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Relying on the principles of the social exchange theory, the current study is aimed at investigating the impact of team-member exchange relationships (TMX) among school management team (SMT) members on school outcomes (organizational citizenship behavior [OCB], job satisfaction and innovation) via the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships between principals and SMTs.

Data were collected from multiple sources in 86 elementary and junior high schools to avoid one-source bias: 86 principals, 357 SMT members and 683 schoolteachers who were not members of the management teams.

The results revealed a positive relationship between TMX and teachers' job satisfaction and OCB, but no significant link between TMX and innovation. LMX partially mediated the relationship between TMX and OCB and between TMX and teachers' job satisfaction. Full mediation was found in TMX-innovation relationship.

The findings carry a message for school principals and policymakers regarding the importance of developing and maintaining high-quality horizontal and vertical exchange relationships among the SMT members for their positive influence on school outcomes.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the link between TMX and LMX as a team phenomenon, and specifically in the educational setting. The finding that there is a positive link between the two constructs may imply that SMTs contribute to school success not only directly by exhibiting high-quality TMX but also indirectly through the high-quality LMX.

This research aimed to investigate the mediating role of social media engagement in the relationship between differentiation-oriented content and purchase intentions. Additionally, this research studies the moderating impact of entrepreneurial social media skills in the relationship between social media engagement and purchase intentions.

The research proposes a positivist research philosophy, deductive research approach and survey research strategy. Data were collected from followers of social media pages of small and medium businesses operating in the fields of groceries, food items, apparel and supplies in Pakistan. Respondents were selected randomly. The descriptive statistics were calculated first, followed by reliability and validity analysis as part of the measurement model. Finally, mediation and moderation analyses were run by using structural equation modeling.

Results of the study confirm that differentiation-oriented content has a positive relationship with purchase intentions and social media engagement mediates this relationship. Results further confirm that the social media skills of entrepreneurs moderate the relationship between social media engagement and purchase intentions.

From a practical point of view, this study will potentially help entrepreneurs in Pakistan unveil the undiscovered potential of social media and understand the importance of social media marketing campaigns in crisis situations. It will unlock the importance of entrepreneurial training and development to better adapt to the dynamic and vibrant world of social media.

This is the first study that investigates the relationship between differentiation-oriented content and purchase intentions. Additionally, the current study adds to existing knowledge by proposing entrepreneurial social media skills as moderators in the relationship of social media engagement with purchase intentions.

Innovation is critical for businesses to stay competitive in today's world, as it allows them to constantly look for new ways to differentiate their products or services from their competitors as well as improve cost-effectiveness. This study explore the role of strategic human resource practices in developing organizations' competitive capabilities-differentiation and cost-effectiveness, which, improves their innovation performance to create a competitive advantage.

The authors collected data from 387 employees from 25 knowledge-intensive information technology organizations in India through a questionnaire-based survey. After checking for biases, reliability and validity, the hypothesized relationships were tested by structural equational modeling using AMOS 26.

Strategic HR practices have a significant and positive effect on innovation performance and both competitive capabilities-differentiation and cost-effectiveness. While the differentiation capability had a strong positive effect on innovation performance, cost-effectiveness capability was not significantly related to innovation performance. The differentiation capability mediates the relationship between strategic HR practices and innovation performance link, whereas the cost-effectiveness capability did not have a mediating effect.

This study provides practical insights to HR and knowledge managers to focus on development of human capital and invest in hiring, training, development, strategic performance management practices to enhance employees' knowledge behaviors, which, stimulates innovation performance.

The paper adds to the strategic HRM paradigm by clarifying the underlying process of how strategic HR practices leads to higher innovation. It affirms the vitality of choosing appropriate competitive capabilities, and supporting organizational factor for business's success. It fills an important research gap by providing original empirical evidence from knowledge intensive information technology organizations in the emerging economy of India.

The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of Michel Porter's generic business-level strategies adopted by the organisation on its employer branding strategy. Based on the expert’s opinion and insights, this study aims to determine the extent to which the employer branding strategy, its inherent significance, the requisite investment and the used tactics are influenced by the organisation's business strategy.

Considering a phenomenological research design, this study adopted semi-structured interviews as a means to gather qualitative data from a purposive sample comprising HR professionals. The collected data were subjected to thematic analysis, enabling the identification of recurring themes and patterns. Findings and conclusions were subsequently derived in accordance with the outcomes of the thematic analysis.

