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This paper aims to investigate business-to-business sales executives’ navigation of challenges and changes in planning during two separate periods (prevaccine and postvaccine) of time, which were impacted by a disruptive event (the COVID-19 pandemic).

This study uses a two-phase qualitative data collection approach. Thirteen executives, primarily from the Business-to-Business (B2B) manufacturing industry, were interviewed in phase one (2–3 months before the first COVID-19 vaccine). The second period of data collection was collected 4–5 months after vaccines became available.

The prevaccine business environment focused on short-term challenges, while the vaccine created exponential changes to long-term sales practices, suggesting the need to focus on critical inflection points that occur after the initial disruptive event.

This exploratory study is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of managing disruptive events within a business-to-business sales environment by stressing the importance of both the actual disruptive event and the inflection points that follow the event.

New business models are constantly developing and evolving. However, this study suggests the biggest changes could occur after an inflection point from the disruption. Thus, firms need to consider different planning strategies before and after certain inflection points following a disruptive event. First, firms should adapt from their predisruption strategy to focus on short-term challenges during the initial phases of a disruption, likely halting most of the long-term planning. Second, inflection points create the need to move beyond short-term challenges and changes to focus on long-term changes. Third, long-term strategies and planning postinflection point will be different, and likely more complex, than long-term strategies and planning predisruption.

Most studies look at a disruptive event through a single data collection period. This longitudinal study compares prevaccine and postvaccine thought processes to explore the impact of an inflection point.

The purpose of this paper is to determine both analytically and numerically the kink solutions to a new one-dimensional, viscoelastic generalization of Burgers’ equation, which includes a non-linear constitutive law, and the number of kinks as functions of the non-linearity and relaxation parameters.

An analytical procedure and two explicit finite difference methods based on first-order accurate approximations to the first-order derivatives are used to determine the single- and double-kink solutions.

It is shown that only two parameters characterize the solution and that the existence of a shock wave requires that the (semi-positive) relaxation parameter be less than unity and the non-linearity parameter be less than two. It is also shown that negative values of the non-linearity parameter result in kinks with a single inflection point and strain and dissipation rates with a single relative minimum and a single, relative maximum, respectively. For non-linearity parameters between one and two, it is shown that the kink has three inflection points that merge into a single one as this parameter approaches one and that the strain and dissipation rates exhibit relative maxima and minima whose magnitudes decrease and increase as the relaxation and nonlinearity coefficients, respectively, are increased. It is also shown that the viscoelastic generalization of the Burgers equation presented here is related to an ϕ⁸−scalar field.

A new, one-dimensional, viscoelastic generalization of Burgers’ equation, which includes a non-linear constitutive law and relaxation is proposed, and its kink solutions are determined both analytically and numerically. The equation and its solutions are connected with scalar field theories and may be used to both studies the effects of the non-linearity and relaxation and assess the accuracy of numerical methods for first-order, non-linear partial differential equations.

This paper aims to seek the optimal proportion of female executives in corporate management teams, and to analyze the threshold effect of the proportion of female executives on the enterprise market value and enterprise management performance by using a panel threshold regression model. The purpose of this paper is to obtain the optimal interval, during which female executives exert positive effects on enterprise market value and enterprise management performance.

Based on the data of listed companies in SSE from 2003 to 2012, this paper conducts theoretical and empirical analysis by using a panel threshold regression model.

This paper proves that the proportion of female executives has a threshold effect on the enterprise market value and enterprise management performance. The results show that the proportion of female executives has an optimal interval. In other words, during the 53.8-68.4 percent interval, the proportion of female executives exerts the least negative effect on the enterprise market value and the most positive effect on the enterprise management performance.

In this paper, the non-linear relationship between female executives, enterprise market value and enterprise management performance has been verified, and the optimization interval of the female executives’ proportion has been figured out as well.

This study aims to advance the understanding of the relationships between employee engagement (EE), satisfaction and turnover intention (TI) beyond their known linear functions by providing a set of significant empirical evidence on nonlinear functions including quadratic, cubic and interactive effects.

This study used four 2 × 2 between-subjects experiments sampling 640 hospitality sales professionals through online data collection methods. EE and employee satisfaction (ES) were examined in disaggregation into personal and organizational dimensions. Residual regression models controlling for age and gender as covariates were the main approaches for analyzing data for nonlinear effects.

Both EE and ES consistently have significant negative quadratic and positive cubic effects on employees’ TI. EE and ES have a negative interaction effect, that is, complementing each other, on TI such that the effect is more pronounced at higher levels than lower levels of EE and satisfaction.

Organizations need to understand some threshold phenomena that may exist in the widely believed linear effects of EE and satisfaction on TI. Doing so may help allocate resources more effectively for EE and satisfaction.

This study examined the nonlinear as well as interactive nature of the relationships between EE and TI and ES and TI to expand our understanding of these relationships beyond the known linearity and add new empirical evidence to the literature.

An interview with Rita McGrath a pioneer of “discovery-driven planning,” now widely recognized as one of the most effective approaches for strategy development in the face of uncertainty.

Her research and experience interacting with executive teams positions her to offer corporate leaders practical perspectives and advice on how to approach strategically the great opportunities and dangers that lie ahead in this VUCA environment.

