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Posits that every enterprise must institutionalize its workplace learning systems and opportunities in such a way that it radiates what it has already achieved and from this moves on to realize its full potential – in short, the enterprise itself is the key. Examines in successive chapters: the individual manager and questioning insights (Q); the major systems which the enterprise uses to capture and structure its learning; a SWOT analysis of the enterprise′s total learning; action learning, its contribution to the achievement of enterprise growth, and the role of programmed knowledge (P); the Enterprise School of Management (ESM) as a phoenix of enlightenment and effectiveness rising from the ashes of traditional, less effective management training initiatives; and, finally, the practical realization of the action learning dream, as evidenced by emerging examples of successful and profitable implementation worldwide. Concludes with a selection of pertinent abstracts.

Managers’ work is surrounded by complex environments, from which they need to learn, in order to understand them. However, complexity poses several challenges to managerial learning, for which usually management educational programs have not prepared managers. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore such challenges and possible ways to overcome them.

This is a conceptual paper that explores in depth the issue of managerial learning challenges in a complex world. Managers face these challenges during their practice, yet sometimes management education has not prepared them for this.

Three managerial learning challenges due to complexity are identified. First, through cognition and cognitive structures, managers simplify the world around them. Nevertheless, biases, inertia and inaccuracy emerge, as managers’ mental models are not truly capable of capturing complexity. Second, managers look for information to aid them in their learning processes, but the information they gather is sometimes bogus, invalid or unfounded. Third, managers could seek for support from management research to improve their learning. However, given management research intricacies, limitations and particularities, a learning challenge emerges as well, as management research has been rarely capable to capture complexity.

Having explored these managerial learning challenges due to complexity, this paper discusses a carefulness-based management learning ideal, which by being underpinned by the quality of carefulness and the related concepts of critical thinking, negative capability and a deep learning style, suggests a potential new way to approach management learning in light of complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of challenges related to interfaces in industrial innovation processes, together with suggestions on how these interface challenges can be managed. The paper investigates similarities and differences between the interfaces and identified challenges in terms of required managerial issues.

The result presented in this paper is based on in-depth case studies of ten product development projects from five different manufacturing firms in Sweden. The empirical results are supplemented with results from a review of relevant literature.

To manage the interface challenges market uncertainty, technological uncertainty, product complexity and/or degree of change in product, production complexity and/or degree of change in production, geographical and/or organisational dispersion between technology development and product development, and between product development and production, it was found that several issues have to be considered. Most of the identified managerial issues concern transfer synchronisation, transfer management and transfer scope. The authors have shown that despite many differences between the different phases in the innovation process, a quite concordant picture emerges when it comes to how to manage interface challenges.

The classification of managerial issues into transfer synchronisation, transfer management and transfer scope provides an overview of areas that need to be addressed to manage interface challenges during the industrial innovation process. This knowledge provides some guidance for managers aiming at a smooth transition process, from technology development to production.

By addressing both the interface between technology development and product development, and between product development and production in the same study, the authors have been able to provide a comprehensive overview of managerial issues related to interfaces challenges in industrial innovation processes in manufacturing firms.

The human service triad (i.e. the relationship between the customer, frontline employee (FLE) and managerial employee) experiences a range of well-being challenges when faced with the introduction of service robots. Despite growth in service robot scholarship, understanding of the well-being challenges affecting the human service triad remains fragmented. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to synthesise the literature and offer a research agenda aligned with the proposed Robotic-Human Service Trilemma. By taking a job performance approach (which considers the actions, behaviours and outcomes linked to organisational goals), the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma conceptualises three well-being challenges (intrusion, sideline and interchange). These challenges are realised via the realistic capabilities and constraints of service robot implementation.

This research relies on a systematic review of all disciplines concerning service robots. In total, 82 articles were analysed using thematic coding and led to the development of the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma and research agenda.

