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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

A study of teachers in Chinese schools examined the antecedents of career sustainability with a focus more on proactive behavior from employees than internal traits, or the company’s organizational goals. Their research showed that self-goal setting has a positive influence on career sustainability and also that career crafting mediates the relationship. The effect is stronger when perceived organizational clarity is high.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Employee training and learning have transformed over the years. The movement from classroom training to the blended format represents the magnitude of this evolution. This has placed much attention on self-regulated learning. This study aimed to understand the individual and organizational mechanisms that sustain the formal learning process in organizations. It explored the goals the organizations and employees strive to achieve by investing in learning. Through this, the authors investigated how technology assistance makes learning more goal-oriented, despite the possibility of different goals for different stakeholders. They also examined how person-job fit can be achieved in employee training.

The study adopted a grounded theory-based inductive approach using a qualitative inquiry that used in-depth interviews of employees working in the Indian IT/ITES sector. This sector is knowledge-intensive and engages in constant skill development. A content analysis of the interview transcripts unraveled the most relevant themes from the participants' discussion.

Individual learners use dimensions of self-regulated learning to set and achieve goals such as better performance and career development. On the other hand, organizations use learning support mechanisms such as better access and flexibility to direct employee learning behavior to achieve organizational goals. Focusing on goal congruence leads to better achievement of results. Goal congruence also implies good person-organization fit.

This research established how aligning individual and organizational mechanisms can help achieve training goals that ultimately contribute to organizational performance. The study differentiated itself by investigating training goal setting and goal achievement at two levels – organizational and individual – using a qualitative approach. It also showed how goal congruence is vital in improving organizational performance and how technology-enabled training practices rely on self-regulated learning and help achieve goal congruence.

Prior studies on the impact of incentives on physicians’ online participation mainly focused on different incentives while ignoring the difficulty of setting monetary incentives efficiently. Based on goal-setting theory, the current research examines the relationship between incentives with goals of varying difficulty and professional health knowledge sharing (PHKS) in online health knowledge-sharing platforms (OHKSPs).

Four field experiments with different monetary incentives were conducted by one of China’s largest OHKSPs, with whom the researchers cooperated in data collection. Monthly panel data on 10,584 physicians were collected from September 2018 to December 2019. There were 9,376 physicians in the treatment group and 1,208 in the control group. The authors used a difference-in-difference (DID) model to explore the research question based on the same control group and the Chow test with seemingly unrelated estimation (sureg) to compare regression coefficients between four groups. Several robustness checks were performed to validate the main results, including a relative time model, multiple falsification tests and a DID estimation using the propensity score matching method.

The results show that the monetary incentive significantly positively affected the volume of physicians’ PHKS directly with negative spillover to the duration of physicians’ PHKS. Moreover, the positive effect of incentives with higher difficulty on the volume of physicians’ PHKS was significantly smaller than that of incentives with low difficulty. Finally, professional title had a positive moderating effect on the volume of goal difficulty setting and did not significantly moderate the effect on the duration of physicians’ PHKS.

Some limitations of this study are: firstly, because the field experiments were enterprise benefit oriented, the treatment and control groups were not balanced. Secondly, the experiments for different incentive measures were relatively similar, making it challenging to validate a causal effect. Finally, more consideration should be given to the strategy for setting hierarchical incentives in future research.

The research indicates that monetary incentives have a bilateral effect on PHKS, i.e. a positive direct effect on the volume of physicians’ contributions and a negative spillover effect on the duration of physicians’ PHKS. The professional titles of physicians also moderate such bilateral switches of PHKS. Furthermore, when a physician’s energy is limited, the goal difficulty setting of the incentive mechanism tends to be low. The more difficult the incentives are, the more inefficient the effects on physicians’ PHKS will be.

Sustainability continues to be put forth as a strategic priority. However, sustainability efforts are often deemphasized for short-term profitability. This study explores the nuances in managerial decision-making related to adopting sustainability initiatives within food supply chains in an emerging economy. We identify a complex interaction between sustainability efforts and risk mitigation. We derive a model to explain conflicting company goals, managerial decisions and system design.

We followed an exploratory research design with an inductive approach. We analyzed data from semi-structured interviews with 29 companies representing different tiers in Turkish food supply chains. We refined and validated the interview findings through a focus group with nine senior managers. We conducted open, focused and theoretical coding in an iterative and reflective manner to analyze the data and derive our results.

From the data, three themes emerged, indicating that managers are pursuing different, often conflicting, goals concerning value creation, risk management and sustainability performance. Managers identified and commented on new risks brought on by sustainability initiatives. These sustainability-induced risks were seen as a threat to operational performance, a driver of increased costs and a negative impact on product quality and delivery performance. Trade-offs across operating, sustainability and risk management systems create transformational tension that confounds the sustainability adoption decision-making process.

The data from the study was contrasted with a theoretical framework derived from systems theory, goal-setting theory of motivation and the theory of planned behavior. We identified four distinct decision paths that managers pursue. Increased awareness of transformational tension and how it influences managerial decision-making can enhance strategic sustainability system design and initiative success.

Grounding on the goal-setting theory and flow theory, this study explored the mechanism underlying the association between transfer design (TD); identical elements and training transfer (TT). Specifically, the authors explored a moderated mediation process of trainer performance and motivation to improve work through learning (MTIWL) that has received less consideration in the TT literature.

Data were collected using the retro-perspective survey method. The first survey was administered offline (t1: the day when leadership intervention was completed. Subsequently, trainees were requested to participate in an online survey (t2: 12–14 weeks later). In all, 355 executives participated.