Major inflection points that create real change unfold gradually, then suddenly. Because they do take a while to unfold, an astute strategist who was paying attention to the signs could take advantage of the inflection. The future doesn’t happen all at once. It begins to unfold unevenly, and if you can “interview” where it is starting to take place now, you can begin to develop an early point of view about it.

There’s no substitute for watching how customers interact with your product or service and listening to their conversations about their experience.

McGrath’s thesis is when an inflection point does indeed reach a tipping point, it can feel as though it came out of nowhere. Her advice: if you are making a series of small options-style investments that are at the “edges” of your mainstream activities, you are likely to pick up on weak signals that allow you to, in an optimistic scenario, surf along an inflection point so that when the opportunity presents itself, you can move with speed to capture an advantage.

Some labor supply curves exhibit inflection points at which they bend backward or fall forward; thus, some workers alternate between increasing and decreasing their labor hours as wages increase. No consensus has yet been reached on the underlying motive for such behavioral inconsistencies. This paper aims to develop a unified theory to explain each of these variations in labor supply.

The author employs a simple model of labor supply with additively separable utility over income and leisure. The sub-utility function for income is of the Friedman-Savage type, exhibiting preferences that alternate between increasing and diminishing marginal utility of income.

Labor supply curves slope downward where relative risk aversion is strong, and upward where relative risk aversion is weak or negative. Thus, utility functions with inflection points can form the basis of labor supply curves with inflection points.

Friedman-Savage utility can explain virtually any observed labor supply functions, including convex, backward-bending, forward-falling, and inverted-S curves.

Inflection points on the labor supply curve can create multiple and unstable market equilibria. Labor-market policies, including legislation pertaining to minimum wages and collective bargaining, and policies to enhance education and economic security, may reduce aversion to risk and thereby decrease the prevalence of unstable equilibria.

This paper unites two lines of research – labor supply and Friedman-Savage utility – which have, rather remarkably, been separate to date. In doing so, it provides a new application of the classic Friedman-Savage paradigm, and a new explanation of labor supply curves with negatively-sloped regions.

Many companies must choose a marketing strategy to promote new products. This includes publishing digital video advertising with interactive features on the Internet. Guided by the attribute-framing theory, this study investigates the impact of the number of positive attribute framings (NPAF) in advertising messages on consumer responses. This study aims to check whether new products are incrementally new products (INPs) or really new products (RNPs).

Content analysis was conducted to identify the forms and components of attribute framing used in advertisements and consumer responses (i.e. review valence). Furthermore, this study followed an expert scoring procedure to identify product newness (INP vs. RNP). Hierarchical polynomial regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between the NPAF, customer response and product newness.

This study has three main findings: (1) regardless of whether the new product is INP or RNP, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between NPAF and consumer responses; (2) the inflection point of NPAF (INP) is greater than the inflection point of NPAF (RNP) and (3) the maximum value of consumer response for INP is greater than that for RNP.

This study sheds light on the effectiveness of attribute framing in new product advertising. Compared to previous research on attribute framing of advertising, this study is based on a realistic scenario in which multiple attributes are framed within a given advertisement copy. Furthermore, secondary data were used to test the impact of NPAF on consumer responses and further explore the effects of product newness.

This study aims to examine how gender diversity within the CPA partnership team impacts the firm’s profit performance.

The authors use the two-stage least squares method in analyzing the gender–diversity–performance relationship using the pooled sample obtained from the National Survey Reports on Taiwan CPA firms between 1992 and 2008.

The authors observe a non-linear relationship between gender diversity at the partner level and profit performance. The relationship curves vary according to firm size. After identifying the point of inflexion for these curves, the findings indicate that the average gender diversity is below the inflexion point for large CPA firms, but exceeds the inflexion point for medium size firms.

According to the critical mass theory, increasing gender diversity within the partnership team can have a positive influence on the value of the firm. Hence, the authors argue that for large CPA firms in Taiwan, the proportion of female partners leaves room for improvement. If the average number of female partners could be increased by 0.95 persons, the critical mass would be attained.

The study provides the empirical evidence that increasing a CPA firm’s proportion of female partners positively impacts the firm’s profit performance. The findings serve a practical value as reference source for any further studies.

Studies of entrepreneurial action often distinguish between different phases such as opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation. Yet, the richness of past contributions masks the absence of an integral framework to organize, in a theoretically consistent ensemble, the different kinds of cognitive processes that underpin entrepreneurial action. In this chapter, we draw from research on human action and cognition to offer an integrative model of the cognitive processes that foster entrepreneurial action. By presenting a more specific articulation of when, how, and why different cognitive processes operate, we provide theorists and empiricists with a more complete picture of how entrepreneurs’ thinking evolves from the emergence of an opportunity idea to the initiation of concrete entrepreneurial acts. In addition, our framework draws attention to cognitive inflection points that entrepreneurs must navigate in their journey toward entrepreneurship. By explicitly locating these inflection points and specifying the changes in mental processing that occurs at each point, we highlight that for entrepreneurial action to ensue, entrepreneurs must shift from one type of cognitive processing to another. Along this line, our model draws attention to the entire set of cognitive “skills” entrepreneurs must master for successful completion of each phase and successful transitions between phases.