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The aim of this research is to study the direct and indirect effects among governance characteristics, long-term orientation and sustainable longevity of family firms.

Data were collected from 108 family firms operating in different sectors using survey questionnaires. The authors used the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to examine the hypotheses of the study.

Results indicate that governance characteristics influence long-term orientation and sustainable longevity. Furthermore, results also suggest that long-term orientation partially mediates the impact of governance characteristics on sustainable longevity. These findings provide critical implications for both theory and practice.

The findings of the study fill gaps in the existing literature and contribute to the body of knowledge in strategic management literature by providing additional evidence of the internal drivers of corporate sustainable longevity, particularly for family SMEs in developing economies.

This article explains the causal mechanism supporting sustainable longevity by analysing the last three generations of one of the oldest family firms in Latin America.

An explanatory single-case qualitative research based on critical realism explores why and how this family firm has been able to maintain its multigenerational longevity.

Los Lingues's evolutionary strategy, driven by transgenerational entrepreneurship under effectuation, has supported this family firm's sustainable longevity. Its effectual logic emerged mainly from the richness of the firm's historical resources embedded in its identity, knowledge and social capital and priority to preserve socioemotional wealth.

This study integrates socioemotional wealth and effectuation theory to explain a family firm's ability to survive through generations and sustain longevity. The study demonstrates the relevance of effectual logic in the entrepreneurial dynamics of a multigenerational family firm. Effectual logic drives the firm evolution and adaptation for sustainable longevity.

Supply chain disruptions have a significant impact on overall project delivery. This study aims to identify the supply chain disruptive factors and develop a framework to mitigate the disruptive effects on the supply chain. Covid-19 and Brexit disruption and their longevity effects in the short, medium and long term on the supply chain are relied upon to develop the framework.

The study adopted a mixed-method approach with a sequential explanatory design. The main disruptive factors were identified through a literature review, and key factors were selected through a focus group exercise. A questionnaire survey was carried out to sample opinions from the practitioners; 41 questionnaires were received and analysed using the relative importance index (RII) method for ranking the factors and percentage frequency distribution to determine the longevity effects. Five follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted over the telephone and later transcribed.

The results of Covid-19 disruption indicate that material cost increase ranked first (RII: 0.863), logistics cost increase and supply chain interaction ranked second and third, respectively. They have long-term, medium-term and short-term longevity effects, respectively. The lowest-rated factors were communication (RII: 0.561), staff shortages (RII: 0.629) and impact on relationships (RII: 0.639). The three most ranked Brexit disruptive factors are supply chain interaction (RII: 0.775), material cost increase (RII: 0.766) and logistic and haulage delay (RII: 0.717). The first two factors have long-term effects, and the logistics and haulage delays have a medium-term impact. The mitigating solutions suggested in the framework are collaborative working, stronger resilience to external forces and better transparency and communication that will lead to good relationships among the supply chain members.

The scope of the study was limited to the UK construction industry; however, the pandemic effect on supply chain can serve as critical learning curve in other developed and developing countries.

The study will help the government and construction firms to understand the focal areas of importance in solving the supply chain disruption problems based on the effects of Brexit and Covid-19. The research would be useful in ensuring the proactive involvement of the government and contracting firms in their preparedness for similar events in the future. The results could be interpreted for critical learning in other developed/developing countries.

Identifying and ranking the supply chain disruptive factors affecting the small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK construction industry has been the focal point of this study. The study also proposes a simple but effective framework comprising the highly ranked factors, their longevity effects and mitigating measures. This will help the SMEs manage future/similar external events affecting the supply chain.

The question of crisis resistance and resilience of long-lived family businesses became particularly volatile with the beginning of the Corona crisis. In this context the project “Narratives of Survival” was launched focusing on the prevailing narratives to find out how crisis situations have been dealt with and narrated by long-lived German family firms.

Based on narrative interviews, the empirical study of transgenerational entrepreneurship was first approached in an open-ended manner. The interview guideline addresses different types of crises and asks about resources, insights, regulations and explanations for the longevity of the family businesses.

