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High-performance work practices (HPWPs) have been well documented within private organisations in developed country economies. Such practices, however, remain under-investigated in the public sector and in emerging economies. The purpose of this paper is to work towards filling this void, by empirically evaluating HPWP within an Indian public sector undertaking (PSU), also the world’s largest commercial public sector employer: the Indian Railways (IR).

The authors investigate whether the practices implemented in this organisation are consistent with the idea of HPWPs, and analyse how they are influenced by different stakeholders and ultimately associated with different indicators of organisational performance. The authors focused on six railway zones and interviewed a total of 62 HR practitioners.

The results show that most practices implemented are aligned with the idea of HPWPs, despite the existence of context-specific unique practices. Furthermore, the authors identify the influence of multiple stakeholders in decision making concerning different practices. The authors additionally found that the measurement of performance goes beyond financial indicators and several context-specific non-financial indicators are identified and their social importance is reiterated.

Theoretically, this paper utilises and contributes to the resource-based view of firms by identifying a distinctive bundle of competencies in human resources through HPWS in the IR.

The study explores the readiness of government agencies to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the efficiency of disaster relief operations (DRO). For understanding the behavior of state-level and national-level government agencies involved in DRO, this study grounds its theoretical arguments on the civic voluntarism model (CVM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT).

We collected the primary data for this study from government agencies involved in DRO in India. To test the proposed theoretical model, we administered an online survey questionnaire to 184 government agency employees. To test the hypotheses, we employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Our findings confirm that resources (time, money and skills) significantly influence the behavioral intentions related to the adoption of AI tools for DRO. Additionally, we identified that the behavioral intentions positively translate into the actual adoption of AI tools.

Our study provides a unique viewpoint suited to understand the context of the adoption of AI in a governmental context. Companies often strive to invest in state-of-the-art technologies, but it is important to understand how government bodies involved in DRO strategize to adopt AI to improve efficiency.

Our study offers a fresh perspective in understanding how the organizational culture and perspectives of government officials influence their inclinations to adopt AI for DRO. Additionally, it offers a multidimensional perspective by integrating the theoretical frameworks of CVM and UTAUT for a greater understanding of the adoption and deployment of AI tools with organizational culture and voluntariness as critical moderators.

Performance appraisal is one of the most critical and indispensable human resource practices for organisations. However, it generates dissatisfaction among employees as it is often viewed as complex and ineffective. The purpose of this paper is to present a new performance management system that integrates multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods – the analytic network process (ANP) and PROMETHEE – with the visual techniques of the GAIA plane and the stacked bar chart. MCDA methods allow a structured and consistent evaluation integrating qualitative and quantitative criteria.

The authors developed a structured and transparent performance management system. It is based on the MCDA methods PROMETHEE and ANP. It also incorporates the visual techniques: GAIA and stacked bar chart. Feedback for trainings and developments can precisely be formulated.

Visual techniques permit clear identification and quantification, for each employee, of the areas that need improvement through training and development, which contributes to the resource-based view of organisations. A real case study has been portrayed to show the added value of the MCDA methods and the visual techniques in employee performance management.

The paper describes a new employee performance system adopted in an organisation. The multi-criteria analysis transparently combines qualitative and quantitative decision criteria into a holistic and transparent evaluation. The visual techniques permit us to gain a deep insight into the employees’ skills profile and capture fine details where individuals perform or underperform.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of intellectual capital and knowledge management in the entrepreneurial success of firms through a research model which is subsequently tested empirically.

The paper utilises the knowledge-based perspective to formulate three sets of hypotheses which the authors subsequently test in the empirical analysis on data derived from the Orbis database, which includes over 1-million data points from approximately 240,000 firms across 174 geographic subdivisions of economic regions in 14 European countries, from 2010 to 2013. The analysis utilises probit model regressions on the likelihood of becoming a high-growth firms (HGF), in the presence of a number of control factors including firm age, firm size, tangible assets, foreign ownership, competitiveness (via Herfindahl index), return on assets, industry sector and country location.

Findings from our analysis suggest that investments in intangible assets and generating patents from research and development (R&D) efforts is positively related to the likelihood of becoming a HGF. In addition, cluster membership seems to be a positive influence on becoming a HGF, however the moderating impact of intangible investments and patents is less clear in clusters.

The authors highlight the mixed effects from cluster membership and the beneficial impact from intellectual capital and knowledge management in achieving high growth firm status.

