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This study aims to take a step toward integrating research regarding the image, role and identity of management accountants by understanding how employers’ perceptions of the ideal management accountant image differ from operational managers’ perceived role expectations, how management accountants perceive their identity and how those factors shape management accountants’ understanding of who they are and want to be.

A qualitative design draws upon the case company’s 100 job advertisements and 31 semi-structured interviews with management accountants and operational managers. Those data are entwined with role theory and its core concepts of expectations and identities and also early recruitment-related theoretical aspects such as image and employer branding.

The findings reveal how employers’ perceptions of the ideal image and operational managers’ role expectations shape and influence the identity of management accountants. However, management accountants distance themselves from a brand image and role expectations. They experience identity conflict between their current and desired identity, the perception of not being able to perform the currently desired role. Although this study presents some possible reasons and explanations, such as employer branding for the misalignment and discrepancy between perceptions of employer (image), expectations of operational managers (role) and management accountants’ self-conception of the role (identity), this study argues that the identity of a management accountant results from organizational aspects of image and role and individual aspects of identity.

Image and external role expectations can challenge identity construction and also serve as a source of conflict and frustration; thus, a more comprehensive approach to studying the identity of management accountants is necessary to understand what contributes to the fragility of their identity.

The results provide an understanding of the dynamics of the image, role and identity to support management accountants and employers and to further address the suggested dissonance and ambiguities.

This study contributes by showing how the dynamics and connections between the image, role and identity influence the identity construction of management accountants. Moreover, this study shows how overpromising as a part of employer branding might not reflect the reality experienced by management accountants but may cause frustration and threaten the management accountants’ identity.

This study answers the call for research and theorising exploring ethical communication and brand risk from the African continent. The study's purpose was to identify the challenges that strategic communication practitioners face in enacting ethical crisis communication in South Africa.

The researchers conducted ten in-depth interviews with South African strategic communication professionals.

The dominant theme emerging from the study is the marginalisation and exclusion of the communication function in decision-making during crisis situations. Communicators were viewed as implementers, technicians and not strategic counsel. The protection of organisational reputation was done at the expense of the ethics and moral conscience of practitioners. Practitioners were viewed and deployed as spin doctors and tools to face unwanted media interactions.

The article sheds light on the concepts of ethical communication and decision-making in a multicultural African context using the moral theory of Ubuntu and strategic communication. It demonstrates the tension professionals experience as they toggle between unethical capitalist approaches and African values. The practitioner's role as organisational moral conscience is hindered, suppressed and undermined by organisational leadership's directives to use opaque, complex communication, selective transparency and misrepresentation of facts.

Complex organizations increasingly rely on middle managers as strategic linking-pins between the top and bottom levels of the organization. Using social identity theory and commitment theory as the foundation, this study evaluates a management and leadership development program (MLDP) intended to engage middle managers as strategy creators and implementers. We also evaluate the cascading effects of leadership development by assessing changes in subordinates' identification with the leader, and commitment to the work unit and organization.

Using a sample of 107 manager participants and 913 of their subordinates, this study measures differences in both manager and subordinate identification and commitment prior to and after the completion of a 6 months strategically oriented MLDP.

Despite the organizations' best intentions, manager identification with and commitment to the organization decreased after completion of the MLDP. Similarly, subordinates identification with the leader and commitment to the organization also decreased at Time 2.

The results paint a complex picture of the nuances of social identification as an outcome of MLDPs, and problematize the notion of cascading effects on subordinates within the organization. Researchers are encouraged to further examine organizational attitudes and perceptions as outcomes of MLDPs.

Suggestions are offered regarding how practitioners can manage strategically oriented MLDPs in order to avoid identity confusion and promote strategic action.

Strategically oriented MLDPs are increasingly popular in organizations. This study is one of the first to evaluate the theoretical mechanisms through which these programs may affect managers and problematize these effects for complex organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in Australia.

First, the authors compare the strategic involvement of Chinese and Australian HR professionals. Second, based on the upper echelon theory, the authors compare the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) and top management team (TMT) between both countries on HR involvement in strategic decision-making. Data were collected from matched pairs of HR and TMT executives in China (n = 168) and in Australia (n = 102).

Results indicate a difference, despite of no statistical significance, in HR involvement in strategic decision-making between Chinese and Australian samples. TMT behavioural integration was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in a collectivistic culture (i.e. in China), but not in an individualistic culture (i.e. in Australia). However, CEO support for HRM was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in Australia, whereas it is not related in China.

The paper conducts a comparative study and practical, and research implications are discussed at the end.

In a work environment marked by unprecedented complexity, volatility and ambiguity, managers must accomplish their objectives while navigating many challenges. This paper aims to investigate potential interrelations among environmental transformations, cognitive biases and strategic decisions. In particular, the purpose of the study is to crystallize the state of art on the impact of cognitive biases on strategic decisions, in the context of environmental transformations.

