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The purpose of this paper is to provide an organizing lens for viewing the distinct contributions to knowledge production from those research communities addressing the impact of competitive strategy on company performance in general, and the influence of cost leadership and differentiation strategy on organizational performance in detail.

The research methodology was based on the PRISMA review, and thematic analysis based on an iterative process of open coding was analyzed and then the sample was analyzed by illustrating the research title, objectives, method, data analysis, sample size, variables and country.

The main factor that influenced the competitive strategy is strategic growth; strategic growth has a significant influence on competitive strategy. Furthermore, competitive strategy will boost firm network, performance measurement and organization behavior. In the same way, the internal goal factor will enhance organizational effectiveness. Also, a differentiation strategy will support management practice factors, strategic positions, product price, product characteristics and company performance.

This study contributes to the literature by identifying a framework of competitive strategy factors, company performance factors, cost leadership strategy factors, differentiation strategy factors and competitive strategy with global market factors. This study provides a complete picture and description of the resulting body knowledge in competitive strategy and organizational performance.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how electronic word of mouth (eWOM) affects purchase intention and brand equity, and to further examine the mediating role of brand equity between eWOM and purchase intention among Indian consumers of branded apparel.

The data was collected from 303 consumers of branded apparel using an online questionnaire, and data were analyzed through structural equation modeling with the help of SPSS v24 and AMOS v23.

The findings of this study demonstrated that eWOM has a positive and significant influence on brand equity and purchase intention. Simultaneously, brand equity partially mediates between the eWOM and purchase intention of consumers of apparel brands.

The study's data set is limited in its generalizability as it is based on specific responses from Indian consumers of branded apparel via an online survey. The results of this study would help marketing practitioners and apparel manufacturers to augment their sales and design their promotional strategy in accordance with consumers' traits.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to propose an integrative model that studies relationships between eWOM, brand equity and purchase intention by incorporating the Elaboration Likelihood Model among Indian consumers of branded apparel. Furthermore, this novel piece of research explores the relationship between eWOM and purchase intention with brand equity as a mediator, particularly for branded apparel selected by Indian consumers.

Shortly before the Second World War, a woman who had never accepted her orphan status, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed ‘Little Coco’ by her father and known as ‘Coco’ to her relatives, became the first women in history to build a world-class industrial empire. By 1935, Coco, a fashion designer and industry captain, was employing more than 4,000 workers and had sold more than 28,000 dresses, tailored jackets and women's suits. Born into a poor family and raised in an orphanage, she enjoyed an intense social life in Paris in the 1920s, rubbing shoulders with artists, creators and the rising stars of her time.

Thanks to her entrepreneurial skills, she was able to innovate in her methods and in her trendsetting approach to fashion design and promotion. Coco Chanel was committed and creative, had the soul of an entrepreneur and went on to become a world leader in a brand new sector combining fashion, accessories and perfumes that she would help shape. By the end of her life, she had redefined French elegance and revolutionized the way people dressed.

Dirty workers occupy jobs and perform tasks that are unpleasant and considered distasteful or “tainted” to other members of society. However, while they experience challenges in managing stigma, they are generally successful in creating positive self-identities. Among these dirty jobs is prostitution. As dirty workers, women sex workers in American history have been treated with humor, ridicule and derision. This study aims to explain the social contexts and the limited economic choices these women faced and examine how they may have managed their dirty work’s stigma to create positive self-identities.

This paper uses primary and secondary sources to examine a 53-year period of American history and to frame these women’s stigma management within a “dirty work” perspective.

The author suggests that sex workers in riskier roles (e.g. street walkers, crib workers or “upstairs girls” in saloons) would have been less able to effectively manage stigma and create positive self-identities as compared to brothels workers, due to the brothel’s strong social support, healthier work culture and richer resources.

While sex work has changed significantly in the past century, the principles of identity management in this difficult and dirty work remain. Understanding the economic, social and individual challenges faced by these dirty workers will aid our understanding of the difficulties confronted by today’s sex workers.

