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The purpose of this paper is to document the opportunities and challenges of a practitioner researcher in accessing interpretive case participants in the public healthcare sector in Ireland.

The paper documents the research design and implementation phases of a longitudinal interpretive research project with specific focus on, research ethics, preparing for data collection, identifying and recruiting the research participants and analysis of the findings based on the specific nuances of the public health context and design considerations. Considerations as an insider researcher in a large public organisation are also presented.

Conducting interpretive research in a healthcare setting presents both opportunities and some challenges; key amongst these is agreed access to research participants. In addition, with research taking place in a healthcare environment, the potential for disclosure of information regarding something harmful to patients or of a criminal nature exists. This risk can be addressed through the ethical approval process documented in this paper. Insider researcher considerations are also explored focussing on the specific nuances affiliate to carrying out a longitudinal interpretive study in a public healthcare setting.

Insights for those wishing to conduct longitudinal interpretive case research in the public healthcare setting are included. The implications for enhanced engagement with interpretive research in this context are addressed.

Through documenting the opportunities and challenges of a practitioner researcher in accessing research participants in the public healthcare sector, this paper discusses insider researcher considerations and seeks to address concerns in the literature regarding insufficient detail relating to interpretive research design and implementation in healthcare contexts.

The purpose of this study is to extend previous research by using a longitudinal design to examine the differential contribution of brand understanding (BU) drivers at various moments in the early tenure of service employees. Employee BU is a prerequisite of brand promise delivery among service employees. Previous studies, using cross-sectional samples, established that brand-oriented recruitment, training and leadership are significant BU drivers.

A three-wave survey was collected from a 105-member panel of recent hires at a restaurant chain that displayed a strong brand culture and adopted internal brand management (IBM) practices. Structural equation models with carryover effects were estimated to measure the impact of BU drivers on Day 1, as well as at four and seven months of tenure. In addition, a latent growth model of BU was estimated using random coefficients modeling.

Results show a significant positive effect of IBM practices on BU at each point in time; however, despite this, by the seven month milestone, BU is still not fully developed.

As with most organizational longitudinal studies, there was sample attrition because of the high turnover that characterizes the restaurant industry. This attrition is not believed to be correlated with the variables measured in the study.

Managers seeking a differentiated customer experience should not assume new hires attain a good understanding of the service brand even after the first seven months of tenure. Hence, brand training and leadership should extend well beyond this time frame.

This study is the first, as per the authors’ understanding, to use a longitudinal design to model BU as a dynamic variable because it befits the learning trajectories of new employees.

This paper aims to explore longitudinally a life sciences international new venture’s (INV’s) development of foreign market knowledge (FMK) and how this knowledge development relates to the firm’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO).

The article adopts a longitudinal case study approach to investigate an INV in the life sciences industry.

The findings show that the EO of an INV changes during its internationalisation. A strong EO, often considered to be synonymous with the early expansion of an INV, is not always able to guide the INV in its later developmental stages. In its continued internationalisation, an INV instead needs firm-specific FMK accumulated from a process of learning by doing. The knowledge development of an INV is a time-consuming process that cannot be rushed by grafting new and experienced employees.

Future research focusing on larger and broader samples of INVs is recommended to validate this study’s results.

Life sciences managers need to develop their own firm-specific FMK by interacting with their foreign business partners.

This study contributes further insights into the FMK development processes and EO of INVs in the life sciences industry during their internationalisation. Further understanding is also provided about how the industry-specific features of an INV in the life sciences industry influence internationalisation over time. The study’s theoretical implications are that international entrepreneurship frameworks and internationalisation process theory need to be integrated to understand the longitudinal development of INVs.

Sustainability innovation systems (SIS) refer to the investment in information systems (IS) to enable business sustainability within stages of sustainability maturity. A prior framework proposes that the roles played by IS to support sustainability depend on the stage of sustainability maturity achieved. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine these propositions.

