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India is the first country to have mandated compulsory corporate social responsibility (CSR) spends through changes in its legislative framework. Focus has thus shifted from the “why” to the “how” of CSR and, therefore, a shift in the “locus” of CSR responsibility from the “influencer” chief executive officer toward the “implementer” CSR professionals. The purpose of this paper is to study the role of management education in developing individual competencies among the implementers and impacting effective CSR implementation.

This paper, using a case study design, studies the role of management education in developing individual competencies among the implementers and impacting effective CSR implementation. Building on theoretical frameworks, this paper carries out an exploratory research of an Indian business school’s management education program for development practitioners. It uses qualitative inputs gathered from relevant stakeholders of the program to understand the role of management education in facilitating the paradigm shift in CSR in the Indian context.

The paper finds that the program has impacted outcomes at three levels, namely through developing key individual CSR-related competencies; impacting participants’ professional performance; and organizational impact in effective CSR implementation.

The case study provides a roadmap to business schools for designing and implementing programs for CSR professionals.

Extant research in the Indian context is silent on key competencies required for CSR implementation and also on the role of management education in developing the same. Such competencies can ensure the efficiency of the expected large CSR spends by private corporates under the new legal requirements and alter the country’s social development path.

This study answers the call for research and theorising exploring ethical communication and brand risk from the African continent. The study's purpose was to identify the challenges that strategic communication practitioners face in enacting ethical crisis communication in South Africa.

The researchers conducted ten in-depth interviews with South African strategic communication professionals.

The dominant theme emerging from the study is the marginalisation and exclusion of the communication function in decision-making during crisis situations. Communicators were viewed as implementers, technicians and not strategic counsel. The protection of organisational reputation was done at the expense of the ethics and moral conscience of practitioners. Practitioners were viewed and deployed as spin doctors and tools to face unwanted media interactions.

The article sheds light on the concepts of ethical communication and decision-making in a multicultural African context using the moral theory of Ubuntu and strategic communication. It demonstrates the tension professionals experience as they toggle between unethical capitalist approaches and African values. The practitioner's role as organisational moral conscience is hindered, suppressed and undermined by organisational leadership's directives to use opaque, complex communication, selective transparency and misrepresentation of facts.

A thematic analysis of teachers’ experiences in implementing the Annual National Assessments (ANAs) policy in South Africa was presented in this chapter. Describing the lack of preparation and capacity building on behalf of policy makers, this chapter argued that teachers’ roles in the policy formulation of the ANAs positioned them as only policy implementers without agency. Two broad categories described the experiences. The first was concerned with the preparation process of assessments. The second was concerned with the implications of assessments, outlining the worry and fear in the use of results for teacher blaming culminating in a standoff between teacher unions and the ministry. The shift in the policy mandate expressed through increased reporting and monitoring requirements for poor performing schools reveals that the assessments deviated from being a diagnostic tool to testing for teacher accountability. Finally, the chapter concluded with a reflection on how the National Assessment Framework, set to replace the ANA policy, could be strengthened based on the opportunities revealed by the ANA policy implementation process.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the benefits of the application of a requirements engineering framework to assist Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) development. This framework combines the technology-driven and the process-driven approaches for requirements analysis and implementation. Specific business process modeling methods enhance the framework and assist the formulation of the functional specifications of the ERP system and the management of requirements.

A case study strategy was chosen as the most appropriate method to answer the research question and test the theoretical propositions. The case study’s unit of analysis is a Greek manufacturing company and its ERP implementation project. A requirements engineering framework enhanced with business process modeling methods was applied and the results were evaluated using metrics for ERP implementation success. Data were collected using multiple sources of evidences, including interviews with various stakeholders, structured questionnaires, direct observations, vendors’ functionality papers and company’s documentation.

This study proves that the configuration of ERP’s reference models together with the adjustments of organization’s processes, provided through a structured requirements engineering framework can lead to reliable functional specifications, a smooth transition to an ERP system and, eventually, to successful ERP implementation, concerning its alignment with requirements.

A single case study is conducted in a typical manufacturing company, providing opportunities for further research in other industries, testing in parallel well-defined requirements and other success factors for ERP implementation.

The paper fulfils the identified needs for applied methodologies and frameworks for requirements engineering which can assist successful ERP implementations.

This paper aims to examine whether the characteristics of boards are more important in determining dividend policy than management characteristics. The authors show that as the final declarers of dividend policy is a firm’s board, the composition of a firm’s board significantly subsumes the effect of management characteristics that may also influence dividend policy.

Using the dividend declaration dummy variable, the authors run a fixed effect logistic regression of the dividend indicator on board characteristics, and managerial characteristics with firm level controls, year effects and industry effects while clustering standard errors at the firm level. For dividend yield variable which is censored at zero, they use a fixed effect Tobit regression.

The results of the study show that board characteristics such as average age, female presence and size have a strong positive significant effect, whereas board independent chair and voting right of directors have a negative significant effect on the likelihood of dividend declaration. For dividend yields, the results suggest that the presence of directors with financial expertise and the board size are the main influencers of dividend policy. Managerial characteristics are subsumed by director characteristics for determining dividend policy. The results overall support the evidence on the monitoring role of boards on management.

The originality and value of this study lies in the approach of including a comprehensive number of board characteristics unlike previous studies which makes the study of the influence of board composition on dividends more encompassing.