Sex work is nearly absent from scholarly management literature. The lack of historical perspective and knowledge in this field limits a full understanding of how various types of dirty workers manage stigma.

The growth of the healthcare industry since the middle of the nineteenth century has offered medical doctors a broad range of opportunities to develop their private practice. However, a major challenge was accessing the new medical technology at the core of this growth, as operation rooms, X-ray machines, laboratories and sterilization equipment were mostly centred in hospitals. Based on the case of Geneva, Switzerland, this chapter discusses the various strategies adopted by medical doctors to benefit from hospital infrastructure for their work. It demonstrates that collective entrepreneurship emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, when groups of doctors started to open collective clinics in response to the impossibility of using the infrastructure of the local public hospital linked to the University of Geneva. This heyday of collective private clinics lasted until the 1990s when listed companies and private investors took over and reorganized these private healthcare organizations.

The American agricultural economist Marion Clawson advised the Israeli government during 1953–1955. Clawson, a protégé of John D. Black and Mordecai Ezekiel, criticized the government for ignoring economic considerations, and stated that Israel’s national goals – defense, Negev Desert irrigation, immigrant absorption via new agricultural settlements, and economic independence – were mutually contradictory. His major recommendations were to improve the realism of Israel’s agricultural plan; end expensive Negev irrigation; enlarge irrigated farms eightfold; freeze new settlements until the number of semi-developed settlements falls from 300 to 100; and limit new Negev settlements to 10 over 5–7 years. Thus, Clawson ignored political feasibility and made value judgments. Minister of Finance Levi Eshkol and Minister of Agriculture Peretz Naphtali rejected Clawson’s recommendations because they ignored Israel’s national goals. By September 1954, Clawson shifted towards greater pragmatism: He acknowledged that foreign advisors should not question the national goals or make value judgments, and sought common ground with the Ministry of Agriculture. At his initiative, he wrote Israel Agriculture 1953/54 in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture. Israel Agriculture was a consensus document: Clawson eschewed recommendations and accepted that the government might prioritize non-economic goals. In proposing Israel Agriculture, Clawson made a pragmatic decision to relinquish some independence for (potentially) greater influence. Ultimately, Clawson was largely unsuccessful as an advisor. Clawson’s failure was part of a general pattern: Over 1950–1985, the Israeli government always rejected foreign advisors’ recommendations unless it was facing a severe crisis.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the potential of the New Deal as a research context in management and organization studies and, in doing so, forward the role one of its chief architects, Harry Hopkins, played in managing the economic crisis. The exploration takes us to multiple layers that work together to form context around Hopkins including the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration, and ultimately, the New Deal. By raising Harry Hopkins as an exemplar of historical-narrative exclusion, the authors can advance the understanding of his role in the New Deal and how his actions produced early insights about management (e.g. modern crisis management).

The paper experiments with the methodological assemblage of ANTi-History and microhistorical analysis that the authors call “ANTi-Microhistory” to examine the life narrative of Harry Hopkins, his early association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and later, the New Deal. To accomplish this, the authors undertake a programme of archival research (e.g. the digital repository of The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum) and assess various materials (e.g. speeches, biographies and memoirs) from across multiple spaces.

The findings suggest Harry Hopkins to be a much more powerful actor in mobilizing New Deal policies and their effect on early management thought than what was previously accepted. In the process, the authors found that because of durable associations with Roosevelt, key policy architects of the same ilk as Harry Hopkins (e.g. Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, Lewis Douglas, and others) and their contributions have been marginalized. This finding illustrates the significant potential of little-known historical figures and how they might shed new insight on the development of the field and management practice.

The aim is to demonstrate the potential of engaging historical research in management with the individual – Harry Hopkins – as a unit of analysis. By engaging historical research on the individual – be it well-known or obscure figures of the past – the authors are considering how they contribute to the understanding of phenomena (e.g. New Deal, Progressivism or Keynesian economics). The authors build on research that brings to focus forgotten people, communities and ideas in management studies but go further in advocating for space in the research to consider the scholarly potential of the individual.