The study revealed that the significance, nature, challenges and ways of implementation of employer branding strategies vary depending on the type of business strategy adopted by the organisation. While organisations pursuing a differentiation strategy heavily invest in employer branding and placing considerable efforts into developing an appealing employee value proposition, companies pursuing cost leadership invest relatively less in employer branding by implementing cost-effective tactics. Companies implementing a focus strategy demonstrate a moderate level of investment in employer branding initiatives.

The study is limited to IT, manufacturing and banking sectors only. Additionally, the sample of the study is limited.

Employer branding as a strategy has been widely explored in the recent past. Similarly, Michel Porters’ generic strategies have also been widely researched. However, the interconnection between these two levels of strategies presents novel perspectives for business strategists and HR professionals involved in the formulation and implementation of HR strategies. This linkage provides valuable insights that facilitate effective decision-making in relation to employer branding strategies, enabling organisations to prioritise their objectives more effectively.

The existing literature lacks research that investigates the connection between employer branding strategy and business strategy. Hence, this study represents a pioneering effort that aims to explore this unexplored linkage. Further, this research effort has also uncovered previously uninvestigated findings concerning the comparative analysis of employer branding strategies across different sectors while examining the connection between business strategy and employer branding strategy.

This paper aims to present the findings from a European study on the digital skills gaps in tourism and hospitality companies.

Mixed methods research was adopted. The sample includes 1,668 respondents (1,404 survey respondents and 264 interviewees) in 5 tourism sectors (accommodation establishments, tour operators and travel agents, food and beverage, visitor attractions and destination management organisations) in 8 European countries (UK, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands and Bulgaria).

The most important future digital skills include online marketing and communication skills, social media skills, MS Office skills, operating systems use skills and skills to monitor online reviews. The largest gaps between the current and the future skill levels were identified for artificial intelligence and robotics skills and augmented reality and virtual reality skills, but these skills, together with computer programming skills, were considered also as the least important digital skills. Three clusters were identified on the basis of their reported gaps between the current level and the future needs of digital skills. The country of registration, sector and size shape respondents’ answers regarding the current and future skills levels and the skills gap between them.

The paper discusses the digital skills gap of tourism and hospitality employees and identifies the most important digital skills they would need in the future.

Previous studies have examined the empowerment of individual teachers, while neglecting the fact that such a phenomenon might grow within a team. Building on the crossover model and social exchange theory, the aim of this study is to explore whether team empowerment among school management teams (SMTs), is transmitted to the school level and affects schoolteachers' job satisfaction and thereby schoolteachers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Furthermore, we explored whether those relationships are moderated by team-member exchange (TMX) relationships.

Data were collected from 86 principals, 357 SMT members and 683 schoolteachers from 86 schools.

Results confirmed the mediating role of schoolteachers' job satisfaction, showing a positive relationship between SMT empowerment and schoolteachers' job satisfaction, and between job satisfaction and OCB. The moderation of TMX and the overall moderated mediation hypotheses were not supported.

The nature of data collected in the current study precludes any inference concerning the direction of casual links among the study constructs. Therefore, longitudinal studies could be designed, aimed at confirming the direction of links among the variables.

The findings reinforce the impact of schoolteachers' job satisfaction on achieving OCBs. Hence, SMT members carry the responsibility to cultivate satisfied schoolteachers through schools' support mechanisms and guidance in order to achieve schoolteachers' OCB.

The study identifies SMT empowerment as a key factor that may indirectly encourage schoolteachers to invest in OCBs through positive attitudes of schoolteachers' job satisfaction.

This paper proposes the “fields and weapons of the competition model applied to business networks” – CAC-Redes (in Portuguese, Campos e Armas da Competição – Redes de negócio), an extension of the fields and weapons of the competition model (CAC) – to study the competition and competitiveness of companies operating in business networks in a competitive environment while integrating organizational competencies, interorganizational ties and company positioning to provide competitive advantage.

CAC-Redes is born from the cross-fertilization process of various theoretical perspectives, namely, industrial organization, traditional view of operational activities and resources, relational view, strategic alignment, transaction cost theory and social perspectives in networks, structured according to systems theory and under the mantle of competitive advantage theory. To discover the structure of existing models of competitiveness in networks, a bibliographic search was conducted in the Scopus database. Quali-quantitative empirical research was undertaken in companies from six different economic sectors through structured questionnaires and personal interviews to understand how companies competed and discover the determining factors of their competitive advantage.

Only seven models of competitiveness in network were found, and their structures and characteristics are quite different from those of CAC-Redes. Empirical research confirms all the hypotheses that support CAC-Redes, which, combined with those of CAC, indicate the CAC-Redes corroboration.

CAC-Redes does not apply to networks without intercompany competition, studies on network governance and corporate strategy formulation.

