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Stakeholder theory understands business in terms of relationships among stakeholders whose interests are mainly joint but may be occasionally conflicting. In the latter case, managers may need to make trade-offs between these interests. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of managerial decision-making about these trade-offs.

This paper draws on the ordonomic approach which sees business life to be rife with social dilemmas and locates the role of stakeholders in harnessing or resolving these dilemmas through engagement in rule-finding and rule-setting processes.

The ordonomic approach suggests that stakeholder interests trade-offs ought to be neither ignored nor avoided, but rather embraced and welcomed as an opportunity for bringing to fruition the joint interest of stakeholders in playing a better game of business. Stakeholders are shown to bear responsibility for overcoming the perceived trade-offs through the institutional management of social dilemmas.

For many stakeholder theorists, the nature of managerial decision-making about trade-offs between conflicting stakeholder interests and the nature of trade-offs themselves have been a long-standing point of contention. The paper shows that trade-offs may be useful for the value creation process and explicitly discusses managerial strategies for dealing with them.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of the nature of ownership and board characteristics on the investment choices in joint ventures (JVs) from the dimensional point of view, controlling for the effect of JV type and other components of intellectual capital.

The authors study a sample of Italian, Spanish, German and French nonfinancial listed firms over the 2010–2018 period, controlling for the fixed effects of the company's sector of operation and the year. The authors also analyze the effect of family control and influence on JV investment size, taking into consideration certain board characteristics, the type of JV, human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency and capital employed efficiency while also controlling for a firm's profitability and size. To test the hypotheses, GLS panel data was used.

The results indicate that the size of the investment in JVs is smaller for family firms than for nonfamily businesses. The presence of CEO duality has an opposing effect on the size of the investment in joint ventures as it has a lowering effect in family businesses while it exerts an amplifier influence in nonfamily businesses. Moreover, the type of joint venture has a significant effect for family firms: the choice of a link joint venture reduces the size of the investment. The authors find that human capital efficiency increases JV investment size for all firms.

This study is the first to analyze the effect of the main dimension of socioemotional wealth – family control and influence – on a firm's JV investment size. It controls for the effect of JV type – link or scale – and the interplay of the other IC components.

Stakeholder capitalism (SC) advocates that organisations should focus on creating long-term value for all key stakeholders rather than maximising short-term profits for shareholders. This paper aims to explore whether and how business organisations have applied stakeholder capitalism principles (SCPs) during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these efforts were communicated in integrated reports.

This study is based on the content analysis of the text extracted from the integrated reports of 22 companies categorised as excellent in the 2020 EY Excellence in Integrated Reporting Award 2020. The research material consisted of paragraphs that reflected how the company observed the SCPs in practice.

The stakeholder responsibility principle was the most represented by the examined companies, followed by the principles of continuous creation, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder cooperation. The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled the necessity of implementing innovative solutions to counteract the virus's spread. It has also spurred the need for two-way digitalised communication between the executives and stakeholders. The new situation also required collaborative approaches in the forms of partnerships, joint initiatives and programmes to ensure employee safety and help communities recover from the social and economic impacts of the pandemic.

This study links SC with integrated reporting (IR) and contributes to the literature by providing new insights into how SCPs have been applied during the COVID-19 pandemic. This discussion suggests that whereas these principles determine how the companies must act to satisfy stakeholders expectations, integrating reporting may help develop a report that is stakeholder-oriented and which responds to their information needs.

Container liner shipping companies started expanding their business by investing in container port terminals in the late 1990s. This market entry results in an extensive presence of vertically integrated liners and terminals. This study aims to explore the competition effects of this vertical integration trend based on a regional (European) analysis. In particular, it extracts lessons from the European Commission (EC) cases on the competition effects of vertical integration. The critical analysis of the cases examined at the institutional level intends to reach conclusions on whether liner–terminal vertical integration harmed or advanced competition in the relevant markets and/or the extent that there is a need to revise the current policy practices.

