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The study here responds to the view that the crucial problem in strategic management (research) is firm heterogeneity – why firms adopt different strategies and structures, why heterogeneity persists, and why competitors perform differently. The present study applies complexity theory tenets and a “neo-configurational perspective” of Misangyi et al. (2016) in proposing complex antecedent conditions affecting complex outcome conditions. Rather than examining variable directional relationships using null hypotheses statistical tests, the study examines case-based conditions using somewhat precise outcome tests (SPOT). The complex outcome conditions include firms with high financial performances in declining markets and firms with low financial performances in growing markets – the study focuses on seemingly paradoxical outcomes. The study here examines firm strategies and outcomes for separate samples of cross-sectional data of manufacturing firms with headquarters in one of two nations: Finland (n = 820) and Hungary (n = 300). The study includes examining the predictive validities of the models. The study contributes conceptual advances of complex firm orientation configurations and complex firm performance capabilities configurations as mediating conditions between firmographics, firm resources, and the two final complex outcome conditions (high performance in declining markets and low performance in growing markets). The study contributes by showing how fuzzy-logic computing with words (Zadeh, 1966) advances strategic management research toward achieving requisite variety to overcome the theory-analytic mismatch pervasive currently in the discipline (Fiss, 2007, 2011) – thus, this study is a useful step toward solving the crucial problem of how to explain firm heterogeneity.

In this increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) global business environment, we believe that taking a virtue-based approach to leadership is key to organizational excellence. Based on a review of the recent literature on global leadership as it relates to organizational virtuousness, we propose a framework to develop leadership virtues in global organizations. We assert that developing virtuous global leaders who can practice and support others to demonstrate the seven virtues of wisdom, temperance, courage, hope, trust, justice, and compassion will help create a more aligned and clear workforce, guide ethical behaviors, and manage cultural differences when growing through mergers and acquisitions across the borders.

Sport co-produces our notions of sex, gender and sexuality. Sport policies based on inclusion demand trans athletes become visible. This creates a problem within sport's hierarchical gender order, and trans athletes' bodies become comprehensible only through mobility from one sex/gender to the other – literally the embodiment of movement through a static gendered space.

In this chapter, we examine the contradictory expectations placed on trans athletes to be visible within heterosexist, white supremacist ‘regimes of looking’ (Fleetwood, 2011). Our purpose is twofold: (1) to critically examine the construction of transness through white racial frames and (2) to grapple with the inherent harmfulness of sport. We ask why trans people would want to participate in an institution that actively limits opportunities for expansive subjectivity, ultimately concluding that the potential for queer futures lies in the very construction of limits themselves. We forward a belief in what sport could be when intentionally created through queer world building. We highlight teams, leagues and spaces that have developed processes that work against dominant forms of medicolegal recognition and visibility politics.

I aim to understand how informal relationships at work provide a supportive context for individuals and contribute to their engagement in an environment of disruptive change when they are likely to be stressed.

The research was conducted in three UK public service organizations during pre-Brexit disruption. An app was used to capture 400+ transient emotions, reactions, and diary entries of employees about their interactions with co-workers, colleagues, and close colleagues. This was followed by 25 interviews to reflect more deeply on those relationships documented in the app.

Interactions with co-workers, colleagues, and close colleagues are shown to contribute in different ways to emotions felt and different aspects of engagement. Closer relationships, less transactional and more emotional in nature, contribute to feelings of trust, significance, and mutual reliance. A typology of four close colleague relationship types also emerged variously driven by the depth of the relationship and sense of shared mutuality.

This research documents employees' lived experience during disruption to show that relationships provide support for the meaningfulness, psychological safety, and availability aspects of personal engagement. It maps the process of developing supportive workplace relationships that form the relational context with four sub-contexts, distinguishing work, and personal engagement by their different foci. Practical and social implications are discussed.

Recent emphasis in research and theory building on compassion in organizations has not yet received sustained attention by organization development and change scholarship. Compassion at work, however, has been reported as instrumental in coaching, ad hoc organizing, prosocial behavior during challenging times, and other processes central to developing and changing organizations. It also has been theorized to bring about an untapped organizational capability, contribute to fostering a climate of workplace forgiveness, and to facilitate development of social entrepreneurship. In this essay, we begin to outline what the recent advances in the compassion literature offer researchers and practitioners of organization development and change. We briefly review how compassion is defined across different contexts, how it can be seen through a positive lens and within broader lines of inquiry on social and emotional dynamics at work, and how interpretive approaches to studying compassion might fit with the study of change. Seeing compassion scholarship as more than a specialized trend in positive organizational behavior, we offer ample opportunities for diverse and novel inquiry into development and change at work.