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This study aims to explore the degree to which the editorial policies of business and management journals explicitly or implicitly discourage replication studies.

The paper examines differences in editorial policy toward replication studies relative to journal quality, age and sub-discipline area. A total of 600 journals (listed as Q1 and Q2 in Scopus) were selected for the current study.

The results reveal that out of 600 selected journals, only 28 (4.7%) were explicitly open to considering replication studies, while 331 (55.2%) were neutral, being neither explicitly nor implicitly dismissive of replication studies. A further 238 (39.7%) were implicitly dismissive of replication studies, and the remaining 3 (0.5%) journals were explicitly disinterested in considering replication studies for publication. CiteScore and Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) of neutral journals were significantly lower than those of journals, which were implicitly discouraging replication research. With regard to the journals implicitly discouraging replications (238), journals in the subcategory of business and international management (51) had the highest percentage (21.4%) followed by strategy and management 30 (12.6%) and Organizational Behavior (OB) and Human Resource (HR) 25 (10.5%).

The available literature does not explore the degree to which the editorial policies of business and management journals explicitly or implicitly discourage replication studies. The current study attempts to address this gap in the literature. Given the lack of support for replications among business and management journals, the current paper sets forth the suggested steps which are deemed crucial for moving beyond the replication crisis in the business and management field.

This paper is derived from a two‐year study that sought to provide a critical understanding of the current state of business leadership development (BLD) and to identify directions for innovative future practice. The second of two companion papers, this contribution aims to investigate the influence of unfavourable competing agendas on BLD and how human resource development (HRD) professionals can work effectively within such circumstances.

The paper analyses three case studies of HRD managers who made significant contributions to their organisation's BLD despite unfavourable political circumstances. These individuals were selected from a population of 190 managers from the first phase of the overall study.

The cases highlight the centrality of political activity to effective BLD design and implementation that is subject to unfavourable circumstances. In particular, the individuals demonstrated the importance of relationship management, challenge and critique and of building change from the bottom up, irrespective of direct senior management support.

The cases shed light on the types of behaviour that may enable HRD professionals to make an effective contribution to BLD, even when there is little formal senior management support. Questions are provided to encourage personal learning and debate about the role and value of HR in the enactment of BLD.

The findings indicate that much best practice advice on leadership development needs to be tempered with an acknowledgement of the degree to which it is subject to competing interests and postulates that constructive political action may be a legitimate activity for HRD managers despite mainstream unitarist advice.

This paper is derived from a two‐year study that sought to provide a critical understanding of the current state of business leadership development (BLD) and to identify directions for innovative future practice. The first of two companion papers, this contribution aims to examine the issue of achieving business relevance in BLD and the quality of HR/management development strategy formulation.

The paper analyses four organisation case studies of BLD strategy derived from interview data sourced from 103 senior line/HRD managers in 20 organisations.

The findings highlight the need for HRD managers to take a discriminating approach to linking BLD strategy, development method, evaluation and the role of management development. In particular, the cases studied reflect the importance of informal activity and politics in the execution of BLD and the positive effect of individual leadership in moderating the effectiveness of the linkages between business context, BLD strategy and its implementation.

The paper provides a conceptual framework to enable practitioners to discriminate between different bundles of development practices that can, over time, be translated into behaviours that suit the changing needs of an organisation. A list of useful starting points is provided for managers to review and improve BLD strategy and practice in their own organisation.

The paper provides a framework that shows the importance of different development populations, different sponsors, interest groups and strategic timeframes in enabling more informed discussion about the strategic alignment of BLD.

We advance theory of how founder identity affects business model (BM) design during new venture creation and contribute to the cognitive perspective on BMs. We look at BM design as a longitudinal process involving a variety of cognitive work that is co-shaped by the founder identity work. Based on an in-depth nine-year process study of a single venture managed by three founders, we observed that a novelty-centered BM design resulted from cognitive work co-shaped by founder identity construction and verification processes. Yet, more remarkably, we noted that founder identity verification decreased over time and observed a process that we labeled “identity-business model decoupling.” It meant that the founders did not alter their founder identity but, over time, attentively grew self-aware and mindfully disengaged negative identity effects to design an effective BM. Our results provide a dynamic view on founder identity imprinting on ventures’ BMs and contribute to the identity, BM, and entrepreneurship literatures.

