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This research investigates the types of critical business situations worked on by multinational corporations' senior managers and the competencies they employ to achieve desired outcomes.

The research is based on a database of N = 440 critical success incidents obtained from semi-structured interviews with a sample of 143 senior managers during competency-based consulting projects over a 25-year period from 1995 to 2019. Content analysis was used to categorise critical success incidents, by similarity of business intent, into groups labelled as critical business situations. Behavioural coding was used to identify competencies.

Nine critical business situations were found, and 10 competencies identified, accounting for 79% of behaviours displayed by the senior managers. Five competencies were found to be used more universally and five were more dependent on the specific critical business situation.

This research provides an overview of the initial stage of this topic. Further empirical validation including applicability in contemporary business contexts, testing of competency relationships with critical business situation criterion-referenced outcomes, and temporal and geographic usage will be presented in an accompanying study.

Knowledge of the specific competencies and their relative frequencies when displayed in different critical business situations provide the potential to give more targeted development suggestions to senior managers facing similar situations.

This study examines concurrently, both the business situations and associated competencies of senior managers, a group for whom extant research is significantly limited.

Prior institutional duality research asserts that ceremonial implementation of organisational practice protects multinational corporations’ subsidiaries. However, the temporal dynamics of the safeguarding function has been under researched. Public sector organisations have also been ignored. This research aims to explore how the safeguarding function is created, maintained and disrupted using the overseas offices (OOs) of a bilateral development agency (BDA) as a case.

A multi-case study, underpinned by neo-institutionalism, was conducted. Data obtained from in-depth remote interviews with 39 informants from the BDA OOs were analysed using the “asking small and large questions” technique, four analytical techniques, cross-case synthesis and theoretical propositions.

A three-phase process was identified. The first phase is the appearance of discrepancies due to institutional duality. The second is the emergence of ceremonial implementation as a solution. In the third phase, “the creation, maintenance and disruption of a safeguarding function” begins. When ceremonial implementation successfully protects the OOs, the safeguarding function is created. The OOs are likely to repeat ceremonial implementation, thus sustaining the function. Meanwhile, when conditions such as management staff change, ceremonial implementation may not take place, and the safeguarding function disappears.

The BDA OOs may not face strong host country regulative pressures because they are donors to aid-recipient countries. Hence, the findings may not directly apply to other public sector organisations.

Development cooperation practitioners should understand that ceremonial implementation is not exclusively harmful.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first institutional duality research that explores the temporal dynamics of safeguarding functions targeting public sector organisations.

Traditional purchasing best practices primarily follow a commercial logic and may not necessarily be applicable for social enterprises (SEs) supplier selection. This study examines how SEs focused on poverty alleviation select suppliers amidst competing institutional logics to achieve both social impact and economic performance.

A grounded theory methodology is applied to guide semi-structured interviews with 18 fair trade verified SEs. Constant comparison methods aided in determining the point of data saturation was reached.

The results of this study indicate that SEs select marginalized suppliers based on implicit criteria that is initially based on social-welfare logic and then through a blend of commercial and social-welfare logic based on company structure.

This study is the first to reveal that SEs addressing social issues do not follow the traditional criteria for supplier selection but have their own unique selection criteria when selecting suppliers.

The Eastern Mediterranean countries exhibit diversity in religion, culture, politics, and economy, amid rapid and dynamic regional developments shaped by global polarization and the international security landscape, rendering future prognostications challenging. This chapter delves into the realms of oil and natural gas production, the influx of multinational corporations, water boundaries, and renewable energy vis-à-vis fossil fuels in the Eastern Mediterranean, elucidating the realities of cooperation and competition within the region. Analysis of cooperation and competition dynamics is imperative for comprehending the tensions among states. Enhanced cooperation between states may lead to mutual benefits, such as increased oil and gas prices favoring their partnership, while any escalation in competition can swiftly be perceived as a threat, exacerbating tensions. The desirability of such cooperation or competition in the international political economy remains subject to ongoing debate.

HRM decentralization and devolution have been highlighted as key HRM processes in organizations’ quest for increased flexibility. Although they have been extensively studied in the MNC and International HRM literature, they have mainly been examined on a separate basis, and their definition and operationalization have often been confused. Thus, we first clarify the difference between the two concepts by refining the definitions by Hoogendoorn and Brewster (1992), and then empirically examine how they are related.

The relationship between HRM decentralization and devolution is examined by means of a survey in a large multi-country sample of multi-unit organizations.

Regarding our clarification objective, we contend that devolution has to do with who takes responsibilities for HRM (i.e. line managers or HRM professionals) while decentralization refers to where HRM responsibilities are allocated (i.e. headquarters or increasingly local units). Regarding the relationship between the two concepts, the results show that higher levels of HRM decentralization are related to higher levels of devolution, but this association is attenuated in organizations with more powerful HRM departments.

The study contributes to theory and practice by disentangling, at the conceptual, operational, empirical and practical levels, two different but related HRM decisions (how much to devolve and how much to decentralize HRM) that organizations must make to efficiently cope with the characteristics of their own structure and competitive environment. It highlights the role of the relative power of HRM departments in how HRM responsibilities are ultimately distributed across the organization.

