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This paper aims to suggest a multi-theoretical explanation using a success story to explain psychological well-being (PWB) among employees of K.C, a small enterprise found in Uganda, a developing country in Africa.

The study used qualitative methodology. Based on in-depth interviews with K.C employees, a story was developed describing the practical experience, focusing on the context, actions, results and lessons learnt. Regarding the sample size, the saturation point was attained on the seventh participant.

Findings reveal that employees that possess psychological capital set targets and generate avenues that allow them to achieve set goals, with personal initiative that makes them proactive to accomplish work tasks and individual adaptability that enables them to adjust their emotions and behavior to fit in a complex working environment, which makes them to think, feel and act positively. Furthermore, several theories, including broaden and build, personal initiative and complex adaptive systems theory, explain the manifestations of PWB of employees in small enterprises.

The study was limited by focusing on the context of a small enterprise. Future research may investigate other study contexts whose findings might be different. In addition, the study being hypothetical lacked statistical testing. It would be a meaningful effort if future studies statistically tested the suggested model. Irrespective of the limitations, the findings of this study remain significant.

In practice, employees may replicate these findings to nurture PWB which eventually contributes to enterprises’ success. This could provide answers to the psychological challenges experienced by employees of small enterprises, especially in the African developing countries like Uganda where this is a major challenge. Specifically, the workers of K.C enterprise may depend on their PWB to deal with workplace challenges and sustain the enterprise’s performance.

Socially, there is need to embrace positive social relationships among employees at the work place which will translate into well-being of society.

This paper is exceptional because it uses a success story showing practical experiences of how PWB of employees in small enterprises is nurtured in Uganda. In addition, a multi-theoretical perspective is used to explain the manifestations in the story, which is the greatest contribution of this paper. Further, a conceptual model is still proposed, depicting psychological capital, personal initiative and individual adaptability as antecedents of PWB.

This paper offers a theoretical explanation to a positive story of a micro enterprise found in Uganda, an African developing country that has successfully managed workplace relationships, its survival and good performance. Specifically, the paper examines multiple theories to explain the practice in this enterprise.

The study uses storytelling, a form of narrative inquiry embedded in qualitative methodology. Based on in-depth interviews with the owner-manager and employees, a story was developed detailing their practical experience while focusing on the context, actions, results and lessons.

Findings reveal that micro enterprises that allow free generation of ideas across all levels with optimistic people who reciprocate and work together create a friendly work atmosphere with support for one another, with the ability to amicably resolve conflicts and build trust. More so, theories including social exchange theory, relational cohesion theory, complex adaptive systems theory and cultural historical activity theory help explain the manifestations of relational people management in micro enterprises.

This paper is unique in its use of a positive story showing a practical experience of how workplace relationships are managed in a micro enterprise found in Uganda. In addition, a multi-theoretical perspective is used to explain the manifestations in the story which may be novel in the study context. Thus, a conceptual model is proposed depicting generalized reciprocity, positive emotions, generative leadership and relational agency as antecedents of relational people management with relational agency again mediating the other relationships.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are important strategic actions undertaken by firms to access resources and markets. However, firms face substantial challenges in M&As during deal completion. While prior literature reviews synthesize the studies on the post-merger consequences of M&As, the literature on deal completion is largely fragmented. In this paper, the authors synthesize prior literature on deal completion into the antecedents and consequences framework and map various studies across the international business and management, finance and accounting literature at the macro-, meso- and micro-levels.

The authors adopt a content analysis-based methodology to conduct the review. First, the authors identify existing literature on deal completion based on keyword searches. Next, the authors propose a framework that integrates the extant literature from a multi-theoretic perspective across four broad themes: concepts, antecedents, implications and moderators. In this study, the authors consider not only empirical but also conceptual papers to strengthen the theoretical foundations of M&A literature. Finally, after synthesizing various studies, the authors highlight a future research agenda on deal completion.

Based on the review, this study provides important avenues for future research on M&A deal completion.

This study theoretically integrates multi-disciplinary and multi-country research on acquisition completion.

This study examines whether managers adopt corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures to suppress earnings management practices and whether corporate governance mechanisms could limit such practices.

A quantitative approach was followed, in which secondary data from listed firms from 2014 to 2019 were gathered. Descriptive statistics and inferential techniques were performed, which included correlation, ordered logistic regression and 2SLS panel regression analyses.