In the qualitative content analysis, 12 guiding narratives were pointed out, providing information about the self-narratives of these entrepreneurial families which revolve around the three themes of self-image, familiarity and strategy.

This study provides information about the secrets of longevity of four very old family firms. The narratives revealed that strengthening the identity of the entrepreneurial family and employees of the family business as well as generating a shared reality, supports constructive handling of challenges and crises. This study contributes to theory by answering calls for narrative analysis in family firms and to practice by showing what younger companies can learn from long-lived family businesses.

COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements and adapt their ways of working. Yet, we know little about how management control might be enacted in the future of the sustainable workplace. The objective of the study is to examine the patterns of management control change in the Big 4 accounting firms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adopting an exploratory qualitative research design, the authors draw on 42 interviews with directors and associates in the Big 4 professional services firms.

The findings reveal two pathways of management control change including alignment and displacement. The authors found that relatively minor adaptions to action and result controls were relied upon to respond to substantial cultural and personnel control changes.

The contributions are threefold: the authors take a temporal perspective to (1) unpack the changes to management control arrangements; (2) theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways encompassing pace, scope and longevity of management control change and (3) contextualise management control arrangements in a hybrid work setting.

1. COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.

2. Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.

3. The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.

4. Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.

5. The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.

COVID-19 has forced Big 4 firms to challenge existing management control arrangements.

Literature has focused on traditional, onsite work settings and largely ignored change pathways.

The authors take a temporal perspective to unpack changes to management control arrangements.

Big 4 firms adapted to hybrid work with substantial changes to personnel and cultural controls.

The authors theorise the findings by developing a three-dimensional taxonomy of change pathways.

This study aims to explore how emotional intelligence (EI) in members of family businesses can enhance the relationships with the stakeholders and whether adopting a relationship marketing approach could extend a family businesses' longevity, the businesses' success through generations.

A mixed-method approach was adopted, and two studies (quantitative followed by qualitative) were conducted in Mexico on small to medium-sized enterprises. This study considers the perspective of owners and employers of family businesses.

The study provides important insights into the relationship between EI and relationship marketing. Enhancing EI in family members whilst conducting a relationship marketing approach, both internal and external, will result in better performance. Family businesses can alleviate conflicts inherent to family emotions whilst building and maintaining strong relationships with customers and suppliers that can secure the long-term success of the organisation by enhancing EI.

Considering the majority of the literature is focussed on highly developed economies such as the USA, the UK and major developing economies such as China and India, this mixed-method study offers Mexico as a novel setting that has become an important procurement hub in light of the recent global developments and international relationship policies.

The study aims to determine the outcomes of mentorship in an online game system, as well as the characteristics of good mentors.

A combination of anonymized survey measures and in-game behavioral measures were used to power longitudinal analysis over an 11-month period in which protégés and non-mentored new players could be compared for their performance, social connections and retention.

Successful people were more likely to mentor others, and mentors increased protégés' skill. Protégés had significantly better retention, were more active and much more successful as players than non-protégés. Contrary to expectations, younger, less wealthy and educated people were more likely to be mentors and mentors did not transfer their longevity. Many of the qualities of the mentor remain largely irrelevant—what mattered most was the time spent together.

This is a study of an online game, which has unknown generalizability to other games and to offline settings.

The results show that getting mentors to spend dedicated time with protégés matters more than their characteristics.

Good mentorship does not require age or resources to provide real benefits.

This is the first study of mentorship to use survey and objective outcome measures together, over time, online.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how users on social media view brands with a heritage. Consumers commonly post opinions and accounts of their experiences with brands on social media. Such consumer-generated content may or may not overlap with content desired by brand managers. Drawing from “The medium is the message” paradigm, this study text-mines user narratives on Twitter1 to shed light on the role of social media in shaping public images of brands with heritage through the lens of the stereotype content model.

The study uses a data set of almost 80,000 unique tweets on 12 brands across six categories, compares brands high versus low in heritage and combines dictionary-based content analysis with sentiment analysis.

