempts to deliver socioeconomic benefit by developing social enterprise within the public sector supply chain.

A case study approach is adopted which focusses on the implementation of public procurement policy intended to support social entrepreneurs (SEs) in the delivery of social care in Scotland. Socio-technical systems theory (STST) is adopted as a lens through which to explore the case.

While acknowledging the contextual limits of the case study, the empirical findings recognise partial implementation of the measures intended to develop social entrepreneurship in the supply chain. The results, however, suggest that both the engagement levels of SEs and the expected socio economic benefits are yet to accrue fully.

The paper concludes that in order to achieve the expected social benefits further progress is required in engaging SEs in formal collaborations with larger, potentially for profit, organisations and also in their increased involvement in the design and commissioning of public services.

The innovative, cross-sectional research design uses a survey based, gap analysis to provide a nuanced comparison between the views of local authority procurement officers and the opinions prevalent within social enterprise care providers and thereby to assesses the effectiveness of public policy.

Firm performance remains at the heart of strategic management. In the quest to refine the field’s contribution, Venkatraman and Ramanujam (1986) argued that reliance upon single measures of firm performance is risky and firm performance should be treated as a multidimensional construct. Subsequently, researchers have examined trends in firm performance measurement ever since. Over a decade since the last examination of this issue, this study aims to add to the ongoing conversation.

The authors investigated 1,972 research papers published in five premier management journals for the years 2015–2019 to determine if multidimensional measurement of firm performance has improved.

The findings suggest that approximately two-thirds of papers that measure firm performance are published using only a single measure of firm performance, and approximately three-fourths do not measure firm performance across multiple dimensions.

This study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the necessity to consider the dimensionality of firm performance, use multiple measures and consistently ground firm performance variables with theory – especially control variables – to keep firm performance as the focus of the strategy field. Evidence and implications are discussed and recommendations for researchers and reviewers are provided.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

Bullying negatively affects victims’ mental health and has been shown to be associated with anxiety and depression. Moreover, many studies have reported the prevalence of mistreatment among medical students (MS), interns and junior physicians. However, there are limited studies on bullying in the Middle East, and no studies on higher education in Bahrain. The authors’ aim was to investigate and compare the prevalence of bullying between MS at a major public university and non-medical students (NMS) at a private university in Bahrain. The authors also sought to explore the associations between bullying, depression and anxiety.

The authors conducted a survey-based cross-sectional study from October 1 to December 31, 2018, using convenient sampling method. A total of 300 students (150 MS and 150 NMS) participated in the study by answering a questionnaire that explored exposure to different types of bullying. In addition, standard anxiety and depression instruments were distributed to students.

The results showed that MS were more exposed to bullying than NMS, with a significant number (41%) reporting mistreatment from multiple sources, including teachers, consultants and peers. Furthermore, the authors found that bullying was significantly correlated with psychological health, anxiety and depression.

There are limited studies on bullying in the Middle East and no studies on the topic of higher education in Bahrain. Furthermore, the learning environment of tertiary education institutions can be improved by addressing the concerns associated with bullying identified in this study.

The purpose of this study is to examine how informational faultlines on a board affect the management of knowledge owned by directors and the consequences on organizational performance. In this study, informational faultlines are defined as hypothetical lines that divide a group into relatively homogeneous subgroups based on the alignment of several informational attributes among board members.

The study uses unique hand-collected panel data covering 7,247 board members at 106 publicly traded firms to provide strong support for the hypothesized U-shaped relationship. The authors use a fixed effects approach and a system generalized method of moments approach to test the hypothesis.

The study finds that the relationship between informational faultlines on a board and organizational performance is U shaped, with the least optimal organizational performance experienced when boards have moderate informational faultlines. More specifically, informational faultlines within boards are negatively related to organizational performance across the weak-to-moderate range of informational faultlines and positively related to organizational performance across the moderate-to-strong range.

By explaining the mechanisms through which informational faultlines are related to organizational performance, the authors contribute to the literature in a number of ways. By conceptualizing how the management of knowledge plays an important role in the particular setting of corporate boards, the authors add not only to literature on knowledge management but also to the faultline and corporate governance literature.

This study offers a rationale for prior mixed findings by providing an alternative theoretical basis to explain the effect of informational faultlines within boards on organizational performance. To advance the field, the authors build on the concept of knowledge demonstrability to illuminate how informational faultlines affect the management of knowledge within boards, which will translate to organizational performance.

This paper uses dialectical inquiry to explore tensions that arise when adopting Industry 4.0 technologies in a lean production system and their reconciliation mechanisms.

We conducted an in-depth qualitative case study over a 3-year period on an Italian division of an international electrotechnical organisation that produces electrical switches. This organisation successfully adopted Industry 4.0 technologies in a lean production system. The study is based on primary data such as observations and semi-structured interviews, along with secondary data.

We identify four empirically validated dialectic tensions arising across different Industry 4.0 adoption stages due to managers’ and workers’ contrasting interpretations of technologies. Consequently, we define the related reconciliation mechanisms that allow the effective adoption of various Industry 4.0 technologies to support a lean production system.

