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We discuss how multinational enterprises (MNEs) can play a leading role and take more responsibility towards reducing inequalities by developing a global sustainability regime. We especially focus on how this may contribute towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Our purpose is to identify and discuss the components and activities that are needed to develop such a strategy and implement it in markets with different structural and institutional conditions. We will especially discuss interactions between the head office and the local subsidiaries/organizations as well as interactions with different salient groups of stakeholders. We focus on three highly significant groups: business, social and political actors. We identify four key components of a global sustainability approach – namely, (i) make it relevant within the organization, (ii) establish a legitimate sustainable network position, (iii) present incentives and gains that stimulate action and (iv) establish long-term salient structures. These components and the associated activities have not been discussed in a coherent manner although some aspects have been put forward in earlier studies. We present a comprehensive framework that suggests what role MNEs can play and what challenges they face while doing so. The chapter is based on more than 10 years’ experience of studying MNEs’ activities in developing as well as developed markets, including how they work with sustainability. The study is based on data from four Swedish MNEs and three major research projects.

In this chapter, I propose an integrative framework for theorizing and empiricizing about talent management, based on the notion of “talent philosophies.” I believe that current debates about whether talent management should be inclusive or exclusive create the risk that our field will become fragmented, thereby undermining its social-scientific legitimacy. Nonetheless, this debate is absolutely correct in identifying the tensions between inclusive and exclusive approaches to talent management as a phenomenon. This, however, creates issues for talent management as a construct for scientific inquiry, as we need clear definitions and measures to create a cumulative body of research as a community. I propose that the solution lies in an expansion of our vocabulary as talent management researchers and identify four constructs that can help us structure and categorize our collective work: giftedness, talent, potential, and strength. Each of these constructs map logically onto different talent philosophies and talent management practices. In establishing “unity in diversity,” I believe talent management could finally make the transition into a more mature field of academic inquiry – although clearly phenomenon driven – characterized in equal parts by construct clarity, rigor, and relevance.

This book on uncertainty comprises the initial volume in a series titled “New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition”. We asked Frances Milliken and Gerard P. Hodgkinson, two well-known scholars who have made important contributions to our understanding of uncertainty to join us in this opening chapter to introduce this project. The brief bios found at the end of this volume cannot do justice to the broad range of their contributions, but our conversation gives a flavor of the kind of insights they have brought to managerial and organizational cognition (MOC). The editors thank them for helping launch the series with a decisive exploration of what defining uncertainty involves, how that might be done, why it is important, and how the task is changing. We were interested to discover that all five of us are currently involved in research that considers the nature and impact of uncertainty, and we hope that readers similarly find that paying attention to uncertainty contributes to their current projects. Working together, we can advance understanding of organizational settings and effective action, both for researchers and practitioners.