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This study aims to provide a contextualized look at the artisan sector in Zambia and asks: What factors contribute to scaling positive impact in artisan ventures in Zambia, and how can these factors be leveraged to promote positive economic, social and environmental outcomes for women and their communities.

This study uses an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach to gain a multi-layered understanding of artisan craft social enterprises in Zambia.

Purpose is found to be the primary driver of social and environmental impact in artisan social enterprises in Zambia, with female leadership a critical factor. Access to finance, markets and resources are also essential to help these organizations achieve their social missions.

While this study provides valuable insights into the artisan sector, its scope was limited to the Zambian context, making the generalizability of the findings to other geographies uncertain.

This research makes a valuable contribution to the literature on social enterprises by highlighting the critical role of female leadership and purpose in driving positive impact in artisan businesses in Zambia. Additionally, the study underscores the importance of understanding the mechanisms through which artisan social enterprises create positive change. The study highlights the importance of artisan craft employment for women in Zambia and illustrates the impact of Zambian artisan ventures, both formal social enterprises and informal businesses, on creating positive social and environmental impacts in the country.

Social entrepreneurship has emerged as an important realm of entrepreneurship during the last decade. Research on what motivates social entrepreneurial activity continues to be of interest in the field. Given the integral role of the social entrepreneur, one area identified as deserving more attention is the leadership traits of the social entrepreneur. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a conceptual model on the role of national leadership culture on social entrepreneurship.

As part of the social fabric of a country, national leadership culture is viewed as a social contextual factor that can either enhance or hinder social entrepreneurial activity. As its broader conceptual base, this paper relies on institutional theory, marketing systems and leadership theory. At the heart of the proposed conceptual model are six leadership dimensions from the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) theoretical model: charismatic/value-based, team-oriented, participative, self-protective, humane-oriented and autonomous. These leadership dimensions are central to the propositions that accompany the proposed conceptual model.

Implications of this research for entrepreneurial marketing and public policy are presented. Since this research is conjectural, future directions for empirical research on national leadership culture in social entrepreneurship are discussed.

The conceptual model is the first to examine the role of national leadership culture on social entrepreneurship. The research adds value to the growing body of research on social entrepreneurship in its social context. It answers the call in the literature to examine leadership as it pertains to the individual entrepreneur’s pre-disposition to engage in social entrepreneurial activity.

The purpose of this article is to present a framework that allows an ampler understanding of the evolution process tracked by companies in the pursuit of strategies for sustainable development, taking into account the increasing awareness of the social and environmental pressures facing business.

The article adopts an interdisciplinary approach, using the complexity standpoint, allowing the articulation of the main axis of this study: sustainable development, organizational strategies and organizational learning.

Consideration of the type of learning undertaken by companies to advance in the direction of strategies oriented to sustainability. This is analyzed in light of the complexity theory, showing the need of transformations in the individual values, a transformation that will reflect itself in the organization and in society.

No empirical research is conducted to analyze the importance of the learning type for the orientation to sustainability in companies. Future research may verify this importance.

The article points to the need for sustainable business actions that are oriented to people and society in general. Some propositions can help managers to manage the considerable difficulties dealing with sustainable development pressures.

The text deepens the understanding about the evolution towards sustainability oriented strategies, considering the learning type as a key concept. It operationalizes the contributions of the complexity theory, according to the view of Edgar Morin (a French perspective). This allows a different comprehension of the non linear behavior patterns that are common in the organizations.

What is systemicity and what is its relationship to third-generation cybernetics, will be explored here. I begin where my published work in social complexity theory let off: What is the benefit of studying experienced emergence versus attributed emergence? And how do we account for researcher reflexivity in the study of emergence? Is systemicity really an ontological given; that is, an inevitability of any rigorous relational position? Or, is it more an accompaniment to a layered (physical, life, social) epistemology? Or, is systemicity an invitation to acknowledge the ontological limits of perception, cognition, and truth? And finally, assuming that systemicity represents third-generation cybernetics, where and how in organizational studies do we recognize our own reflexivity and relation to what we study, to whom we address our ideas, and how we communicate?

The purpose of this paper is to address the emerging way in which qualitative research is now carried out within the commercial world, the influences of shifting paradigms and the importance of theoretical understanding for current practice.

The “method” underpinning this paper is qualitative observation drawn from research across a wide range of client companies during more than 30 years of commercial qualitative practice, as well as from recent, ongoing conversations with other commercial practitioners and academics, and from the academic and literature.

Commercial qualitative research has, largely, moved away from a classic scientific paradigm towards a social constructionist perspective. The paper explores how the concept of emergence derived from complexity sciences and the contribution of neuroscience to understanding the role of emotion in judgement and decision making, can help make sense of current commercial practice.

The implications for commercial practitioners are highlighted. Training in analytical skills and emotional awareness as reflection‐in‐action is needed in order that analysis and interpretation are embedded within the ongoing research process, i.e. training needs to include qualitative thinking as much as practice.

The paper highlights the creative potential of “emergent inquiry”, improvisation “in the moment” and the particular skills required.

With reference to the concepts of chaos theory, proposes that long‐term strategic planning is of little benefit to businesses (especially small businesses) operating in the hospitality industry, and that managerial focus should emphasize innovative and creative practices in order to sustain competitive advantage. To achieve this, organizations need to have a clear vision of where they want to be and attempt to achieve this aim by adapting to situations as they arise. Today’s hospitality organizations should not try and overcome their environment by predicting future outcomes but instead should change and adapt with the environment.

The use of accounting to help apply the principles of scientific management to business affairs is associated with the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control. This first British industry‐based study of the implementation of these calculative techniques makes use of the case study research tool to interrogate archival data relating to leading iron and steel companies. We demonstrate the adoption of standard costing and budgetary control early on (during the inter‐war period) by a single economic unit, United Steel Companies Ltd, where innovation is attributed to the engineering and scientific background and US experiences of key personnel. Elsewhere, significant management accounting change occurred only with the collapse in iron and steel corporate profitability that began to become apparent in the late 1950s. The process of accounting change is addressed and the significance for our study of the notions of evolution and historical discontinuity is examined. The paper is contextualised through an assessment of initiatives from industry‐based regulatory bodies and consideration of the economic circumstances and business conditions within which management accounting practices were the subject of radical revision.

This paper seeks to investigate the influence of the external environment on the choice of strategic management activities, from a chaos and complexity perspective, since a business environment is a complex adaptive system.

The study in this paper was of an exploratory nature, using the qualitative techniques of case study, depth interviews and document analysis to collect data from two companies each in the IT and packaging industries, namely, more successful/less successful companies.

The paper finds that first, it was proposed that more successful companies in turbulent environments would use radical, fast and disruptive strategies. Furthermore, strategy making should be a democratic, bottom‐up process and should be organic, self‐organising, adaptive and emergent. The results confirmed these propositions. Second, it was proposed that more successful companies in stable environments would use more traditional management and strategies and more formal strategy planning activities. The findings did not confirm this proposition, probably due to the fact that in reality a truly stable environment does not exist in South Africa.

This paper is of benefit to managers and strategists by emphasising a new way to consider the future management and strategies of their companies. Since businesses and markets are complex adaptive systems, using complexity theory to increase understanding of how to cope in complex and turbulent environments is necessary, but has not been widely researched.

The wastage that occurs owing to defective knowledge of the conditions affecting the quality of fruit carried in refrigerating chambers on board ship, and the attempts which are being made to solve the problems involved, formed the subject of a joint contribution to the Section of Engineering by Dr. Ezer Griffiths and Mr. Edgar A. Griffiths.