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It is known from research that the right context can help managers develop an ambidextrous approach. But just as few of us are naturally ambidextrous, many managers fail to balance conformity and change during strategy implementation. This paper aims to investigate why.

Through a qualitative study of managers of an international airline, the authors examine a series of cultural barriers that constrain managers’ agile decision-making and stop managerial ambidexterity.

The authors identify six culturally ingrained practices that block managerial ambidexterity: top management’s unwavering emphasis on cost control when survival hinges on fresh investments; little or no scanning of the environment for new areas of opportunity; intensive planning oriented toward efficiency issues; functional structures characterized by extensive division of labor; centralized control; and formal hierarchical communication channels.

Managers find it difficult to put into practice new initiatives, particularly when the proposed initiatives counter the underlying cultural world of the organization. The authors suggest that this dark side of culture can pose tough barriers for ambidextrous action.

There is an urgent need for organizations to be aware of the possible misalignments between ambidextrous pursuits and the cultural forces that actually drive action. A deep understanding of their organization’s cultural universe is a crucial first step for managers aspiring to better engage with ambidexterity and outwit and outperform competitors.

Different strategic approaches need not be viewed as irreconcilable. If cultural elements do not block it, managerial ambidexterity can showcase innovative approaches to reconciling trade-offs in strategic decision-making.

Organisational implementations of information technology (IT) normally fail due to cultural forces that inhibit the usage levels required to facilitate successful IT implementation. The purpose of this paper is to explore IT implementation from an IT culture perspective (Leidner and Kayworth, 2006). In particular, it identifies and follows the trajectory of IT culture archetypes that emerge during the implementation process and further investigates their role in facilitating successful IT implementations.

This research adopts the qualitative single case study approach and draws on the implementation of a management information system in a Nigerian global bank.

The findings illustrate three different IT culture archetypes and provide insights into their dynamic nature. The progressive weakening of two IT culture archetypes and the corresponding strengthening of the third archetype shows how initial vision conflicts can get transformed into vision agreements.

This paper extends the IT culture perspective by illustrating how a congruence relationship between IT cultures and IT artefacts can be fostered. The paper shows how diverse IT cultures can develop reasonably quickly in line with initial user experiences of a system. When IT cultures are aligned with the values embedded in IT, positive engagement and usage of the technology results strengthening the presence of embracing IT cultures.

Digital technologies create myriad innovation opportunities and have inspired the establishment of many new start-ups in recent years. Despite the growing knowledge on digital entrepreneurship, few studies explore how start-ups exploit these opportunities to achieve entrepreneurial success. The purpose of this paper is to explore start-ups’ capabilities for successful delivery of digital artefacts in a cloud computing infrastructure.

Empirical data were collected during a qualitative case study of an established start-up in the Chinese market by interviewing 41 interviewees. Informed by the notion of dynamic capabilities and using the Gioia methodology, the case firm's life cycle was analysed in detail.

The study identifies start-ups’ ordinary and dynamic capabilities for successful development and delivery of digital services. The findings provide insights into a portfolio of start-ups’ capabilities, namely adaptation, networking, reengineering and refinement.

The study suggests that start-ups’ capabilities and underlying entrepreneurial actions determine the degree to which adoption of digital technologies create and transfer value to customers. The study offers specific insights into how start-ups successfully develop and deliver digital artefacts in a cloud infrastructure based on entrepreneurs' prior expertise, vision and accumulated experience.

This paper examines how entrepreneurship focused programs build capacities for disadvantaged groups to pursue more dignified lives. The struggles of disadvantaged entrepreneurs against pronounced structural constraints are well documented, but less is known about how targeted programs of entrepreneurship focused support change the status quo for disadvantaged communities.

The paper is grounded in a mainly inductive, interpretive study and explores the work of an entrepreneurship focused program targeted at refugee participants. The paper reports on intensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews with 23 program participants in London, UK.

The empirical sections elaborate three key mechanisms supporting greater self-determination and better opportunities: building entrepreneurial intention, building contextual legitimacy and building proximal ties. These mechanisms empower disadvantaged groups to pursue a wide variety of meaningful goals, including but not limited to starting a business.

This paper draws attention to problems of over-emphasizing the disadvantaged entrepreneurs' agency. It uses the vocabulary of self-determination theory (SDT) and offers a psychosocial perspective of the consequences of disadvantage and the potential for entrepreneurship focused programs to build key capacities and improve precarious lives.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in the special issue.

A general description of each paper in the special issue is provided. The introduction highlights the need for more research into the broad topic of the global elite.

Research in the social sciences uses a very broad definition of the global elite. It would be helpful in critical management and organization studies and critical international business research, to begin to identify important and key research areas that enable a more critical investigation of whom the global elite are and how they might be studied.

This paper introduces five diverse papers that deal with issues pertaining to a global elite and transnational capitalist class.

Global environmental and social threats challenge humans’ well-being and the survival of posterity. Industry 4.0 (I4.0) transformed the industry sector, enabling process automation and scalability, increasing manufacturers’ productivity, efficiency, and profitability, and supporting manufacturing innovation and firms’ competitive advantage. Despite this, the I4.0 paradigm, as currently conceived, does not fit for purpose in the context of the climate crisis and planetary emergency, nor does it address deep social tensions.

