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The purpose of this study is to identify the drivers and future scenarios of Iran’s Social Security Organization.

The research is applied in terms of orientation and mixed in terms of methodology. In this research, the methods of theme analysis, root definitions, fuzzy Delphi and Cocoso were used. The theoretical population is the managers and senior experts of the social security organization, and the sampling method was done in a judgmental way. The tools of data collection were interviews and questionnaires. The interview tool was used to extract the main and subdrivers of the research and develop the scenarios.

Through theme analysis, 35 subdrivers were extracted in the form of economic, sociocultural, financial and investment, policy, marketing, environmental and legal themes. Due to the large number of subdrivers, these factors were screened with fuzzy Delphi. Eleven drivers had defuzzied coefficient higher than 0.7 and were selected for final prioritization. The final drivers were prioritized with the CoCoSo technique, and the two drivers of social security holdings governance and state of government revenues had the highest priority. Based on these two drivers, four scenarios of prosperity, resilient social security, unstable development and collapse have been developed.

Some of the suggestions of the research are: using the capacity of FinTechs and financial startups to invest the government revenues of the organization, using digital technologies such as business intelligence for more efficient decisions and developing corporate governance in the organization.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of job-hopping executives at their former and subsequent firms.

We conduct regression analyses using a sample of firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2010 to 2020 to examine whether CSR performance is similar from one firm to the next as executives switch jobs.

We find a positive relationship between the CSR performance of former and subsequent firms under job-hopping executives. This relationship is the strongest in the year of the job switch; it weakens in the second year and eventually disappears in the third year. In addition, we show that this relationship benefits different CSR stakeholder groups and is contingent on executive and subsequent firm attributes and job-hopping characteristics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that firms that hire a new chief executive officer from a firm with a strong track record in CSR, the new firm experiences a significant surge in CSR performance compared with firms that do not experience such a shock.

This study has implications for executive hiring decisions.

This study extends the understanding of CSR determinants through the lens of inter-organisational ties associated with job-hopping executives.

Prior literature has long argued that knowledge networks contain great opportunities for innovation, and researchers can identify these opportunities using the properties of knowledge networks (PKNs). However, previous studies have examined only the relationship between structural PKNs (s-PKNs) and innovation, ignoring the effect of qualitative PKNs (q-PKNs), which refer to the quality of the relationship between two elements. This study aims to further investigate the effects of q-PKNs on innovation.

Using a panel data set of 2,255 patents from the Chinese wind energy industry, the authors construct knowledge networks to identify more PKNs and examine these hypotheses.

The results show that q-PKNs significantly influence recombinant innovation (RI), reflecting the importance of q-PKNs analysed in this study. Moreover, the results suggest that the combinational potential of an element with others may be huge at different levels of q-PKNs.

This study advances the understanding of PKNs and RI by exploring how q-PKNs impact RI. At different levels of PKNs, the potential of the elements to combine with others and form innovation are different. Researchers can more accurately identify the opportunities for RI using two kinds of PKNs. The findings also provide important implications on how government should provide support for R&D firms.

This study aims to identify the political alignment and political activity of the 11 Presidents of Britain’s most important scientific organisation, the Royal Society of London, in its early years 1662–1703, to determine whether or not the institution was politically aligned.

There is almost no information addressing the political alignment of the Royal Society or its Presidents available in the institution’s archives, or in the writings of historians specialising in its administration. Even reliable biographical sources, such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography provide very limited information. However, as 10 Presidents were elected Member of Parliament (MP), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social and Local History provides a wealth of accurate, in-depth data, revealing the alignment of both.

All Presidents held senior government offices, the first was a Royalist aristocrat; of the remaining 10, 8 were Royalist or Tory MPs, 2 of whom were falsely imprisoned by the House of Commons, 2 were Whig MPs, while 4 were elevated to the Lords. The institution was Royalist aligned 1662–1680, Tory aligned 1680–1695 and Whig aligned 1695–1703, which reflects changes in Parliament and State.

This study establishes that the early Royal Society was not an apolitical institution and that the political alignment of Presidents and institution continued in later eras. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the election or appointment of an organisation’s most senior officer can be used to signal its political alignment with government and other organisations to serve various ends.

The purpose of the study is to identify barriers to collaboration among female administrators at a Ghanaian technical university (TU), based on the social identity theory (SIT).