This is the first empirical investigation of tensions in the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in a lean production system. Furthermore, the paper presents four theoretical propositions and a conceptual model describing which tensions arise during the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in a lean production system and the reconciliation mechanisms that prevent lean production system deterioration.

The concept of interestingness has been investigated in several management disciplines but studies mobilizing such concept in supply chain management (SCM) to develop strategies for the field's advancement are relatively scarce. This research paper aims to investigate how SCM scholars rank attributes of interestingness and the strategies to harness interestingness in the field of SCM.

The authors adopt a mixed methods research design in which a survey on SCM researchers' ranking of interestingness' attributes and qualitative interviews with selected academics are conducted.

The findings highlight the importance given by SCM scholars to attributes such as rigor, relevance, novelty and communication and how they are interrelated. Also, other interestingness attributes are underlined by scholars during the qualitative interviews including inquisitiveness, engaging the reader, imaginativeness and entertainment. Furthermore, a research agenda to synthesize the propositions to develop interesting research is also proposed.

Interestingness attributes such as rigor, relevance and novelty are discussed. Recommendations for interesting research are suggested which can be useful to scholars and journal editors. The findings of this research are also relevant for practitioners for a better understanding of academic/practice relationships to develop high impact collaboration.

This paper is among the few studies that focus on interestingness in SCM research from the perspective of scholars. In doing so, the authors seek to contribute to the classic debate in SCM field about “relevance-rigour” duality by providing a broader outlook based on interestingness and proposing a research agenda for prospective studies in the field.

The aim of this paper is to examine the effect of structural and demographic board diversity as well as board tenure on family firms' environmental performance, by analyzing the differences between family and non-family businesses and within family firms.

Tobit regressions are applied to investigate the effect of independent directors, CEO non-duality, board gender diversity and board tenure on environmental performance. The study also controls for other board and firm characteristics, as well as for time, industry and country-fixed effects. In doing so, the authors rely on a sample of non-financial listed firms from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal over the period 2014–2021.

The authors find that women on the board positively influence environmental performance and this effect is significant only in family firms, although board tenure negatively moderates the relationship. Board independence significantly affects environmental performance only in non-family firms. A strong presence of family directors has a negative effect on family firms' environmental performance, especially when directors' turnover is low.

This paper examines the unexplored relationship between structural board diversity and environmental performance in family companies. This study provides empirical evidence on the association between gender diversity and family firms' environmental performance focusing for the first time on a European setting. Moreover, this study provides evidence of a different effect of board tenure in family and non-family businesses.

Existing literature has begun to identify the agonistic and contested aspects of the ongoing development of accountability systems. These “contests” are particularly important during periods of change when an accountability “deficit” has been identified, that is, when existing accountability systems are deemed inadequate and requiring revision. The purpose of this paper is to explore one such set of contests in the case of large technology and social media firms: the so-called “big tech”. The authors focus specifically on “big tech” because of increasing societal concerns about the harms associated with their products, services and business practices.

The authors analysed four US Congressional hearings, in which the CEO of Facebook was held to account for the company's alleged breaches and harms. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the dialogue between the account giver (Mark Zuckerberg) and account holders (Members of Congress) in the oral testimony at the four hearings.

Two areas of contestation in the dialogue between the account giver and account holders are identified. “Epistemic contests” involved contestation about the “facts” concerning the harms the company had allegedly caused. “Responsibility contests” involved contestation about who (or what) should be held responsible for these harms and according to what standards or criteria.

The study advances critical dialogical accountability literature by identifying two areas of contestation during periods of change in accountability systems. In so doing, they advanced the theory by conceptualising the process of change as underpinned by discursive contests in which multiple actors construct and contest the “problem” with existing accountability systems. The outcomes of these contests are significant, the authors suggest, because they inform the development of reforms to the accountability system governing big tech firms and other industries undergoing similar periods of contestation and change.

This paper aims to propose and evaluate an innovative approach to education for sustainable consumption (ESC) which empowers teenagers and young adults to improve sustainable consumption competences. This approach combines pedagogical learning approaches such as real-world learning (e.g. experiential learning and research-based learning) with transformative and transdisciplinary research approaches (i.e. real-world laboratory research).

Through a transdisciplinary research design, the authors explore if real-world experiments (RWEs) offer a suitable approach for sustainable consumption education at schools. RWEs are a research approach for knowledge production, aiming to go beyond temporary interventions, to establish semi-permanent spaces for sustainability transformation and reflexive learning. To evaluate this proposal, the authors study already existing active teaching and learning approaches developed within and for ESC and put these in perspective, to define and understand the RWEs.

Insights from a transdisciplinary research project which applied RWEs as a teaching and learning approach in German schools complement conceptual considerations. As a result, advantages, such as the development of core competencies among learners, but also challenges experienced, are illustrated. Though, the challenges found are not unique to the RWE, rather they point out important potentials for ESC through suggesting systematic changes in educational institutions and teaching approaches.

This paper explores RWEs as an active and participatory teaching and learning approach for sustainable consumption education at schools and delivers practical insights and a definition of RWEs as an innovative teaching and learning approach.