The findings indicate that firms use CSR disclosure to conceal managers' opportunistic behaviour via earnings management as an entrenchment strategy and that corporate governance mechanisms could significantly constrain such behaviour.

This study goes beyond the conventional agency theory by incorporating additional theoretical perspectives from stakeholder and legitimacy theories, resulting in a multi-theoretical perspective in conceptualizing the study.

The findings are expected to have significant policy implications, especially in limiting the opportunistic use of CSR disclosures and reducing earnings management practices to safeguard stakeholders' interests and ensure the sustainability of business entities.

The levels of CSR and board governance practices are captured using comprehensive indices. Moreover, earnings management was operationalized using both accrual-based and real earnings management proxies. Furthermore, while addressing an empirical dearth noted, the findings provide significant policy implications for limiting managers' opportunistic and unethical use of CSR disclosures with corporate governance mechanisms.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate different strands of institutional theory within the internationalization process of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developed and emerging economies. In the light of this purpose, the authors try to fill the gap in the literature through analysing the main institutional theories: neo-institutionalism, new institutional economics, comparative capitalism and the institution-based view. Therefore, the main concern is to determine the distribution of different strands of institutional theory in its subfields in this study.

This study provides a profound analysis of different strands of institutional theory within the period from 1990 to 2018 in a larger sample. With a qualitative content analysis, authors reviewed 150 articles using different strands of institutional theory at both theoretical and analytical level and accessed 25 journals published in Social Science Citations Index between 1990 and 2018. In this study, authors used the inductive approach and the qualitative content analysis (Duriau et al., 2007) and adopted a research method to investigate different strands of institutional theory within the internationalization process of MNEs in developed and emerging markets (EMs).

Coders have synthesized the strands of institutional theory in detail to analyse the theoretical contribution of the study. The strands of institutional theory have been analysed both by institutional perspective and citation analysis. Coders classify the analysis level into three main categories. These are country, headquarter and subsidiary level. Our findings are related to the basic determinants and assumptions of different strands of institutional theory. Because in new institutional economics, analysis levels are country and industry. On the other hand in institution-based view, analysis levels are country and firm. Finally in comparative capitalism, analysis levels are country and region and, in neo-institutionalism analysis level is organization itself. In this study, findings show that sociology-based institutional strands, especially neo-institutionalism, are more preferred than other theories.

This study’s content analysis is limited to scope of selected journals. However, this study may suffer from publication bias. The authors examined only peer-reviewed articles from selected journals and did not include book chapters, book reviews, editor and special issue editor articles, research notes, conference papers and congress invitations. The important theoretical limitation of this study is to clarify the different strands of institutional theory in international business literature (Aguilera and Grøgaard, 2019). The firm size of MNEs is not included in this study, but it should be involved in coding categories in future studies.

This study provides the largest sample up to now and covers developed markets and EMs. Authors analysed this research from four perspectives: theoretical foundation, methodology, location and entry mode choices. On the other hand, this study shows that the institutional environment not only mitigates or mediates the effects but also directs the effects on foreign direct investment’s internationalization process of location choice and entry strategies.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of board characteristics on environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in the energy industry of emerging economies.

The authors adopt the Bloomberg ESG rating to measure the extent of ESG disclosure using a sample of 1,260 observations from BRICS emerging economies. Multiple regression techniques were used to estimate the effect of board characteristics on ESG disclosures of a sample Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) listed companies between 2010 and 2019.

The authors find a relatively low (at 37%) level of ESG disclosure among the sampled firms and a relatively high degree of variability. The authors also find that board gender diversity, board composition and board diligence are positively related to the level of ESG disclosure while the study documents no relationship between board size and ESG disclosure.

The study’s findings highlight the importance of corporate board attributes in influencing strategic decisions such as the level of ESG disclosure and the findings may be useful to regulators, policymakers and investors in making informed investment decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts at examining the impact of board characteristics on ESG disclosure in the energy industry in emerging economies. The paper provides new evidence on the relationship between board characteristics (BC) and ESG disclosure in the energy industry of emerging BRICS countries within a panel multi-country research setting.

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on the earnings management (EM)–corporate social responsibility (CSR) relationship as most of the previous studies have been carried out in non-turbulent periods. This study investigates whether CSR affects EM during the pandemic period by testing two hypotheses: the cognitive biases hypothesis and the resilience hypothesis

The difference-in-difference and triple difference approaches are used for a sample of 536 US firms (268 socially responsible firms and 268 matched non-socially responsible counterparts) during the 2017–2021 period. Socially responsible firms are selected from the MSCI KLD 400 Social Index, and matched firms are identified through the propensity score matching method.

