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The authors’ contention in this paper is that the expression of subsidiary strategy in IB literature has become fragmented and incomplete. Therefore, this study aims to propose a rethink on how IB scholarship approaches the important issue of subsidiary strategy by holistically examining the discrete and integrated set of activities, choices and decisions that constitute the subsidiary strategy process for, in this context, assuming a competence-creating role within the multinational enterprise (MNE).

A conceptual model is designed to illustrate the holistic process of subsidiary strategy from assigned to assumed role and how a subsidiary can navigate a pathway to elevated performance and survival.

The paper identifies the key integrated elements that constitute a holistic strategic process that can enhance a subsidiary’s standing within the MNE and maximise its survival prospects.

Particular focus is placed on subsidiaries that strategise to advance their internal corporate role to competence creator via upgraded knowledge capabilities.

This paper offers a roadmap for IB scholars to contribute to a future discourse around the subsidiary strategy process for assuming a competence-creating role.

The aim of this research is to determine the stages that women in resource-constrained environments go through in order to emancipate themselves through entrepreneurial activities. Based on their fieldwork, the authors develop a process framework of emancipation-through-entrepreneurship.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 57 female entrepreneurs in two resource-constrained countries in West Africa. Non-participant observations were employed as a secondary data collection technique to provide important sources of information for triangulation.

This study's findings indicate that the process of female emancipation through entrepreneurship begins with the perception of one's personal motivations, followed by the choice of economic activities, the gathering of various necessary resources, and finally the commencement and running of a venture to bring about the desired emancipation. Various factors, such as family, the external environment, personal qualities and ease of operations, were found to influence the choice of entrepreneurial activities. We also found that human, social, cultural and political capital interact to produce economic capital, a central form of capital for the starting and running of ventures in resource-constrained environments.

Although extant studies have shown that entrepreneurship can be a vehicle for women to liberate themselves from various constraints, it is as yet unclear which process these women follow to achieve such emancipation. The development of a process framework of emancipation-through-entrepreneurship is the key contribution of this paper. Despite extant research demonstrating that entrepreneurship can assist women in financially limited settings to achieve economic independence, the specific steps these women take in the process remain unclear. Thus, this paper presents a process framework that focuses on women in constrained environments and their journey to emancipation through entrepreneurship.

There is a noticeable dearth of literature offering Marxist perspectives and analyses on the Bangsamoro struggles for self-determination, ethnic and religious identities and social justice. A reason for this may lie in the general derision of bourgeois academics and conventional commentators on the supposed paucity of Marxist theories on nationalism, ethnicity and religion. This may have influenced, ironically, Filipino Marxist thinkers into being indifferent to this research topic. Far from the truth, however, that Marxism is essentially an economic determinist social conflict theory, its historical materialism offers a rich treasury of analyses and perspectives on nationalism, self-determination, religion and ethnic identity within the context of class struggles as the acme of the theory of scientific socialism. The paper, therefore, offers a scientific analysis of the Bangsamoro Question from a Marxist standpoint beyond the perspectives of psychologism, naturalism and ethno-racialism, which are usually deployed by traditional and uninformed commentators in analyzing ethnicity questions and quests for separatism.

The paper employs the historical and class analysis of the dynamics, relationships and struggles of classes in the history of the Bangsamoro struggles against colonialism and the subsequent postcolonial regimes up to the present time.

As a scientific paradigm, historical materialism presents itself as a general scientific social conflict theory. Using this framework through historical and class analyses, the paper proves the improbability of the Moros’ quest for separatism or genuine autonomy at this historical point. It, therefore, asserts the linking of the Moro struggles to the more immense struggles of the Filipinos for national and social liberation from imperialism.

The paper is limited to the historical and class analyses of classes’ dynamics and struggles. It is, therefore, far from an exhaustive analysis of the Moro struggles using different non-Marxist social conflict theories.

The research can be considered a practical guide in analyzing and predicting the trajectories of the Moro struggles in Mindanao and Sulu.

The work addresses the question from radical and Marxist premises.

This is a highly original and valuable work from the point of view of Marxist social conflict theory.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of “freedom of science” (“academic freedom”) for the advancement of society and mankind, which, however, is permanently endangered by powerful organisations, groups and individuals, who in pursuit of their one-sided interests are seeking to constrain information about the truth. As a broad term, freedom of science embraces freedom in research, learning, teaching and publication. All of these activities should be dedicated to identifying the truth and learning about the truth.

Three theoretical approaches are of importance for framing issues related to freedom of science, which in this paper are integrated into the framework of mindset agency theory: freedom is a value; “freedom” is claimed by agents who pursue specific interests (goals), which might constrain others; and individuals are agents who are interacting with each other within a social system – cooperation, ignorance or conflict.

Freedom as a value is at the core of intellectual autonomy. Intellectual autonomy is a necessary condition for innovation and advancement of knowledge. The observable modes of interaction/coexistence among researchers are influenced by individual research goals and by the researchers’ access to resources, which may be deliberately constrained by opponents or other researchers as competitors.

For further research, which is beyond this paper, the authors can refer to: analyses of challenges of “academic freedom” – in terms of ethics, protection of individual human rights, political pressures and conflicts of interests; the issues of truth, i.e. the impact of fake news and creation of “alternate facts”; and the relation between academic freedom and employment (academic tenure) in present-day societies. Owing to lack of space, this paper cannot deal with the danger emerging from powerful organisations or powerful individuals, who are challenging freedom of science.