Therefore, a new revolution focusing on human and environmental needs is strongly required to address society’s economic and social problems. Combining digitalization and social purposes may address local, national, and international issues by involving a human-centered perspective in traditional business-oriented entrepreneurship.

Depending on the above, this chapter provides an in-depth understanding of Digital Entrepreneurship (DE), Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE), and how entrepreneurs may employ digital technologies to reach business and social aims.

The purpose of this study was to explore how the migration experiences of international accounting professionals were shaped by colonial structures and how, through their interactions with other professionals, migrants hybridize their professional identities and the profession in Canada.

A post-colonial analysis of the career narratives of international accounting professionals who migrated to Canada.

This paper illustrates how explicit and formal requirements for transformation, as well as the more subtle informal demands of employers and clients, require non-Western professionals to transform personal characteristics in ways that make them more “Canadian” or “professional”. Findings show that mimicry takes many forms, with some professionals becoming “consummate mimics”, while others discuss their transition in ways that highlight resistance (“reluctant mimics”) and the demands that systematically frustrate and exclude many non-Western professionals from full participation in the “global” profession in Canada (“frustrated mimics”).

This paper contributes to the existing scholarly literature on the persistence of colonial structures in shaping the experiences of colonized people even as they migrate in search of better opportunities decades after the colonial structures have been formally dismantled. It builds on Bhabha’s (1994) work illustrating that colonial structures are susceptible to change through action and interaction. We hope this study contributes to social change by providing some insights into how mimicry, resistance and hybridization may disrupt the unreflexive enactment of colonial structures that sustain inequality.

This study extends the literature on professional migration using a postcolonial perspective to empirically examine the lived experience of the colonial encounter and professionals transition their professional identities across borders.

The aim of this review is to reflect the current state of Financial Technology (FinTech) research along with its journey of development. Further, a conceptual framework showing the interaction of independent, mediating, and moderating variables with dependent variables (acceptance of FinTech products and services) along with propositions is prepared to facilitate the future researchers. This systematic literature review consists of 110 articles from 78 journals indexed in two academic databases (Scopus and/or Web of Science), extracting facts and figures about FinTech during 2016–2021. Our findings contribute to the literature by exemplifying that FinTech is a mixed set of threats and opportunities. In the present review only 18 articles belong to 2016–2017 but 54 articles are considered from 2020–2021, the increasing number of FinTech articles in high-ranking journals indicate the speedily growing popularity of FinTech. Similarly, secondary data based articles are dominating the primary data based ones. Further, regression analysis and PLS-SEM are the most popular statistical techniques among the authors of FinTech articles. To the best of knowledge of the authors, this is a unique study in which the latest FinTech research findings are skimmed.

Digital technology and SDGs have gained increasing interest from the research community. This chapter aims to explore the field through a holistic review of 188 publications from 2017 to 2022. For the systematic review of 188 articles, a three-step methodology comprising of PRISMA guidelines was performed, bibliometric analysis and text analysis using VOS-Viewer and Sentiment Analysis using RStudio had been undertaken. Bibliographic coupling revealed the following clusters Digital Space (Over all SDG), Localising SDGs, Financial Systems and Growth (SDG 8), Sustainable Supply Chain (SDG 9), Education (SDG 4), Energy Management (SDG 7), Smart Cities (SDG 11 and 13), Gender, Skills, and Responsibility (SDG 5 and 12), Food Management (SDG 1, 2 and 3), Business Innovation (SDG 8 and 9) and ICT (SDG 9). Next, co-occurrence analysis highlighted the following clusters Circular Economy (SDG 8), Higher Education System (SDG 4), Digital health (SDG 3), Industry 4.0 (SDG 9) and Supply Chain Management (SDG 9). Next, text analysis traced the most relevant areas of work within the theme. Finally, sentiment analysis revealed positive sentiments of the field. The research concluded that only a few SDGs had found major focus while the others don't have any solid ground in the literature. This chapter presents a knowledge structure by mapping the most relevant SDGs in the context of digital technology and sets directions for future research.

The expansion of new technologies has induced the digital revolution and paved the way for an innovation-based economy. Digitalization, while blurring real and virtual environments, acts as an incentive for innovation and has been regarded as a tool to tackle the crisis. Its particular acceleration was caused by the lockdown regulations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social entrepreneurship searches for innovative methods, tools and models to solve pressing social problems. The concept suggests applying business models for implementing social missions. Revenue generated from commercial activities is spent to solve social challenges caused by market imperfection, government inefficiency, disasters, pandemics, wars and economic crises. Advancing technologies, on the one hand, present opportunities for social enterprises and, on the other hand, involve risks to employment, data protection, transformed business model and strategies and changes in society's lifestyle and impose costly digital technologies to be adopted. Social entrepreneurs can create social value by using digital technologies that allow them to reach remote customers, investors or beneficiaries overcoming geographical boundaries or time differences. Yet digitalization can pose a threat to existing jobs as they become redundant; it transforms them or gives rise to new jobs while demanding technological skills and digital literacy. Moreover, enhanced digitalization and effective governmental actions set the stage for the decline of social business. The chapter explores the influence of digitalization on social entrepreneurship and discusses the potential of digital transformation for social enterprises. It examines the risks and opportunities that bring accelerated digitalization to social entrepreneurship.