A mixed-method approach was adopted, integrating qualitative interviews of 15 female administrators and completing structured questionnaires from 117 randomly sampled female administrators. The SIT, as the analytical framework, identified themes emerging from the data on barriers to collaboration among female administrators. While exploratory factor analysis identified measures of factors hindering collaborations, the use of structural equation modeling (SEM) enabled the confirmation of relationships among the barriers to collaboration with female administrators.

There existed statistically significant relationships between four of the barriers: intergroup relations conflict, trust with stakeholders and among females and structural barriers (SBs). For the quantitative analysis, it was found that SBs, intergroup relations, conflict and trust were statistically significant except for weak cultures. For the qualitative, results showed that SBs, lack of trust with stakeholders and among females and intergroup conflict hinder collaboration.

The study has a limited scope in using only one TU and focusing on a particular gender. The implications of this research will enrich the literature on barriers to female administrative collaboration in technical education based on the SIT.

Promoting administrative collaborations in the TU will ensure sustainability and efficient administrative systems.

Institutional policies should include gender inclusivity and equality on networking opportunities and provide mentorship programs for efficient administrative systems.

We used the SIT to determine barriers to collaboration among female administrators in a technical education institution, and the mixed methodology added a unique dimension to the study.

Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies. The study also analyzes the sensitivity of various operational decisions to mitigate bias in the analysis.

The model adapts empirical methodologies from activity-based modeling, transport equity evaluation, and residential freight trip generation (RFTG) to estimate person- and household-level delivery demand and cargo van traffic exposure in 41 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).

Evaluating 12 measurements across varying population segments and spatial units, the study finds robust evidence for racial and socio-economic inequities in last-mile delivery for low-income and, especially, populations of color (POC). By the most conservative measurement, POC are exposed to roughly 35% more cargo van traffic than white populations on average, despite ordering less than half as many packages. The study explores the model’s utility by evaluating a simple scenario that finds marginal equity gains for urban freight management strategies that prioritize line-haul efficiency improvements over those improving intra-neighborhood circulations.

Presents a first effort in building a modeling framework for more equitable decision-making in last-mile delivery operations and broader city planning.

Literature around the careers of female academics is targeted mainly toward identifying and examining career progression inhibitors, while the drivers appear largely unexplored. This paper aims to contribute to contemporary knowledge by identifying drivers to the career progression of female academics in Australia. With COVID-19 currently impacting the careers of female academics this knowledge can assist universities and human resource (HR) professionals in developing policies and practices to better facilitate female academic career progression.

Empirically this paper draws on a qualitative study of 18 male and 29 female academics, as well as nine senior university stakeholders. The authors employed semi-structured interviews and a novel methodology, Draw, Write, Reflect.

In line with attribution theory, senior stakeholders mainly identified organisational efforts, including leadership, gender equity endeavours, recruitment and promotion approaches, as well as a construct known as “relative to opportunity considerations”, as drivers of female academics’ career progression. Female academics, however, largely attributed their career progression to personal factors, such as family support, informal mentoring, and determination and persistence.

The findings have implications for universities and HR practices seeking to facilitate female academic career progression. Implementation of the drivers identified may enhance female academics’ abilities to progress their careers.

By focussing on the drivers of, rather than the barriers to, female academic careers, the research is novel in its identification of a previously unexplored mismatch between organisational attribution and individual attribution of career progression drivers thereby advancing knowledge of gender differences in academic careers.

This study aims to study the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the relationship between outsourcing and product innovation in entrepreneurial ventures in a transition economy.

The data of 10,296 Vietnamese entrepreneurial ventures from the four rounds of the survey conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam to investigate the moderating effects of private ownership and government support on the association between outsourcing and entrepreneurial ventures’ product innovation performance. The Probit regression model is employed to estimate such associations.

Our research uncovered that the impact of outsourcing on the likelihood of product innovation is more significant for entrepreneurial operations characterized by a substantial degree of private ownership and government backing as opposed to those without.

The results of our research indicated that the resource-based perspective and extended resource-based view (ERBV) are essential in examining the impact of gaining resources or skills from external sources on the growth of entrepreneurial enterprises. These ideas have significance and importance not just in industrialized economies but also in countries undergoing transition. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial enterprises should have the ability to manage a wide range of resources and make decisions about which activities should be handled internally and which should be delegated to other parties.

Our findings also imply that entrepreneurial ventures should be able to control many resources and choose which tasks should be performed in-house and which should be outsourced to third parties.

By adopting and leveraging the resource-based view (RBV) and extended resource-based views (ERBV), our study developed a theoretical model about private ownership and government support for moderate outsourcing’s impact on entrepreneurial innovation in a transition economy.