This study conducts longitudinal case studies of six companies across three industries. Data were collected from the companies’ Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reports over a six-year period from 2009 to 2015.

The study provides initial empirical support for the proposition of the SIS framework that companies follow a staged path to sustainability maturity and that IS play specific roles as companies mature.

The findings encourage future research to take a longitudinal and holistic view of sustainability and IS. Future research could also collect a more comprehensive data set for statistical analysis.

The study provides guidelines for practitioners in making decisions about companies’ investments in IS for sustainability, particularly within individual stages of sustainability maturity.

The study goes beyond environmental sustainability to empirically show that companies are deploying IT assets for social sustainability too.

The multiple-longitudinal case study approach provides an intimate understanding of companies’ actual usage of IS resources to enable sustainability. The study is also among the very early research using GRI reports for research on IS and sustainability, showing that these reports are a rich secondary data source for IS scholars.

A literature review revealed that none of the few longitudinal studies of enterprise content management (ECM) implementations focus on small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). To contribute to this area, the purpose of this paper is to generate insights in relation to how SMEs can successfully promote implementation of ECM solutions.

The paper presents and analyses a longitudinal study of an ECM project.

The findings of the paper include a definition of a process model for ECM implementation in SMEs, identification of ten success factors related to ECM system implementation, and a definition of a new pattern for ECM technology development, compared to existing case studies.

Since it appears to be the first detailed study of ECM system implementation in SMEs, this paper provides a point of departure for future research in the use of ECM technology in SMEs.

Practitioners in SMEs preparing to engage in ECM projects may utilize the findings of the paper in relation to managing the implementation process and understanding various benefits that ECM systems can produce.

The paper represents a contribution to the sparse literature on ECM implementation. In fact, the case seems to be the first longitudinal study of ECM implementation in SMEs.

Whilst several studies investigate the attributes of dysfunctional leaders exhibiting corporate psychopathic traits, there is a paucity of longitudinal data exploring the way these leaders damage employees and the organisation. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the literature and provide a focus for HR to address these emerging issues within organisations.

A longitudinal and in-depth case study approach is taken to explore the impact on a workplace of a dysfunctional leader exhibiting the traits of a corporate psychopath. A framework is used to analyse the nuances of the behaviours, in particular bullying behaviours and the impact of this leadership style on the workforce over a five-year period.

The long-term negative effects of this type of leadership are identified through a detailed analysis of a trait commonly associated with this toxic style of leader, bullying behaviours and their consequences.

Whilst a single case study allows for in-depth analysis, it may be seen as atypical and of limited application. However, the longitudinal approach is ideal to investigate the nuance of how a highly dysfunctional leader operates within and through the multiple layers of an organisation.

The paper identifies the traits and effects of a dysfunctional leader on an organisation to enable the organisation primarily through human resources to deal with them and their behaviours.

The finding of this study adds to the knowledge of identifying and dealing with toxic behaviours in the workplace.

The longitudinal nature of the study provides a unique insight into the behaviours and damage of a dysfunctional leader within the workplace.

This study aims to propose a longitudinal analysis of motivations for Integrated Reporting (IR) adoption, internal changes, the benefits of IR implementation and compliance challenges.

The authors analyse a longitudinal case study of an Italian-listed company (Eni) participating in the IR-Pilot Programme (PP) and covering 10 years of IR adoption. The analysis was based on a mixed-method approach that included semi-structured interviews, content analysis of annual reports and triangulation with other data sources. Results are discussed regarding institutional theory, legitimacy theory and diffusion of innovation theory.

The study suggests that motivations for adopting IR change over time and participation in the IR-PP helps Eni acquire a comprehensive and substantial integrated view of value creation over time, makes integrated culture a key factor for strategic business sustainability and confirms the readiness of early adopters to comply with the non-financial Directive (NFD).

