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investigate and analyze the aspects of legitimation, theorization and trends for the evolution of research in information technology governance (ITG) in Brazil, according to researchers familiar with the matter.

By means of a qualitative and quantitative research of exploratory-descriptive approach, the Delphi method was applied using a questionnaire supported by content analysis.

ITG is an increasingly interdisciplinary research field, with significant help from other fields of knowledge, such as administration, computer science and engineering. The main means of ITG publication are periodicals (MISQ, JMIS, JISTEM RESI), scientific events (AMCIS, ECIS, HICSS, EnANPAD, CONTECSI) and researchers, such as Peter Weill and Edimara Mezzomo Luciano. Best practice models are the most significant theoretical frameworks, and the main trend of research are on emerging technologies such as cloud computing and Internet of things (IoT) in the context of ITG.

To the unavailability of some researchers to participate in the second phase of the Delphi research performed, as well as the non-completion of a third Delphi round. Likewise, the “Block B (open answer questions)” it was not contemplated in the second phase for a new collection of answers, which could partially change the results presented here.

The results show important insights for ITG researchers that can allow new researches about its applications, jointly reflecting on relevant aspects for the advancement of this research field.

There are several research contributions to broaden the discussion and the evolution of this new scientific field in Brazil and that can be grouped for each set of stakeholders: academia and related researchers; the practicing community of business managers and private and public organizations; the academic legitimizing bodies; the non-academic legitimating bodies and researchers from other areas of knowledge.

ITG is a concept that emerged as part of corporate governance (CG), which has evolved as an emerging theme and is expanding in the international academic arena. However, the current stage of legitimation, theorization and trends of ITG in the Brazilian researches are lacked greater understanding, in order to provide better targeting for new researches.

This paper aims to propose the phenomenography as an approach that may contribute to the organizational studies based on the practice perspective, considering that it analyzes the phenomenon through the practitioner’s view and experience.

It is a theoretical essay about phenomenography as a theoretical-methodological perspective, considering its concept, its relation with practice theories and how its theoretical-methodological approach is capable of bringing a new perspective over the organizations, in the practice perspective.

The phenomenographic method, together with the practice perspective, enables mapping, identifying, describing and relating all the different ways by which an organization, in each one of its structuring dimensions, is effectively experienced. It argues that aspects such as the phenomenographic interview, the second-order perspective, the collective conceptions stated in the outcome space and their relations, the complexity of hierarchy and the abductive theorization about the emerging concepts of collective perceptions form, all together, an alternative and promising theoretical approach to analyze the entanglement between action and the material dimension that constitutes the organizational practices.

The phenomenographic outcome space may become a catalyst of a theorization about practices, which is capable to modify them or modify the way they are understood.

It discusses the possibility of phenomenography to theorize from the agents’ collective consciousness.

Conducting research that is both practice- and theory-relevant is important for the service research community. Action research can be a fruitful approach for service researchers studying the transformative role of service research and wanting to make contributions to both the research community and to practical development. By exploring the current use of action research in service research, this study aims to make suggestions for enhancing the contribution to theory and practice development and to propose criteria for research quality for action research in service research.

This study builds on a systematic literature review of the use of action research approaches in service research.

The study makes three main contributions. First, it posits that any action research project needs to consider the four elements of problem identification, theorization, creating guiding concepts and intervention. Second, based on these elements mirrored in service action research, it outlines and analyzes three approaches to action research (i.e. theory-enhancing, concept developing and practice-enhancing). Third, it suggests a move from instrumental to a more conceptual relevance of the research and elaborates on the criteria for research quality.

This study contributes to the understanding of how action research may be applied for conducting high-quality collaborative research in services and proposes measures to enhance research quality in action research projects focusing services.

This paper aims to add to the theorization of the gender dynamic in rural areas by investigating the motives of women who join their family firm (or their spouse's family firm) and thereby defy the demographic trend of rural flight. The context of this study is the depopulation of rural areas with the closing of basic services and relocation of the younger population, and educated women in particular, to urban areas. Consequently, rural family businesses risk failing to find successors and suffering forced closure or relocation. The empirical site of the study is rural family firms in Sweden, a context characterized by a high level of gender equality in legislation and culture but gender-conservative business structures in rural regions.

The empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of nine (9) life course narratives of women entrepreneurs in a rural region of Southern Sweden who have returned to rural areas to join their family business. The authors follow the view established by gender scholars that women are active agents in navigating their lives, and their life story narratives offer insight into the considerations that inform their choice to stay or return to rural locations. In Sweden, the setting for the study, gender equality is widely supported by legislation, policy and institutional frameworks and popular understanding of gender relations. In contrast to the gender-progressive policies of Sweden at large, women's entrepreneurship in rural regions of Sweden tends to follow traditional gender hierarchies and face similar constraints as in rural areas of other countries. The juxtaposition of these competing sets of ideals makes Sweden an important and interesting place to study and draw insights from the experiences of women entrepreneurs.

