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The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

Blockchain technology (BCT) has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing transparency and trust. However, the relationship between the benefits of BCT and agri-food supply chain performance (AFSCperf) remains underexplored. Therefore, the current study investigates the influence of BCT on AFSCperf and sustainability issues.

Through a comprehensive literature review, various benefits of BCT are identified. Subsequently, a research framework is proposed based on data collected from questionnaire surveys and personal visits to professionals in the agri-food industry. The proposed framework is validated using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings reveal that BCT positively impacts AFSCperf by improving traceability, transparency, food safety and quality, immutability and trust. Additionally, BCT adoption enhances stakeholder collaboration, provides a decentralised network, improves data accessibility and yields a better return on investment, resulting in the overall improvement in AFSCperf and socio-economic sustainability.

This study offers valuable practical insights for practitioners and academicians, establishing empirical links between the benefits of BCT and AFSCperf and providing a deeper understanding of BCT adoption.

Stakeholders, managers, policymakers and technology providers can leverage these findings to optimise the benefits of BCT in enhancing AFSCperf. Moreover, it utilises rigorous theoretical and empirical approaches, drawing on a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing food operations and supply chain literature, public policy, information technology, strategy, organisational theory and sustainability.

This study aims to identify the essential elements impacting the adoption of blockchain technology (BCT) in supply chain management (SCM) by integrating the technology acceptance and information system success (ISS) models.

Questionnaire-based data was collected from 236 supply chain professionals from Beijing. The proposed research framework was evaluated using structural equation modeling (SEM) by using SPSS 23 and AMOS 24 software.

The empirical findings specify the positive influence of total quality on perceived usefulness and compatibility. Further, perceived ease of use positively influences perceived usefulness, compatibility and behavioral intention. Moreover, perceived usefulness positively impacts compatibility and behavioral intention. Compatibility positively influences behavioral intention. Finally, technology trust was found to be a significant moderator between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention and between perceived ease of use and adoption intention to use BCT in SCM.

This study empirically develops the second-order construct of total quality, representing the ISS model. Furthermore, this study established how the ISS and technology acceptance models influence behavioral intention through compatibility. Finally, this study confirmed the moderating role of technology trust among perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and behavioral intention.

The study explores the current research trends within the responsible leadership (RL) domain and proposes a future research agenda by conducting an extensive review of past research. The study aims to understand recent developments in theories, constructs and contexts in RL literature.

Scopus database is used for the data collection on RL and patterns from 1998–2022. In total, 138 articles were covered for a systematic literature review (SLR) of RL behaviors. Further, the search was extended, and 109 more articles were included for bibliometric analysis of RL using R software. In total, 247 papers were reviewed.

The results present the consequences and antecedents of RL behaviors with external and internal stakeholders. Literature also indicates that researchers are more attentive to empirical studies with internal stakeholders, such as responsible leaders' impact on employee outcomes. Among theories, stakeholder theory's normative integrative and instrumental perspectives are used with RL.

The first limitation of the study is that this study collected data only from the Scopus database and the choice of language was English. Future studies may use other databases, languages and keywords. Instrumental and integrative RL behavioral styles would help balance organizations' financial and social goals.

This research enhances the literature on RL by combining content and bibliometric analysis to develop a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of integrative and instrumental leadership behaviors.

Previous literature on sustainable supply chain management has largely adopted an instrumental view of stakeholder management and has focused on understanding the effect of powerful stakeholders who have a more decisive influence on an organization's supply chain decisions. Social enterprises have emerged as organizations that often aim to create impact by integrating marginalized stakeholders into their operations and supply chains. This study examines the trade-offs that social enterprises experience due to their moral stance toward stakeholder engagement, evidenced in their commitment to serving marginalized stakeholders, as well as the responses adopted to these trade-offs.

The study follows a theory elaboration approach through a multiple case study design. The authors draw on insights from stakeholder theory and use the empirical insights to expand current constructs and relationships in a novel empirical context. Based on an in-depth analysis of primary and secondary qualitative data on ten social enterprises, the authors examine how these organizations integrate marginalized stakeholders into various roles in their operations.

When integrating marginalized customers, suppliers and employees, social enterprises face affordability, reliability and efficiency trade-offs. Each trade-off represents conflicts between the organization's needs and the needs of marginalized stakeholders. In response to these trade-offs, social enterprises choose to internalize the costs through slack creation or vertical integration or externalize the costs to stakeholders. The ability to externalize is contingent on the growth orientation of the organization and the presence of like-minded B2B (Business-to-Business) customers. These responses reflect whether organizations accept the trade-offs at the expense of one or more stakeholders or if they avoid the trade-offs and find mutually beneficial solutions.

Building on the empirical insights, the authors elaborate on stakeholder theory with a focus on the integration of marginalized stakeholders by emphasizing a moral justification for stakeholder engagement, identifying the nature of the underlying trade-offs which can arise when various stakeholder needs are in conflict and examining the contingencies affecting organizational responses to these trade-offs.

Open innovation (OI) is an effective way to achieve firms' sustainable development in emerging markets. This study aims to investigate the effects of business and philanthropic corporate social responsibility (CSR) on OI and the moderating role of firm proactiveness in such relationships. This study also examines the effects of OI on firms' financial and innovation performance.