This study, among the few longitudinal case studies, provides organisations, regulators and academics with insights into the motivations driving the successful adoption and implementation of IR and the NFD. The results may help companies consider one of the tools currently deemed to bring sustainability into action and participation in pilot groups.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the important and distinctly under‐researched topic of first customer references, for which a basic descriptive framework is created. The paper also tests the framework, validating it by means of new insights obtained from a longitudinal case study.

The present work is an embedded single longitudinal case study with two levels of analysis units: the company and its customers. Pattern‐matching logic and time‐series analyses are used. The idea is to compare the observed patterns with those introduced through the basic descriptive framework. Each case is analyzed, after which a cross‐case analysis is conducted over the specified time horizon. Programming theory is used to describe the iterative nature of the phenomenon of market entry, although natural language is used instead of formal notation.

The longitudinal case study demonstrates various operational aspects of the framework in practice. The study indicates the correct business operations setup model after each customer case. The case study generally reveals, from the perspective of competence marketing, that there are no failed customer cases if experimental knowledge has been gained.

In order to evaluate capabilities of start‐up technology companies to enter the market, all customer cases should be evaluated, even the failed ones. Successful customer references may provide only a partial picture of the gained capabilities.

This paper explores the important and distinctly under‐researched topic of first customer references, for which a basic descriptive framework is created and will be of interest to companies trying to enter the very competitive business‐to‐business market for complex products.

The purpose of this paper is to respond to the call by McMullen and Dimov (2013) for a clearer understanding of entrepreneurial journeys by investigating the entrepreneurial capitals and micro-processes of seven young early stage entrepreneurs who all exited their businesses within 3 years of start-up.

The authors analysed empirical data from concurrent in-depth interviews which generated rich longitudinal case studies. Theory-building then led to a proposed “Longitudinal Dynamic Process Framework” of entrepreneurial goals, processes and capitals.

The framework builds on prior studies by integrating entrepreneurial processes and decisions into two feedback loops based on continuous review and learning. It thereby enhances understanding of the dynamics of new business development and unfolds the early stage ventures entrepreneurs' business exits.

The findings are based on a small purposive sample. However, the main implication for research and theory is showing how the entrepreneurial capitals are dynamic and influenced by entrepreneurs' environment, and also separating entrepreneurs' personal issues from their business issues.

The findings challenge some assumptions of policymakers and offer new insights for practitioners and early stage entrepreneurs. These include having more realistic case-studies of the entrepreneurial journey, recognizing the need to be agile and tenacious to cope with challenges, understanding how capitals can interact in complementary ways and that entrepreneurial processes can be used to leverage them at appropriate stages of the start-ups.

The concurrent longitudinal analysis and theory-building complements extant cross-sectional studies by identifying and analysing the detailed processes of actual business start-ups and exits. The proposed framework thereby adds coherence to earlier studies and helps to explain early stage entrepreneurial development, transformation of capitals and business exit.

This paper aims to examine the development of trust during online collaboration. The purpose of the inquiry is to improve the understanding of individual trust development in longitudinal online collaboration teams.

The paper reveals the conclusion of a longitudinal online collaboration case study of two student cohorts over a two‐year period, where each cohort is in their first year, based on a previous trust research model. However, the study is conducted in a new context through the implementation of online collaboration tools. Data is collected using longitudinal surveys and in‐depth interviews.

The paper demonstrates that trust development in different online collaboration groups does not follow a particular pattern in this case study. This development is characterised by fluctuation and complexity. Trust development does not attain the ideal state discussed in previous research and trust development is different within each team. The paper provides insight into the complexities of trust development in an online collaboration environment and information system understanding.

The paper demonstrates the findings regarding development features are context‐specific and have not been subjected to testing for replication within other settings. The authors intend this for future research.

The observations will help team leaders to understand changes in trust. It will also aid system developers and designers to consider trust development features in future system design for online collaboration environment and tools.

The paper builds upon a previous trust development model but applies it to the context of online collaboration using student groups to analyse the findings over time.