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This study aims to examine the relationship between talent development environment (TDE) variables of job focus and long-term development with the and workplace adaptation (WA) of Malaysian professional returnees as mediated by the organisational support.

A total of 130 respondents who are Malaysian professional returnees participated in this study. The hypotheses formulated for this study were tested using partial least square-structural equation modelling version 3.

The mediation analysis has revealed a significant relationship between job focus and long-term development on WA via organisational support. Six out of seven hypotheses were accepted. The finding also indicates that the long-term development construct has a strong impact on the WA of Malaysian professional returnees.

This study focused only on professional returnees from selected sectors of the National Key Economic Areas in Malaysia.

Organisational support mediating WA should be capitalised on by human resource development practitioners in public and private sectors to assist professional returnees in their WA through the talent development approach specifically on job focus and long-term development.

The findings from this study extend the knowledge of WA in the context of professional returnees in a developing country, Malaysia. The integration between the selected TDE variables and WA with the mediating function of organisational support adds new insights into the process of WA.

The purpose of this paper is based on China’s economic fundamentals. Factor input, structural optimization and institutional reform, which determine the fundamentals of China's economic development, will actively prop up long-term, sustained and stable growth of the Chinese economy and keep China's potential economic growth rate stabilized within a reasonable growth range in the long term.

The fundamentals of economic development of a country are the basic situation of economic operation determined by the country's main factors and the long-term trend thereof, and they have such characteristics as stability, internality and persistence.

Stability refers to economic operation that remains relatively stable within a reasonable growth range at a certain stage of development, and this does not rule out exceptional economic fluctuations in certain years due to the impact of unexpected short-term factors. For instance, the fundamentals of the Chinese economy during the period after the reform and opening-up are characterized by a sustained high growth rate.

Internality refers to the intrinsic quantity and quality of all factors supporting the economic development of a country, especially the quantity and quality of the factors that play a decisive role in the economic development of a country at a specific stage. For instance, demographic dividend and capital formation have bolstered the high-speed growth of the Chinese economy since the reform and opening-up.

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

The purpose of this paper is to explore issues related to the development of long‐term planning for the municipal/public libraries in Greece. In Greece, municipal libraries constitute the largest category of public libraries. Although over the last decade efforts have been made to enhance their services, municipal/public libraries appear to be still in search of a purpose and are at a crossroad.

An empirical qualitative research study was conducted in order to examine the efforts made so far to develop long‐term plans and to study the attitudes and views of Greek municipal libraries' heads concerning the development of long term plans. The empirical research was carried out early in the second half of 2007, utilizing a specifically developed questionnaire distributed to 194 municipal library representatives, 100 of which agreed to participate in the study.

A number of current issues facing Greek municipal libraries are studied along with an overview of the strategic plans already developed. The perceptions of 100 municipal library directors in regard to developing strategic plans are recorded and the results overall suggest the need for formal long‐term planning in the municipal/public libraries in Greece.

This paper contributes to the discussion on the development of long‐term planning aimed at municipal libraries in Greece. It is one of the very few studies providing empirical evidence based on the views of municipal/public library directors in Greece.

This study aims to examine the role of human resource development (HRD) in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability initiatives of multinational companies (MNCs).

The authors analyze contents of corporate responsibility (CR) reports disclosed by 23 MNCs from Europe, Asia and North America to examine HRD’s contribution to CSR and sustainability, with particular attention to long-term human development and organization development.

The analysis of CR reports indicates that HRD is perceived as playing a role in the following areas: diversity, equity and inclusion; community engagement; work–life balance; employee long-term growth and development; performance management; business ethics and ethical culture; and raising CSR awareness. In all areas, HRD was identified as playing a significant role in supporting companies’ CSR agendas.

This study extends research on the intersection of HR, CSR and sustainability and provides evidence of HRD’s important contributions to CSR and sustainability.

Drawing on the results of the previous chapters, this chapter looks at current progress in terms of climate disaster risk incorporation into development planning and practice at three levels (national government, municipalities, and communities) and analyzes gaps, challenges, and opportunities. The chapter also discusses potential factors for enhancing local disaster risk management (DRM) capacity by collaborating with three levels of stakeholders.

Based on literature and an empirical case, the purpose of this paper is to present a framework for decision‐making in utilities where unbundling considerations are taking place. The paper analyses the implications of splitting long‐term network planning activity from the organization responsible for short‐term network operation activities.

The proposed framework includes an analysis of impacts of external forces, set‐up of common targets and performance models, and alignment of responsibilities in the new organization. The empirical results and validation of the proposed framework is performed by an electric utility, where legal unbundling of activities has taken place; the study includes expert interviews and theoretical analysis.

Colliding interests in the new business model can be avoided if economic and technical targets are mainly set by the regulator for both network development and operation activities.

The results are based on internal re‐organization; a complementary study on re‐organizing network business activities to an external service provider could give information about the generalizability of the findings.

Application of the proposed framework for decision‐making and lessons learned can support electric utilities when planning for unbundling and strategic target‐setting in the unbundled business model.

The study presents experiences of re‐organized network business activities in a pioneering market area with a long experience of outsourcing. The detailed analysis of internal re‐organization within one electric utility can facilitate further restructuring phases.

During the Communist Party of China's endeavors over the past century, China has created “two miracles,” namely, large-scale and rapid economic development and long-term social stability.

The causes for China's achieving the “two miracles” lie in the adherence to the Party's leadership as the political guarantee, the scientific theoretical guidance as the ideological guarantee, the socialist system as well as the national governance system as the institutional guarantee and giving full play of people's creativity under the Party's leadership as the driving force guarantee.

From a political economy point of view, the theoretical logic behind the creation of the “two miracles” is that the combination of the state capacity and the scaling up of markets under the Party's leadership contributes to the rapid economic development and further the long-term social stability based on the financial foundation laid by rapid economic development. The historical experience of the “Two Miracles” can be summed up as the cultivation of state capacity under the leadership of the Party, the synergy and complementarity between the central government and local governments, the combination of development planning and market mechanisms, and the coordination of selective, functional and inclusive industrial policies.

It is necessary to judge future development trends from a medium and long-term development perspective, further promote the co-evolution of the state and the market, reshape the growth regime for high-quality development, fully tap the potential of domestic demand and create a “people-centered” economic development model so as to continue the “two miracles” and achieve a miracle of high-quality development in the second century.

Describes three approaches to incorporating sustainable development into the agri‐food system. Presents the argument that long‐term sustainable development demands trans‐formational change, whereas stop‐gap sustainable development measures can be introduced on an add‐on piecemeal basis. Rooted in strategic choice theory and the punctuated equilibrium paradigm, focuses on how ideology influences organizational design, and compares the current agri‐food system with Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) and the Seikatsu Club. The current agri‐food system protects the environment by regulating the use of environmentally‐unfriendly agricultural practices and chemicals. The Seikatsu Club provides economic incentives for farmers to emphasize sound ecology. CSA values ecological and economic concerns equally, with an additional emphasis on social justice. Discusses implications for future study of changes that incorporate sustainable development.