The findings reveal that women who choose to join rural family firms view them primarily in a positive light and see this choice as aligned with their need for professional flexibility and assertiveness, rewarding relationships, and a calm, secure, well-balanced life. Theoretically, the study implies that women choosing to engage in rural family firms seek non-material benefits, such as work–life balance and social support, and may be driven in part by a sense of psychological ownership that extends to the rural community.

The findings provide novel insights on women as active agents in navigating their lives and the intrinsic (e.g. alignment of personal values) and extrinsic (e.g. community support) motives that inform their decisions. The study also raises questions regarding how women perceive themselves as “fitting in” to rural settings and to what extent the sense of security within these settings that the women describe may be contingent upon factors such as their families' embeddedness within the community as well as their conformity to the local social norms.

This conceptual paper explores the possibility to envision circular regenerative processes embracing agrowth and placemaking within tourism; an industry remarkably connected to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impacts on the planet. Drawing on theorisations of circular economy, on the concept of agrowth, and on theories of placemaking, this viewpoint offers a novel conceptual framework to imagine a regenerative future for tourism.

The authors connect the ancient archetype of “circularity”, largely used to make sense of life on Earth, with the Greek concept of oikonomia. The resulting notion of a circular oikonomia is then intersected with theories of placemaking. In doing so, the authors are driven by the idea of de-growth, as an “a-growthism” urging the abandonment of the faith towards growth for an enduring stable regenerative agrowth.

The authors offer a novel conceptual framework to counteract the negative impacts of Anthropocene and envision future scenarios in which tourism can make a difference by enacting enduring regenerative processes for places and human and non-human entities.

The originality of this study lies in the conceptual framework proposed to imagine the future of tourism, hospitality and mobilities in circular regenerative terms. This study envisions stable and enduring regenerative processes of natural assets, materials, products, services and resources as well as a tourism space made up of lively, multiple, transformative relationships and interactions among people and the environments people live in and travel to.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the default portrayal of street trade as an informal occupation and spatial practice, by examining comparatively the changes in the regulatory frameworks of two politically distinct city administrations in Latin America since the introduction of the informal economy debate.

This paper draws from a comparative case study design to synthesize evidence from historical administrative records, secondary research and materials from a two-year fieldwork carried out in Lima and Bogotá in 2008 and 2009.

The author argues that the incorporation of the informal economy framework into local governments’ policymaking has reframed street trade as a subject of policy. Since the 1970s, the author traces a shift from worker-centered initiatives, through the deregulation of street trade, to entrepreneurial-centered approaches. Nowadays, both, Lima’s neoliberal governance focusing on “formalizing” and Bogotá’s socialist/progressive governance aiming at “upgrading” street trade respond more explicitly to distinct assessments about the informal economy – legalist and dualist, respectively. Yet, both cities converge in that the closer street trade is perceived as an informal occupation; the more likely policy initiatives decouple the right to work from the right to access public space, spurring more marginal forms of street vending.

Even though the informal economy framework has helped to draw attention to important policy issues locally, nationally and internationally, this paper calls for a critical revision of such framing at the local level to allow for inclusive urban governance.

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML) offer opportunities for organizations to develop new or enhance existing capabilities. Despite the endless possibilities, organizations face operational challenges in harvesting the value of ML-based capabilities (MLbC), and current research has yet to explicate these challenges and theorize their remedies. To bridge the gap, this study explored the current practices to propose a systematic way of orchestrating MLbC development, which is an extension of ongoing digitalization of organizations.

Data were collected from Finland's Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (FAIA) and complemented by follow-up interviews with experts outside FAIA in Europe, China and the United States over four years. Data were analyzed through open coding, thematic analysis and cross-comparison to develop a comprehensive understanding of the MLbC development process.

The analysis identified the main components of MLbC development, its three phases (development, release and operation) and two major MLbC development challenges: Temporal Complexity and Context Sensitivity. The study then introduced Fostering Temporal Congruence and Cultivating Organizational Meta-learning as strategic practices addressing these challenges.

This study offers a better theoretical explanation for the MLbC development process beyond MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) and its hindrances. It also proposes a practical way to align ML-based applications with business needs while accounting for their structural limitations. Beyond the MLbC context, this study offers a strategic framework that can be adapted for different cases of digital transformation that include automation and augmentation of work.

This paper aims to add to the theorization of family dynamics and women’s entrepreneurship by examining women’s influence on decision-making in family businesses. Business decisions in family firms, in particular, are not free from family influence in terms of goals and strategies, and the role of women in decision-making processes is of particular interest. Consequently, the role of women entrepreneurs in family firms and their influence on business development requires a more fine-grained analysis of the family dynamic within the family and the business.

This study draws on a qualitative study and focuses on the life story narratives of nine women in rural family businesses in rural communities of Småland province in Sweden to empirically examine the decision-making processes. This region is known both for its entrepreneurial culture and traditional gender order. Based on the narrative accounts of women entrepreneurs in family businesses, the data analysis method is thematic, using a Gioia-inspired method.