The authors derive and test our research model, which outlines the interrelationship of the various factors leading to firms becoming high-growth firms. The results suggest that there may be further fruitful ground for future investigation in the intersections of knowledge management and intellectual capital concepts within entrepreneurial contexts.

Biculturals possess higher cultural intelligence than monocultural individuals. This study explores biculturals' key factors and attributes and how their cultural knowledge and identification influence International Business Negotiations (IBNs) and help their firms outperform others.

Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 35 bicultural senior managers in Lebanon.

The findings highlight three essential qualities and behaviors that allow biculturals to act as a bridge between the parties during IBN: adaptability, cultural frame switching (CFS) and creativity.

This study explores the notion of bicultural personnel using their understanding of multiple cultures to be innovative, avoid groupthink and generate new creative ideas that help overcome stalemates during IBNs.

Based on the multi-faceted nature of high-growth firms (HGFs) and the significant investments by governments to make the business environment more conducive to firm growth, the effects of changing institutions impacting on HGFs has not been explored in any great detail. While the authors have a very clear understanding of the spatial variations of HGFs and their firm characteristics in various advanced countries, the authors are lacking such insights for emerging countries. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Given the growth prospects and economic reforms, the authors chose emerging Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as the research context. Utilising a cross-country panel data set spanning 11 countries, the authors investigate the share of HGFs across these countries and further examine how changes in institutions impact firms to become HGFs. The authors frame the arguments around three institutional dimensions, namely corruption, investment climate and bureaucratic quality.

The findings suggest that the rates of HGFs are significantly higher in emerging CEE countries as compared with those in developed countries. Second, the results show that an improvement in a country’s institutional environment impacts positively on the likelihood of firms becoming HGFs. Among the three measures of institutions, bureaucratic quality seems to have the largest positive impact as compared with corruption and investment climate.

The authors contribute to the literature by presenting the share of HGF across 11 emerging CEE countries and estimating how changes in institutions impact on firms becoming HGFs for the period 2000-2013.

The COVID-19 pandemic has showcased the lack of resilience found in the global value chains (GVCs) of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Existing evidence shows that MNEs have only recently and slowly started recovering and attempting to rebuild the resilience of their GVCs. This paper analyzes the challenges/inhibitors faced by MNEs in building their resilience through their GVCs.

A four-stage hybrid model was used to identify the interrelationship among the identified inhibitors and to distinguish the most critical ones by ranking them. In the first stage, we employed a modified total interpretive structural modeling (m-TISM) approach to determine the inter-relationship among the inhibitors. Additionally, we identified the inhibitors' driving power and dependency by performing a matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis. In the second stage, we employed the Pythagorean fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (PF-AHP) method to determine the weight of the criteria. The next stage followed, in which we used the Pythagorean fuzzy combined compromise solution (PF-CoCoSo) method to rank the inhibitors. Finally, we performed a sensitivity analysis to determine the robustness of the framework we had built based on the criteria and inhibitors.

We find business sustainability to have the highest importance and managerial governance as the most critical inhibitor hindering the path to resilience. Based on these insights, we derive four research propositions aimed at strengthening the resilience of such GVCs, followed by their implications for theory and practice.

Our findings contribute to the extant literature by uncovering key inhibitors that act as barriers to MNEs. We link out our findings with a number of propositions that we derive, which may be considered for implementation by MNEs and could help them endow their GVCs with resilience.

This study examines the impact of customer involvement (CI), technology strategy, firm internationalization and servitization on product and service innovation performance (SIP) in hybrid offerings. In addition, it investigates the moderating role of digitization and co-creation in the relationship mentioned above.

A research framework was developed through the lens of service-dominant (S-D) logic theory, and the proposed research hypotheses were empirically tested. Primary data were collected via the survey method, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

Findings of this study suggest that the S-D logic theory effectively explains CI and servitization in hybrid offerings. Furthermore, digitization is a crucial driver of SIP. Additionally, this paper finds that co-creation moderates between servitization and innovation performance of hybrid offerings.

Besides theoretical contributions, this study presents valuable insights to manage service networks during servitization.

First, this work proposes a comprehensive framework of hybrid offerings' driving factors (i.e. CI, firm internationalization, technology strategy and servitization) and their impact on product and SIP. Second, it tests the moderating effects of digitalization and co-creation in the context of hybrid offerings.