The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses suggested that trainees’ MTIWL mediational impact between leadership intervention triggers (transfer design and identical elements), and TT was supported. In addition, the indirect impact of these variables on TT was found to be significant when the trainer had high performance than when it was low. This confirmed the trainer’s performance as a potential moderator in the TT process.

This study is limited to the exploration of leadership intervention variables on TT. The findings have implications for leadership professionals and scholars who use leadership intervention and motivation metrics to predict TT.

This study offers a moderated mediation mechanism for enhancing TT through leadership intervention triggers. The proposed conceptual model included MTIWL as mediator and trainer performance during leadership intervention as moderator.

Drawing on goal-setting theory and team effectiveness theory, the study aims to examine the impact of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team performance. In addition, it investigates the mediating effect of project commitment on the impact of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team performance. Furthermore, the study also tests the moderating role of career level on the impact of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team performance.

Survey data were collected from 563 employees working in 290 information technology (IT) companies in India using a self-reporting structured questionnaire. Partial least squares path modeling was used to test the hypothesized model, and the Process macro was used to test the moderating effect.

The results show that agile taskwork and agile teamwork positively affect team performance and project commitment, and project commitment positively impacts team performance. Furthermore, project commitment fully mediates the relationship between agile taskwork and team performance and partially mediates the relationship between agile teamwork and team performance. Furthermore, the career level negatively moderates the impact of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team performance.

The study shows the importance of agile work practices and project commitment to enhance team performance. Thus, the study provides managers with two strategies to improve their team performance.

There is a scarcity of research examining the distinct effects of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team performance and the mediating role of project commitment in these relationships. Furthermore, as per the empirical evidence, no previous research has empirically examined the moderating role of career level in the agile taskwork-team performance and agile teamwork-team performance relationships.

While previous operations management literature acknowledges the positive influence of Lean and Industry (I4.0) on performance, recent studies examining the synergy between these two factors have produced inconsistent and contradictory results. Therefore, this study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the effect of Lean and I4.0 synergy on firm performance.

This study utilised a meta-analysis approach, examining 23 empirical studies exploring multiple effects of the Lean and I4.0 synergy on firm performance. Multiple subgroup analyses were conducted to assess the contradictory outcomes and identify in what conditions such synergy may achieve performance.

The results affirm the prevailing positivist perspective among most scholars regarding the positive influence of the Lean and I4.0 synergy on firm performance. However, the overall effect size derived from the studies indicates a weak relationship, suggesting that this synergy alone is not the sole determinant factor of firm performance. In addition, the subgroup analyses reveal the presence of contingent conditions that may affect the performance outcomes when integrating Lean and I4.0, as most effects exhibit a weak relationship.

This study represents the first meta-analysis investigating the relationship between the Lean and I4.0 synergy on firm performance. By shedding light on the contradictory effects often depicted in the operations management literature, this study provides a critical reflection for researchers who tend to adopt an overly optimistic view of such synergy.

This research aimed to conceptualize organizations as open and purposeful systems to study how organizational culture (OC) influences firms' Innovative Performance (IP). The authors proposed goal setting and internal integration/external adaptation paradox as central to explaining OC's mediating and suppressing effects on IP.

The authors collected data from 372 Costa Rican organizations and analyzed them with structural equations. This research used the Denison Model instead of the usual typology-based approaches.

The mission had a direct and high impact on IP. The mediated effect via adaptability was also elevated, as well as the suppressor effect through consistency. There was no effect on IP of involvement. According to these results, the Open and Rational Systems Framework emerge as the main theoretical explanatory concepts.

Disaggregating the OC through a performance-oriented dimensional model makes it possible to study the dynamics between the elements that compound it and facilitate integrating these findings with other research streams.

This paper integrates the action phase theory (APT) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to analyse the dynamic mechanisms involved in the configuration of goals and implementation intentions throughout the entrepreneurship process.

The empirical analysis compares individuals in different phases of this process (not yet decided, potential and nascent entrepreneurs). A large sample of adults from Spain is analysed. Structural equation models and multi-group analysis (MGA) serve to test the hypotheses.

The results confirm that perceived behavioural control (PBC) is the most influential antecedent of entrepreneurial goal intention (EGI) in pre-actional phases (undecided and potential entrepreneurs), whilst attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE) takes this role during nascency. Subjective norms (SNs) are more important in Phase 1 (establishing the goal) and in Phase 3 (performing nascent behaviour).

This study contributes to both the TPB and the APT. It provides the most relevant insight into the mental process that leads to starting up and helps explain certain previous conflicting results found in the literature. Additionally, it has important implications not only for theory building but also for support bodies and for entrepreneurship educators.

Gamification design is considered an effective way of changing users' health behavior and improving their health management performance. Even though numerous studies have investigated the positive effect of gamification competition on users, little research has considered gamification's ineffectiveness and negative effects. In particular, how gamification competition affects users' technological exhaustion remains unclear.

According to flow theory and related research on gamification, this study discusses the nonlinear relationship between gamification competition and users' technological exhaustion. Furthermore, the authors analyze the moderating effect of user type (socializers and achievers) and users' health condition on this nonlinear relationship. Based on flow theory, the authors propose a series of research hypotheses. To test all research hypotheses, the authors collected information from 407 users via a questionnaire as the data for this study.

The empirical results found a U-shaped relationship between gamification competition and technological exhaustion. Technological exhaustion gradually decreases as competition increases until reaching the lowest point; after that, technological exhaustion gradually increases as competition increases. Further, being a socializer and health condition play a moderating role in the U-shaped relationship between competition and technological exhaustion.

This study's findings not only enrich the related research in flow theory and gamification, but also contribute to the effective design of gamification in health management platforms.