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Purpose: The purpose of the paper is twofold: first, to examine whether the progress of strategic management research has been damaged by an excessive focus on statistical significance to the exclusion of substantive significance and second, to provide recommendations for improving research practice toward establishing the substantive significance of empirical findings.

Methodology/Approach: We conduct the same survey described in McCloskey and Ziliak (1996) on a sample of all 41 papers published in Strategic Management Journal during 2007 that use regression methodology. We use the criteria for good science represented by these survey questions as the foundation for our discussion. We present our arguments for the relevance of each of these criteria in strategy research with examples of best practice and provide a detailed analysis of areas of research practice that can be improved with associated recommendations.

Findings: Our survey suggests that there is indeed cause for concern, since 90% of our surveyed papers make no distinction between statistical and economic/substantive significance of their results. At the same time, many of the surveyed papers make some attempt to interpret their results in a substantively meaningful fashion.

Originality/Value of Paper: Our paper addresses a critical set of issues that influence progress in strategic management research. We provide a roadmap for how we can address these issues for progress in our field.

In this paper, we propose a new conceptualization of the purpose of the corporation in relation to its activities. This conceptualization builds upon the existing distinction between the corporation as a legal vehicle and the enterprise as an economic organization, but renews the approach of the enterprise. We argue that the enterprise is a peculiar historical form of economic organization that emerged in the late nineteenth century to not only produce but also create new goods and technologies. This creative purpose involved a new type of managerial authority, not grounded in corporate law, but institutionalized in other branches of law, such as labor law. The legitimacy of the managers relied on the premise that the enterprise’s creative power would be harnessed for collective progress. However, this new view of the enterprise was insufficiently conceptualized in the twentieth century and continued to be governed by standard corporate law. This allowed managers to be seen as agents of shareholders, and the purpose of collective progress to be replaced by the interests of shareholders. Our analysis has important implications for the purpose of the corporation. As enterprises become more innovative and impactful, we argue that they can no longer be governed by traditional corporate law. If the corporation remains the legal cloth for business activities, then its purpose must consider the nature and impacts of these activities. We therefore interpret the new legal forms of purpose-driven corporation as an appropriate framework to restore the enterprise and a collective purpose within corporate law.

This chapter explores the relationship between entrepreneurship skills and decent work (DW), and how policy can help achieve this. We review the entrepreneurship skills literature in the context of DW, highlighting the key entrepreneurship skills needed in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Thereafter, we extract lessons from selected policy initiatives in countries with broad similarities (Australia, Canada, United States and England), through the lens of DW. Our review draws on peer-reviewed journals and key United Nations and global entrepreneurship platform publications. Entrepreneurship skills deficiencies have a detrimental impact on the success and sustainability of SMEs. Yet, SME's survival and growth is currently crucial, whereby organizations need to transform in response to changing environmental, political, technological and consumer needs. This is intensified by the challenges of Covid-19, severely affecting DW and productivity. To develop and retain even a semblance of ‘decent work’, entrepreneurs need to develop appropriate skills and there is a need for suitable policy addressing this. In this chapter, we present lessons learnt based on our review and provide recommendations for entrepreneurship skills development policies aligning with DW.

For more than a century, the corporation has shaped our thinking of organizations. This deeply institutionalized form is still regarded as both the iconic business organization and the core structural unit of our economic order. Today, however, it stands at a crossroads. Economic, social, and environmental failures of the recent past as well as misconduct and scandals are widely linked to inadequacies in this corporate form and its governance. The aim of this volume is to spark a debate within the field. In this introduction, we provide an outline of the current crisis and an overview of the interdisciplinary set of articles presented in this volume. We conclude with a view ahead and a plea for the acknowledgement of “alternatives.”

A paradigm shift is observed in the last decade where transactional marketing is taken over by relationship marketing. Customer relationship management (CRM) has been an integral part of a business strategy in the current era. CRM integrates product sales, product marketing and, most importantly, customer service in a seamless manner to generate value for the organization as well as for its customers in short a win-win situation. Profoundly, CRM needs to be a part of the top management agenda and driven top-down instead of an IT initiative. Industrial revolution 4.0 is characterized by cyber-physical systems. Internet of Things (IoT) is the digital technology for the present and future. IoT primarily aids in gathering real-time data and transmitting the same over the internet to a central repository for consuming the same in business models. Real-time customer data analytics can be performed by customer-centric organizations to enhance CRM.