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After the completion of this case study, students will be able to understand the importance of being close to local people when embarking on social business; understand that clear purpose and good decision-making can lead to great outcomes; and learn that innovation is crucial to ensure sustainability of both business and impact.

The case highlights the journey of Laiterie du Berger (LDB), a social enterprise in the agribusiness industry and the challenges faced as it expands and innovates. LDB’s roots lie in its commitment to social impact, aiming to uplift the Fulani livestock farmers and address socioeconomic issues. The company’s business model prioritizes people over profits, focusing on sustainable development and poverty alleviation. The LDB case showcases the challenges and opportunities in the agribusiness industry. LDB’s commitment to social impact, demonstrated through its support for farmers and sustainable farming practices, has been integral to its success. As the company expands and innovates, it faces critical decisions that require balancing financial growth with social responsibility. By embracing development, innovation and collaboration, LDB can continue to be a catalyst for positive change in the agribusiness industry while staying true to its roots and the principles that have defined its journey.

This case study is designed for bachelor’s and master’s degree students in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as MBA students. The case focuses on social entrepreneurship with the example of an agribusiness company located in Senegal, prioritizing social impact and quality of life. The case study explores the dynamics of the sector, including expansion strategy, innovation initiatives and the dilemma of balancing social mission and profit that social entrepreneurs may be facing. By analyzing this real-world situation of LDB, students will have the opportunity to enhance their decision-making skills.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

To ensure that students are well prepared to successfully analyze this case, they should be familiar with the following concepts, theories and principles:

▪ Stakeholder theory

▪ Concept of duty to consult and accommodate

▪ Concept of social license to operate (SLO)

▪ Concept of indigenous economic self-determination

▪ Indigenous world view

▪ Seventh generation principle

▪ Cree principles

▪ Dene principles

The information provided in this case was gathered by the authors through face-to-face interviews, phone interviews, e-mail exchanges and secondary research. Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC) separates business operations from council operations through use of corporate entities (as shown in Exhibit 1 of the case). Meadow Lake Tribal Council II (MLTCII) is the corporate entity that oversees two companies referenced in the case: Mistik Management and NorSask Forest Products LP. Interviews were conducted with the General Manager at Mistik Management, Certification Coordinator at Mistik Management, Chief of Buffalo River Dene Nation, Chief of Waterhen Lake First Nation, MLTC Vice-Chief, Board Member and Advisor to MLTCII, President and CEO of MLTCII, MLTCII Business Development Consultant and a former consultant with MLTC, NorSask Forest Products and Mistik Management.

Mistik Management Ltd., a forestry management company co-owned by the nine First Nations of MLTC, was a leader in economic reconciliation in 2022. However, the company had dealt with significant challenges not long after it was established in 1989. Richard Gladue, former Chief of the one of MLTCs Member First Nations and a leader in economic development at MLTC, had been actively involved in establishing the organization. Gladue loved the life and vitality of the boreal forest in the Meadow Lake region and felt a sense of responsibility to take care of the forest and the land for generations to come. This responsibility was balanced with the acknowledgement that the forest also provided vast economic development, employment and wealth generation opportunities for MLTC and its Member First Nations.

In the early 1990s, MLTC and Mistik Management dealt with a year-long blockade by a group of protesters that included members of Canoe Lake Cree First Nation, one of the Member First Nations of MLTC. They had not been consulted on Mistik’s processes and policies, and the company’s clear-cut logging had affected their ability to continue their traditional way of life and practices on the land. After the incident, Mistik Management moved more quickly to invest in a co-management process that they were still refining and using in 2022 when consulting with Indigenous groups and communities.

A natural resource economy brings together Indigenous peoples, industry and government. In this case, students will learn about the important role that relationships play and how decisions are made when balancing complex legal, environmental and economic interests. Students will learn about the history of duty to consult and accommodate in Canada; conduct a stakeholder analysis and reflect on how decisions affect stakeholder interests; and make recommendations for meaningful Indigenous engagement strategies using the concept of social license and indigenous principles.

This case is suitable for use in undergraduate courses on indigenous business, ethical decision-making, public policy and/or natural resource development. There may also be applications in other fields of study, including anthropology, economics and political science.

