Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of how a UK business school has explicitly linked sustainability to employability and embedded these into all levels of its undergraduate and postgraduate degree portfolio.

This case study features Nottingham Business School’s (NBS’s) journey of linking sustainability with employability to achieve the University’s strategic objectives and help deliver on the sustainable development goals (SDGs). After reviewing all courses, a cross-school approach was adopted in re-designing the curriculum, first at undergraduate and later postgraduate level. Partnerships, both internal and external were developed, involving the employability and enterprise teams, the University’s students and alumni, local employers, local authorities and businesses and charities. Feedback from graduates is included.

When NBS introduced new undergraduate modules in 2012, there was resistance with concerns over already crammed curricula and the perceived irrelevance of sustainability. This changed as students realised that an understanding of sustainability was benefiting them at interviews and adding value to their employers. While it cannot be proved that increased self-awareness and sustainability literacy have a direct effect on graduate prospects (as measured by the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey), NBS has seen the percentage of students in graduate level employment and/or study increase from 71 to 89.6 per cent over the past five years.

Linking sustainability to employability, and embedding these in the curriculum, should benefit any institution, its students, employers and society, and can be replicated anywhere in the world.

This article explores the value of engaging a hybrid learning strategy in a micro-enterprise setting when responding to a global pandemic. The research question asks: “Does a hybrid learning strategy enhance a micro-enterprise's response to extreme events?”.

A micro-enterprise owner–manager (OM) reflects on their experience running a business during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which resulted in the complete decimation of the organization’s revenue stream in early 2020. Captured in conversation with an academic peer, these practitioner insights provide valuable case evidence relating to micro-enterprise response to extreme commercial events, such as a global pandemic.

The journey from initial survival-mode to emergent market opportunity recognition and subsequent growth is recorded. The paper contributes to the limited research on the impact of learning strategy plans on micro-enterprise crisis response strategies and provides insights into the value of engaging a hybrid learning strategy when responding to a significant external business shock.

Drawing from these insights, the authors offer a literature-informed framework from which to consider the dynamics of an adaptive strategic response in a micro-enterprise setting, offering a means through which micro-enterprises can plan for and respond to extreme events in the future.

This paper examines the different features of China's economic development in different stages of economic globalization. The study finds that the investment- and export-based growth model drove China's high-speed economic growth between 2000 and 2007, which came into existence around 2000 when China plugged into the global production network.

This paper also finds that China slowed down to the New Normal because of the disruption to the socio-economic underpinnings of this growth model. As China adapts to and steers the New Normal, supply-side structural reforms can channel excess capacity to the construction of underground pipe networks in rural areas of central China and fix capital while advance rural revitalization.

At the same time, enterprises must strive to build a key component development platform for key component innovation and the standard-setting power in global manufacturing.

The establishment of a domestic production network integrating the integrated innovation-driven core enterprises and modular producers at different levels can satisfy the dynamic demand structure of China in which standardized demands and personalized demands coexist.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the evolution, characteristics, motivations, entry patterns, organizational structure and effectiveness of the internationalization of Chinese research institutions in the past 40 years of reform and opening-up.

This paper describes the evolution and practice of Chinese research institutions “going out” by constructing a theoretical framework diagram and uses official statistics and existing research to explain the authors’ points.

The research results show that the internationalization of research institutions has undergone four phases: sprout period, starting period, adjustment period and accelerating period. It shows a rapid growth of investment scale, diversification of investment entities, rich and varied forms, and transition to major countries along the “One Belt and One Road.” Expanding the international market, tracking and acquiring technological frontiers, nurturing domestic R&D talents, and evading the risks of political, economic, cultural and scientific differences between home and host countries are the main motivations for Chinese research institutions to “go global.” Multinational corporations have entered the host country with modes such as M&A, greenfield investment and joint R&D alliances in their own strengths and also presented a variety of organizational structures such as integrated R&D networks.

This paper systematically summarizes the internationalized experience model of research institutions with Chinese characteristics since the reform and opening-up. From the perspective of internationalization model transformation, policy integration and cooperation among emerging economies, it presents the opportunities and challenges faced by the research institutions in the process of internationalization and provides a theoretical basis for improving the internationalization ability of research institutions.

This paper explores the motivating factors that lead to opportunity recognition among social entrepreneurs in India.

The study followed an exploratory, qualitative design based on thematic analysis of the interview data collected from 13 Indian social entrepreneurs.