The authors have conducted a systematic literature review to identify existing relevant work on this topic and to detect potential avenues for future research.

The findings highlight how decision-making is influenced and enabled by internal (e.g. perception) and external factors (e.g. digitalization). Specifically, the strategic role of cognitive biases appears to be crucial when investigating the related impact on strategic decisions in times of environmental transformation.

Implications are drawn for scholars and practitioners interested in evaluating the role of specific decision-making determinants for the formation and implementation of strategic decisions. In this sense, we stress that decision-makers need to manage their cognitive biases and select the right information out of a wide data set in order to adapt to environmental transformations.

By systematizing the literature review, potential interrelations among environmental transformations, cognitive biases and strategic decisions are identified. Furthermore, the primary phases that drive the decision-making process are proposed (analysis, decision, onboarding and control).

The main objective of this study is to investigate an impact of organizational culture on supply chain risk and strategic sourcing. It also examines the relationship between organizational culture and strategic sourcing. By collecting 159 survey responses from supply, executives and managers of U.S. manufacturing firms, it provides empirical evidence that organizational culture and strategic sourcing mitigate supply chain risks. Organizational culture also makes a positive impact on the implementation of strategic sourcing. This study emphasizes the importance of cultural impacts to supply executives and managers in supply chain risk management.

Start-ups are the new avenues for innovation and employment. Strategic management is critical for employee engagement and skill development of start-ups. This study aims to understand the impact of strategic management on employee engagement and skill development.

The study attempts to identify principal factors of strategic management influencing employee engagement and skill development. Structural equation modeling has been used to understand effects of the study.

The study results have shown the challenges concerning employee skill development and reflected on importance of the employee engagement programmes for the growth of the human resource in the start-ups.

The study has confined to strategic management for employee engagement and skill development. However, studies related to challenges encountered by start-ups in the specific areas of marketing, operations and finance, etc. would provide more detailed impact on the growth of start-ups.

This study provides an insight into strategic management for employee engagement and skill development. The results would provide directions for improving strategy management from the perspective of employee engagement and skill development.

The study on start-ups provides a direction to the owners of start-ups to understand the importance of strategic management and human resource management for building strong enterprising which can provide employment opportunity for the youth of the nation and improve the society at large.

This paper is an attempt to provide directions for managing challenges from the perspective of employees’ engagement and skill development, which is essential for growth and sustainability in the future.

Modern academic links between leadership and strategy were forged in the early 1960s with the heightened application of strategy to business planning. These links were soon dissolved by the strategy consultants who came to dominate the field of business strategy in the mid-1960s. The consultants dismissed the role of leadership in strategic planning in favor of objective analyses of the external environment that eliminated any need for leadership skills, judgment, values, or intuition. Failures to implement strategy in the 1980s led to limited roles for leaders in implementing strategies they had no role in creating, but the gulf between leadership and strategy has steadily widened.

This paper traces the consequences of this widening gulf for teaching leadership and strategy in the classroom. It explores how an integrated approach to teaching leadership and strategy would better prepare today’s students for the challenges they will face as future business leaders.

This manuscript explores the evolving roles of HR professionals amidst global megatrends and organizational transitions, focusing on the Italian context, which has experienced disruptive adoption of new forms of work such as remote and hybrid work. In this challenging scenario, our research aims to uncover if and how HR professionals are transforming their roles or maintaining the status quo in navigating organizational changes, dealing with the upcoming working scenario, and challenging conventional perceptions of HR practitioners.

The study employs the social-symbolic work lens, that contributes to a deeper understanding of how HR professionals work to construct organizational life, the identities of employees, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. This perspective highlights HR professionals’ personal efforts, consisting of the emotional labor entailed in steering organizational transformations and, eventually, maintenance in a context where remote work has become prevalent. Data was collected through 16 online focus groups involving 76 HR professionals from Italian organizations.

Our research offers two interrelated contributions to HR literature. First, we provide pieces of evidence on how HR practitioners act as agents of change in two emerging roles: the “Wannabe Hero” and the “Ordinary Hero”. This challenges the prevailing rhetorical discourse about the so-called HR business partner. Secondly, we delve into the persistent obstacles that hinder HR professionals from making a substantial impact in addressing radical changes. These findings will provide useful insights into effectively engaging HR practitioners as agents of change in organizational transformation, shedding light on praxis, structures, and their emotional work.

The paper analyzes HR professionals’ social-symbolic work, which offers an original contribution to the comprehension of the activities they carry on in practice and the emotions they have been experiencing. These influence both the way HR professionals play their role and the organizational and institutional environment.

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.