If the case is used in an indigenous business course, it would be best positioned in the last third of the class, after topics such as duty to consult and accommodate, social license and meaningful engagement with indigenous communities have been covered. If used in an ethical decision-making course, it would be best used when discussing stakeholder theory and engaging in stakeholder analysis. If used in a public policy course, the case could be used to start a discussion around the duty to consult and accommodate indigenous communities in Canada. If used in a natural resource development course, the case would be best used as an example of indigenous economic development.

This study aims to identify the critical factors contributing to India-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) capacity building and value creation for beneficiaries.

A total interpretive structural modeling technique has been used to develop a hierarchical model of critical factors and understand their direct and indirect interrelationships. The driving force and dependence force of these factors were determined by using cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis.

This study identifies 12 critical factors influencing NGO capacity building in India’s intellectual disability sector across four dimensions. Internal organizational capabilities include infrastructure, staff qualifications, fundraising, vocational activities and technical resources. Second, coordination and stakeholder engagement highlight government and agency collaboration, dedicated board members and stakeholder involvement. Third, adaptability and responsiveness emphasize adjusting to external trends and seizing opportunities. Finally, impact and value creation emphasis on improving value for persons with disabilities (PWDs).

The findings of this study have practical implications for Indian NGOs working for PWDs. The study provides NGOs with a structural model for improving organizational capacity by identifying and categorizing critical factors into the strategic model.

There is a scarcity of literature on capacity building for disability-focused NGOs in India. This study seeks to identify critical factors and develop a hierarchical model of those factors to assist policymakers in India in building the capacity of NGOs.

This paper aims to analyze the thematic content of research addressing the relation between board of directors (BoD) and business transformation (BT) to obtain better understanding of status and to derive future areas of study.

This paper reviews literature through a bibliometric analysis based on co-occurrence of articles published in Web of Science Core Collection ™ (WoS) between 1990 and 2022, identifying key concepts, setting network of relations and identifying the strategic importance of clusters of concepts. Findings and implications are discussed, future lines of research are presented and limitations are noted.

Thematic research on boards addressing transformation shifted from the analysis of individuals' traits to an organizational approach with majority of research centered on the role of boards under different theories and the consequences of strategic changes on firm's performance. Further research is around gender diversity, sustainability and the moderating role of ownership structure and business culture.

Some limitations are also noted. This analysis considered articles indexed by WoS for Q1+Q2 publications as source of literature, while including others such as Scopus would increase knowledge base. Also, to identify main streams of research, the authors considered keywords with cumulative occurrence spanning from 30% to 40% while increasing this percentage would add terms that might improve precision to the connections among keywords. Other techniques could have been used such as co-citation or bibliographic coupling, although the authors find these as better suited to investigate the basic structure behind the foundational knowledge of the topic while the authors’ intention was to understand the positioning of study fields regarding the degree of research progress.

This paper presents some practical implications for future researchers. Those who wish to leverage previous evidence to address new research questions might look into principal themes covering BoD dynamics and composition to exert CG, and the relation between strategic decisions and performance measured by different variables. Those who wish to position their research as new findings to shed light on dilemmas, might find opportunities in the fields of climate change-sustainability, R&D for growth and innovation under the perspective of intangible assets.

This paper, is the first to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to identify research clusters for the intersection of boards and transformation and to determine their stage of development.

本文旨在分析探討董事會與業務轉型之間的關係的學術研究的專題內容，以能對有關課題的研究狀況有更深入的了解，並擬從分析中取得未來可供研究的範疇。

本文透過科學計量分析法來進行文獻探討。方法乃基於在1990年至2022年期間在Web of Science Core Collection 刊載的學術論文的共現分析而進行; 透過這個研究方法，研究人員建立了聯繫的網絡，並確認了各個概念群組的策略重要性。在本文中，研究結果和研究結果帶來的啟示會被討論，未來的研究領域和方針也會得到說明，研究的局限也會被認定和記錄下來。

探討董事會而又涉及業務轉型的專題研究，由當初集中探討董事個人的特質、轉移到現在研究整體的組織理念和處事取向，而就後者來說，大部份的研究都集中於在不同的理論框架裡董事會所扮演的角色，以及因策略上的改變而為公司的業績帶來的影響。進一步的學術研究都是圍繞著性別多元化、可持續性、所有權結構所扮演的緩和角色和商業文化的研究。

盡我們所知，本文乃為首篇學術論文，去鑑定關於董事會與業務轉型之間的關聯的研究集群，也是首篇學術論文，去確定這些研究集群的發展階段。

This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right.

