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The aim of the study is to examine the effects of opportunity creation and discovery on the performance of family firms. Specifically, from the tenets of dynamic capabilities and organizational contingency perspectives, this study proposes and tests a framework of how family firms' creation and discovery behavior impact venture growth and the conditions under which such impact can vary.

The study uses moderated-hierarchical regression to analyze survey data from 156 family-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within a sub-Saharan African economy.

The findings indicate that creation behavior has a curvilinear U-shaped relationship with venture growth, while discovery behavior has a direct positive relationship with venture growth. Further analysis reveals that the curvilinearity of the U-shaped relationship between creation and venture growth will be stronger for older family firms than for younger ones.

The study findings may be limited by the cross-sectional nature of the data and the specific focus on family firms only.

The results highlight the significance of pursuing both opportunities among family firms. In fact, both creation and discovery opportunities are significant drivers of family firm growth, albeit in different capacities. Relatedly, managers of older family firms (compared to younger firms) can invest more in exploiting creative opportunities.

From these findings, governments and other stakeholders should create enabling environment and institutional frameworks conducive to exploiting opportunities by entrepreneurial firms.

The study is novel – as it provides unique findings on the performance implications of creation and discovery behavior of entrepreneurial family firms within developing economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adjustment of government redistributive policies in Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries following changes in income inequality over the period 1980–2021.

The authors first modelled the time-varying dynamics between income inequality and redistribution and then used a non-linear framework to test for the existence of asymmetries and cointegration in their long-run relationship. The authors used two complementary measures of inequality – the share of total income accruing to top percentile income holders and the ratio of the share of total income accruing to top decile income holders divided by that accumulated by the bottom 50% – and computed redistribution as the difference between the two inequality indicators before and after taxes and transfers.

The authors found that the sign of the relationship between income inequality and redistribution is mostly positive and time-varying. Overall, the authors also found evidence that the impact of increases in inequality on redistributive measures is higher than that of decreases. Finally, the authors obtained a significant long-run relationship between both variables in all countries except Denmark and Spain. These results hold for both Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to account for the potential existence of non-linearities and to examine the asymmetries in the adjustment of redistributive policies to increases in income inequality using alternative income inequality metrics.

In a supply-constrained region like Asia, promoting exports has always been a challenge particularly at a time when Asia’s trade has been severely affected by lack of external demand. This paper argues that price barriers have taken a new shape during the global financial crisis period which may generate differential impacts on trade flows as we proceed toward recovery. The size and shape of price barriers would be higher if NTBs, applied by the countries during the crisis period, were counted. One of the conclusions of this paper is that ‘price’ barrier is still more important than ‘non-price’ barrier in enhancing Asia’s trade and integration. The higher the price barrier between countries in a pair, the less they trade. In other words, a 10 percent increase in the ad-valorem price (transport and tariff) lowered trade by 6 percent. Tariff and transport costs, each considered separately, also influence the trade flow in the same direction, to more or less the same extent. There are indications of huge domestic infrastructure bottlenecks in countries in Asia. Based on direct and indirect evidence related to trade barriers, this paper concludes that complementary trade policies focusing on price and non-price barriers have immense importance in enhancing international trade and integration in the post-crisis period.

This research study aimed to collect feedback from the learners on the usefulness and effectiveness of the online counselling sessions organised during COVID-19 lockdown through online platforms to provide academic support to the learners.

The link of a questionnaire designed in a Google Form sent to IGNOU learners of the January 2020 session enrolled under the jurisdiction of IGNOU Regional Centre (RC) Chandigarh through email as well as SMSs. Total responses received were 487, out of which 445 responses were complete, roughly 8% of the total registered learners during the January 2020 session. The questionnaire contained questions on a cross-section of online counselling issues, besides questions on the learners' profile.

Majority of the learners were satisfied with the input provided while organising online counselling sessions during COVID-19 lockdown in India. A significant proportion of learners (88%) used smartphones for attending counselling sessions. Facebook page of the RC rated as a relatively better option than other online platforms. However, more than 50% of learners faced Internet connection problems and found them a significant hurdle for smooth viewing of online counselling sessions. The proportion of learners who encountered difficulties in handling electronic devices was insignificant. The learner's feedback on many attributes such as usefulness and effectiveness of the online counselling sessions, interaction with the academic counsellors, e-content used in the counselling was significantly positive. A significant proportion of the learners have reported that face to face counselling could be replaced with online sessions in future, considering its flexibility in terms of place and schedule of learning and availability of recording of such sessions.

The research study was conducted under Chandigarh region of IGNOU which has a predominantly urban population. Thus the results of the study are limited to Chandigarh region and the region with similar socio-economic settings. This certainly limits the scope of the study.

The study certainly provides valuable feedback to the ODL policymakers to consider replacing face-to-face counselling with an online mode in a phased manner. Online counselling options will be highly cost-effective, easily manageable, and provide flexibility for learners and resource persons, resulting in addressing learners' non-attendance related issues in the face-to-face counselling sessions.

In the analysis of our finding it is clearly stated that the Internet connectivity and availability of electronic devices is an important issue to provide online counselling support to socially and economically disadvantaged groups. Therefore, the research study also identifies such social issues as a major challenge for providing online counselling support to the learners.

This is an original empirical research study and data collected is used in the analysis for the first time. This analysis is based on the feedback gathered from the learners registered at IGNOU RC Chandigarh during the January 2020 session. The data and derived results not used in any other study.

Secondary customers often experience secondary vulnerabilities that manifest in family-centred transformative services as other- and self-related customer needs. Yet, a relational perspective on primary and secondary customers’ needs is lacking. The study analyses secondary customers’ needs and their relationship to primary customers’ needs to enhance well-being in customer entities. The service inclusion lens is used to understand customers’ experiences of vulnerability.

