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This paper aims to provide instructors with a hands-on engaging and experiential class activity designed to teach undergraduate and graduate students about different organizational structures in management courses. Through this exercise, students will be able to self-identify the challenges and strengths of working under contrasting organizational structures.

Split into two (or four) teams, students construct origami animals based on their team’s organizational structure, using both mechanistic and organic structures to create a zoo based on a set of instructions and boundary conditions. Materials required include origami paper, markers, printed instructions, origami animal instructions, and role title cards for each student. The exercise takes approximately 30–45 min, including debriefing discussion. All materials/instructions needed are included with this paper (except origami paper and markers).

Through this exercise, students internalize the challenges and strengths of working in organizations with contrasting structures. The debrief discussion will help solidify student understanding of what the day to day experience of working in different organizational structures might look like, the pros and cons of different structures, and what type of employees or industries might thrive under different structures.

This paper is being submitted for the “Special Issue Call for Papers: Modern Day Experiential Exercises.”

This activity allows students to draw their own conclusions about organizational structure and to engage in a fruitful discussion about what working at different types of organizations looks like on a day-to-day basis.

This activity allows students to strengthen their skills in communication, teamwork, and leadership by having them work in teams to complete a challenging, competitive task.

While teaching organizational structure in management courses has traditionally been limited to traditional forms of instruction such as lecturing and reviewing different organizational charts, this activity gives students a fun competitive in-class activity in which they practice working as a part of contrasting organizational structures to see what type of structure they might thrive in.

This paper intends to verify the extent to which Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects intend to contribute to sustainable development (SD) in Brazil, one of the top three leading countries in terms of the number of CDM projects. The authors assess the impact of CDMs not only in environmental aspects, but also social and economic ones.

The authors define a set of qualitative sustainability indicators and scrutinize documents regarding a sample of almost half of all the projects registered in Brazil between 2004 and 2020 (219 projects).

The findings of this study contradict many previous studies finding very limited evidence of SD in CDMs in many different countries: most projects in Brazil intend to contribute to some extent with SD, with 91% and 75% claiming to improve social and economic aspects, respectively.

The authors derive lessons from Brazil that can be used in other researches.

The authors derive lessons from Brazil and propose paths for public policy toward encouraging sustainable development.

The empirical data set relies on data collected directly from each of the projects in Brazil (roughly half of all of them) between 2004 and 2020. This is not only up to date, but pushes further the analytical scope of previous works.

This study aims to examine how the adoption of digital technologies affects the business competitiveness of countries in Latin American and European countries.

This study used a structural model based on factors representing the pillars of the Global Competitiveness Index: financial system, adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT), skills, labor market, product market, macroeconomic stability, business dynamism and gross domestic product (GDP) purchasing power parity (PPP) as a percentage of the total world value. The authors considered 17 Latin American and 28 European countries. The model was analyzed by partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

ICT adoption in Latin American countries is a strong predictor of business dynamism (66% of the variance), skills (81% of the variance), product market (75% of the variance), labor market (42% of the variance) and financial system (49% of the variance). Similarly, ICT adoption in European countries is a strong predictor of business dynamism (35.6% of the variance), skills (72.2% of the variance), product market (51.6% of the variance), labor market (81.7% of the variance, but with a negative path coefficient) and financial system (38% of the variance).

Latin American countries should create policies to build skills to increase ICT adoption, and improve business and labor market dynamism. A theoretical implication is that the authors propose two structural models based on the GCI that best explains competitiveness in Europe and Latin America.

Using GCI data, the authors present empirical evidence on the predictors of competitiveness across 17 Latin American and 28 European countries with a special focus on the adoption of digital technologies.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between board demographic diversity and human rights reporting for a sample of large Western European companies.

Grounded on resource dependence theory, the authors hypothesize that greater gender, age and nationality diversities will translate into enhanced levels of human rights reporting. The authors use ordinal logistic regression analysis to analyze the association between these types of board diversity and such reporting.

The findings suggest that the companies in the sample attribute little importance to the reporting of information pertaining to the issue of human rights. They also suggest that only the diversity of nations represented in the board of directors is significant in explaining this type of reporting.

The sample includes only large companies from Western Europe and the analysis covers only one year.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides the first empirical analysis of factors influencing human rights reporting conducted on a multiple-country setting. It is also the first investigating the association between boards of directors’ demographic diversity and such reporting.

Household food insecurity and poor well-being have increased during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and resulting lockdown measures. Home food growing has been associated with improved food access and well-being, but it is unknown what role it plays during food supply crises and lockdown. It is also unclear how home food growing and social restrictions may affect opinions about growing food in urban areas (i.e. urban agriculture; UA).

A cross-sectional online survey was conducted during the UK national lockdown in March-April 2020 to measure home food growing, perceived food insecurity, well-being, and opinions of UA. The participants were 477 UK-based adults (369 female, mean age 39.57 years ± 13.36); 152 participants were engaged in home food growing prior to the pandemic. Responses were compared to data collected from a separate sample of participants before the pandemic (N=583) to explore potential shifts in opinions about UA.

Participants who engaged in home food growing had lower levels of food insecurity (U_­=19894.50, z=−3.649, p<0.001, r=−0.167) and higher well-being (U=19566.50, z=−3.666, p<0.001, r=−0.168) than those not engaged in home food growing. Perceived food insecurity partially mediated the relationship between home food growing and well-being; home food growing was associated with less food insecurity, which in turn was associated with better well-being. There were no differences in opinions of UA compared to the sample of participants from before the pandemic.

Home food growing may have had a protective effect over perceived food security and well-being in the early stages the pandemic. Opinions of UA were positive and unchanged compared to data collected pre-pandemic. Policies that support home food growing and access to suitable growing spaces and resources may be beneficial for food system resilience and well-being.