The aim of this paper is to promote the concept of organizational voluntarism, borrowed from political philosophy and to stimulate feedback and debate as to its efficacy in furthering the discourse on corporate responsibility.

The paper examines a range of current theories that address the issue of balancing organizational plurality and coherence. It identifies both shortfalls in current research and provides criteria for developing new theory in this area. The concept of organizational voluntarism is developed and these criteria used to test the robustness of the model and to explore future areas of research.

The criteria used to assess the voluntarism model are: the centrality of organizational plurality, the embeddedness of social relations and power in organization working, accounting for the motivations of managers to work this way; and the need for clear organizational benefits. Four potential cognitions are proposed that define a voluntaristic mindset.

The aim is only to develop the concept of voluntarism and promote debate about its value as an organizing principle in multi stakeholder settings.

The paper offers a research proposition that managers who pursue voluntaristic behaviour will be influenced by cognitions that reflect plurality of interests, the value of personal interest, the need to “take” authority and who value political models of working in the reconciliation of competing interests.

The paper provides an additional perspective that can further the development of corporate responsibility by mediating the demands for corporate control and efficiency and the calls for greater inclusion.

Traditional approaches to organizational change are of little use in the bid for increased innovation as they reinforce top‐down predictability. An alternative approach is through the creation of pockets of good practice which act as role models of change. These pockets need to be subversive of existing practices but simultaneously deliver organizational success criteria. The success of this approach is dependent upon managers developing a critical perspective about organizational control systems. Contrary to received wisdom the foundation for this critical perspective may be most usefully developed from the manager’s own cynical experience of organizational life. In building this critical perspective management development may begin to fulfil a wider educational role in society.

Research on cultural entrepreneurship has explored the role of language in making and giving sense to novel ventures and market categories and in legitimating them. We analyze how an emerging de novo market category, quantum computing, is constructed through the use of analogies and metaphors. Through a multimodal analysis of interview and newspaper data, we find that in addition to using analogies and metaphors to highlight familiarity, actors also use such tropes to expound the weirdness of the new category, thus marking it as profoundly different and novel. Such tropes have a dual function; they draw the boundaries between science and laypeople but also arouse awe and curiosity among the audiences. Our study thus casts light on the cultural work during de novo category emergence.

The purpose of this paper is to show that, with demands from a widening range of stakeholders for more democratic approaches to governance, there is an evident need to develop alternative models of organizing. In seeking to understand how to conceptualise this alternative, an analysis of the organizational and political institutional contexts for leadership is provided.

Analyses the main precepts of democracy to establish the basis upon which a comparison between these two contexts might be made. It distinguishes between the value premises of democracy and the structural mechanisms through which those principles are enacted and identifies the significant leadership processes that underpin these values. This analysis is then used as a basis for analyzing the leadership role in organizations.

The paper demonstrates that differences between the two settings are a matter of perspective: the structural mechanisms of democracy are not enacted rationally. In particular, the pre‐eminence of micro‐political activity is highlighted as a vehicle for the enactment of ethical behaviour and civic virtue in both settings.

Applying a political institutional approach to leading suggests the need to reconfigure the role of hierarchy to encourage self‐organization, valuing conflict, protection of weaker stakeholders, the legitimization of political activity and helping groups to forge their own identity.

Most similar analyses are typically constructed within the canons of rational organization. Applying to businesses the principles of institutional leadership implies a significantly different model in which leaders promote and legitimise both the distribution and coalescing of power and the necessary dissent and debate required to reconcile a plurality of interests with the establishment of organizational coherence.

As retail margins narrow, the quest for maximum returns from each outlet increases. Increasingly, the board rooms of international retailers are opening to geographers for help in identifying not only where their customers are but on what they spend their money. Argues that a bespoke approach to geographic modelling and planning which addresses the “big question” facing businesses is the only way for this relatively new discipline to fulfil its potential as a strategic management tool.