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This article explores whether six broad categories of activities undertaken by Canadian business scholars’ academics: publications record, citations record, teaching load, administrative load, consulting activities, and knowledge spillovers transfer, are complementary, substitute, or independent, as well as the conditions under which complementarities, substitution and independence among these activities are likely to occur.

A multivariate probit model is estimated to take into account that business scholars have to consider simultaneously whether or not to undertake many different academic activities. Metrics from Google Scholar of scholars from 35 Canadian business schools, augmented by a survey data on factors explaining the productivity and impact performances of these faculty members, are used to explain the heterogeneities between the determinants of these activities.

Overall, the results reveal that there are complementarities between publications and citations, publications and knowledge spillovers transfer, citations and consulting, and between consulting and knowledge spillovers transfer. The results also suggest that there are substitution effects between publications and teaching, publications and administrative load, citations and teaching load, and teaching load and administrative load. Moreover, results show that public and private funding, business schools’ reputation, scholar’s relational resources, and business school size are among the most influential variables on the scholar’s portfolio of activities.

This study considers simultaneously the scholar’s whole portfolio of activities. Moreover, the determinants considered in this study to explain scholars’ engagement in different activities reconcile two conflicting perspectives: (1) the traditional self-managed approach of academics, and (2) the outcomes-focused approach of university management.

Drawing upon the resource-based view this study aims to examine the connections between formal and informal business relationships and resource-bridging and adaptive capabilities within the context of foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in Thailand. Based on prior literature emphasizing business network ties as sources of competitive advantage in emerging markets, this study extends the discourse by investigating the moderating effects of technological turbulence, power distance and assertiveness.

This study uses a quantitative research approach, using data obtained from a self-administered survey conducted among 168 foreign subsidiaries spanning diverse industries in Thailand. The data were analyzed by using multiple-group structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized relationships.

Cultivating different types of business ties enables foreign subsidiaries to improve different types of capabilities. While interpersonal relationships (i.e. informal businessties) enable them to develop their abilities to combine various resources (i.e. resource-bridging capability), rigid contractual-based relationships (i.e. formal businessties) help them to be more adaptive (i.e. adaptive capability). These relationships are also contingent upon the levels of technological turbulence, host-country power distance and host-country assertiveness.

This research builds upon prior research on network ties and capability building by delineating the specific nature of capabilities. Contradicting to the previous findings, demonstrating a negative relationship between formal business ties and capabilities, this study found that each type of business tie enables foreign subsidiaries to enhance different types of capabilities under different circumstances. Moreover, this study adopts a lens of host-country national culture rather than home-country culture in investigating the moderating effects of power distance and assertiveness.

This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesise existing research knowledge on African women entrepreneurship to identify gaps for future studies.

The paper conducted a systematic literature review of published studies from 1990 to 2020 on women entrepreneurship in Africa using a 5M gender aware framework of Brush et al. (2009).

The systematic literature review of published studies found the fragmentation, descriptive and prescriptive orientation of studies on Africa women entrepreneurship and devoid of theoretical focus. Further, women entrepreneurship studies tended to be underpinned from various disciplines, less from the entrepreneurship lens, mostly quantitative, and at its infancy stage of development. With a primary focus on development, enterprise performance and livelihood, studies rarely attended to issues of motherhood and the nuanced understanding of women entrepreneurship’s embeddedness in family and institutional contexts of Africa.

The paper questions the view that women entrepreneurship is a “panacea” and unravels how family context, customary practices, poverty and, rural-urban and formal/informal divide, significantly shape and interact with African women entrepreneurs’ enterprising experience and firm performance.

The findings and analyses indicate that any initiatives to support women empowerment via entrepreneurship should consider the socially constructed nature of women entrepreneurship and the subtle interplay of the African institutional contexts’ intricacies, spatial and locational differences which significantly influence women entrepreneurs’ choices, motivations and goals for enterprising.

The paper contributes to a holistic understanding of women entrepreneurship in Africa by using a 5M framework to review the research knowledge. In addition, the paper not only identifies unexplored/or less examined issues but also questions the taken-for-granted assumptions of existing knowledge and suggest adoption of context- and gender-sensitive theories and methods.

This study aims to understand how organizations in the service industry can encourage the use of enterprise social networks (ESNs) for knowledge sharing, focusing on the concepts of intra-organizational trust and governance.

The authors gathered data through an online survey of 104 participants from the financial services industry. Data were analyzed using structural equation modelling to test the proposed model and evaluate the constructs’ reliability and validity.