CAC-Redes is effective in studying complex competitiveness phenomena because it considers multiple influences; provides a process based on qualitative and quantitative variables that increase the probability of formulating successful competitive strategies; simplifies the differentiation of skills from core competencies and determines them; proposes a competitive advantage criterion to select suppliers; creates a unifying language to represent the different strategic specificities of companies, competitors, suppliers, customers and the company environment and provides a library containing 181 weapons (resources) and dozens of interorganizational ties that can be used in empirical studies with other methodologies.

CAC-Redes, due to its originality and peculiarities, theoretically contributes to theory of resources because it dispenses with the assumption, “unique resource, source of competitive advantage”; to relational view because it considers interorganizational relationships as a competence and treats it quali-quantitatively and to core competencies because if the strategy changes, different core competencies will be needed. Furthermore, it is an alternative to the dynamic capabilities perspective, and it transforms the five manufacturing performance objectives into nine for the entire company.

CAC-Redes is an original model because its structure and characteristics comparatively differ from those of existing models, and 14 singularities are detected.

Sustainable development involves companies on an individual, organizational and social level requiring the adoption of business models or innovations capable of privileging the co-creation of mutual value with a view to sustainability. From an organizational perspective, this paper aims to show that knowledge brokers, by making explicit their roles as mediators of interactions and acting on dynamic capabilities (DCs), can generate a proactive approach to the three dimensions of sustainability and specifically allows capabilities to positively impact the propensity toward sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices.

This study offers an empirical analysis of 200 companies in the agro-food sector participating in a knowledge brokerage system activated by protection consortia. It uses a multiple regression technique that allows for observing relationships between DCs and SSCM.

Absorptive, adaptive and innovative capabilities, when understood and brokered, have a positive and direct impact on the SSCM.

As there have rarely been frameworks developed that correlate knowledge brokerage, DCs and sustainability, this paper suggests that DCs, when adequately valued by the knowledge broker, allow for identifying the requirements of the various stakeholders regarding sustainability and changes in market scenarios to generate sustainability practices along the supply chain.

This paper aims to study whether international niche market leaders (INMLs) gained their leading position as early mover or diligent follower, and assess whether they leveraged hard or soft forms of technological, supply pre-emption and customer lock-in advantage mechanisms.

Empirical material stems from qualitative and quantitative data on a sample of 20 niche companies from the Basque Country (Spain) that operate in business to business markets.

The sample predominantly followed an early entrant strategy and applied soft measures to reach niche market leadership.

Findings imply that early entering fosters conquering leadership in niche markets, that pioneer advantage is easier to sustain in niches than in mainstream markets, and that soft measures are more effective in niche markets than in larger markets. A limitation to our findings is that they follow from explorative research on a sample of firms from a reduced geographic setting.

Hidden champions and INMLs can be important sources of technological progress and economic value for the localities that host them. Therefore, despite their traditional low profile and the fact that they are not always the largest firms around, policymakers may want to pay more attention to this type of companies.

Tot he best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to research entry timing and its outcome for market leadership with regard to niche players or hidden champions-type of firms. It introduces an original taxonomy to operationalize and distinguish between hard and soft measures to leverage advantage mechanisms related to market entry timing.

The demands on the police to ensure security and order have increased in times of growing right-wing extremism, corona protests and widespread criticism of and dissatisfaction with democratic structures and processes. Protection, escort or even confrontation in the course of public demonstrations and protests as well as the protection, e.g. of politicians, synagogues or mosques requires additional deployment of the police and poses extended challenges. However, the police force itself also faces various problems with antidemocratic, violent or extremist police officers. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate why and how civic education of police officers can be a cornerstone to respond to the described challenges and improve democratic policing.

This paper describes how civic education can be organized in police training and further education and how it can be designed in cooperation with civil society actors. It is based on a research and development project conducted between 2016 and 2021 under the title “Civic Education and Police.”

Civic education can or could be an approach in sensitizing police officers to social conflicts and in better understanding the background and reasons for their deployment. Moreover, civic education can be helpful in preventing abuse of power and police violence, reducing negative aspects of esprit de corps and strengthening police legitimacy.

Civic education of police officers can help to understand conflicts and social tensions, strengthen the understanding of the society, improve police investigation, reduce misbehavior and support legitimacy in the democratic state.

The article uses findings from the project Civic Education and Police, which was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education between 2016 and 2021. Project partners were the German Police University and the University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration in North Rhine-Westphalia. The project conducted empirical studies on the supply and demand structure of civic education for and in the police. In addition, a database of educational concepts, a series of conferences and a new journal for conference documentation, research and special issues were launched.