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This paper aims to explore the significance of resource sharing in business to capture new market opportunities and securing competitive advantages. Firms enter strategic alliances (SAs), especially for designing new products and to overcome challenges in today’s fast changing environment. Research projects have dealt with the creation of SAs, however without concrete referencing the impact on selected supply chain resources. Furthermore, academia rather focused on elaborating the advantages and disadvantages of SAs and how this affects structural changes in the organization than examining the effects on supply chain complexity and performance.

The authors collected and triangulated a multi-industry data set containing primary data coming from more than 200 experts in the field of supply chain management along and secondary data coming from Refinitiv’s joint ventures (JVs) and SA database and IR solutions’ database for annual reports. The data is evaluated in three empirical settings using binomial testing and structural equation modeling.

The results show that nonequity SAs and JVs have varying degrees of impact on supply chain resources due to differences in the scope of the partnership. This has a negative impact on the complexity of the supply chain, with the creation of a JV leading to greater complexity than the creation of a nonequity SA. Furthermore, the findings prove that complexity negatively impacts overall supply chain performance. In addition, this study elaborates that increased management capabilities are needed to exploit the potentials of SAs and sheds light on hurdles that must be overcome within the supply network when forming a partnership. Finally, the authors give practical implications on how organizations can cope with increasing complexity to lower the risk of poor supply chain performance.

This study investigates occurring challenges when establishing nonequity SAs or JVs and how this affects their supply chain by examining supply networks in terms of complexity and performance.

Supply chain vulnerability (SCV) analysis is vital for manufacturers globally because it creates a pathway for building resilient supply chains in uncertain environments. This study aims to identify drivers of SCV in the Indian manufacturing sector.

Sixteen drivers were identified from the literature review and followed by expert interviews. Interpretive structural modeling was used to determine the hierarchical structural relationship among identified SCV factors.

It was found that risk is not a board room agenda. Misaligned performance measures with incentives and lack of risk dashboard are the causal factors of SCV. Supply chain security, centralized production and distribution and lack of trust in the supply chain were driven factors.

This provides new insights to assess and prioritize initiatives for supply chain sustainability in terms of continuing business operations. The structural model provides a systemic view of SCV and helps reduce vulnerability.

This study aims to analyze the factors that drive or prevent interorganizational data sharing in the context of digital transformation (DT). Data sharing appears as a precondition for companies to capture emerging opportunities in supply chain management and for product-related servitization; however, there are ongoing concerns, and data are often perceived as the “new oil.” It is thus important to gain a better understanding of the determinants of firms’ decisions.

The authors develop an embedded case study analysis involving 16 firms within an extended supply network in the automotive industry. The authors focus on the peculiarities of the new context, as opposed to elements highlighted by research prior to the advent of the latest technologies. Abductive reasoning is applied to the theoretical foundations of the resource-based view, resource dependence theory and the complex adaptive systems perspective.

Data sharing is largely underpinned by factors identified prior to DT, such as data specificity, dependence dynamics and protection mechanisms and the dynamism of the business context. DT, however, can influence the extent of data sharing. New factors concern complementarities whenever data are pooled from different sources and digital platforms, as well as different forms of data ownership protection.

This study stresses that data sharing in the context of DT can be explained through established theoretical lenses, providing the integration of elements accounting for new technological opportunities.

The modern corporation is evaluated by many measures that go beyond profit, which was the emphasis for years previously. Today’s corporation is weighed against expectations of many stakeholders, including not just customers but employees, investors, the government and even the public at large with no discernible financial or other tie to a company. As such, corporate boards necessarily must be concerned with more than financial performance, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the increasing emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. Given that public relations scholars and practitioners have long been concerned with stakeholder relationships, social responsibility and other non-financial indicators, it would make sense that public relations has a more obvious presence on corporate boards.

This study examined the 25 companies in the Fortune Modern Board 25 to determine how many board members had a background or expertise in public relations that would contribute to the leadership necessary for the concerns of the modern corporation, and whether the boards had a committee designated to public relations or related functions.

Results show that there are few corporate boards that have public relations represented prominently in either their members or committees. The same is true for executive leadership teams. Public relations or communications executives do appear to play some role in ESG, CSR and DEI reporting, but often there are staff members with those specific titles and roles.

The study was limited to 25 corporations on a Forbes list that ranked them as best in communicating ESG, CSR and DEI. The method examined publicly available literature which was revealing to the research questions, but more could be learned by interview or survey with CCOs.

The study shows the current presence of public relations capacity in terms of members of corporate boards, corporate committees and among the C-suite is not significant. Also, rather than PR as a function owning modern concerns of DEI, ESG and CSR, there are professionals with specific expertise in those areas who are responsible for those corporate issues.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), ESG (environmental, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) have recently been stressed as important for corporations to measure and report. The role of the public relations profession in managing and/or communicating in these areas is important to consider in terms of public expectations and satisfaction of communication on these subjects.

This paper is unique in integrating public relations theory and practice with board theory and the current management concerns with ESG, CSR and DEI. Little if any previous research has considered which professions are in charge of communicating on these concerns.

Virtual reality (VR) offers unprecedented immersion and interactivity in education, and working and learning from home have become the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study empirically investigated the factors affecting the use of a VR online learning system (VROLS).

To explore factors affecting users’ continuance behavioral intentions toward using VROLSs, a research framework was formed comprising factors that constitute benefits (i.e. pull factors) and costs (i.e. push factors); these factors included perceived value, flow and social influence. The data for this study were collected via online survey questionnaires. A total of 307 valid responses were used to examine the hypotheses in the research model, employing structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques.

