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The COVID-19 pandemic was an eye-opening experience that put to the test our crisis management competencies across many institutions, including those offered by institutions of higher education. This study aims to review the literature on international business (IB) risks and IB education (IBE) to question whether business graduates are equipped to make decisions in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) marketplace.

While the IB literature has discussed the importance of various sources of risks on global business operations, IBE did not effectively adopt an integrative approach to building the needed risk management competencies related to those risks into our education. The authors argue that this integrative approach to teaching IB is critically needed to prepare future global managers for addressing crises, like that of the pandemic and others. Specifically, this study proposes that this integrated risk management competency can be developed through the building of “synergistic mindsets”.

This study presents a conceptual framework for the components of the synergistic mindset, with intelligence that directly links to present IB risks. These components are cultural intelligence (CQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), public policy intelligence (PPQ), digital intelligence (DQ) and orchestration intelligence (OQ).

Insights related to IBE effectiveness in addressing today’s VUCA market demands and IB risks are discussed.

In the wake of labor shortages in the retail industry, there is value in highlighting a business case for employing neurodivergent individuals. Drawing on signaling theory, this study explores whether perceived neurodiversity management (neurodiversity policies and adjustments) helps enhance neurodiversity awareness and affective commitment and whether affective commitment leads to lower turnover intention.

A cursory content analysis of publicly available documents of randomly selected four retail organizations was undertaken, which was followed by an online survey of the Australian retail workforce, leading to 502 responses from supervisors and employees.

The content analysis shows that retail organizations barely acknowledge neurodiversity. The findings of the main study indicate that neurodiversity policies are positively associated with both neurodiversity awareness and affective commitment, while adjustments were positively linked to affective commitment. Moreover, affective commitment was negatively associated with turnover intention. Affective commitment also mediated the negative effects of neurodiversity policies and adjustments on turnover intention.

This study supports, extends and refines signaling theory and social exchange theory. It addresses knowledge gaps about the perceptions of co-workers and supervisors in regard to neurodiversity management. It provides unprecedented evidence for a business case for the positive attitudinal outcomes of neurodiversity policies and adjustments. The findings can help managers manage neurodiversity for positive attitudinal outcomes.