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The authors explore the under-researched area of post-decision evaluation in PPPs (public–private partnerships), focusing upon how and whether Post-decision Project Evaluation (PdPE) is considered and provided for in United Kingdom (UK) public infrastructure projects.

The authors’ research design sought insights from overviewing UK PPP planning and more focused exploration of PPP operational practice. The authors combine the extensive analysis of planning documents for operational UK PPP projects with interviews of different stakeholders in PPP projects in one city. Mobilising an open critical perspective, documents were analysed using ethnographic content analysis (ECA) and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis consistent therewith. The authors theorise the absence and ambiguities of PdPE drawing on the sociology of ignorance.

The authors find a long-standing absence and lack of PdPE in PPP projects throughout planning and operational practice, reflecting a dynamic, multi-faceted ignorance. Concerning planning practice, the authors’ documentary analysis evidences a trend in PdPE from its absence in the early years (which may indicate some natural or genuine ignorance) to different levels or forms of weak inclusion later. Regarding this inclusion, the authors find strategic ignorance played a substantive role, involving “deliberate engineering” by both public sector and private partners. Interview findings indicate lack of clarity over PdPE and its under-development in PPP practice, deficiencies again suggestive of natural and strategic ignorance.

The authors draw from the sociology of ignorance vis-à-vis accounting's absence and ambiguity in the context of PPP, contributing to an under-researched area.

Protection motivation theory (PMT) explains that the intention to cope with information security risks is based on informed threat and coping appraisals. However, people cannot always make appropriate assessments due to possible ignorance and cognitive biases. This study proposes a research model that introduces four antecedent factors from ignorance and bias perspectives into the PMT model and empirically tests this model with data from a survey of electronic waste (e-waste) handling.

The data collected from 356 Chinese samples are analyzed via structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results revealed that for threat appraisal, optimistic bias leads to a lower perception of risks. However, factual ignorance (lack of knowledge of risks) does not significantly affect the perceived threat. For coping appraisal, practical ignorance (lack of knowledge of coping with risks) leads to low response efficacy and self-efficacy and high perceptions of coping cost, but the illusion of control overestimates response efficacy and self-efficacy.

First, this study addresses a new type of information security problem in e-waste handling. Second, this study extends the PMT model by exploring the roles of ignorance and bias as antecedents. Finally, the authors reinvestigate the basic constructs of PMT to identify how rational threat and coping assessments affect user intentions to cope with data security risks.

In this paper, the philosophy of John Rawls, known as “Justice as Fairness,” is discussed. This philosophy examines the responsibilities social actors hold toward their societal organizations. From an Islamic perspective, justice is pivotal in safeguarding collective interests, aligning with Rawls' conviction that just societies nurture happiness and foster well-being across various life aspects. To achieve customer welfare, our viewpoint underscores the importance of justice in reflecting on consumer well-being from both Rawls’ theory and Islamic perspectives.

We adopt a conceptual approach where secular views of Rawls’ “Theory of Justice” are merged with the Islamic view, resulting in novel insights regarding the hermeneutics involved in the notion of justice and the preservation of consumer well-being.

Our analysis reveals that John Rawls' “A Theory of Justice” aligns with the Islamic perspective in several respects yet diverges in others, notably in the concepts of pre-creation consciousness and divine guidance. These distinctions are emphasized in our paper.

Our paper presents a perspective on justice founded on the concepts of the “Original Position” and the “Veil of Ignorance.” The commentary explores consumer well-being by integrating Rawls' principles with an analysis that elucidates the role justice plays in enhancing societal welfare.

Sustainability has long been known to present an epistemic challenge. In the corporate setting, this challenge translates into the difficulties experienced by managers not only in devising solutions to corporate sustainability problems, but even in developing the awareness of the latter. The paper explores how these difficulties may be overcome by corporate stakeholder management policies.

The paper develops a conceptual framework that reconstructs the Hayekian theory of market process in the context of Williamson's (1996) distinction between autonomous and cooperative adaptation.

Applying the Hayekian theory of market process to the process of engagement and collaboration of corporate stakeholders, the paper shows how the latter process may address the epistemic challenge of corporate sustainability and derives implications for the design of business models for sustainability.

The paper informs stakeholder theory in two ways: first, stakeholder theory is given a novel justification in terms of reflecting the growing prominence of cooperative adaptation and second, corporate stakeholder management is shown to be crucial for maximizing not only economic but also sustainability performance.

