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Implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has proven a significant challenge for companies. While multinational enterprises (MNEs) have shown a real intention to contribute to these goals, they face major barriers in implementing the SDGs in their core business strategies. Extant academic studies on this phenomenon have primarily explored why companies “should” address the SDG agenda but have not (yet) explored what “works,” what does not “work,” and why. Therefore, evidence of a sizable gap between intention and realization is growing. Besides, there is a limited explanation for the existence of this gap and no validated implementation models that could help overcome it. Additionally, management research remains relatively fragmented. The diversity of existing theoretical and empirical frameworks makes it difficult to consolidate scientific and practical insights on “how” to guide companies to accelerate the global goals through their core operations.

This study is one of the first attempts to draw lessons from extant research on effective SDGs’ implementation strategies. For that, we upgrade the “SDG Compass,” which has been recognized as a leading framework for SDGs implementation in companies’ core activities. A critical assessment of the literature on the SDGs implementation has been conducted through a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis. This has helped us identify gaps in the SDG implementation practice and accumulate relevant insights supporting a more integrated and upgraded implementation framework: the SDG Compass+. This framework can advance coordinated theoretical and practical research by identifying the antecedents and critical factors of impactful SDG implementation strategies.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the ‘real’ world and substantially impacted the virtual world and thus the Internet ecosystem. It has caused a significant exogenous shock that offers a wealth of natural experiments and produced new data about broadband, clouds, and the Internet in times of crisis. In this chapter, we characterise and evaluate the evolving impact of the global COVID-19 crisis on traffic patterns and loads and the impact of those on Internet performance from multiple perspectives. While we place a particular focus on deriving insights into how we can better respond to crises and better plan for the post-COVID-19 ‘new normal’, we analyse the impact on and the responses by different actors of the Internet ecosystem across different jurisdictions. With a focus on the USA and Europe, we examine the responses of both public and private actors, with the latter including content and cloud providers, content delivery networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs). This chapter makes two contributions: first, we derive lessons learned for a future post-COVID-19 world to inform non-networking spheres and policy-making; second, the insights gained assist the networking community in better planning for the future.

Companies are increasingly leveraging digital technologies toward innovation strategies that deliver novel features to customers sequentially through successive new product generations (i.e., successive innovation). Extant literature examining successive innovation is both limited and fragmented across marketing and management literatures. Our goal is to synthesize literature on concepts related to successive innovation (such as versioning and upgrades) to identify the core dimensions of successive innovation and provide a cohesive framework to guide future research in this domain.

Given the equivocality in understanding the conceptual domain of successive innovation, we review and synthesize literature across three disciplinary domains: marketing, management, and information and decision sciences. Based on the emerging patterns from the literature review, we develop a conceptual framework of successive innovation with the aim of moving the discussion toward greater theoretical clarity.

Based on the literature review and synthesis, we identify three core-dimensions that define successive innovation and compare these across digital and physical product realms: coexistence, embeddedness, and adoption controllability.

Our proposed conceptual dimensions of successive innovation, and discussion of differences across physical and digital product domains, offer important directions for future research and a common vocabulary.

As physical and digital successive innovations can differ in coexistence, embeddedness, and adoption controllability, firms need to consider relevant barriers to adoption of successive product generations and select appropriate strategies to promote and communicate successive innovation. Our proposed successive innovation conceptual dimensions help managers comprehend the complexity of arranging such innovation in business and consumer segments.

Our contribution to the emerging literature on successive innovation is threefold. First, by conducting a comprehensive literature review, we integrate insights from different fields of inquiry (i.e., marketing, management, and information and decision sciences). Second, based on the synthesis of the literature, we offer a conceptual framework of successive innovation, which aims to move the discussion toward greater theoretical clarity. Third, based on our review and conceptual framework, we discuss a set of future research directions to guide academic research efforts.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.

Three decades of academic and professional discourse on HR technologies (HRTs) have produced continued disagreement over construct definitions and research streams that are highly fragmented. These realities suggest that greater consistency in meanings is sorely needed if we are to integrate and upgrade knowledge in this area. This chapter draws on the findings of a systematic research review to properly define the content domains of human resource information systems (HRIS), virtual human resources (virtual HR), electronic human resource management (e-HRM), and business-to-employee (B2E) systems. An integrative synthesis was performed on 242 system-level writings that appeared in the literature from 1983 to 2017. The weight of the evidence strongly supports treating HRIS, virtual HR, e-HRM, and B2E systems as independent, complimentary constructs. While the first three comprise a firm’s HRT system, the fourth construct is more appropriately positioned in the business-collaborative system. The sample was further evaluated with an analytic framework to detect patterns of practice in research designs. This revealed that much more attention has been focused on system actions and outcomes than on attitudes and system characteristics. Different units of analysis were well represented aside from trans-organizational studies. Finally, a case is made for better contextualizing HRT research by recognizing differences in assimilation stage, functional penetration, and collective proficiency. These factors are rarely mentioned, let alone studied, raising additional concerns about measurement error. Detailed suggestions are offered on ways to incorporate them. Together, these materials should promote more sophisticated and generalizable assessments of technology, improving our ability to understand its impacts.

Introduction: Human resource management (HRM) is going through a transformation phase due to the pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis compelled the employees to work virtually. To mitigate the effects of COVID-19, several organisations heavily invested in artificial intelligence (AI) in the realm of HRM.

Purpose: With limited studies on the paradigm shift in HRM post-pandemic and the role of AI, the study investigates and proposes a conceptual framework for the paradigm shift in HRM practices post-COVID-19 pandemic and the significance of AI. Furthermore, the study investigates the outcomes of the use of AI in HRM for organisations and employees.

Methodology: A comprehensive review of the literature based on the guidelines of Tranfield, Denyer, and Smart (2003) and Crossan and Apaydin (2010) has been followed. A systematic literature review assisted in critically analysing, synthesising, and mapping the extant literature by identifying the broad themes involved.

Findings: COVID-19-related economic disruption has led to a paradigm shift in HRM practices. AI-enabled HRM practices are now centred around remote and contingent workforce management, mindfulness, social capital, increasing employee engagement, reskilling and upskilling towards new competencies, etc. AI is making remote work seamless through smooth recruitment and selection process, onboarding, career and development, tracking and managing the performance, facilitating learning, and talent management. Post-pandemic, AI-powered tools based on data mining (DM), predictive analytics, big data analytics, natural language processing (NLP), intelligent robots, machine learning (ML), virtual (VR)/augmented reality (AR), etc., have paved the way for managing the HRM practices effectively, thereby leading to enhanced organisational performance, employee well-being, automation, and reduced cost.