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This study investigates how a competitor orientation (knowledge of and acting on competitors' strengths and weaknesses) facilitates coopetition activities (collaboration with competitors), within networks of competing micro-sized, independent, family restaurants, owned by entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds.

An instrumental case study features data collected from interviews with 30 owners (as key informants) of micro-sized, independent, family-owned restaurants, in two urban clusters within the Midlands (UK). Specifically, the context involves restaurants offering South Asian cuisine and where the owner originated from the Indian sub-continent (Bangladesh, India or Pakistan). Secondary data were collected wherever possible. These two clusters (not named for ethics reasons) are highly populated by members of these respective ethnic communities; also, they contain a relatively large number of restaurants offering South Asian cuisine.

A competitor orientation facilitated strong coopetition-oriented partnerships comprised of extended family and intra-community members that helped enhance individual firms' performance, maintained family employment and sustained their cluster. It also helped owners develop subtle counter strategies where weak ties existed, such as via inter-community networks. For example, strategies attracted customers that were not loyal to a particular restaurant, or indeed, sub-ethnic cuisine (within Bangladesh, India or Pakistan, like the Punjab region). Subtle as opposed to outright counter strategies minimised retaliation, since restaurant owners wanted to avoid price wars, or spreading misinformation where the reputation of a cluster may suffer alongside the likely survival of individual businesses within that regional cluster.

Mixed evidence exists in earlier studies regarding the competitive rivalry in certain sectors where ethnic minority ownership is prominent; not least, restaurants located in regional clusters. However, this investigation considers the notion – what if some of these earlier studies are wrong? More specifically, does certain prior research under-represent the extent that rival entrepreneurs of an ethnic minority origin collaborate rather than compete for mutually beneficial purposes? New evidence emerges regarding ways in which a competitor orientation can influence the performance-enhancing nature of coopetition activities among business owners originating from both intra and inter-ethnic communities.

This study aims to develop a hierarchical model that uncovers the relationships between challenges confronting Africa's organ transplant supply chain systems.

Eleven challenges (variables) were identified after a comprehensive review of the existing literature. The contextual interactions among these variables were analysed from the perspectives of health-care stakeholders in two sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries (Nigeria and Uganda), using Delphi-interpretive structural modelling-cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) techniques.

The findings reveal that weak regulatory frameworks, insufficient information systems and a lack of necessary skills make it challenging for critical actors to perform the tasks effectively. The interaction effects of these challenges weaken organ supply chains and make it less efficient, giving rise to negative externalities such as black markets for donated organs and organ tourism/trafficking.

This paper establishes a solid foundation for a critical topic that could significantly impact human health and life once the government or non-profit ecosystem matures. The MICMAC analysis in this paper provides a methodological approach for future studies wishing to further develop the organ supply chain structural models.

The study provides valuable insights for experts and policymakers on where to prioritise efforts in designing interventions to strengthen organ transplantation supply chains in developing countries.

This study is one of the first to empirically examine the challenges of organ transplant supply chains from an SSA perspective, including theoretically grounded explanations from data collected in two developing countries.

“My Story” is based on a life story approach. This study aims to facilitate therapeutic alliances by providing a format for older and younger people to interact.

Three pairings were studied to explore the experiences of the older and younger person using “My Story”. The focus of the case studies was on how and if any therapeutic alliance emerged.

This study found that in the two of the pairings, “My Story” helped to create a bond and mutual benefit for the participants’ central to a therapeutic alliance. This led one of the pairings to develop into an intergenerational friendship and potentially help with loneliness.

As this was an exploratory and small pilot, more cases and research are required to fully assess if “My Story” is a useful approach to develop intergenerational befriending.

Intergenerational befriending may be one solution that could help with loneliness and social isolation through forming a therapeutic alliance to make the befriending successful.

Loneliness and social isolation for older people remain a problem.