The study uses an exploratory approach. The data consists of ethnographic observations and interviews of elderly residents (primary customers), their family members (secondary customers) and nurses in two nursing homes.

Primary and secondary customers’ needs are interrelated (or unrelated) in four ways: they are separate, congruent, intertwined or discrepant. The vulnerability experiences fluctuate in intensity and over time, individually reflecting on these need dimensions.

The study contributes to service research concerning customers’ experiences of vulnerability, secondary customers and their inclusion in services. Primary customers’ service inclusion may increase/decrease secondary customers’ service inclusion and their experience of vulnerability. Moreover, secondary customers’ inclusion is often necessary to foster primary customers’ inclusion and well-being.

Fostering service inclusion and well-being for primary and secondary customers requires balanced inclusion and acknowledging the needs of both groups. Service providers may need to act as moderators within customer entities if discrepant needs occur.

The study addresses the under-researched areas of family members’ customer needs, their relation to primary customers’ needs, experiences of secondary vulnerability and context-related vulnerability.

This paper contributes to the theory of the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and innovation at small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by conducting a conceptual analysis of the question why Germany boasts by far the highest number of “Hidden Champion” SMEs. This is done by case studies from the army and public financial management of aid disbursal in developing countries. Implications for HRM at SMEs are discussed.

Conceptual analysis using case studies.

Contributing towards filling the gap concerning theoretical underpinnings of the link between HRM and innovation, we suggest that interdisciplinary work from relevant organisational case studies indicates that the concept of institutional design to provide motivational incentives may be relevant, especially concerning high performance systems with bundles of HRM practices. Specifically, the fundamental principle of subsidiarity is found to be important.

The research is broadly applicable to organisations of all kinds, as the diverse case studies indicate. We point towards tentative implications for the firms that account for the majority of the work force, namely SMEs, and among them the most successful ones, the so-called “Hidden Champions”.

HR managers can improve motivation, performance and innovation by decentralising decision-making as far as possible, while ensuring the overall organisational goals are well understood and shared, and resources are dedicated to train and educate staff. Additionally, the conception of rank-order competitions complements the institutional design.

Greater productivity and material performance as well as greater job satisfaction via larger autonomy and decision-making power on the local level can be achieved by the application of subsidiarity as key HRM configuration. This can be employed at SMEs, as discussed, but also other organisations. Further, the principle of subsidiarity and the greater emphasis on staff training and education may help reduce inequality.

Our paper contributes towards filling the gap in the literature on the link between HRM and innovation, by identifying the role of subsidiarity. We introduce an interdisciplinary perspective, with contributions from economics and psychology, among others. We also contribute to the history of HRM.

This paper presents the concerns in manufacturing supply chain. Further this study investigates the role of information technology (IT) and information sharing (IS) in manufacturing supply chain and determines its impact towards supply chain integration (SCI), supply chain performance (SCP), and manufacturing firm performance (FP) in Malaysia. The theoretical framework was proposed for the study on the basis of existing literature. The study administered a survey questionnaire to collect data from manufacturing firms in Malaysia with 112 respondents. A multiple regression analysis is conducted to establish the relationship between IT, IS, SCI, and FP. The study finds that IT and sharing has significant positive effect towards and performance. Firms that use IT and practice IS across partners in the supply chain are more likely to integrate their internal and external value chain for better performance both within and across the manufacturing firms in the supply chain. This study can be of interest to the manufacturing industry as well as other industry practitioners interested in improving the performance of the organization and supply chain in total. For supply chain practitioners, this results indicate that the firms should adopt IT and IS practices to strategically improve SCI. This in turn will also improve the supply chain network and firm’s performance. This study employs a newly developed framework which depicts the causal relationship between IT, IS, SCI, Supply Chain Performance, and FP in Malaysia. Furthermore, it closes a gap in existing literature by examining the effect IT and communication (ICT) practices toward manufacturing firms’ performance and SCP in a single setting. In addition, the current study attempted to construct a model which would estimate and interpret SCP and FP simultaneously, and to evaluate this model in an empirical fashion.

Hedonic value is commonly conceded as a determinant of behavioral intentions toward location-based advertising (LBA). However, the careful consideration of a mechanism behind hedonic motivation and its subsequent impact on continuance intention is inadequate. This study aims to explore the formation of hedonic value and its motivation for prolonged usage toward LBA.

A sample of 486 mobile users was recruited to evaluate the research model using structural equation modeling (SEM).

Results reveal that perceived utility and promotional offers are the strongest indicators of hedonic value. Moreover, social support and contextual convenience play an essential role in heightening hedonic value. Furthermore, the research lenses attempt to clarify the direct, indirect influences of hedonic value, irritation and perceived credibility on continuance intention.

The findings offer practitioners an understanding of how to improve hedonic value and continuance intention and develop effective LBA strategies in emerging markets.

This study narrows the gap of current literature by formulating a hedonic value-based continuance intention model based on uses and gratifications theory (UGT). Additionally, this work illuminates the insights into hedonic value toward LBA by identifying its motivations, including perceived utility, promotional offers, social support and contextual convenience.

This article outlines the theoretical foundations of the research contributions of this edited collection about “Diversity and Discrimination in Research Organizations.” First, the sociological understanding of the basic concepts of diversity and discrimination is described and the current state of research is introduced. Second, national and organizational contextual conditions and risk factors that shape discrimination experiences and the management of diversity in research teams and organizations are presented. Third, the questions and research approaches of the individual contributions to this edited collection are presented.