The analyses reveal the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma consists of three challenges: intrusion, sideline and indifference. The findings demonstrate that FLEs are required to counterbalance the constraints of service robots, leading to an uneven well-being burden within the human service triad. This paper suggests a research agenda for investigation of the challenges that underpin the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma.

Through the conceptualisation of the Robotic-Human Service Trilemma, this study is the first to explore how states of well-being equilibrium exist within the human service triad and how these states are challenged by service robots. The authors present a balanced centricity perspective to well-being that contrasts previous trade-off approaches and that enhances the body of service robot literature with a well-being lens.

The purpose of this paper is to delineate a research agenda to guide future service research investigating the digital transformation of financial service systems through Fintech – disruptive innovations by new market entrants that challenge the position of mainstream financial institutions.

Rooted in the philosophical foundations of “use-inspired research,” this paper addresses the managerially and societally relevant phenomenon of Fintech by identifying, and responding to, the individual challenges and problems associated with the digital transformation of financial services. This is accomplished through a computational text-mining approach to analyze the corpus of 1,545 published practitioner articles associated with Fintech, identification of managerial challenges therein and subsequent delineation of a novel research agenda.

By connecting managerial challenges relating to Fintech with the service literature, this paper develops a use-inspired research agenda that provides scholarly and managerially relevant research directions (RDs). These pertain to the complexity of digital financial service systems (micro level), orchestration of value co-creation with Fintech (meso level), and the development of elastic infrastructures, models and markets (macro level).

Fintech is an emerging phenomenon associated with the digital transformation of financial services. However, actual guidelines on how service research related to Fintech could be advanced from a theoretically as well as managerially relevant angle are unavailable to date. Here, the authors address this challenge and provide the field with 18 tangible RDs to advance service theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to guide future academic research addressing managerial challenges associated with Fintech and the digital transformation of financial service. Due to the explicit use-inspired nature of the work, the future research stemming from the agenda that the authors put forward here will be of benefit to decision makers and society more broadly.

This empirical research contributes to the discourse regarding the role of information and communication technologies in service in general, and the digital transformation on financial services in particular. The in-depth computational text-mining analysis is unbiased, replicable and provides the foundation for a use-inspired research agenda that is subsequently delineated.

Sustainability approaches across product supply chains are well-known, while similar knowledge on transport supply chains (TSC) is limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore sustainability approaches and managerial challenges in extending sustainability across a TSC.

This paper presents a case study of a TSC with a shipper, a third-party logistics firm and a hauler. Each actor’s views on sustainability-related communication and relations with other TSC actors are analyzed through the lens of agency theory.

Each dyad in the TSC reveals different, more or less collaboration-based approaches. Challenges are revealed, including the lack of shipper understanding for the TSC context and the use of immature contracts, which disincentivizes sustainability compliance. The multi-tier study object reveals the silencing of distant actors and the need for actors to take on mediating roles to bridge information asymmetries.

Combining literature perspectives (relations, communication and agency theory) provides a deeper understanding of the approaches applied and identifies different challenges. The inclusion of agency theory reveals principal problems such as information asymmetries between agents and less-informed principals and suggests complementary labels of supply chain actors.

Practical contributions include the highlighting of managerial challenges, which can aid managers in extending sustainability across TCSs.

The case study method offers insights into collaboratively improving sustainability in supply chains (such as using contracts), thus having social and environmental implications.

The paper narrows knowledge gaps about managing sustainability among logistics service providers and analyzes data from multi-tier actors.

The purpose of this paper is to provide the insights on the challenges influencing rural start-ups. It provides insights with regards to managerial, operational, marketing and finance-related challenges influencing the rural start-ups in the study. The study aims to expand the domain of start-ups by including a broader range of challenges and related aspects found in the start-up literature.

The paper opted for an exploratory study using the open-ended approach of grounded theory, including 61 rural start-ups operating in Karnataka, India. The data were analysed through non-parametric test to understand the comparison between different sectors of rural start-ups.

