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This paper aims to address the long-standing problem of suboptimal student team experiences for instructors and students by incorporating the student voice by co-creating a virtual team collaborative environment to improve team collaboration in the online classroom.

This paper presents a novel design science research approach and relates two elaborated action design science research (eADSR) cycles that design, implement and evaluate the student team experience in online courses requiring teamwork.

The outcome is a holistic view of a virtual team classroom environment specified with technologies and practices that may be employed to optimize the student team experience. The eADSR process yields non-obvious diagnoses and actionable steps for continually incorporating the ever-changing social aspects unique to students in addition to the evolving technological landscape.

This paper is valuable to faculty members interested in applying eADSR processes to incorporate the student voice to address pedagogical and learning challenges in the classroom. Additionally, it provides a DSR-based model that can be implemented in the classroom to improve student team collaboration as well as transparency for the instructor and the students in terms of team member contributions with the goal to alleviate student and faculty frustrations. This topic is particularly relevant in light of COVID-19 as students and faculty alike are thrust into new online classroom environments.

Employing eADSR in the classroom is a novel and unique approach to create a replicable model for virtual team collaboration that can be added to the classroom.

The negative cultural bias vis-à-vis international business and cross-cultural management has been duly acknowledged, necessitating recommendations towards investigating its positive effects. Methodologically, quantitative research clearly predominates, and there have been calls for alternative approaches. Thus, this conceptual paper addresses the research gap (methodological and thematic) by investigating if multicultural teams can be an essential part of the global workforce and whether positive effects exist regarding dynamic capabilities, learning and knowledge transfer.

The underlying ethnographic research design enabled exploring within the embedded single case study from an emic perspective, including qualitative observation and semi-structured expert interviews, and provided detailed insights into the company’s multicultural work environment.

The results reveal that applying a qualitative design allowed the needed exploration and show that multicultural, geographically dispersed teams are positively experienced and considered necessary in today’s globalised world. They are likely to increase in the future. Moreover, dynamic capabilities (multicultural competencies) are indispensable for multicultural teamwork. Regarding learning opportunities, different viewpoints for discussion and the ability to reflect on these offer valuable insights. In line with theory, multiculturality is considered a “two-edged sword”, providing simultaneous benefits and challenges. Contrary to the theory, even highly important information transfers can occur virtually, although occasional physical contact is essential for trust building.

The multinational family business offers a unique example of a positive relationship between multiculturalism and organisational excellence and demonstrates how the application of a qualitative methodology can support theory building by delivering a revised model of dynamic capabilities in multicultural environments with geographical dispersion.

Most studies on workplace meetings have examined them as physical gatherings but have not linked them to interactions before and after meetings. Drawing upon coordination theory, this study aims to examine the impact of interactions before, during and after meetings on meeting effectiveness.

A survey design was used, and regular workplace meeting attendees were recruited. A mediation model was developed to test the effect of interactions on perceived meeting effectiveness.

Interactions before meetings positively influenced attendee involvement during the meeting, and attendee involvement mediated the positive relationship between attendee interactions during the meeting and perceived meeting effectiveness. A novel finding of this study is that incorporating meeting outcomes in subsequent work positively influenced perceived meeting effectiveness because it fostered common understanding of the meeting agenda.

The present results link prior empirical findings on interactions before and during meetings to new predictions regarding the effect of interactions after meetings. Coordination theory expands current conceptualizations of workplace meetings by broadening the notion of meetings to cover a more extended period of interdependent interactions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Grameen America's response to COVID-19 pandemic. This is accomplished by identifying and analyzing the key initiatives implemented by Grameen America within the framework of selected United Nations' Sustainability Development Goals (UN’s SD Goals).

This study has used qualitative content analysis to analyze financial and nonfinancial information of Grameen Bank.

This study follows a qualitative content analysis method to precisely gauge the shift in Grameen’s strategy and focus, as well as to assess the impact of its initiatives on the small business community before and after the pandemic. The findings showcase that Grameen’s longstanding mission to alleviate poverty is in line with the UN’s SD Goal 1. Also, Grameen’s commitment to create partnerships with external organizations to offer credit and noncredit services and support is consistent with UN’s SD Goal 17.

Notwithstanding the significant contributions of this case study, the findings are limited in some respects. First, this case study focuses on the Grameen America’s unique experience regarding its response to COVID-19 pandemic. This may affect the interpretation and generalization of the findings of this study. Performing comparative views across wide range of relevant microlending institutions could help improve the generalization of the findings. Also, this case study examines the impact on women and minority groups who were particularly affected by the pandemic. The results should, therefore, be interpreted with care as circumstances may change over time.

