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Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuro-developmental condition that has frequently been pathologised in career research and broader society to date. The study seeks to reframe such assumptions through a qualitative positive-focused exploration of career stories of ADHD adults, elicited through a strength-focused technique with wide applicability for coaching and other career-based development activities.

Situated in a strength-focused coaching psychology paradigm, the authors undertook semi-structured interviews with 17 participants, using an adapted feedforward interview technique (FFI) rooted in positive psychology (PP), to investigate individuals' strengths and successful career experiences.

Narrative thematic analysis of the transcripts identified two core themes: “the paradoxical nature of strengths” and “career success as an evolving narrative”. The participants described how they have achieved career success both “in spite of” and “because of” ADHD. The use of the FFI demonstrated a helpful and easily taught method for eliciting personal narratives of success and strengths, an essential foundation to any coaching process.

This research provides a nuanced overview, and an associated conceptual model, of how adults with ADHD perceive their career-based strengths and experiences of success. Further, the research shows the value of using a positive psychological coaching approach when working with neurominority individuals, using a successful adaptation of the FFI. The authors hope that the documentation of this technique and the resulting insights will offer important guidance for managers as coaches and internal and external career coaches, as well as providing positive and relatable narrative resources for ADHD adults.

In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

Polymer laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/P) is an additive manufacturing technology that is sustainable due to the possibility of recycling the powder multiple times and allowing the fabrication of gears without the aid of support structures and subsequent assembly. However, there are constraints in the process that negatively affect its adoption compared to other additive technologies such as material extrusion to produce gears. This study aims to demonstrate that it is possible to overcome the problems due to the physics of the process to produce accurate mechanism.

Technological aspects such as orientation, wheel-shaft thicknesses and degree of powder recycling were examined. Furthermore, the evolving tooth profile was considered as a design parameter to provide a manufacturability map of gear-based mechanisms.

Results show that there are some differences in the functioning of the gear depending on the type of powder used, 100% virgin or 50% virgin and 50% recycled for five cycles. The application of a groove on a gear produced with 100% virgin powder allows the mechanism to be easily unlocked regardless of the orientation and wheel-shaft thicknesses. The application of a specific evolutionary profile independent of the diameter of the reference circle on vertically oriented gears guarantees rotation continuity while preserving the functionality of the assembled mechanism.

In the literature, there are various studies on material aging and reuse in the PBF-LB/P process, mainly focused on the powder deterioration mechanism, powder fluidity, microstructure and mechanical properties of the parts and process parameters. This study, instead, was focused on the functioning of gears, which represent one of the applications in which this technology can have great success, by analyzing the two main effects that can compromise it: recycled powder and vertical orientation during construction.

The research study provides empirical insights on the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership (EL), entrepreneurial passion for founding (EPF), entrepreneurial bricolage (EB) and project success (PS), in the case of freelancers. The study aims to get a better understanding of whether freelancers, who behave like entrepreneurial leaders, can successfully complete projects through EB.

The study collected data from 209 freelancers through snowball sampling, in two waves, with a time-lag of fourteen days, to better examine the causality of variables. Data were analyzed by Model No. 4 and 7 (i.e. mediation and moderation, respectively) of Process macro.

Drawing on the effectuation theory, the results show that EB mediates the relationship between EL and PS and EPF moderates this relationship.

The freelancers can formally establish businesses later, after knowing whether they can complete these new types of projects. These online freelancing platforms can provide special services to freelancers who first want to test their skills on unrelated projects. In sum, the paper suggests that freelancers can be successful entrepreneurial leaders.

The EL, EPF, EB and PS are studied in the context of the informal sector, i.e. freelancing, which is the emerging working style in the world. It provides an in-depth understanding of phenomena in freelancers that lacks background literature.

This paper aims to explore how the maieutic role of management accounting (MA) can be sustained in the context of MA digitalization.

The paper begins with practitioners’ descriptions of the context that makes the MA support of non-routine decisions maieutic. To understand how the maieutic characteristics can be sustained in future MA digitalization, the authors then analyze the discourses these practitioners have about artificial intelligence (AI) in providing MA support.

As a basis, the authors’ data show various maieutic characteristics within the use of MA answers in decision-making as well as within the MA process of generating such answers. The paper then identifies three MA digitalization discourses, namely, “computation,” “judgment” and human-AI “interaction” discourse, each with their unique agendas on how AI should be used.

The paper is based on the premises that AI and digitalization are often discussed without sufficient understanding about the context being digitalized. The authors’ data suggest that MA support in non-routine decision-making is fundamentally maieutic, and AI – as it currently stands – is not expected to change this by providing perfect answers. The authors provide novel insights about maieutic MA support and the current discourses on using AI in MA support, and how digitalization does not necessarily compromise maieutic MA support but instead has the potential to sustain or even enhance it.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the twin transition in China in the organization of innovation processes in artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology (GT) development and to understand the role of foreign multinationals in Chinese innovation systems.

A qualitative research approach is used by interviewing executives from German multinationals with expertise in AI and GT development and organization of innovation processes in China. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies, and the data were analysed with a thematic qualitative text analysis.

The findings show that AI applications for GT are primarily developed in cross-company projects that are led by local and regional authorities through the organization of industrial districts and clusters. German multinationals are either being integrated, remaining autonomous or being excluded from these twin transition innovation processes.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing one of the first qualitative approach towards twin transition innovation processes in China and exploring the integration of multinational enterprises in cluster organizations. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first twin transition studies from this perspective in emerging economies.

In recent years, there has been significant interest in adopting XR (extended reality) technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), particularly in retail. However, extending activities through reality-mediation is still mostly believed to offer an inferior experience due to their shortcomings in usability, wearability, graphical fidelity, etc. This study aims to address the research gap by experimentally examining the acceptance of metaverse shopping.

This study conducts a 2 (VR: with vs. without) × 2 (AR: with vs. without) between-subjects laboratory experiment involving 157 participants in simulated daily shopping environments. This study builds a physical brick-and-mortar store at the campus and stocked it with approximately 600 products with accompanying product information and pricing. The XR devices and a 3D laser scanner were used in constructing the three XR shopping conditions.

Results indicate that XR can offer an experience comparable to, or even surpassing, traditional shopping in terms of its instrumental and hedonic aspects, regardless of a slightly reduced perception of usability. AR negatively affected perceived ease of use, while VR significantly increased perceived enjoyment. It is surprising that the lower perceived ease of use appeared to be disconnected from the attitude toward metaverse shopping.

This study provides important experimental evidence on the acceptance of XR shopping, and the finding that low perceived ease of use may not always be detrimental adds to the theory of technology adoption as a whole. Additionally, it provides an important reference point for future randomized controlled studies exploring the effects of technology on adoption.