Perceived value, flow experience and the number of peers using VR primarily affect the decision to adopt a VROLS. The pull factors of spatial presence, entertainment and service compatibility, along with the push factors of complexity and visual fatigue, affect perceived value. Therefore, we conclude that perceived value is a primary factor positively influencing both flow experience and the decision to adopt the service.

This study contributes to a theoretical understanding of factors that explain users’ intention to use VROLSs.

This paper aims to examine the antecedents of adoption intention of profit-sharing investment deposits (PSID) among Moroccan customers.

Applying an extended version of diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory and using a non-probability sampling technique with convenience approach, a quantitative survey was developed and administered to 171 Islamic banking users. Structural equation modeling was then used to evaluate the significance of relationships between the various variables under study using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 26.0 statistical packages.

Empirical findings of the structural analysis indicated a significant direct relationship between adoption intention and six out of seven variables: perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility, perceived complexity, perceived risk, religiosity and social influence, all of which had a significant effect on Moroccan customers’ intention to invest their funds in profit-sharing based deposit instruments, whereas customer awareness exerted an insignificant positive effect.

The absence of a longitudinal study tracking the actual adoption behavior is the main limitation of this study. Furthermore, data were collected solely from Islamic banking users. Finally, despite being insightful, the empirical findings should be generalized with caution since the sample was purposely selected by the banks’ management.

This study implied that participatory banks should pay substantial attention to risk perceptions, as PSID adoption intention is typically inhibited by high perceived risks associated with these products. Moreover, this study provides great indications to Moroccan regulators and policymakers on a number of issues related to this emerging business.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper represents the first attempt to confirm the effectiveness of the Rogers’ DOI in examining the intention to adopt a financial innovation in the Moroccan context. It is also the first of its kind to address customers’ apprehensions regarding profit-sharing investment products.

This study examines the relationship between multi-layer supply chain flexibility (MSCF) and Supply chain resilience (SCR). Further, it looks at the moderating effect of environmental dynamism (ED) and supply chain risks (SCRI) on the relationship between MSCF and SCR.

Executives from the pharmaceutical, agri-food, electronics, automobile and textile industries were invited to complete a self-administered questionnaire. We received feedback from a total of 302 participants. Prior to conducting the primary analysis, we addressed the potential for nonresponse bias and verified the assumptions of homoscedasticity and normal distribution of the data. The reliability and validity of the constructs were established through confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modelling is employed for the purpose of conducting hypothesis testing.

The results demonstrate a notable influence of MSCF on SCR, particularly in settings characterized by high levels of ED and SCRI. The study highlights the importance of flexibility in multiple aspects of the supply chain to build resilience against a range of disruptions and uncertainties.

The study presents the fundamental role of Multi-Layer Flexibility in building up SCR. The results of this study reinforce the existing literature and offers empirical evidence for how ED, SCRI moderates the influence between MSCF to SCR. These results offer valuable information to both supply chain specialists and researchers for building comprehensive strategy to bring resilience in supply chains.

Existing research has examined the results of women’s political leadership participation (WPLP) and the reasons for the lack of advancement of women to management positions. However, little research has been adopting a more comprehensive framework and configuration perspective to investigate the determinants of WPLP. By integrating institutional theory and institutional complementarities theory, this study aims to construct an institution–culture–structure framework to investigate the multiple driving mechanisms of WPLP.

Drawing on the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method and a sample of 66 countries, the authors identify multiple equifinal combinations of conditions related to high and not-high levels of WPLP.

According to the results, the authors summarize five pathways influencing WPLP. These pathways include education and culture-driven pattern, political institutions-driven pattern, political institutions and structure-driven pattern, integrated-driven pattern and political institutions and culture restrictive pattern.

The authors shed new light on the driving mechanism of WPLP and contribute to research on making full out of women’s leadership.

Technostress reduces employees' work performance and increases their turnover intentions, such that technostress harms organizations' success. This paper investigates how the digital mindset of employees, reflecting their cognitive filter while using digital technologies, influences reactions to techno-stressors.

In this quantitative study, the authors conducted a survey among 151 employees who regularly use digital technologies and encounter various techno-stressors in their daily work. To build this research model and evaluate the influence of employees’ digital mindset on technostress, the authors followed arguments from the transactional model of stress. The authors evaluated our research model using the covariance-based structural equation model.

The study findings reveal that employees’ digital mindset influences technostress. Employees with high levels of digital mindset react with less adverse effects on perceived techno-stressors. Further, the authors find that employees with high levels of digital mindset perform well and are satisfied with their job. The authors contribute to technostress research by revealing that digital mindset buffers the adverse effects of techno-stressors. The authors also contribute to research on digital mindset by showing that it influences psychological and behavioral reactions to techno-stressors.

This study develops and empirically tests an integrated model of technostress to explain how digital mindset mitigates technostress. The study findings outline relevant research avenues for studies investigating employees’ characteristics and technostress.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the productive structure and the size of the informal economy in Latin American countries.

The study employs econometric techniques for panel data covering the period from 2002 to 2017 and considering 17 Latin American countries. The evidence presented is based on the informal economy data generated by Medina and Schneider (2018) who estimate the size of the informal economy using a structural equation model and the share of manufacturing in total employment as a measure of the size of the manufacturing sector. Also, the study addresses the possible endogeneity bias in the relationship studied and makes the conclusions more robust, thus avoiding spurious correlations that weaken the findings.

The results indicate that most industrialized Latin American countries are associated with a smaller size of the informal economy.

The findings have important policy implications, as they suggest that Latin American economies need to switch the structure of the economy toward more sophisticated productive structures if they want to reduce the size of the informal economy. Thus, more efforts should be deployed to policies to diversify and upgrade economies.

The study contributes to the literature on the informal economy by connecting the country’s productive structure and informality. Specifically, the results show that the productive structure of countries is a plausible explanation for the size of the informal economy.