The implication for practice is that policymakers should encourage the creation of more member-based financial and non-financial institutions that can help members integrate financially and socially into society. Also, practitioners should increase their ethical duties and responsibilities to their members in society in good and bad times as members tend to value the ethical aspect of financial businesses.

The social implication of the findings is that helping members of society to cope with the difficulties brought about by COVID increased the sense of belonging among members and made them feel cared for, thereby increasing financial and social inclusion among underserved people.

Prior literature addressed the initiatives of microlending institutions such as Grameen Bank to achieve financial inclusion among financially vulnerable women. This case study contributes to the literature on financial inclusion and poverty alleviation by examining Grameen America’s response to the pandemic by identifying and assessing Grameen America (GA’s) key initiatives and their impact within the framework of the UN’s SD Goals in the post COVID-19 world.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a novel storytelling approach that investigates lived experience at the intersection of motherhood/caregiving and Ph.D. pursuits. The paper contributes to the feminist tradition of writing differently through the process of care that emerges from shared stories.

Using a process called heartful-communal storytelling, the authors evoke personal and embodied stories and transgressive narratives. The authors present a composite process drawing on heartful-autoethnography, dialogic writing and communal storytelling.

The paper makes two key contributions: (1) the paper illustrates a novel feminist process in action and (2) the paper contributes six discrete stories of lived experience at the intersection of parenthood and Ph.D. studies. The paper also contributes to the development of the feminist tradition of writing differently. Three themes emerged through the storytelling experience, and these include (1) creating boundaries and transgressing boundaries, (2) giving and receiving care and (3) neoliberal conformity and resistance. These themes, like the stories, also became entangled.

The paper demonstrates how heartful-communal storytelling can lead to individual and collective meaning making. While the Ph.D. is a solitary path, the authors' heartful-communal storytelling experience teaches that holding it separate from other relationships can impoverish what is learnt and constrain the production of good knowledge; the epistemic properties of care became self-evident.

This paper aims to determine the impact of mentorship on the development of self-directedness among beginner teachers in their initial years of teaching.

The researcher adopted a positivist paradigm to explore the situation of concern. Quantitative research was conducted, involving the collection and analysis of numerical data. Two closed-ended structured questionnaires were utilised, derived from the 40-item self-directed learning readiness scale (SDLRS) developed by Fisher and King, and a pre-determined questionnaire by Glazerman focused on the first-year teaching experience, induction and mentoring of beginner teachers.

Beginner teachers merely relying on the knowledge obtained from their studies is insufficient to achieve a satisfactory level of self-directedness when starting a teaching career. Most beginner teachers faced significant challenges in their early years of teaching due to the absence of mentoring support. In addition, most indicated that they resume their teaching duties and rely on their district for general support, guidance and orientation. Finally, the results have shown that mentoring positively impacts beginner teachers’ self-directedness.

The first limitation was that this study was narrowed to one South Africa University part-time B.Ed honours students working as beginner teachers in different provinces at primary and secondary schools. As a result, the findings of this research might be interpreted by some critics as one-sided and not representative of the views of most beginner teachers in South Africa who are working. The second limitation of this study is the sample size. In this study, 222 responses were received. As a result, the findings of this research might be considered not representative of the target sample size.

The presence and effective implementation of mentoring programmes in schools can positively impact beginner teachers' professional development and retention during their first years of teaching.

We contend that our research holds significance for international readership as it aims to garner attention towards potential research endeavours in diverse settings concerning mentorship programs for beginner teachers, specifically promoting self-directed learning. Our research offers opportunities to compare our findings with studies conducted in more comprehensive, comparative contexts and foster research possibilities in broader, contrasting contexts.

Based on the findings of this research, the availability and effective use of mentoring programmes would significantly affect beginner teachers' self-directedness, improve their retention rate and alleviate their teaching challenges. This study was the first research on the perceptions of the influence of mentoring on the self-directedness of beginner teachers.

The purpose of this study is to explore and gain a greater understanding of women's entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic. How have women entrepreneurs changed their entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic? What dimensions are highlighted by women entrepreneurs for a sustainable entrepreneurship during the COVID-19 pandemic?

This study was conducted with a qualitative design where multiple case studies were conducted with 30 women. Data were collected through qualitative interviews with the women entrepreneurs in Asia and Europe.

