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Though the work of Mary Parker Follett predates the field of stakeholder theory by almost 60 years, and no reference to her work is found in the stakeholder literature, many of the tenets of stakeholder theory echo Follett’s ideas precisely. More importantly, Follett’s work yields a much richer foundation for stakeholder theory, as well as providing direction for its advancement. The article traces both the similarities and differences between Follett’s work and that of contemporary stakeholder theorists, and shows how Follett’s ideas can be used to enhance our current understanding of the theory and improve its implementation.

Students will be able to analyse competitive situations of the focal firm in the platform market, factors that make the focal firm become dominant in the sharing economy through the technology platform and the focal firm’s motives and growth strategies through mergers and acquisitions and overseas expansion, as well as give recommendations on the focal firm’s strategies to move forward to achieve and maintain its competitive position in the platform market.

On 4^th April, 2018, Meituan-Dianping (Meituan), a Chinese group-buying website for consumer products and retail services acquired Mobike, a Chinese dockless bike-sharing platform for US$2.7bn. Mobike had raised several rounds of funding for its large investments and operations in this highly competitive and cash-intensive industry. However, it was still struggling to survive and make a profit in the Chinese and overseas markets. It was believed that the merger between the companies was the only viable alternative. Had Meituan’s Chief Executive Officer made the right decision in acquiring Mobike? After Mobike became an integral part of Meituan, what should be done to turn this technology platform to be profitable in the Chinese and overseas market?

The case is intended for senior undergraduate or graduate-level courses in business schools.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.

The best way to equip students with the skills to lead and thrive in a global economy is to teach innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership, and make them aware of sustainability. Students can develop the skills to identify and capitalize on new business opportunities through an active learning process. Universities provide students with the knowledge, and serve as the fuel for innovation and entrepreneurship [1]. Problem solving develops complex thinking ability in the students [2]. This is becoming increasingly critical as in many industries technological innovation is now the most important driver for competitive success. Global competition has also put pressure on the firms to continuously innovate [3]. There is also a need to continuously challenge given this the students need to think about building a sustainable society. An increased focus on sustainability will promote meeting the needs of the current generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs [4].

The purpose of this case study is to summarize a task force's efforts to change the educational degree requirements for open librarian positions at a large university in the Midwestern USA.

The paper reviews the literature on degree requirements in academic libraries and the nature of LIS degrees from countries outside the USA. It analyzes 136 position advertisements for academic librarians by required terminal degree and the type and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) status of the institution.

The paper concludes that, while most position advertisements do not specifically address foreign Library and Information Science (LIS) degrees, many advertisements, especially those at ARL libraries, contain flexible language that allows for degrees that are “equivalent” to the American Library Association (ALA) accredited LIS degree.

The data collected from the relatively small sample of 136 job advertisements for academic librarians posted on the ALA Joblist and Chronicle of Higher Education web sites were largely meant to be anecdotal.

The paper provides useful information for academic libraries in the USA, receiving applications for professional positions from applicants with foreign LIS degrees.

Although the literature on the ALA‐accredited Master's of Library and Information Science (MLS) degree is extensive, no study considers the availability of positions to those with MLS degrees from other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine skill underutilization and collective turnover in a large professional service firm (PSF). The authors hypothesize that skill underutilization is positively related to collective turnover, that skill underutilization is greater among professionals than nonprofessionals, and that the positive relationship between skill underutilization and collective turnover is stronger for professionals than for nonprofessionals.

Using survey data from a large PSF, the authors test these predictions across 191 groups (professional and nonprofessional) in 80 offices. Collective turnover rates were taken from company records one year after the survey was administered.

The authors find support for the prediction that skill underutilization is positively related to collective turnover. In addition, skill underutilization is greater among professionals than nonprofessionals within a PSF. However, the relationship between skill underutilization and collective turnover did not differ between professionals and nonprofessionals.

While the authors find that skill underutilization is positively related to collective turnover, future research is needed to measure the group processes that occur among group members and lead to collective turnover. Limitations of this study include the inability to validate the aggregation of data from the individual level to the group level, and the generalizability of findings to other PSFs or to involuntary turnover situations.

Understanding the antecedents of collective turnover is of particular concern to PSFs, as they are composed of highly skilled, intrinsically motivated professionals, who generate value for the firm. These findings are particularly timely, given the significant levels of underemployment in countries throughout the world.

In addition to extending skill underutilization and collective turnover research to the occupational group level, the findings highlight the importance of providing development opportunities for employees during difficult economic conditions in order to minimize collective turnover.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is possible to identify different types of sadistic offenders within a sample of sexual homicide offenders (SHOs).

The study addresses this research question through the use of two-step hierarchal cluster analysis and binary logistic regression utilizing a sample of 350 cases of sexual homicide from Canada.

Results from cluster analysis show that three groups emerge: a non-sadistic group, a mixed group that show evidence of some sadistic behavior and a sadistic group that have high levels of sadistic behavior. Additionally, the sadistic cluster was more likely to destroy or remove evidence at the crime scene than the mixed and non-sadistic cluster and was more likely to leave the victim’s body at a deserted location than the non-sadistic cluster.

This is the first study to examine the dimensionality of sadism within a sample of SHOs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the combined effects of different modalities of long-term knowledge accumulation and short-term knowledge searching on the generation of high-impact ideas. The authors aim at providing useful conclusions for academic scholars.

Two dimensions of the cumulative knowledge structures of researchers are measured: knowledge depth and knowledge breadth. The search strategies employed by researchers are classified as local search and distant search. The authors use researchers’ historical publications to measure cumulative knowledge structures. References contained in these publications serve as an indicator of knowledge searching behaviors and are used to measure search strategies. Highly cited papers with random-but-matched papers from the same journal published in the same year are adopted to test the hypotheses.

The knowledge depth of researchers positively predicts the generation of high-impact ideas. Knowledge breadth has a bell-shaped relationship to the generation of high-impact ideas. Two instances of “strategic fit” between the knowledge structures and search strategies of researchers are identified; namely, knowledge breadth combines most effectively with local search, and knowledge depth combines most effectively with distant search in generating high-impact ideas.

Using article references to measure authors’ knowledge search behaviors may lead to biases. Future research should perform a survey to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the knowledge search behaviors of scholars.

A “T-shaped” knowledge structure in the long run is recommended for maximal generation of high-impact ideas. Researchers who have not adopted this optimal knowledge structure can employ a matched search strategy to leverage their existing knowledge structures.

This paper is among the first to examine the interactive effects between the cumulative knowledge structures and short-term knowledge searching strategies of researchers. The authors have enriched the exploration and exploitation theory by adding the dimension of time into the analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of gender on the neural substrates of theories on consumer behavior (i.e. the original compared with the revised versions of consumer learning [CL] theory) and to examine whether gender influences brain activation associated with word-of-mouth (WOM) communications (i.e. information specificity, source expertise and tie strength) after a product harm crisis. This article also discusses the WOM effects of product quality perception, negative emotion and purchase intentions by precise localizing brain activity.

This study applied functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity (i.e. the blood oxygen level-dependent signal) during WOM communication after a product harm crisis.

The male participants treat the product quality as a constant and tend to support the original CL theory. The female participants, however, showed differentiable brain activation across three factors, suggesting a dynamic representation for product quality (i.e. not a constant), and they appear to be more sensitive to the revised CL theory.

This paper concluded that the original CL theory applies to males and the revised version applies to females. Therefore, gender determines whether the original or the revised version of the CL theory works in consumers’ decision-making, and the extant of research has not focused on the information after a product harm crisis in terms of whether the information being communicated is specific or tensile through WOM communication.