The findings of the survey data indicate that intra-organizational trust and governance are related to the use of ESN for knowledge sharing to enhance service innovation. Further, the findings suggest that, although trust directly affects service innovation, using ESN for knowledge sharing partially mediates the relationship between trust and service innovation. The findings also reveal that governance significantly moderates the relationship between ESN for knowledge sharing and innovation.

This paper provides insights into the relationship between trust, knowledge sharing and innovation. The novelty of this study demonstrates that governance strengthens the relationship between ESN for knowledge sharing and innovation. Further, the study suggests that firms using or intending to use ESNs could keep track of the evolving nature of ESNs, develop an open culture and create a trusted environment in their organizations.

Drawing upon insights from knowledge-based theory and the learning perspective, this study aims to explore safeguarding strategies in open innovation. Geographic diversity and collaborative breadth can effectively protect proprietary innovations that limit knowledge leakage concerns.

Using a cross-industry sample from the Taiwanese Technological Innovation Survey III, which covered 1,519 firms, the authors investigate the conditions under which partnership portfolios affect radical innovation.

The findings suggest that the partnership portfolio has an inverted U-shaped influence on radical innovation and that this relationship is moderated by geographic diversity and collaborative breadth. This work identifies a balance in the tension between diverse partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage with regard to open innovation activities.

This study provides senior managers with an indication of the relationships between partnership portfolios and innovative knowledge protection, identifying the geographic diversity and collaborative breadth that serve as safeguards to prevent leakages of a firm’s innovative knowledge.

This study makes an original contribution to the empirical exploration of innovation knowledge protection and provides new insights into the field of open innovation. The authors, thus, balance the tension between partnership portfolios and knowledge leakage.

The aim of this paper is to identify the main challenges and limitations of current business process management (BPM) development directions noticed by researchers, as well as to define the areas of the main BPM paradigm shifts necessary for the BPM of tomorrow to meet the challenges posed by Industry 4.0 and the emerging Industry 5.0. This is extremely important from the perspective of eliminating the existing broadening gap between the considerations of academic researchers and the needs of business itself.

A systematic literature review was conducted on the basis of the resources of two digital databases: Web of Science (WoS) and SCOPUS. Based on the PRISMA protocol, the authors selected 29 papers published in the last decade that diagnosed the challenges and limitations of modern BPM and contained recommendations for its future development. The content of the articles was analyzed within four BPM core areas.

The authors of the selected articles most commonly point to the areas of organization (21 articles) and methods and information technology (IT) (22 articles) in the context of the challenges and limitations of current BPM and the directions of recommended future BPM development. This points to the prevalence among researchers of the perspective of Industry 4.0 – or focus on technological solutions and raising process efficiency, with the full exclusion or only the partial signalization of the influence of implementing new technologies on the stakeholders and in particular – employees, their roles and competencies – the key aspects of Industry 5.0.

The proposal of BPM future development directions requires the extension of the BPM paradigm, taking into account its holistic nature, especially unpredictable, knowledge-intensive business processes requiring dynamic management, the need to integrate BPM with knowledge management (KM) and the requirements of Industry 5.0 in terms of organizational culture. The limitation is that the study is based on only two databases: WoS and SCOPUS and that the search has been narrowed down to publications in English only.

The proposal of BPM future development directions also requires the extension of the BPM paradigm, taking into account the specific challenges and limitations that managers encounter on a daily basis. The presented summaries of the challenges and limitations resulting from the literature review are accompanied by recommendations that are primarily dedicated to practitioners.

The article indicates the area people and culture as one of the four core areas of BPM. It emphasizes the necessity to account to a greater degree for the influence of people, their knowledge, experience and engagement, as well as formal and informal communication, without which it is impossible to use the creativity, innovativeness and dynamism of the individual and the communities to create value in the course of business process execution.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first systematic review of the literature on the limitations of modern BPM and its future in the context of Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0.

This paper aims to further our understanding of policy–practice gaps in organizations from an organizational learning perspective. The authors conceptualize and analyze policy–practice gaps in terms of what they label the dual challenge of organizational learning, i.e. the organizational tasks of both adapting ongoing practices to prescribed policy demands and adapting the policy itself to the needs of practice. Specifically, the authors address how this dual challenge can be understood in terms of organizational learning and how an organization can be managed to successfully resolve the dual learning challenge and, thereby, bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations.

This paper draws on existing literature to explore the gap between policy and practice. Through a synthesis of theories and an illustrative practical example, this paper highlights key conceptual underpinnings.

In the analysis of the dual challenge of organizational learning, this study provides a conceptual framework that emphasizes the important role of tensions and contradictions between policy and practice and their role as drivers of organizational learning. To bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations, this paper proposes five key principles that aim to resolve the dual challenge and accommodate both deployment and discovery in organizations.