The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations.

The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings.

The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different perspective on the field were asked to respond independently to a prompt asking what does special education mean for students with EBD and what is being done and how do we maintain tradition? The contributors' responses to the prompt are presented and then summarized across the essays. A remarkable consistency emerges across the independent essays. In addition to the tradition of providing a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, the contributors identify needs to support teachers serving this population. Needs in teacher training and the expertise required to meet the needs of individuals with EBD are outlined as well as potential contributions of technology to carry out specific tasks. We conclude with a call for increased advocacy for use of the knowledge that we currently possess and that which will soon be discovered to support students with EBD as well as their teachers. We also note that the contributors' names are listed alphabetically to acknowledge the equality of each person to the final product.

Due to the uniqueness of individual construction projects, identifying the dominant risk factors is needed for risk mitigation in ongoing and future projects. This study aims to identify the dominant construction supply chain risk (CSCR) factors, based on studies conducted between 2002 and 2022.

The study adopts the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) procedure to identify, screen and select relevant articles in order to provide a bibliography and annotation of the prevalent risks in the supply chains. A descriptive analysis of the findings then follows.

The study’s findings have highlighted the three most prevalent risks in the construction supply chain (poor communication across project teams, changes in foreign currency rate, unfavorable climate conditions) as reported in literature, that project teams need to pay closer attention to and take proactive steps to mitigate.

Due to limitations imposed by the chosen research methodology, tools, time frame and article availability, the study was unable to examine all CSCR-related papers.

The results will serve as a useful roadmap for risk/supply chain managers in the construction industry to take strategically proactive steps towards allocating resources for CSCR mitigation efforts.

Context-specific research on the impact of social and cultural risks on the construction supply chain would be beneficial, due to emerging social network risk factors and the complex socio-cultural settings.

There is presently no study that has reviewed extant studies to identify and compile the dominant risk factors (DRFs) associated with the supply chain of construction projects for ranking in the supply chain risk management process.

This study aims to focus on how smartphone addiction impacts young consumer behavior related to mobile technology (i.e. the compulsive app downloading tendency). After a thorough literature review and following the risk and protective factors framework, this study explores factors that could mitigate its effects (resilience, family harmony, perceived social support and social capital).

The study used the covariance-based structural equation modeling approach to analyze data collected from 275 Generation Z (Gen Z) smartphone users in Spain.

Results suggest that resilience is a critical factor in preventing smartphone addiction, and smartphone addiction boosts the compulsive app downloading tendency, a relevant downside for younger Gen Z consumers.

Through the lens of the risk and protective factors framework, this study focuses on protective factors to prevent smartphone addiction and its negative side effects on app consumption. It also offers evidence of younger consumers’ vulnerability to smartphone addiction, not because of the device itself but because of app-consumption-related behaviors.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

By adopting the “hard” and “soft” project management (PM) approaches from the PM-literature, this paper aims to problematize the expected role of client organizations in driving innovation in the transport infrastructure sector.

Addressing a large public client in Sweden, a case study design was initially applied to provide in-depth insights and perspectives of client project managers’ views and experiences of managing projects expected to drive innovation. In this paper, the concepts of “hard” and “soft” are used to discuss empirical findings on challenges associated with adopting a PM-approach for driving innovation in projects. The empirical material consists of interview data, complemented with observations and archival data.

Findings reveal challenges associated with combining hard and soft approaches, frequently demonstrating difficulties in balancing short-term project expectations with the promotion of innovation. In line with the literature, project managers note that there is a need for soft approaches to promote development and drive innovation. Yet, findings reflect a situation in which operational success criteria predominate, whereas soft approaches are not sufficiently used to create the grounds required for fostering innovation.

Insights are provided into how PM-approaches may impact construction innovation in the infrastructure sector, demonstrating a need for further research on the challenges and implications of applying and combining hard and soft PM-approaches.