The complexity of decision-making in rural family firms is further complicated in part due to a closeness with the rural community. Thus, a typology of three decision-making modes in family firms emerges an informal family-oriented mode, a semistructured family/employee consensus mode and a formal board mode with at least one nonfamily member. Moreover, the advantages, disadvantages and strategies that women use to influence decisions within the respective mode are outlined.

This work contributes to the study of women’s agency and its implications in family business and entrepreneurship in the rural context. The study implies that women’s agency shapes the (rural) entrepreneurship context and, likewise, the (rural) entrepreneurship context influences women’s agency. Hence, the author challenges the view of women as only caregivers and sheds light on the practices and processes behind the scenes of entrepreneurial family businesses.

This paper aims to trace subsequent steps of the sustainability reporting evolution in terms of changes in the organisation fields and professional jurisdictions involved. As such, it highlights the (interrelated) organisational and professional challenges associated with the progressive incorporation of “sustainability” within corporate reporting.

The paper draws on Suddaby and Viale’s (2011) theorisation of how professionals reshape organisational fields to highlight how organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital evolve alongside the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting.

The paper shows organisational spaces, actors, rules and professional capital mobilised during the recent evolution of sustainability reporting, starting from a period in which there was no space for sustainability, to more recent periods in which sustainability gained increasing momentum beyond initial niches, and culminating in more integrated forms of sustainability reporting.

Although the analysis is limited to empirical evidence collected by prior research and practice on sustainability reporting, the paper offers a view to imagine how the incorporation of sustainability within corporate reporting relies on and affects organisational fields and professional jurisdictions.

The paper offers a lens to interpret corporate and professional challenges associated with the more recent evolutions of sustainability reporting practice and standard setting. It also allows framing the papers accepted in the special issue on “new challenges in sustainability reporting” and concludes by suggesting an agenda for future research.

This paper aims to measure and rigorously compare the perceptions of South Korean university social engagement between faculty and students, two definitive stakeholders identified by stakeholder theory – but considerably heterogeneous, to understand how South Korean campus embraces social engagement in practice. To that end, this study delves into the conceptual framework of university social engagement and selects a highly internationalized, research-oriented, four-year comprehensive South Korean university campus that has long sought to become engaged in communities as the research site.

Methodologically, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to identify the factor model that successfully fit the data of the study. Factorial invariance tests and latent mean analysis were then conducted to measure and strictly compare the between-group mean differences.

According to the findings, neither faculty nor students had positive perceptions of their institution’s social engagement in terms of leadership, participatory decision-making, curriculum and instruction, institutional supports and systemic mechanism. That is, two definitive stakeholders on campus similarly perceived that social engagement has not yet been institutionalized as a core value and therefore embraced in practice. Based on these findings, this study discussed several implications for university decision makers. Specifically, the institutionalization of and the need for authentic leadership in university social engagement were emphasized as a means to encourage and facilitate the delivery of practical, beneficial services to the public.

As with all studies, there are certain limitations that must be noted. The sample for this study represents the experiences and expectations of faculty and students at only one institution. Therefore, the experiences of individuals at this single university are not necessarily representative of all South Korean universities. In addition, given that the public service missions of South Korean universities emanated from Western thoughts (Duke, 2008; Ward, 2003), social engagement in the present study has been discussed and conceptualized according to the dominant Western scholarship.

As both faculty and students similarly perceived, participatory decision-making and systemic mechanism do not work properly, and therefore, social engagement as an institutional value cannot strongly take root on campus. Based on the scale used, this study identified communication and organizational supports as the likely issues that obstruct the institutionalization of social engagement. In relation to communication, Boyte and Hollander (1999) emphasize that it is important that stakeholders are well aware of the engaged effort of the institution. Then, the voices of stakeholders need to be acknowledged as valuable feedback so that university decision makers and stakeholders can discuss mutually important issues and concerns (Minnesota Higher Education Services Office, 2003). Furthermore, the relevant literature consistently contends that engaged effort can only be productive with continuous and systemic organizational supports (Boyte and Hollander, 1999; Holland, 1997; Minnesota Higher Education Services Office, 2003; Weerts and Sandmann, 2008). That is, the engaged work of teaching, research and service should be thoroughly assessed and reported to stakeholders on a regular basis. The implication in this study is that university decision makers should make greater effort to design and implement policies and regulations that enable organizational supports to continue.

For social engagement to be valued in practice, the relevant literature (Kellogg Commission, 1999; Garlick and Langworthy, 2008; Minnesota Higher Education Services Office, 2003; Peterson, 2009) advises that top institutional leaders need to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship that includes research, teaching and learning; develop incentives to encourage faculty involvement in engaged work; support engagement so that it is incorporated into the curriculum and instruction; and secure funding for engagement. The fundamental insight that these suggestions provide to university decision makers is crystal-clear: social engagement must be authentically prioritized in the decision-making process.

The quantitative and descriptive findings of the study seek to provide one further step toward the objective of establishing the groundwork for future research on university social engagement in Asian context. Further, replication studies with various Asian cases and research designs may results in tangible improvements to the theorization of Asian university social engagement.