Because this is a conceptual study, empirical research is called for to explore further and test the findings and conclusions of the study. Several avenues of possible future research are proposed.

This paper primarily contributes by introducing and elaborating on a conceptual framework that offers novel perspectives on the dual challenges of facilitating both discovery and deployment processes within organizations.

The purpose of this study is to examine how formal and informal institutions play a role in the Iranian context in shaping corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and practices.

Using a multiple case-study approach combining comparative and cross-sectional methods with semi-structured interviews, primary data was collected from eight corporations that actively participated in CSR activities in Iran. A microanalysis approach was used to examine the meanings and dynamics in the data. Through thematic analysis and pattern-matching techniques, the authors separately examined the roles of formal and informal institutions. Cross-case analysis was used to highlight the cases’ similarities and differences.

This study demonstrates that both formal and informal institutional structures exist in Iran and that both types influence CSR. This study also shows that informal institutions (such as personal values, culture, religion, traditions, charity and philanthropy) play a more explicit role than formal institutions (such as legal regulations and laws) in shaping CSR adoption policies and practices. The results indicate that, among institutions linked to CSR, formal and informal institutions are complementary and potentiate each other in Iran. Nevertheless, compared to formal ones, informal institutions play a more prominent role in shaping CSR policies and practices.

The authors recognize that, although the eight corporations are large, and although they interviewed their key personnel, they do not claim that these findings are generalizable, owing to the qualitative nature of the study and the small number of selected corporations.

This study makes relevant theoretical and empirical contributions. First, it contributes to the growing body of CSR literature that highlights the necessity of linking informal and formal institutions. Although the CSR literature lacks research on informal institutions in developing economies, researchers have yet to push forward and explore how the CSR adoption process works in developing economies that have influential informal institutions.

Drawing insights from institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether and to what extent banks have reconfigured their management control systems (MCSs) in response to growing institutional pressures towards sustainability, understood as environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The authors conducted an exploratory study at the three largest Italian banking groups to shed light on changes made in MCSs to account for ESG issues. The analysis is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the sustainability and controls areas, as well as from other relevant operational areas particularly concerned with the integration process of ESG issues. Additionally, secondary data sources were used. The Malmi and Brown (2008) MCS framework, consisting of a package of five types of formal and informal control mechanisms, was used to structure and analyse the empirical data.

The examined banks widely implemented numerous changes to their MCSs as a response to the heightened sustainability pressures from regulatory bodies and stakeholders. In particular, with the exception of action planning, the results show an extensive integration of ESG issues into the five control mechanisms of Malmi and Brown’s framework, namely, long-term planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and cultural controls.

By identifying the approaches banks followed in reconfiguring traditional MCSs, this research sheds light on how adequate MCSs can promote banks’ “sustainable behaviours”. The results can, thus, contribute to defining best practices on how MCSs can be redesigned to support the integration of ESG issues into the banks’ way of doing business.

Overall, the findings support the theoretical assertion that institutional pressures influence the design of banks’ MCSs, and that both formal and informal controls are necessary to ensure a real engagement towards sustainability. More specifically, this study reveals that MCSs, by encompassing both formal and informal controls, are central to enabling banks to appropriately understand, plan and control the transition towards business models fully oriented to the integration of ESG issues. Thereby, this allows banks to effectively respond to the increased stakeholder demands around ESG concerns.

Organisational strategy becomes reality by connecting organisation’s resources and capabilities in daily operations, and physical workspace is one of the environments in which this takes place. This study aims to explore to what extent factors required for successful strategy implementation are considered when designing, using and managing workspaces of knowledge-intensive organisations.

For the study, managers in 25 large and medium-sized knowledge-intensive organisations were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews focused on organisation’s strategy, strategy implementation practices and workspace design and management. To form a comprehensive framework of strategy implementation success factors for the study, the factors of 11 frameworks were analysed, grouped and renamed.

Current workspace design, usage and management mainly support human-related strategy implementation factors. However, both organisation- and human-related factors are needed for the strategy implementation to be successful. Therefore, the organisations studied may have unused potential in their workspaces to ensure strategy-aligned operations and behaviour.

Due to the potential imbalance between organisation- and human-related strategy implementation factors, a more holistic, organisational-level approach to workspace design, usage and management is recommended to ensure the success of strategy implementation.

Workspaces have extensively been studied from individual strategy implementation factors’ as well as employees’ perspectives. Prior to this work, there are only few studies exploring workspace in the holistic, strategy implementation context.