This study critically assesses the EC’s decisional practices in port container terminal vertical mergers in the last 25 years (1997–2021). Based on a literature review comparing maritime and competition economists' perspectives, it reviews the types of mergers examined, the methodology followed for relevant market definition and calculation of market shares and the estimated competition effects. The Hamburg–Le Havre area is the port range used as a case study for comparing the decisional practice with actual market developments. These container ports serve the greatest consuming market of final and intermediate goods in Europe and are gateways to Central and Eastern Europe.

The assessment identifies a need for expanding the investigation as a precondition for reaching conclusions on both the anti- and pro-competitive effects. First, only a limited number of transactions have been notified to the EC. Second, the empirical research identified a gap in this process, as there were no decisions (phase I) on vertical mergers between 2008 and 2016. Third, the exante assessment has not applied a phase II in-depth analysis to any case due to the absence of competition concerns. Finally, due to the absence of complaints, there is a lack of any ex post assessment of the effects of vertical integration.

This assessment is important for understanding the current and emerging features of intra-port and inter-port competition and the potential effects that the continuation and expansion of liner companies' vertical integration strategies will have along maritime supply chains. It also contributes to the broader discussion on liner companies' strategies, such as the research and policy-making efforts around the globe to understand the impact of both vertical and horizontal integration.

These discussions are critical for a diversity of businesses that use liner shipping services or provide facilities and services to container shipping lines or ports. They are important for the interests of customers and consumers as they could inform any needed re-visiting of competition policy to protect from the dominance of any market developments that would lead to conditions limiting competition. Expanding analysis on the competition effects of non-notified mergers would help a better understanding of market changes.

Enhancing competition and limiting monopolies is valuable from a consumer's perspective. This is more so in the case of maritime trade that serves the needs of societies. The study contributes by generating a better understanding of how decision-makers have worked towards that direction and what realignments are worthy.

There are no previous comprehensive reviews and analyses of the ways that policy-makers at the regional level have addressed the competition effects of vertical integration strategies of liner shipping companies when enhancing competition is valuable from a consumer perspective. Comparing maritime economists and competition, the study, via its literature review, also offers a comparison of maritime and competition perspectives on these competition effects, allowing positioning of how effective decisional-making practices have been.

With the rise of the gig economy, management positions are increasingly staffed with flexible labor, so-called interim managers. They plunge into organizations for a limited period, operating in a liminal position as partly insider, partly outsider. Although several contributions to their client organizations are acknowledged, it is unknown how the interim manager’s knowledge from previous assignments is made useful in the new context under these particular working conditions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the interim manager’s knowledge is transferred to the client organization while operating from a liminal position.

This paper presents an interview-based multiple case study of six interim assignments where knowledge transfer is considered a social and context-dependent process.

The findings unveil the multifaceted nature of the liminal position, which consists of task orientation, time limitation, political detachment and cultural distance. These facets contribute to knowledge transfer in terms of new shared understandings and joint interests, which in turn might create new practices that augment continuous knowledge-sharing patterns.

The results contribute to the research on flexible work arrangements by shedding light on how the liminal position, predominantly depicted as an obstacle for the individual, might facilitate knowledge transfer. Through the process of knowledge generation, it is shown how a short-term engagement might enable the organization to increase its knowledge over time.

Organization and management scholars are increasingly interested in understanding how “fluid” forms of organizing contribute to the tackling of grand challenges. These forms are fluid in that they bring together a dynamic range of actors with diverse purposes, expertise, and interests in a temporary and nonbinding way. Fluid forms of organizing enable flexible participation. Yet, they struggle to gain and sustain commitment. In this case study of the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, which supports the achievement of zero hunger by 2030, we explore how the temporality of narratives contributes to actors’ commitment to tackling grand challenges in fluid forms of organizing. In our analysis, we identify three types of narratives – universal, situated, and bridging – and discern their different temporal horizons and temporal directions. In doing so, our study sheds light on the contributions by the temporality of narratives to fostering commitment to tackling grand challenges in fluid forms of organizing. It suggests the importance of considering “multitemporality,” i.e., the plurality of connected temporalities, rather than foregrounding either the present or the future.