If there is no freedom of science then social progress is constrained. If there is no access to right data, decisions will be wrong.

So far, a comprehensive cybernetic model was not published, which supports systems thinking about scholars and teachers (inter)acting in research organisations.

For non-profit organizations (NPOs) external funding is an essential resource. Studies highlight how control is attributed to funders and so external funding threatens the autonomy of the recipient organization. The purpose of this study is to investigate how external control can be structured and exercised, and to explore how control interacts with organizational autonomy.

The research is based on interviews and participant observations with NPOs and their funders over a period of time. It reports from four different funding-relations: contract-based, social investment, gift-funded and civil society–public partnership. The concept of organizational discretion is used to analyse how control and autonomy are interconnected in these relationship.

The analysis illustrates the value in exposing the different discretionary boundaries related to external control and how control can become a sparring partner in the organization's striving for autonomy. A concluding argument is that control and autonomy are each other's companions rather than antagonists. The study leads us to question a general assumption that NPOs strive to avoid resource dependence and external control but instead may use such control to develop strategies for independence and self-realization.

The empirical material is unique as it includes voices of recipient organizations and funders, and offers a comparison of different controlling-relations. The study presents an innovative analytical framework based on the concepts of discretionary space and reasoning, which supports a critical discussion regarding the idea of external control as detrimental to the autonomy of NPOs.

This paper aims to examine the effects of domestic structure forces on “sub-national” foreign policy (SFP); an analytical concept provides a suitable operational framework for research on international activities of sub-national entities or regions.

The paper is carried out on the basis of a theoretical framework proposed by the author. First, the dependent variable is defined. Then, domestic structure is broken down into four variables, including legal grounds, the level of autonomy, the type of intergovernmental relations and institutionalization. A comparative method is used to examine the validity of the theoretical framework.

The paper finds out that domestic structural forces influence level and form of SFP with some regularity. The influence of these forces on SFP can be explained, as they recur and have such consistent effects that they create patterns and regularities in SFP. Such regularities can be detected through systematic analysis.

The topic of SFP is relatively controversial because of academic debate over international agency of substate actors. However, it is a worthwhile subject of research, as it has the potential to revolutionize research in foreign policy analysis. Moreover, the phenomenon of SFP is in need of theorizing and comparison as the literature on SFP is still in its infancy.

Michael Brown argues that what unites the human and social sciences is their evolving character, made explicit in the concepts of “reflexivity,” “course of activity,” and “theorizing.” Once the social sciences are taken as a whole, the notion of “sociality” will allow to grasp society as ever changing, as a becoming. I shall examine the notion of sociality in the literary criticism of Lukács, Goldmann, and Adorno, three authors who consider the essay as the adequate open form of critique in times of rapid social change. Originally adopted by the young Lukács, the essay tended to be abandoned by him when elaborating the concept of critical or socialist realism as a repository of timeless cultural values. In his studies in the European realist or the soviet novel, for example, on Balzac, Stendhal, Thomas Mann, or Solzhenitsyn, the dialectical concept of social totality becomes a sum of orientations, presenting the individual writer with the moral task to choose “progress” and discard “negativity.” The social is thus narrowed to individual choice. Different from Lukács, Goldmann's literary theory defines cultural production as a matter of the social group, the transindividual subject. Goldmann was deeply marked by Lukács's early writings from which he gained notably the notion of tragedy and the concept of maximum possible consciousness—the world vision of a social group which structures the work of a writer. Cultural creation is resistance to capitalist society, as evident in the literature of absence, Malraux's novels, and the nouveau roman. In the writings of Adorno the social is lodged within the avant-garde, provided that one takes its means and procedures literally, e.g., the writings of Kafka. By formal innovation—among others the adoption of the essay, the small form, the fragment—art exercises criticism of the ongoing rationalization process and preserves the possibility of change (p. 319).

Research into the interpretability and explainability of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) systems is on the rise. However, most recent studies either solely promote the benefits of explainability or criticize it due to its counterproductive effects. This study addresses this polarized space and aims to identify opposing effects of the explainability of AI and the tensions between them and propose how to manage this tension to optimize AI system performance and trustworthiness.

The author systematically reviews the literature and synthesizes it using a contingency theory lens to develop a framework for managing the opposing effects of AI explainability.

The author finds five opposing effects of explainability: comprehensibility, conduct, confidentiality, completeness and confidence in AI (5Cs). The author also proposes six perspectives on managing the tensions between the 5Cs: pragmatism in explanation, contextualization of the explanation, cohabitation of human agency and AI agency, metrics and standardization, regulatory and ethical principles, and other emerging solutions (i.e. AI enveloping, blockchain and AI fuzzy systems).

As in other systematic literature review studies, the results are limited by the content of the selected papers.

The findings show how AI owners and developers can manage tensions between profitability, prediction accuracy and system performance via visibility, accountability and maintaining the “social goodness” of AI. The results guide practitioners in developing metrics and standards for AI explainability, with the context of AI operation as the focus.

This study addresses polarized beliefs amongst scholars and practitioners about the benefits of AI explainability versus its counterproductive effects. It poses that there is no single best way to maximize AI explainability. Instead, the co-existence of enabling and constraining effects must be managed.