This study uses multisource data from 688 firms in China, including data from surveys of top managers and objective data. The Tobit model, Poisson model, and ordinary least squares regression are adopted to test the hypotheses.

The results suggest that business CSR and philanthropic CSR both have positive effects on OI. Proactiveness weakens the positive effect of business CSR on OI, while strengthening the effect of philanthropic CSR on OI. The results also show that OI increases firm innovation and financial performance.

CSR enables firms to build wild, deep and trust-based relationships with external actors, which may benefit firms in open search of knowledge. However, it has not received adequate attention in the literature on OI. The findings contribute to the research on OI drivers from the perspective of social activities and enhance the understanding of how different types of CSR and firm proactiveness work together to influence OI.

Given the significance of innovation in enabling firms to maintain a long-term competitive edge and secure excess profits, this paper aims to investigate whether and how stakeholders’ attention to innovation (SATI) influences corporate innovation.

This paper introduces a novel variable, SATI, which is achieved by segmenting stakeholders’ attention into two categories: attention to innovation and attention to other facets, using textual analysis methods. Subsequently, this paper empirically examines the influence of SATI on corporate innovation.

This paper finds that SATI positively affects corporate innovation input, and the result remains true after addressing possible endogeneity issues using instrumental variable regression. Furthermore, the positive effect of SATI on corporate innovation is stronger in firms facing greater financing constraints, thus verifying the financing constraints hypothesis. The positive effect is also stronger in firms with lower risk-taking levels, thus confirming the innovation failure tolerance hypothesis. Further analysis suggests that SATI increases both corporate innovation output and efficiency, thus ruling out the catering hypothesis.

This paper highlights the importance of SATI in driving corporate innovation. It enriches the literature on the repercussions of stakeholders’ attention and determinants of corporate innovation. In addition, it provides practical suggestions for further implementing China’s national innovation-driven development strategy.

Given the regional diversity in China, this study aims to provide an empirical evaluation of how organizational stakeholders (i.e. customers, employees, suppliers and shareholders) affect corporate environmental sustainability investment (ESI).

To empirically investigate the influence of organizational stakeholders on ESI, this study used regional-level data consists of Chinese A-share stocks for the years 2009–2019.

This study’s findings show that pressure from customers, employees and suppliers has a significant effect on corporate ESI, with customers being the most important stakeholder group. Shareholders, by contrast, have no significant influence on ESI. The influence of these pressures is more pronounced in developed regions (the east) than in less developed (the west) localities of China.

This study complements the stakeholder–institutional perspective by implying to consider the differentiated logics of the contesting stakeholders in the nonmarket operations.

Practically, this study poses that managers must realize the heterogeneity of pressures from stakeholders and the differentiated impact of these pressures keeping in view the institutional differences in different regions.

Our study reports initial empirical evidence that shows how regional differences influence the role of stakeholders in determining corporate environmental strategy.

Since the 1980's, diversity management (DM) has been regarded as a relevant scholarly and practical endeavour laden with different and often contrasting rationales and conceptualisations. In this regard, the current literature on DM largely differentiates between two overarching approaches – the instrumental and the critical approach with varying conceptualisations and underlying understandings of DM. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how a paradox lens can be utilised to bridge existing understandings of diversity management.

The authors aim to discuss the current state of DM literature and reconceptualise DM from a paradox lens.

The authors argue that the use of a paradox lens on DM allows for challenges to be brought forward instead of ignored or hidden away by illuminating and actively acknowledging both the liberating but also the challenging and oftentimes constraining experiences for the actors involved. Thus, a Paradox lens offers space for embracing and utilising paradoxes when working with diversity.

Diversity management is no new concept in the field of human resource management and several scholars argue that the longstanding divide between the instrumental and critical approach remains problematic and limiting for the practice of DM. Hence, the value of reconceptualising DM from a paradox lens lies in bridging the two approaches in order to give way to viewing DM as a nuanced, dynamic and multifaceted practice that can accommodate complexity and contradictions in new and potentially beneficial manners.

In the face of crises, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have focused on their financial viability but there are other operational aspects to consider (e.g. activity or volunteer involvement). This study aims to investigate whether governance changes made by NPOs in times of crisis have enhanced organizational viability in a broader sense.

Through community-engaged research, the link between governance changes and organizational viability is examined. This study is based on a survey of 10,926 French NPOs and the conceptual framework of societal orientation.

They show that changing governance in the midst of a crisis can protect organizational viability, if the beneficiaries and members remain the core of the strategic target and if the content of volunteering remains stable.

This study, therefore, calls for a better study of the risks of governance changes for internal stakeholders, both at the level of scholars and within the organizations themselves. The results extend recent works on governance change and highlight the relevance of societal orientation in times of crisis.

This study helps to counter the criticisms regularly made about governance (particularly in France) and highlights the importance of maintaining the board of directors in NPOs. It invites NPOs to make decisions that protect their values, mission and beneficiaries at all times.

This study focuses on societal orientation in relation to stakeholder theory, as well as the nonfinancial aspects of viability.