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Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

Scans the top 400 management publications in the world to identify the most topical issues and latest concepts. These are presented in an easy‐to‐digest briefing of no more than 1,500 words.

For CEOs the world over, the mathematics are simple: the company needs to spend $millions on a new IT services, this can be done cheapest in India or China, the company has to maximize revenues for its shareholders, therefore it is goodbye to jobs in New England, hello new, cheaper employees in New Delhi. However business in the twenty‐first century, and mathematics, is not like that anymore because one group of people are increasing their influence, and they do not like jobs moving abroad. Who are they? Stakeholders. And, according to Thomas A. Hemphill's article “Global outsourcing: effective functional strategy or deficient corporate governance?”, they represent the biggest challenge to corporate governance protocols yet.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

Outsourcing information technology functions has become an increasingly accepted cost‐reducing strategy in both the USA and Western Europe. What these managerial decisions mean in human resource terms is the elimination of high paying employment. In the USA, global outsourcing is now raising public policy concerns about its effects on the nation’s long‐term technological leadership and the ethical propriety of such corporate decisions on a key stakeholder – employees. Global outsourcing is a direct challenge to corporate citizenship (the new corporate governance model) and human capital theory (which recognizes the value of the knowledge worker to the success of the firm) now recognized by many US corporations. While accepting the managerial limits of these approaches, it is argued that corporations and industry associations need to develop and implement a human capital strategy which balances the negative consequences of global outsourcing with corporate citizenship responsibilities to employee and community stakeholders.

Using the policy recommendations identified in the study as an analytical departure point, the study proposes a “public-private governance and sustainability model” that builds upon the policy options and develops implementation strategies for the key stakeholder institutions implementing the proposed solutions in the US food waste management ecosystem.

Within an exploratory research perspective, an affinity diagram is employed to help identify important policy recommendations identified with key policy reports. Moreover, the study employs a “meta regulation” approach that employs four essential characteristics of any regulatory instrument or approach: target, regulator, command and consequences.

The study has identified the recommended solutions identified as most effective, and developed recommended implementation strategies that could accomplish the goal of potentially reducing food waste in the US at the consumer level. The study recommends passage of federal legislation that specifies what form of administrative rule-making and enforcement process should be instituted, as well as who are the important stakeholders to be considered and authority provided in this rule-making and enforcement process.

This study offers a comprehensive “proposed public-private governance and sustainability model” addressing food waste management safety and quality date labeling implementation challenges by the enforcing federal, state and local governments, as well as collaborating with industry associations and consumer interest groups.

The purpose of this study is to apply the institution-based view and resource dependence theory in arguing that perceived deficiencies in a legal service sector where a foreign subsidiary operates will influence the intensity of its political ties with actors in both the regulatory and legal arenas. The authors further theorized that these relationships will vary across governance environments.

The research context for this study was multinational enterprises (MNE) wholly owned foreign subsidiaries and international joint ventures (IJVs) operating in the Philippines and Thailand. Data for most variables in this study came from primary survey data collected in 2018 from senior managers of MNE WOSs and IJVs operating in the Philippines and Thailand.

The authors’ analysis of 352 foreign subsidiaries operating in the Philippines and Thailand show that, in a flawed democracy, perceived deficient legal services enhance the intensity of foreign subsidiary political ties with government actors in both the regulatory and legal arena. However, in a hybrid regime, perceived deficient legal services enhance only the intensity of foreign subsidiary political ties with government actors in the regulatory arena. The authors’ findings also suggest that the relationship between perceived deficiencies in legal service sector and the intensity of political ties is stronger for foreign subsidiaries that operate in heavily regulated industries across both a flawed democracy and hybrid regime. Conversely, the authors do not find the market orientation of these foreign subsidiaries to play a role in this process.

The authors’ study was unable to control for whether managerial perceptions of deficient legal services were well informed at the local or federal level. This issue raises the question of will the presence of an in-house legal department influence managerial perceptions with regard to deficiencies within a legal service sector? Based on these limitations, the authors suggest that future research can further extend political ties research by using a fine-grained analysis in investigating the antecedents of managerial perceptions of legal services within different legal jurisdictions.

The political ties literature has largely argued that political ties are more prevalent in environmental contexts comprising institutional voids as MNEs attempt to mitigate volatility associated with the lack of developed institutional infrastructure (e.g. Blumentritt & Nigh, 2002; Bucheli et al., 2018). However, the concept of institutional voids is very broad and still rather abstract in nature. Hence, scholars have yet to fully understand what types of institutional voids may drive MNE foreign subsidiary political tie intensity in varying governance contextsThe authors’ study attempts to contribute to this important line of research by investigating how one type of institutional void, namely, perceived deficiencies in the legal service sector, can influence the intensity of political ties in varying governance environments.

This paper aims to address the viability of two recent initiatives proposed to address the important human rights issue of employee and building safety among manufacturers in the global supply chain: the recently proposed “Shared Responsibility Paradigm” now being considered by concerned stakeholders as a new approach to understanding human rights issues across global supply chains and the proposed International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 45001 comprehensive framework for management systems addressing occupational health and safety.

First, the paper establishes a theoretical foundation for these two initiatives as practical and implementable solutions for this human rights issue and includes a section addressing the results of recent academic research on social responsibility in global supply chains. The paper then provides a detailed description of the shared responsibility paradigm and the ISO 45001 health and safety standard, respectively, followed by a discussion of their viability, policy implications and directions for future research.

Recent developments pertaining to the implementation of the ISO 45001 standard and the unveiling of the World Economic Forum’s shared responsibility model offer aspirational hope for a multi-stakeholder solution to successfully addressing serious human rights issues related to employee safety in Bangladesh and other least developed countries.

