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Corporate changes not only impact the firms involved but also have consequences for their ecosystems. However, the existing literature on ecosystem change is limited. This paper describes and discusses the interconnected patterns between corporate and ecosystem change, shedding light on the various forms these changes take.

The empirical part of the paper is based on the case study of two previously merged organizations' separation.

The paper reveals intensifying and dissipating change patterns, illustrating the linkages between rapid and gradual corporate and ecosystem changes within and across various ecosystem spheres. Three spheres are conceptualized: sphere of control, sphere of interdependency and sphere of negotiation, each indicating a separate change pattern.

The contribution of this paper lies in its discussion on interconnected corporate and ecosystem changes, offering valuable insights for situating corporate change within the ecosystem and establishing a vocabulary for ecosystem change. Moreover, through the empirical study of a corporate divorce, the paper enhances our understanding of this specific form of change.

Managing megaprojects is challenging due to their inherent complexity and uncertainty. Collaborative project delivery models have been introduced as an alternative to traditional project management in public infrastructure megaprojects and are often realized through collaborative contracts. These project organizations act as institutional arenas for logic interaction as actors with differing institutional backgrounds interact within the project. This paper aims to study the delivery phase of three megaprojects through an institutional lens, investigating the institutional interaction and alignment of logics therein.

A multiple case study was employed to reach deep insight into the phenomenon. Sixty-one interviews were conducted over 3 cases with representatives from all levels of the project hierarchy. Respondents were selected through snowball sampling. In two cases, observations of the shared project office were conducted. Data analysis built on first-order codes and second-order themes, collected into a theoretical framework.

The empirical evidence demonstrates the dynamics shaping institutional logics and gives evidence for changing logics in projects with a well-applied collaborative contract. However, there is a risk of resistance and a return to traditional logics since institutional change is slow and an unsuitably applied collaborative contract can lead to adherence to the conventional way of work.

Current research has focused on the regulatory framework and procurement phase of such models, but little attention has been given to the delivery phase and the interaction of conflicting logics. This paper can serve as an exemplar of the different logics found within public infrastructure projects and their interaction and alignment. Contributions include a heightened emphasis on the start of the project as a meeting point for differing institutional logics and the role change necessary when using a collaborative contract.

The aim of this study is to critically examine the transparency and reporting practice of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) controversies within the pharmaceutical and textile industry. Based on the four core dimensions of transparency, we explore which reporting medium is most frequently chosen for the disclosure of negative ESG contributions, the nature and information content of the disclosed incidents and how voluntary adherence to sustainability reporting standards and independent assurances affect the reporting.

We use conceptual content analysis and employ a counter-accounting approach to analyse the disclosure of 190 ESG controversies in 104 corporate reports from the pharmaceutical and textile industries, covering a three-year period from 2018–2020.

The very large majority of controversies are reported only once in the legal proceedings section of the annual report, but not again in the sustainability report, where it would be necessary to provide a balanced picture. Moreover, companies tend to disclose only those controversies that are either associated with high media attention or are expected to be related to litigation, resulting in 26 per cent of controversies not being disclosed at all. The overall quality of disclosure is unsatisfactory and in need of improvement, but comparably higher in the pharmaceutical industry than in the textile industry. Interestingly, neither the application of sustainability reporting standards nor independent assurance seems to positively impact the disclosure behaviour.

Our paper provides new insights into the shortcomings of current ESG controversy disclosures by revealing patterns of selective reporting practices and the strategic framing of issues. In addition, it contributes to the debates on corporate cherry-picking in the adoption of sustainability reporting guidelines and on the effectiveness of external assurance of sustainability reports. Based on the findings, it offers important implications for practitioners, in particular management, policy makers, rating agencies and assurance providers.

This study aims to develop an extended social attachment model for expatriates, integrating a multiple stakeholder perspective, to understand evacuation decisions during disasters.

Through interviews with 12 Tokyo-based expatriates who experienced the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, this study collects the lived experiences of a diverse set of expatriates. This data is analyzed abductively to map relevant evacuation factors and to propose a reaction typology.

While the 2011 Tohoku disasters caused regional destruction and fears of nuclear fallout, Tokyo remained largely unscathed. Still, many expatriates based in Tokyo chose to leave the country. Evacuation decisions were shaped by an interplay of threat assessment, location of attachment figures and cross-cultural adjustment. The study also discusses the influence of expatriate types.

Disaster planning is often overlooked or designed primarily with host country nationals in mind. Expatriates often lack the disaster experience and readiness of host country nationals in disaster-prone regions in Asia and beyond, and thus might need special attention when disaster strikes. This study provides advice for how to do so.

By unpacking the under-researched and complex phenomenon of expatriate reactions to disasters, this study contributes to the fields of international human resource and disaster management. Specifically, seven proposition on casual links leading to expatriate evacuation are suggested, paving the way for future research.

Student engagement has become increasingly significant in sustainability education for engineers because it enables future engineers to develop competencies, knowledge and values relevant to acting for sustainability. Therefore, this paper aims to examine characteristics of student engineer engagement with sustainability and to discuss the meanings of this concept.

To build a more holistic picture of student engineer engagement with sustainability, this study followed a literature review approach to search, screen and appraise relevant journal articles on this topic. As a result of this research, 30 articles were identified as eligible.

Based on the theoretical framework for student engagement with sustainability, newly synthesized here, and the content analysis of the 30 papers included in this study, four patterns of engagement were identified: intrapersonal engagement, inter-relational engagement, engagement as connection and disconnection and situated engagement.