It is critical for those who are engaged in the work of resisting the movement of academically restrictive policy to understand that it is a deliberate act on the part of conservatives to outlaw critical race theory (CRT) specifically, because it is a theoretical mechanism for discrediting the rhetorical foundations of their policy movement. The knee-jerk institutional courses of action to now defund initiatives and curriculum related equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) represent what has always been a deeply rooted investment in white supremacy on the part of the institutions (Baldwin, 2021; Patel, 2021; Squire, 2021).

The author explores and defines the CRT tenets of interest convergence (Bell, 1980) and whiteness as property (Harris, 1993) in relation to EI (Fricker, 2007; Dotson, 2011) as frameworks for examining three EGOs in the region where these policies have become most dominant. All three are critical tools of analysis for understanding the stake the White conservative political elite have in EGOs, and the magnitude of EI these policies represent, and stand endorse in their rhetoric. Definitions of EI often rely on the work of Amanda Fricker’s (2013) text on the subject, but this paper is invested in the expansions of this theorization for speaking to the nature of the injustice that EGOs represent as a matter of historical trend, with grave implications for futures marked by continued oppression. Whiteness as property and interest convergence are points for explicating the dialectic and material aspects of issues of race and equity in this country; namely, how knowledge processes inherent to higher education sound even more alarms as EGOs become commonplace for college campuses.

To support the arguments laid out, the author provides a historical review of the settler-colonial foundations of higher education as an american institution. This is meant to provide contour to the image of postsecondary education that exists today. In accordance with this paper’s allegiance to CRT, many of the texts would be considered revisionist history (Delgado and Stefancic, 2023), which stray from dominant narratives of american comfort and speak more accurately to the experiences of minoritized populations. The author then applies the same analysis to the sociopolitical contexts of EGOs, and to policy language itself. Each section is closed with an explanation of its connection to tenets of CRT and EI so as to provide a thread to follow into the subsequent discussion section.

In the first presentation of the early writings of this work, the author was lucky enough to be in community with Barbara Applebaum at the annual meeting for the American Educational Studies Association and engage in discourse surrounding EI and CRT applications to EGOs. In conversations surrounding the will in the willful ignorance that is exemplified in the movement of EGOs, the author had shared with Dr Applebaum the early thinking on how that will was the same force that brought together converging interests, which have continually forecasted interest divergence. This is commonly referred to as “political backlash.” The author had said something along the lines of: “if we follow the interest convergence, we can get in front of the subsequent political moves to turn the clocks on what was once celebrates progress.” This conversation planted the seed for what is the thesis of this paper. Interest convergence and divergence happen at the will of white populations because of the american truth of whiteness as property. In the context of higher education, this means that because educational pursuit has largely been white property, it has served as an arena for white populations to converge and diverge their interests with those of the minoritized. For example, the policies that drained federal funding for higher education in the 1970s were passed on the tails of a Civil Rights Movement that shook the very foundation of this country and expanded access to postsecondary education for racially minoritized groups (Berret, 2015).

Ensuring that this social construction is a matter of status quo has largely been the work of postsecondary institutions, and EGOs represent the most recent attempt at epistemically imposed inferiority. Explicit attention to the fact of higher education’s complicity and overall investment in the socialization of oppression is necessary to engage in transformative practice that resists anachronism. If higher education researchers and practitioners do not recognize the stake in both the presence and resistance to EGOs, there would likely be acts of resistance that will belie an act of interest convergence – and later divergence – on the part of the state.

The struggle for racial justice has always faced significant challenges and controversies across interpersonal, intergroup and structural levels. As racism continues to evolve and adapt to new social, political and technological developments, researchers, activists and practitioners grapple with complex and intersecting issues. This chapter discusses some of the ongoing challenges anti-racist endeavours face today. It engages with contemporary global issues, such as international migration, globalisation and the digital revolution that have implications on the fight against racism. The chapter covers topics such as the recent backlashes against anti-racism, the emergence of the ‘colour-blind’ ideology and the challenges anti-racism faces in the realm of technological advance and digital spaces. Additionally, this chapter explores the discourse of decolonisation as a radical approach to anti-racism. It concludes with a critical discussion of the idea that mainstreaming and expanding anti-racism to include racial majorities may enhance its effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework of ideation pathways that organically extend the current stock of knowledge to generate new and useful knowledge. Although detailed, granular guidance is available in the strategy literature on all aspects of empirically testing theory, the other key aspect of theory development – theory generation – remains relatively neglected. The framework developed in this paper addresses this gap by proposing pathways for how new theory can be generated.

Grounded in two foundational principles in epistemology, the Genetic Argument and the open-endedness of knowledge, I offer a framework of distinct pathways that systematically lead to the creation of new knowledge.