This paper offers an early viability assessment of the two recent initiatives proposed to address the important human rights issue of employee and building safety among manufacturers in the global supply chain: the “Shared Responsibility Paradigm” and the proposed ISO 45001 standard for worker health and safety.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP) from a shared value perspective. Adopting reputation as a multilevel form of value that mediates the CSR–CFP relationship, the paper explains how CSR initiatives may enhance both firm and country reputation and how the amount of shared value between the two leads to CFP.

The paper first establishes the theoretical foundation for the relationship between CSR and CFP. It then draws connections to a more recent stream of literature surrounding the concept of creating shared value to expand upon this relationship, adopting reputation as a multilevel form of shared value that mediates the CSR–CFP relationship. The paper further discusses moderating influences of this relationship that may vary contextually with emerging economies such as those in Latin America.

The paper argues that as markets become further developed, CSR initiatives will create a higher proportion of shared reputational value between a corporation and country. This is the result of from aligning CSR initiatives that benefit a society, with the strategic goals of the firm – the essence of creating of shared value – but is more difficult in emerging markets, especially volatile ones.

This paper offers insight into a complex relationship between CSR, shared reputational value and CFP by introducing the more recent concept of creating shared value. Several propositions related to this general relationship, and some related to the difference among emerging markets (such as those in Latin America), address the need for more research related to corporate and country reputation, creating shared value and in the emerging market context.

This article reviews the overall issue of sweatshop labour practices, with a particular focus on the apparel industry. Although sweatshop labour exists in the United States, the media focus in recent years has centred mainly on overseas manufacture. This article will review individual companies and the practices of which they have been accused. The issue of labour compensation will also be explored, as low wages is the target reason for many apparel manufacturers to source their production overseas. Appendices to this article include Foreign Labour Statistics, outlining foreign labour compensation as compared to that of the United States. This article will also review the focus of the White House Industry Partnership and United Students Against Sweatshops. Lastly, there is a detailed recommendation for suggested required information on all apparel products labelling, which would summarise the manufacturer's quality of labour practices on the garment label; thus providing the consumer with immediate information on the environment under which the item was manufactured.

The subject of corporate internal investigations engenders a special challenge for the final arbiters of a company's strategy, the boards of directors. The taint to corporate reputation associated with allegations of improper business practices has widespread, and possibly long‐term, financial and legal implications for various key stakeholders of the corporation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodological approach to balancing firm social reputation with the fiduciary responsibilities inherent to directors in publicly‐traded companies.

For boards to effectively address the issues raised by threats to corporate reputation and cooperation with US government agencies in their criminal and civil investigations, a two‐stage approach of interactive/reactive engagement (based on a typology developed in 1975) provides the theoretical foundation to formulate a firm nonmarket strategy for addressing corporate internal investigations.

Recognizing the new socio‐economic reality faced by the modern firm (i.e. corporate citizenship and stakeholder engagement) requires that executives and directors balance the strategic importance of maintaining the firm's social reputation for the long term with the short‐term economic consequences of criminal and civil litigation over improper business practices.

The value of this interactive/reactive engagement approach is that it requires explicit managerial/board recognition of the benefits ”accruing to the corporation and its stakeholders (i.e. leniency in sentencing and fines, enhanced corporate social reputation,), while factoring in carefully measured costs” (e.g. the negotiated waiver of attorney‐client privilege and work‐product protection) that must be absorbed by the firm and its shareholders.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness (through the analytic prism of “corporate citizenship”) of the US pharmaceutical industry's political strategy behind the Partnership for Prescription Assistance, the program that the industry has recently initiated to address the prescription drug needs of senior and other low‐income American citizens.

By reviewing data collected by PhRMA, the industry's association, over a one‐year period, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance program is evaluated for: performance (over periods of one month, three months, six months and one year); congruence with the concept of corporate citizenship; and effectiveness as an industry political strategy.

During its first year of operation, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance has matched two million Americans with public and private assistance programs that meet their prescription health needs. Furthermore, the Partnership for Prescription Assistance fits into the corporate citizenship perspective, and offers the pharmaceutical industry a viable alternative (“industry political strategy”) to state and federal legislative efforts to establish prescription drug importation programs.

This article addresses recent efforts (in the form of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance) by the US pharmaceutical industry to counteract proposed legislation to allow prescription drug importation in the USA. The article provides evidence of industry political strategy success in the implementation of the Partnership for Prescription Assistance. This article will have value to pharmaceutical industry management, health care advocates, public policy makers, and business faculty whose research interest lies in the area of business and society.

Establishing timely national product design standards is an important cooperative activity capable of capturing economic benefits from having the national product design standard adopted for global commerce. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an exploratory analysis of five global economic powers' – Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA – national standards strategy (NSS), comparing them for commonality in institutional standards setting policy approaches, i.e. there should be a general “convergence” in specific NSS policy initiatives among similar, economically developed countries.

The five national standards strategies are evaluated for distinctive policy initiatives, with common policy initiatives combined, resulting in 18 distinctive policy initiatives found among the surveyed population. Each national standard strategy is then compared to the 18 policy initiatives, with commonality recorded.

Contrary to any preconception that economies considered comparable in economic development would tend to converge around similar NSS policy initiatives, the evidence reveals there is less harmonization (the results show convergence is overwhelmingly in the moderate/low categories – 14 policy initiatives, or 77.8 percent), with initial evidence indicating that the degree of public or private institutional involvement in technology standards setting may affect the types of policy initiatives included in a NSS.

The paper is exploratory in nature, with only five nation‐states in the survey.

The paper provides insight into: the strength of a country's NSS versus a competitor nation; and public and private sector development of the national innovation system.

The paper offers an exploratory evaluation of harmonization of NSS across countries and its significance to the national innovation system and global competitiveness.