Change management (CM) and project management (PM) literatures examine the key roles (change agent, project manager, project or change sponsor) played during projects or changes only from their respective points of view. They do so even in cases where projects and changes occur at the same time – or are so-called change projects. In such cases, effective management should utilize both scientific fields’ bodies of knowledge (BoK). The purpose of this paper is to unfold how and in which domain(s) typical roles of the two disciplines correspond to each other.

This paper is a systematic, bi-disciplinary meta-review that simultaneously studies relevant literature on roles performed during projects and changes. The common domain of CM and PM was identified; the systematic review and comparison of role definitions followed.

This paper examines and illustrates the correspondence of 7 CM and 14 PM roles; e.g., “sponsor” refers to the same role and “change agent” and “project manager” are corresponding ones, referring to the same role up to a certain degree.

This paper does not provide an exhaustive overview of various instances of different role (and stakeholder) interpretations.

Findings should facilitate the better management of changes that require CM-type and PM-type capabilities and actions.

As a result of the meta-review, two CM roles were re(de)fined. Linking PM and CM roles provides common ground on which practitioners of both fields can rely. A step-by-step tool for the identification of such cases in practice, when both types of roles should be played and both BoK can be utilized complementarily, was developed.

The aim of this research is to assess the key enablers of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in the context of the Indian automobile industry. It is done to apprehend their comparative effect on executing I4.0 concepts and technology in manufacturing industries, in a developing country context. The progression to I4.0 grants the opportunity for manufacturers to harness the benefits of this industry generation.

The literature related to I4.0 has been reviewed for the identification of key enablers of I4.0. The enablers were further verified by academic professionals. Additionally, key executive insights had been revealed by using interpretive structural modelling (ISM) model for the vital enablers unique to the Indian scenario. The authors have also applied MICMAC analysis to group the enablers of I4.0.

The analysis of this study’s data from respondents using ISM provided us with seven levels of enabler framework. This study adds to the existing literature on I4.0 enablers and findings highlight the specificities of the territories in India context. The results show that top management is the major enabler to I4.0 implementation. Infact, it occupies the 7th layer of the ISM framework. Subsequently, government policies enable substantial support to develop smart factories in India.

The findings of this work provide implementers of I4.0 in the automobile industry in the form of a robust framework. This framework can be followed by the automobile sector in enhancing their competency in the competitive market and ultimately provide a positive outcome for the Indian economic development led by these businesses. Furthermore, this work will guide decision-makers in enabling strategic integration of I4.0, opening doors for the development of new business opportunities as well.

The study proposes a framework for Indian automobile industries. The automobile sector was chosen for this study as it covers a large percentage of the market share of the manufacturing industry in India. The existing literature does not address the broader picture of I4.0 and most papers do not provide validation of the data collected. This study thus addresses this research gap.

This study aims to better understand the micro–meso–macro perspective in social marketing, through the examination of a transformative, primarily meso-level initiative aimed at developing more resilient communities in the face of disaster.

Research was oriented around two cases of community resilience planning. Relevant documents were reviewed, and a series of semi-structured interviews with the manager and advisors in an emergency management office were conducted, followed by in-depth interviews with 15 individual community participants.

The findings suggest a multilevel (micro–meso–macro) model of social change, incorporating fluid and interactive movement between the levels. In the context examined, community leaders were initially motivated to be involved due to their role, sense of altruism and curiosity. Their motivation to continue was encouraged, as misconceptions around emergency response were addressed and the value of community connections was highlighted. As planning progressed, greater involvement and empowerment resulted.

This study is limited in its focus on two communities, and the context of emergency preparation and response. However, it contributes insights into a leading initiative designed to help build community resilience and insights into a micro–meso–macro perspective of social change.

The study also suggests that social marketers, when implementing a meso-level initiative, will benefit from considering multiple levels, seeking the involvement and cooperation of meso-level leaders which will help facilitate downstream change.

Contributing to the discussion of the micro–meso–macro levels of social marketing, this research examines disaster preparation and response – a context not frequently examined in social marketing. Findings suggest that interactive, multi-level thinking, especially considering the individual implementers of meso-level change as a “target market”, will benefit social well-being initiatives.

The main purpose of this research is to construct a generalized set of innovation processes that occur at the ecosystem level based on the academic research. The study analyzes the cultural and creativity-driven over-the-top (OTT) platform that encompasses diverse network of ecosystem members by utilizing the four cooperation practices.

This study begins with the literature review that discusses various topics related to ecosystem (e.g. service innovation, innovative ecosystem). Then, this study introduces a new conceptual framework that describes how cooperations occur in the ecosystem. Finally, a qualitative and explorative case study of the OTT platforms in the global context is conducted.

The application of the framework reveals how co-innovative business ecosystems demonstrate co-evolution through different structures and directions. An ecosystem can evolve by incorporating other industries (i.e. horizontal growth or broadening strategy) to deepen and broaden the industry integration.

As an explorative approach that opens the discussion on how co-innovation and co-evolution occur at the ecosystem level, particularly in the culture and creativity-driven industry, the value of this research extends to other similar industries where diverse actors such as technology firms, Internet firms, direct consumers, government and even the society impact the type of product and service and shape the evolution of the entire ecosystem.