The authors find an income-increasing practice for both socially responsible firms and control firms for the whole period and each sub-period. Moreover, socially responsible firms are more likely to manage their earnings (income increasing) than their counterpart. Furthermore, the authors show that CSR commitment exacerbated EM in line with the cognitive biases hypothesis.

This study is the first shed light on the dark side of CSR during pandemic periods.

Digital servitization concerns how manufacturers utilize digital technologies to enhance their provision of services. Although digital servitization requires that manufacturers possess new capabilities, in contrast to strategic (or dynamic) capabilities, little is known about how they develop the required operational capabilities. The paper investigates the mechanisms for developing operational capabilities in digital servitization.

This paper presents an exploratory study based on 15 large manufacturers operating in Europe engaged in digital servitization.

Three operational capability development mechanisms are set out that manufacturers use to facilitate digital servitization: learning (developing capabilities in-house), building (bringing the requisite capabilities into the manufacturer), and acquiring (utilizing the capabilities of other actors). These mechanisms emphasize exploitation and exploration efforts within manufacturers and in collaborations with upstream and downstream partners. The findings demonstrate the need to combine these mechanisms for digital servitization according to combinations that match each manufacturer’s traditional servitization phase: (1) initial phase - building and acquiring, (2) middle phase - learning, building and acquiring, and (3) advanced phase - learning and building.

This study reveals three operational capability development mechanisms, highlighting the parallel use of these mechanisms for digital servitization. It provides a holistic understanding of operational capability development mechanisms used by manufacturers by combining three theoretical perspectives (organizational learning, absorptive capacity, and network perspectives). The paper demonstrates that digital servitization requires the significant application of building and acquiring mechanisms to develop the requisite operational capabilities.

This study empirically aims to examine the collaboration between social enterprises (SEs) and impact investors (IIs), which are organisations with similar interests but with distinct logics, and in high demand in emerging economies with complex problems. Despite the significant economic contributions of these organisations, there have been limited studies examining how they collaborate in different contexts, including theoretical insights explaining how they gain partner fit from resource synergy.

Mainstream businesses use the compatibility and complementarity concepts to examine buyer–supplier strategic alliances. Using similar concepts in the context of hybrid organisations, the authors interviewed six pairs of SEs and IIs with dyadic relations in Nigeria, aiming to deeply understand how they align dissimilar logics in pursuing common goals in emerging economies.

The authors’ findings revealed how compatibility criteria from the institutional logics perspective and complementarity from social exchange theory guide collaboration between SEs and IIs in an emerging economy. Using these theories provides new insights that distinguish SEs and IIs collaboration from conventional theories on the internationalisation of businesses, which remained insufficient for understanding the cross-border operations of SEs.

The study holds practical implications for organisations, regardless of their size, international investors, governments, organisations and individuals desiring to pursue sustainable business agendas in emerging economies with huge impact opportunities and the process involved.

The outcomes of this study extend knowledge of the theoretical lens examining collaborative entrepreneurship from the perspective of hybrid organisations. It also challenged existing knowledge on collaboration between SEs and IIs, often characterised by potential tensions due to the dissimilarity of institutional logics of actors.

This study aims to conduct a thorough literature review to map current studies on international marketing capabilities (IMCs) applying dynamic capabilities view (DCV). The aim of this study is to increase the chances for more conceptual and terminological rigor in future research in this particular research area.

This is a systematic literature review following the established review process of reviews in leading (international) marketing journals. A multilevel analytical approach was adopted, combining inductive coding with deductive coding and following the logic of antecedents-phenomena-consequences.

Synthesis of 20 rigorously selected previous empirical studies on IMCs applying DCV reveals that academic interest in these capabilities is well justified and growing and there are some well researched antecedents to focal capabilities (e.g. inter-organizational capabilities, outside-in market orientation) as well as their prevalent consequences (e.g. export and innovation performance). There is little knowledge of moderators to these links, especially with regard to consequences. This review illustrates that the current research lacks consistency in how key constructs are defined and measured, provides the guide to future conceptualization and measurement of so-called International Dynamic Marketing Capabilities (IDMCs) and proposes some concrete research directions.

The authors extend prior research in the investigated topic by critically evaluating prior works, providing improved conceptualization of IDMCs as well as concrete research agenda for IDMCs structured along recommendations for Theory, Context and Methods (TCM framework).