It suggests that marketing techniques and infrastructure challenges influences the rural start-ups. Therefore, success of start-ups is influenced by these related variables.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Researchers are therefore encouraged to test the proposed propositions further in the area of challenges and growth in the domain of managerial, infrastructure, marketing, finance, human resource and logistics in rural start-ups. The study is restricted to rural start-ups located in districts of Karnataka, India.

The paper includes implications for managing the challenges for enhancing the growth of start-ups. The paper provides insights on the significant challenges witnessed by the start-ups and provides directions for the growth of start-ups.

This paper fulfils an identified need of the start-ups in rural sector and contribute to the growth of start-ups in rural sector of India.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how rural start-ups operate and create a niece in the growth of Indian economy.

This qualitative study aims to examine key stakeholders' perspectives of primary care group/trust prescribing strategies. Within the context of general practice prescribing, the paper also debates the wider issue of whether GPs' prescribing autonomy is under threat from managerial expansion following recent organisational changes in primary care.

Data were obtained from focus groups and a series of individual semi‐structured interviews with GPs and key primary care organisation stakeholders.

The data underlie a tension between the managerial objective of cost‐restraint and GPs' commitment to quality improvement and individual clinical patient management. In presenting both managerial and medical narratives, two divergent and often conflicting discourses emerge, which leads to speculation that managerial attempts to constrain prescribing autonomy will achieve only limited success. The contention is that GPs' discourse features as a challenge to a managerial discourse that reflects attempts to regulate, standardise and curtail clinical discretion. This is due not only to GPs' expressed hegemonic ideals that clinical practice centres on the interests of the individual patient, but also to the fact that the managerial discourse of evidence‐based medicine encapsulates only a limited share of the knowledge that GPs draw on in decision making. However, while managers' discourse presented them as unwilling to impose change or directly challenge clinical practice, evidence also emerged to suggest that is not yet possible to be sufficiently convinced of the future retention of prescribing autonomy. On the other hand, the use of peer scrutiny posed an indirect managerial influence on prescribing, whilst the emergence of prescribing advisors as analysts of cost‐effectiveness may threaten doctors' dominance of medical knowledge.

There is a continuing need to analyse the impact of the new managerial reforms on primary care prescribing.

This study provides a snapshot of managerial and GP relations at a time of primary care transition.

For work organizations and their members, establishing and maintaining mutually satisfying employment relationships is a fundamental concern. The importance that scholars attach to employment relationships is reflected in research streams that explore the optimal design of strategic human resource management systems, the nature of psychological contract fulfillment and violation, and the factors associated with achieving person-environment fit, among others. Generally missing from theory and research pertaining to employment relationships is the perspective of individuals who reside at the employee-employer interface – managerial leaders. We argue that, for managerial leaders, a pervasive concern involves the tangible and intangible resource requirements of specific employees. We then provide the groundwork for study of the leader’s perspective on employment relationships by proposing a model that identifies how employees come to be perceived as low versus high maintenance and how these perceptions, in turn, influence leader cognition, affect, and behavior.

Faced with new wealth creation paradigm, triggered by technology and relentless globalization of markets, increasing number of companies are becoming knowledge‐based enterprises. This paper aims to discuss the change in enterprise environment; evolution of performance and cost measures; and the challenges for managerial accounting researchers and practitioners in developing value‐based costing and performance measurement systems (PMS).

A conceptual discussion and approach are taken.

Internet and e‐commerce have changed forever the way companies conduct their businesses. Virtual enterprise and efficient supply chain management systems will shape the future of these enterprises. Organizations are trying to become agile enterprises with the help of strategic alliances of firms and integration using information technologies. Traditional performance and cost measures are no longer suitable for developing and managing enterprises in the so‐called new environment. In order to remain relevant and to add value, cost and performance measures must be designed and systematically evaluated to reduce the often‐unnoticed mismatch between strategic goals and operational tactics.

Suggestions are presented for future research directions in managerial accounting areas that would address the requirements of new economy enterprises.

Alerts managerial accounting researchers and practitioners to develop new costing and PMS taking into account the new enterprise environment.