The results indicate that both user-generated content and sentiment are significantly more positive for brands low rather than high in heritage. Regarding warmth, consumers use significantly more positive words on sociability and fewer negative words on morality for brands low rather than high in heritage. Regarding competence, tweets include more positive words on assertiveness and ability for low-heritage brands. Finally, overall sentiment is more positive for brands low rather than high in heritage.

Important from co-creation and integrated marketing communication perspectives, the findings provide brand managers with actionable insights on how to more effectively use social media.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first to examine user-generated content in a brand heritage context. It demonstrates that heritage brands, with their longevity and strong links to the past, need to be aware of how contemporary social media can detract from their image.

This study aims to examine the relationship between pollution and life expectancy in oil producing communities, where there is a dearth of empirical evidence on how knowledge and coping strategy, agriculture and foreign capital inflows mediate the relationship between pollution and life expectancy.

The study employed a cross sectional survey design to analyze the roles of knowledge and coping strategy, agriculture and foreign capital inflows in the relationship between pollution and life expectancy in Benekuku and Okpai oil producing communities in the Niger Delta. The study employed the modern structural equation modeling (SEM) estimator.

Estimates show the mediating effect of agriculture on air pollution-longevity (coeff. = 0.398; t-value = 4.425; p < 0.05) and (coeff. = −0.120; t-value = −3.862; p < 0.05) mediating effect of foreign capital. The result revealed that agriculture and foreign capital inflows are significant mediators in pollution-life expectancy relations, affirming the Niger Delta as a pollution haven. However, knowledge and coping strategy with estimate of (coeff. = 0.233; t-value = 6.150; p < 0.05) spurs life expectancy.

The study suggests knowledge of hazard identification and reporting and awareness of coping strategy as the panacea to poor life expectancy rate in these local oil producing communities.

The study departs from existing works by estimating the mediating roles of agriculture and foreign capital inflow in air pollution-Life expectancy by controlling for knowledge and coping strategy using the structural equation model with ethical approval from Health Ethics Research Committee.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0734

Over the last decades, the development of entrepreneurial activity has allowed greater growth and economic development in Spain. However, within the analysis of Spanish entrepreneurial dynamics, insufficient attention has been paid to a key group: senior entrepreneurs. The fact that the first two decades of the 21st century have been accompanied by the two worst economic crises in remembrance since the Great Depression of the 1930s has had a great impact on the professional careers of the group of senior workers, whose careers have been cut short due to the closure of companies. In this way, the present work delves into the reality of senior entrepreneurs in Spain, analyzing the main characteristics of this group, which is becoming increasingly important in society.

Using microdata from the Spanish National Statistics Institute's Labour Force Survey, the study focuses on reference persons who, being 50 years of age or over and actively working, work as an entrepreneur and have started their activity in the last 12 months. The study covers, in turn, the analysis period of the fourth quarters from 2005 to 2020. In relation to the methodology, the work focuses on the use of binary logistic regression techniques, given that the phenomenon to be studied is binary in nature: entrepreneurship or not.

The main conclusions drawn are the importance of sociodemographic factors such as educational level, age, the profession of the couple as well as the fact of having or not having children. The sector of activity and region are also significant. It is also concluded that senior entrepreneurship in Spain is of a necessary nature, considering the evolution of unemployment and decisions based on pension reform.

The main limitations of the study refer to the lack of socioeconomic information. Thus, it would be interesting to know the link among the sociodemographic characteristics and the economic situation of the professionals, as well as the fact of whether they have started from a previous situation of unemployment or employment.

The obtained conclusions allow progress to be made in the generation of economic policies aimed at the professional reorientation of a group of workers who, due to labor market circumstances, are obliged to end long professional careers and to seek alternatives. In fact, entrepreneurship is a viable professional alternative for these professionals.

Despite the importance of senior professionals in the Spanish economy, more research is needed on their characteristics and needs. Despite important studies such as Socci et al. (2020) or Perez-Encinas et al. (2021), there are not many studies for the Spanish reality. This paper seeks to deepen the understanding of the sociodemographic characteristics of Spanish senior entrepreneurs, based on current public information and considering different stages of the economic cycle.