The results from this study show that women entrepreneurs have mainly focused on financial resources. Economic sustainability is required for companies to survive a crisis in the form of a pandemic. This study has shown what lessons women have from the pandemic where the four D’s model constitute a first step to a theoretical contribution. For women, it is about dollars (e g economic sustainability), demand from customers, the role that digitization has played and distribution both to customers and from suppliers.

Practical implications from this study are that women entrepreneurs need to be prepared for economic crises to a larger extent. The economic sustainability plays a key role in sustainable businesses for women entrepreneurs in any kind of context.

Women's entrepreneurship looks different, and more knowledge is needed about their conditions. It contributes to increased social sustainability.

This study contributes to an increased understanding of how women's entrepreneurship has been affected during a global crisis.

This study aims to explore virtual leadership work within educational settings in the light of social disruption. In 2020, a global pandemic changed the way we work. For school leaders, that involved running a virtual school overnight. Although there is a stream of research that explores leadership in solely virtual communities, there is a gap in the literature regarding practices that transition from analog to virtual practices and the changes in leadership in those types of work practices.

The data gathering method constitutes a questionnaire to explore school leaders’ experiences of virtual work and virtual leadership in light of social disruption. One hundred and five Swedish school leaders answered the questionnaire covering both fixed and open questions.

The results show that school leaders’ general experiences of transition to virtual school have worked relatively well. We show how the work changes and shift the focus in the virtual workplace.

The author’s contributions include theorizing about leadership affordances in virtual schools and providing implications for practice. The authors summarize our main contribution in five affordances that characterize virtual leadership, including a focus on core activities, trust-based government, 1:1 communication with staff, structure and clarity and active outreach activities. The results could be interesting for understanding the radical digitalization of leadership in the digital workplace.

We conceptualized the novel phenomenon of COVID-induced virtual teams and its implications and provided researchers with the required information on how to conduct a phenomenon-based study for conceptualizing novel phenomena in relevant ways.

This article stems from phenomenon-based and, thus, theory-building and grounded qualitative research in the German industrial sector. We conducted 47 problem-centered interviews in two phases (February–July 2021 and February–July 2022) to understand how team members and team leaders experienced COVID-induced virtual teamwork and its subsequent developments.

Empirically, we found COVID-induced virtual teams to be characterized by a high relevance of shaping positive team dynamics via steering internal moderators; crisis is a novel external moderator and transformation becomes the key output factor to be leveraged. Work-from-home leads to specific configuration needs and interrelations between work-from-home and on-site introduce additional dynamics. Methodologically, the phenomenon-based approach is found to be highly suitable for studying the effects of such novel phenomena.

This article is explorative. Thus, we advocate further research on related novel phenomena, such as post-COVID-hybrid and work-from-home teams. A model of how to encourage positive dynamics in post-COVID-hybrid teams is developed and lays the groundwork for further studies on post-COVID teamwork. Concerning methodology, researchers are provided with information on how to conduct phenomenon-based research on novel phenomena, such as the COVID-induced virtual teams that we studied.

Companies receive advice on how to encourage positive dynamics in post-COVID teamwork, e.g. on identifying best practices and resilient individuals.

In a country such as Germany that faces labor shortages, our insights might facilitate better labor-market integration for those with care-work obligations and international workers.

We offer a first conceptualization of a relevant novel phenomenon, namely COVID-induced virtual teams. We exemplify the phenomenon-based approach as a suitable methodology that serves to build relevant theory using active categorization.

This paper aims to examine how a social entrepreneurial organisation in Sweden collectively learned to adapt itself to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using an abductive approach, this study conducted single case fieldwork on a social entrepreneurial organisation called SFE. The following research questions were asked: What are the changes in collective learning conditions that SFE has to face during the pandemic? What are the outcomes of collective learning during the pandemic in SFE?

This study results indicate that collective learning conditions were changed by restructuring the organisation’s design and teamwork during the pandemic, which facilitated sharing of knowledge and experiences. This collective learning helped the organisation develop new virtual projects during the pandemic. Another result of this collective learning was the members’ new shared understanding of the organisation’s vision.

This study hopes to broaden the understanding of the relationship between collective learning in organisations and organisational adaptation in times of crisis.

This study can help leaders of social entrepreneurial organisations understand what changes are necessary to create a team that collectively learns.

The data had the advantage of being gathered as a real-time process, and the researcher witnessed how the organisation achieved adaptation as it happened and not just through its members’ reflection of it as a past phenomenon.