Existing knowledge can be deepened (through introspection), broadened (through leverage) and rejuvenated (through innovation). These ideation pathways can unlock the vast, hidden potential of current knowledge in strategy.

The novelty and doability of the framework can potentially inspire research on a broad, community-wide basis, engaging PhD students and management faculty, improving knowledge, democratizing scholarship and deepening the societal footprint of strategy research.

Knowledge is open-ended. The more we know, the more we appreciate how much we don’t know. But the lack of clear guidance on rigorous pathways along which new knowledge that advances both theory and practice can be created from prior knowledge has stymied strategy research. The paper’s framework systematically pulls together for the first time the disparate elements of transforming past learning into new knowledge in a coherent epistemological whole.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical historical analysis of the business (mis)behaviors and influencing factors that discourage enduring cooperation between principals and agents, to introduce strategies that embrace the social values, economic motivation and institutional designs historically adopted to curtail dishonest acts in international business and to inform an improved principal–agent theory that reflects principal–agent reciprocity as shaped by social, political, cultural, economic, strategic and ideological forces

The critical historical research method is used to analyze Chinese compradors and the foreign companies they served in pre-1949 China.

Business practitioners can extend orthodox principal–agent theory by scrutinizing the complex interactions between local agents and foreign companies. Instead of agents pursuing their economic interests exclusively, as posited by principal–agent theory, they also may pursue principal-shared interests (as suggested by stewardship theory) because of social norms and cultural values that can affect business-related choices and the social bonds built between principals and agents.

The behaviors of compradors and foreign companies in pre-1949 China suggest international business practices for shaping social bonds between principals and agents and foreign principals’ creative efforts to enhance shared interests with local agents.

Understanding principal–agent theory’s limitations can help international management scholars and practitioners mitigate transaction partners’ dishonest acts.

A critical historical analysis of intermediary businesspeople’s (mis)behavior in pre-1949 (1840–1949) China can inform the generalizability of principal–agent theory and contemporary business strategies for minimizing agents’ dishonest acts.

A separate study of the different behavioral biases does not allow for a full understanding of the complexity and stability of the heterogeneity of beliefs. Therefore, through a more global view of these anomalies, the authors wish to show that they can converge on a single concept, which is the heterogeneity of beliefs.

It is therefore essential to stress that the importance of this study is mainly reflected in the methodological approach used in the construction and analysis of the map and not only in the results achieved. This contribution states that structural analysis, as a means of building the cognitive map, can facilitate the task of investors and other decision-makers, in the identification and analysis of the heterogeneity of beliefs that can therefore guide investors' strategy in decision-making.

The authors have studied the behavior of the investor and its way of interpreting the information and the authors have emphasized the value of studying the concept of heterogeneity of beliefs in its complexity. So that part of the work seems to be relevant and crucial to filling, if you will, that void. In this sense, the authors have shown that behavioral abnormalities are multidimensional concepts: “self-deception”, “cognitive bias”, “emotional bias” and “social bias”.

In particular, this article will aim to achieve the objective of proposing a model for measuring the heterogeneity of beliefs. Thus, the authors want to show that the heterogeneity of beliefs can be measured directly through the different behavioral anomalies.

This chapter addresses one of the most crucial areas for critical thinking: the morality of turbulent markets around the world. All of us are overwhelmed by such turbulent markets. Following Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2004, 2010), we distinguish between nonscalable industries (ordinary professions where income grows linearly, piecemeal or by marginal jumps) and scalable industries (extraordinary risk-prone professions where income grows in a nonlinear fashion, and by exponential jumps and fractures). Nonscalable industries generate tame and predictable markets of goods and services, while scalable industries regularly explode into behemoth virulent markets where rewards are disproportionately large compared to effort, and they are the major causes of turbulent financial markets that rock our world causing ever-widening inequities and inequalities. Part I describes both scalable and nonscalable markets in sufficient detail, including propensity of scalable industries to randomness, and the turbulent markets they create. Part II seeks understanding of moral responsibility of turbulent markets and discusses who should appropriate moral responsibility for turbulent markets and under what conditions. Part III synthesizes various theories of necessary and sufficient conditions for accepting or assigning moral responsibility. We also analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions for attribution of moral responsibility such as rationality, intentionality, autonomy or freedom, causality, accountability, and avoidability of various actors as moral agents or as moral persons. By grouping these conditions, we then derive some useful models for assigning moral responsibility to various entities such as individual executives, corporations, or joint bodies. We discuss the challenges and limitations of such models.