An original pilot was undertaken to test the approach by bringing together older people identified as lonely by a voluntary sector provider and pairing these with a student volunteer. The students visited the older person over six weeks to discuss their life story and create an artefact based on the story for the older person.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a framework to achieve sustainable development and fulfilling these Goals will take an unprecedented effort by all sectors in society. Many universities and businesses are using the Goals within their strategies and sustainability reporting. However, this is difficult as there is currently no standard methodology to map the 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators. Work at the University of Leicester has focused on developing a robust methodology to map a higher education institution's (HEI's) research contribution to the Goals. We have integrated this unique methodology into an automated software tool to measure a university's academic contribution to the Goals using mathematical text mining techniques. Our ability to quickly and effectively map institutions' research contributions has boosted our ambitions and efforts to develop software to map the full operations of an HEI or business.

This study aims to investigate the possible implications of compliance with corporate governance (CG) provisions, including board composition and ownership structures, on the firm’s likelihood of falling into financial distress.

The study applies a random-effects logistic regression model as a baseline analysis using a sample of 110 FTSE 350 manufacturing companies from 2014 to 2019. This technique is supported by conducting a two-stage Heckman regression model to overcome the potential existence of endogeneity problems.

The empirical evidence suggests that board composition and ownership structure are heterogeneously associated with financial distress probabilities in that they might have either reduced or increased the financial distress of the sampled firms. Specifically, board independence, board gender diversity, audit committee independence and institutional ownership negatively influence the likelihood of financial distress. In contrast, and consistent with the expectations, ownership concentration is positively attributed to financial distress, while the board size, audit committee size and managerial ownership have insignificant impacts on financial distress.

The study extends the existing body of knowledge by examining the collective effect of board characteristics and ownership structures on firms’ financial distress likelihood among a sample of manufacturing firms within the FTSE 350 index post the 2008 global financial crisis and following the recent CG reforms in the UK during the study period from 2014 to 2019.

This study aims to explore the key challenges and drawbacks of smart contracts (SCs) and how they impact digital resilience within small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Whilst this type of technology is seen as a step forward in terms of traceability, transparency and immutability to increase digital resilience, we argue that it should be approached with trepidation.

In developing this paper, the authors conduct a systematic literature search using the Scopus database. Through this, we identified 931 relevant articles, of which 30 were used as the focus of this article. Thematic analysis was used as the analytical approach to develop themes and meaning from the data.

In this paper, there is an emphasis on the importance of understanding the potential risks associated with SC implementation, as well as identifying appropriate strategies for mitigating any negative impact. In our findings, we puts forward three key themes, namely legality, security and human error, which we argue are key smart contract challenges that impact SME digital resilience.

In this paper, we propose the notion of “centralised control in decentralised solutions”. This comes from the research highlighting SC weaknesses in digital resilience for SMEs. We argue that there is a need for standards, regulations and legislation to address these issues, advocating, ironically, a centralised approach to decentralised technology.

The paper aims to explore the anxiety of university students. The authors note that the rhetoric of the snowflake is frequently invoked in lay discourse to characterise a generation of young people as overly sensitive. This misleading conceptualisation is potentially stigmatising.

Interviews were conducted with tweleve young women (18–25 years) about anxiety during their transition through university and into adulthood.

The authors identified three themes: (1) students in a modern world, (2) gendered demands and (3) anxiety of adulting. Analysis demonstrated numerous, transecting and discourse-informed anxieties about modern life.

University professionals may benefit from understanding the gendered dimensions of anxiety associated with transitions to adulthood, including the increased pressures to succeed and achieve.

The arguably pejorative label of “snowflake” could negatively impact the social progress made in recognising the importance of taking care of mental health and help-seeking. This is especially concerning for females, as they have higher prevalence of anxiety conditions than males.

This study aims to explore the impact of board size, board gender diversity and federation age on the likelihood of having a female chair in National Sports Federations (NSF).

A quantitative methodology compares 300 sports boards in five countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK), using data collected from NSF’s websites.

The board size and federation age have no significant impact on having a female board chair when the countries and the percentage of female directors are included in the model. When the number of women is measured in absolute value rather than in relative terms, the only variable that predicts a woman chair is the country. When the model does not include country differences, the percentage of female directors is key in predicting a chairwoman, and when the number of women is used as a variable instead of the percentage, a board’s smaller size increases the odds of having a chairwoman.