This review provides practical recommendations about how to support the engagement of student engineers with sustainability at the levels of the individual, staff, educational programmes and associated curricula. Future research directions are also discussed.

This study contributes a theoretical framework synthesizing student engagement theory with sustainability education. It also describes current characteristics of student engineers’ engagement with sustainability.

This paper aims to explore explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) in democracy, proposing an applicable framework. With artificial intelligence’s (AI) increasing use in democracies, the demand for transparency and accountability in AI decision-making is recognized. XAI addresses AI “black boxes” by enhancing model transparency.

This study includes a thorough literature review of XAI. The methodology chosen was design science research to enable design theory and problem identification about XAI’s state of the art. Thereby finding and gathering crucial information to build a framework that aims to help solve issues and gaps where XAI can be of major influence in the service of democracy.

This framework has four main steps to be applied in the service of democracy by applying the different possible XAI techniques that may help mitigate existing challenges and risks for the democratic system. The proposed artifact intends to display and include all the necessary steps to select the most suitable XAI technology. Examples were given for every step of the artifact to provide a clear understanding of what was being proposed.

An evaluation of the proposed framework was made through interviews with specialists from different areas related to the topics in the study. The interviews were important for measuring the framework’s validity and originality.

Nearly 75% of EU buildings are not energy-efficient enough to meet the international climate goals, which triggers the need to develop sustainable construction techniques with high degree of resilience against climate change. In this context, a promising construction technique is represented by ventilated façades (VFs). This paper aims to propose three different VFs and the authors define a novel machine learning-based approach to evaluate and predict their energy performance under different boundary conditions, without the need for expensive on-site experimentations

The approach is based on the use of machine learning algorithms for the evaluation of different VF configurations and allows for the prediction of the temperatures in the cavities and of the heat fluxes. The authors trained different regression algorithms and obtained low prediction errors, in particular for temperatures. The authors used such models to simulate the thermo-physical behavior of the VFs and determined the most energy-efficient design variant.

The authors found that regression trees allow for an accurate simulation of the thermal behavior of VFs. The authors also studied feature weights to determine the most relevant thermo-physical parameters. Finally, the authors determined the best design variant and the optimal air velocity in the cavity.

This study is unique in four main aspects: the thermo-dynamic analysis is performed under different thermal masses, positions of the cavity and geometries; the VFs are mated with a controlled ventilation system, used to parameterize the thermodynamic behavior under stepwise variations of the air inflow; temperatures and heat fluxes are predicted through machine learning models; the best configuration is determined through simulations, with no onerous in situ experimentations needed.

The aim of this study was to obtain evidence of the practical significance of the generational involvement (GI) of top management teams (TMT) on the nexus between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and business performance (BP) in small family businesses (SFBs).

This study employed a questionnaire survey of 112 Malaysian SFBs. The data was analyzed using descriptive analysis, hierarchical multiple regression analysis and a two-way interaction model.

The results indicate that SFBs have a positive EO–BP nexus. However, the study found that TMT-GI has a negative effect on EO and reduces the positive nexus between EO and BP. Specifically, higher levels of GI were associated with lower levels of EO and weaker BP.

The study raises the necessity for SFBs to seek out a management mechanism and structure to balance the entrepreneurial boundary between the family-level and the business-level when there is increased GI. Additionally to the current, incorporating family TMT-related human ecology aspect of GI with the family business field could lead to a new research value stream.

The results of this study will enable family business decision makers and TMT to better understand the importance of considering family factors in their management strategies.

This analysis highlights the spatial relation of family-level logic in dominating EO–BP nexus at intervals in SFBs, where family factor of TMT-GI will be a key moderator.

In this chapter, we introduce the topic of essentiality of work, exploring its implications for workers, labour markets, and public policy. The essentiality of work often corresponds in a dialectical way with the precarity of work, raising pressing questions about how societies value and, more pertinently, devalue various types of labour, thereby influencing life chances and societal integration. What we see in the contributions to this volume and the wider evidence is that essential work is typically performed by workers who are treated as expendable, or inessential. We proceed to outline the various contributions from the studies compiled in this volume. These present diverse perspectives on ‘essentiality’ and the experiences of essential workers. Offering a range of new empirical insights, the volume underlines the vitality and lasting relevance of essentiality – both as a concept and in the experience of workers – beyond the pandemic.

Intellectual capital (IC) is an increasingly important strategic asset for sustainable value creation in organisations. This paper aims to provide a conceptual perspective on the university’s role as a catalyst for IC creation and development within the dynamic landscape of organisations, exploring the nexus to capture its essence.

Adopting a conceptual framework development approach, key concepts were cohesively and coherently synthesised from various theoretical underpinnings, namely, the multiple capitals approach to maximising corporate value creation, the evolved triple bottom line approach to corporate sustainability, the triple helix innovation model and its subsequent extensions, the upper echelons theory and the social licence construct linked to stakeholder, legitimacy and institutional theories.

A comprehensive conceptual framework was developed that outlines universities’ role in catalysing four corporate IC forms crucial to sustainable organisational value creation: human capital, governance capital, social/relational capital and structural/organisational capital. The framework interprets this role of universities as dynamic IC reservoirs serving regional ecosystems for sustainable development. It highlights the synergistic sustainable value creation between universities and organisations in host communities and broader society, with university governance acting as a key driver.

This paper offers a theoretically grounded interpretation of universities’ pivotal role in catalysing essential forms of IC to support contemporary organisations’ sustainable value-creation processes. The proposed framework has the potential to ignite conversations on the crucial connection between universities and corporate IC development relevant to sustainable organisations, inspiring future empirical research, reflection and discussion.