The study identifies two aggregate factors that motivate social entrepreneurs: personal and contextual. Personal factors include life experiences, social awareness, social inclination since childhood, spiritual motives, the need for a meaningful career and entrepreneurial intention. Contextual factors included institutional voids, community development, the presence of a role model and volunteer experiences.

This study contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature by providing a model for motivating factors that lead to opportunity recognition. This study enables policymakers and social entrepreneurship educators to identify aspiring social entrepreneurs and provide target-specific support to them.

This study enables policymakers and social entrepreneurship educators to identify aspiring social entrepreneurs and provide target-specific support to them.

The study uniquely contributes to the social entrepreneurship field by offering deep qualitative insights into the motivational and opportunity recognition patterns of social entrepreneurship.

The interview explores the Live Enterprise model at Infosys. The idea is to enable mature companies to transform into a business with digital native agility, with many small teams innovating while leveraging shared digital infrastructure, in an environment of continuous evolution and learning.

Jeff Kavanaugh, Vice President and Global Head of Infosys Knowledge Institute, the research and thought leadership arm of Infosys, explains how the model promotes rapid experimentation through the digital runway, innovation at the edges by distributed micro-teams and extreme automation at scale for repeatable processes and functions. He and co-author Rafee Tarafdar describe the inner workings of this model in their new book “The Live Enterprise: Create a Continuously Evolving and Learning Organization”.

Outcomes are made possible by four capabilities: hybrid talent, a design-to-evolve mindset, a digital runway and a ‘micro is the new mega’ approach to transformational change.

Micro is the new mega because the Live Enterprise model uses frequent micro-change releases at scale in short sprints. The cumulative effect of these many small changes compounds quickly to transformational change

Essential reading for executives at mature companies who need to compete in the new digital environment. Offers such revolutionary ideas as: Employee experience (EX) is as important as customer experience (CX) in the live enterprise

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the social turn in contemporary capitalism and contemporary art through the lens of art-based social enterprises (ASEs) that aim to create positive social benefits for young people experiencing forms of marginalisation, and which trade creative products or services to help fulfil that mission. A growth in ASEs demonstrates a growing interest in how the arts can support social and economic development, and the ways new economic models can generate employment for individuals excluded from the labour market; extend opportunities for more people to participate in art markets; and challenge dominant market models of cultural production and consumption.

This paper considers a number of challenges and complexities faced by ASEs that embrace a co-dependence of three goals, which are often in tension and competition – artistic practice, social purpose and economic activity. It does so by analysing interviews from staff working with 12 ASE organisation’s across Australia.

While the external forces that shape ASEs – including government policy, markets, investors and philanthropy – are interested in the “self-sufficient” economic potential of ASEs, those working in ASEs tend to prioritise social values and ethical business over large financial returns and are often ambivalent about their roles as entrepreneurs. This ambivalence is symptomatic of a position that is simultaneously critical and affirmative, of the conditions of contemporary capitalism and neoliberalism.

This paper addresses a gap in social enterprise literature presenting empirical research focussing on the lived experience of those managing and leading ASEs in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the trends of global automobile industry toward energy saving and smart application. The automobile industry has its own special supply, safety and reliability system. It combined with the legislations that progressive safety driving leads to increase automobile electronic (AE) facilities and enlarges the proportion of the electronic control for vehicles. Based on matured communication and semiconductor industries in Taiwan, the government assists these hi-tech industries in entering the AE domain by clustering relevant enterprises with assembly supply chains. Flagship IC packaging and LCD panels enterprises are located in the Kaohsiung Industrial Park which possesses advantages for the clustering of AE industry.

In this paper, a systematic investigation on establishing AE industry cluster in Kaohsiung Industry Park (KIP) is presented. First, 42 electrical and electronics enterprises are site visited and interviewed for operation and management preferential demands. Second, problems encountered in enterprises’ operation are identified through expert weight method. Third, the main factors involved in the operational management are then analyzed based on five flagship enterprises in KIP. The integration of industrial–university–government resources and assistance is demonstrated. Finally, the establishment of an innovative talents cultivation model is illustrated.

The developed systematic talent program is proposed to resolve the urgent demands in recruiting talents, operational costs and new products development.

This paper satisfies needs of research enterprise management. The establishment of an innovative talents cultivation model is illustrated.