There are some limitations to this study which we believe provide useful directions for future research. Firstly, the authors have not considered the role of gender typing in sports activities which explains the extent that women participate in specific sports (Sobal and Milgrim, 2019) and the related perception of such sports in society. The social representation of sports activities classified as masculine, feminine or gender-neutral can hypothetically influence women’s access to that specific federations’s leadership. The authors included the country factor only partially, as a control variable, as the social representation of sports usually goes beyond national boundaries.

This study has implications for sport policymakers and stakeholders, and for institutions such as the IOC or the European Union that implement equality policies. If the aim is to increase female presence in the highest position of a sports board and to achieve gender equality more generally, other policies need to be implemented alongside gender quotas for the sports boards, namely, those specifically related to the recruitment and selection of the sports board chairs (Mikkonen et al., 2021). For example, given the implications of critical mass and its ability to increase more female’s engagement then the role of existing chairs acting as mentors and taking initiative in this objective may be warranted. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the existing gender portfolio of each board and its subsequent influence on recruiting a female chair, regardless of the organization’s age. Knoppers et al. (2021) concluded that resistance to gender balance by board members is often related to discriminatory discourses against women. The normalization of the discourses of meritocracy, neoliberalism, silence/passivity about the responsibility of structures and an artificial defence of diversity emphasise that equality should not only be determined by women (Knoppers et al., 2021).

When countries are included in the model, the results suggest that the social representation of a female board member is different from that of a female board chair.

The originality of the study is that it shows the factors that constrain women taking up a chair position on NSFs. Theoretically, it contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how a critical mass of females on boards may also extend to the higher and most powerful position of chair.

Public service organizations (PSOs) face a critical dilemma: how to generate more value for society but with a much-reduced resource base. The article advances the strategy axis of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) research by examining EO and proactive market orientation (PMO) as joint-strategic approaches to this end, and how the characteristics of public managers may moderate the paths to value creation.

The article draws on a unique survey-based dataset developed from Brazilian PSOs and employs structural equation modelling for hypotheses testing. Post-hoc analysis, by way of analysis of variance, demonstrates the joint impact of the two strategic approaches on public service performance level.

Entrepreneurial and PMOs are revealed as routes to enhanced service performance, but managers’ domain expertise negatively moderates these relationships. Post-hoc analysis reveals how organizations displaying higher levels of both orientations realize superior performance, relative to those favouring either/or.

The study contributes new evidence for EO model specificity by examining a narrowly bounded sample of PSOs; addresses the neglect of other outcome variables beyond traditional performance, showing the value of EO for society and offers new insights to the managerial conditions that moderate the positive synergies between EO, PMO and service performance.

This special issue seeks to create an interdisciplinary community of researchers applying decision-making theory to the international marketing context. The articles published in this special issue contain cutting-edge conceptual and empirical studies that enhance existing knowledge on international marketing decision-making.

Thirty-six (36) manuscripts were submitted to the editorial office focusing on a broad range of international marketing decision-making. Following a thorough review process, a collection of five original empirical studies on different facets of international marketing decision-making from multiple theoretical, contextual and methodological perspectives are included in this Special Issue.

Overall, the combined evidence presented in this Special Issue shows that the general field of international marketing decision-making is starting to mature. Evidence from the contributors to this Special Issue shows that researchers have taken inspiration from both the past and the present when designing and crafting their research and, by doing so, they have collectively contributed to new knowledge in terms of international marketing decision-making principles, decision-maker personality traits, the consequences of international marketing decisions and cross-cultural differences with regards to decision-making influences and behavior.

With few exceptions, not much is known about how international marketing decisions are made. Yet, the way international marketing decisions are made is critical for international marketing success. This sphere of international marketing decision-making research, while relatively anemic, is typically underpinned by behavioral economic theories of decision-making, such that a duality in decision-making processes is identified. Nevertheless, international marketing and management studies are dominated by the planning paradigm, while in practice, managers often see the attempt to deviate from planning as irresponsible and dangerous. The articles included in this special issue have addressed major unanswered questions regarding the content and processes of international marketing decision-making.