The purpose of this study is to examine how different innovation efforts can support multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) pursuits of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in emerging markets and under what circumstances they are applied.

The article comprises in-depth case studies on two high-profile Swedish MNEs: a telecom firm and a fast-fashion firm, with data collected both at the headquarter-level and local-market level.

The study shows that MNEs pursue a selection of prioritized SDGs in emerging markets. To overcome challenges related to attaining these goals, we find that MNEs engage in innovation efforts at different levels of commitment. In some instances, they engage in operational innovation aimed at relieving symptoms of sustainability misconduct and ensuring compliance. In other instances, they engage in systemic innovation efforts, which involve the actual market structures underlying sustainability problems.

MNEs are increasingly incorporating the United Nations SDGs into their innovation strategies. The study contributes to international business research on MNEs’ roles in realizing the SDGs by conceptualizing and discussing two pertinent approaches to innovation.

This study investigates how global retailers develop sustainability through network interactions that influence institutionalized sustainability perceptions. The findings enable retailers to drive sustainability systematically and understand the critical internal and external issues.

The study investigates how retailers can work to increase support for sustainability through the normative, cognitive, and regulative institutional pillars. The network perspective suggests the need to offer relevant resources, involve influential actors and perform supporting activities to mobilise stakeholders. Empirically, qualitative case studies of IKEA and Hennes & Mauritz were conducted.

Based on the network and institutional perspectives, the study identified nine fields that retailers can use to develop sustainability internally and in their networks. The study shows that they can mobilise actors, resources, and activities to change institutionalised values and practices.

The developed model provides guidelines on how to systematically work with sustainability. The broad view developed is particularly relevant considering that most of the existing research on global firms and sustainability focuses on a narrow research problem without relating it to sustainability as a complex and overarching phenomenon.

Talent management can provide an organization with a competitive advantage. However, little is known about how human resource practices pertaining to talent management drive positive outcomes. Drawing on social exchange theory, this study investigates the effect of talent management practices usage on employee commitment and intention to leave. Integrating social exchange theory and the theory of met expectations facilitated predicting the mediating role of perceived career growth in the talent management practices usage-employee outcomes relationship.

Data were collected using a survey from 268 employees from eight organizations from the financial and services industries in Jordan.

Talent management practices usage has a significant direct positive effect on employee commitment but no direct effect on employees’ intention to leave. Further, there is pioneering evidence that perceived career growth mediates the following relationships: talent management practices usage and commitment and talent management practices usage and intention to leave.

The study provides unprecedented evidence of the effect of TM practices usage on employee outcomes and the role of perceived career growth in the TM practices usage-employee outcomes relationship from an underexplored context of Jordon. Our research results contribute to theory development in TM by supporting, extending and integrating social exchange theory and the theory of met expectations.

Due to the constantly increasing competitiveness along with the complexity of knowledge, firms perceive collaboration as a key strategy that preserves firms' radical innovation performance. In this context, this paper aims to examine how firms’ partners’ diversity in open innovation activities influences the development of radical innovations, critical for social development. In particular, this study analyzes how the functional and geographical breadth of the firm’s collaboration portfolio affects its radical innovation performance. Furthermore, it also explores the role of firm size as a moderator in the relationships proposed.

This research employs panel data analysis, using a sample of 4,677 Spanish firms, with data sourced from the PITEC database.

The results of this study show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the functional and the geographical breadth of collaborations and the firms’ radical innovation performance. Moreover, this study finds partial support for the moderating role of firm size, in the sense that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms vary in their optimal number of diversity of partners.

This research provides a better understanding on how partners’ functional and geographical diversity, along with organizational characteristics such as firm size, affect how firms benefit from collaboration for innovation. This study shows that both SMEs and large firms experience diminishing returns when their collaboration networks become overly diverse in pursuit of radical innovation, due to increased costs. However, in SMEs, the turning point occurs at a later stage, consistent with the idea that small firms need broader functional networks to access complementary and novel resources they usually lack.

Start-ups require a competitive advantage to integrate sustainable practices and develop organizational capabilities to thrive in dynamic business environments. However, implementation of these practices presents several ethical challenges. This study aims to quantify the influence of organizational capabilities (information technology capabilities and organizational virtues) on start-ups' competitive advantage and readiness to implement environmental, social and governance practices.

This study employed a survey design, and data were collected from 320 start-up founders and/or managers in India. The data were analyzed using Smart PLS 4.0.

The findings suggest that organizational capabilities, including information technology capabilities and organizational virtues, play an important role in enhancing start-ups' competitive advantage and readiness to implement sustainable practices. Dynamic capability mediates these relationships, while entrepreneurial orientation moderates the relationship between organizational virtues and dynamic capability.

This study has significant implications for organizations implementing sustainable business practices through the development and nurturance of organizational virtues and information technology capabilities. The study is also useful for leaders, managers and entrepreneurs in training and development, managing tradeoffs and maintaining important organizational capabilities to establish a balance between people’s concerns, the environment and profits.

Few studies have examined the role of organizational capabilities, sustainable business practices and competitive advantage in the context of start-ups. This study contributes to the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship and organizational capabilities.