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Complaint service management, aimed at improving customer satisfaction, provides important content for incorporation into studying a closed-loop supply chain. An analysis of the relationship between two provides the basis for probing the role of complaint management (CM) in the closed-loop supply chain to help it perform more efficiently and effectively through the application of advanced technologies. This paper considers how CM can be computed combining computer communication and information technologies. This computing process involves collection, evaluation and disposal. Using computer telephone integration technology, an integrated multi-channel system is designed; complaint and production evaluated through an intelligent decision support system; and CM processing system established to implement corresponding disposal which reflects the utility of CM. This research on the process of incorporating CM into our studies has significance for computing business service in the future. Based on exergoeconomics theory, the closed-loop supply chain is discussed, and the metric about “system negative environment effect” is introduced to system performance in terms of energy expenditures; a case study illustrates the efficacy of the process

Considering the vital role of resource-constraint innovation in developing countries, the aim of the study is to examine the mechanism of internal and external heterogeneous knowledge sharing (HKS) in the relationship between sustainable leadership (SL) and frugal innovation (FI). The social exchange theory was used to develop a research framework.

This study employed Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis to examine the relationship among several latent factors based on 263 participants from Pakistani SMEs.

The current findings support the significant positive impact of SL on both internal and external HKS. Moreover, this study also confirms the mediating effect of both types of HKS in the relationship between SL and FI.

To delve further into the benefits and vital role of HKS, it is recommended to conduct further research that would examine the potential impact of heterogeneous knowledge sources on the “SL–FI relationship” and to apply the presented research methodology in other countries and organizations beyond Pakistani SMEs.

This study is one of the first documented attempts to demonstrate HKS as a mechanism in the relationship between a specific type of leadership and FI.

Using social influence theory, this study examines the relationship between self-initiated expatriates' (SIE) political skill, as a measure of their social effectiveness, and cross-cultural adjustment (CCA). It also tests whether the host employer's psychological contract (PC) fulfillment mediates this relationship.

Partial least square structural equation modeling (covariance-based SEM) technique is employed to analyze a sample of 209 SIEs.

The study finds SIEs' political skill positively and significantly associated with SIEs' work-related adjustment. The relationship with interactional adjustment is only marginally significant. It also finds that SIEs' PC fulfillment mediates the relationship between SIEs' political skill and work-related adjustment. The mediation is marginally significant for the relationship between SIEs' political skill and general living adjustment.

The study adds to the literature on expatriates' skills and CCA by theorizing and testing the hitherto unexplored role of SIEs' political skill in their work and non-work CCA. It also theorizes and examines the host employer's PC fulfillment as a mediating mechanism, through which SIEs' political skill facilitates their CCA. Finally, it advances the literature on political skill by testing the construct's application in the cross-cultural and non-work domain.

The objectives of this study are twofold: first, to identify the effect of sustainability management on the success of international development projects, and second, to investigate the moderating role of political and social skills on this relationship.

This study adopted a quantitative research methodology based on questionnaire data collected from 43 international development project managers from various fields in Burkina Faso (West Africa). Descriptive statistics and exploratory and confirmatory analyses using principal component analysis were used to assess the quality of the measurement model. A multiple regression analysis based on the partial least squares approach was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that sustainability management positively contributes to the success of international development projects. However, given the specificities of these projects and their perception of success, the project coordinator's political and social skills do not predict a greater impact of sustainability management on the success of international development projects. The study also found that project coordinators prioritize their technical skills over behavioral ones.

This study fills a gap in the literature, given that little is known about the moderating role of political and social skills in the effect of sustainability management on the success of specific projects such as international development projects.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the contingent use of rational, intuitive and political decision-making in R&D.

This research is based on a study in an R&D department of a multinational high-tech firm in the Netherlands. The study consists of a case study design, focusing on four embedded cases, longitudinally studying each case.

The literature distinguishes three dimensions of innovation decision-making processes: rational, intuitive and political. By studying these interwoven dimensions over time, this study finds that the dominant use of each of these dimensions differs across the innovation process. There is an emphasis on intuitive decision-making in an early phase, followed by more emphasis on political decision-making, and moving to more emphasis on rational decision-making in a later phase of the R&D process. Furthermore, the predominant choice in a specific innovation phase for one of the three decision-making dimensions is influenced by the decision-making dimension that is dominantly employed in the preceding phase.

This study contributes to the innovation decision-making literature by developing and applying a model that distinguishes rational, intuitive and political decision-making dimensions, the interactions among these dimensions in innovation decision-making in R&D, and the contingency of these dimensions upon the innovation phase. It calls for further research into the contingent nature of innovation decision-making processes.

For practitioners this study has two relevant insights. First it highlights the importance and usefulness of intuitive and political decision-making in addition to the prevailing emphasis on rational decision-making. Second, practitioners may be more alert to consciously changing their dominant decision-making approach across the phases of the innovation process. Third, companies may adjust their human resource policies to this study’s findings.

The literature on rational, intuitive and political decision-making is quite extensive. However, research has hardly studied how these decision-making dimensions develop in conjunction, and over time. This paper reports on a first study to do so and finds that the dominant use of these dimensions is contingent upon the phase of the R&D process and on the decision-making dimensions used in earlier phases. The study suggests that using a contingency approach can help to further integrate the debate in research and practice.

This paper conceptualises how managers psychologically experience and respond to crises via metaphor analysis.

This paper uses a discourse dynamics approach to metaphor analysis. Conceptual metaphors were analysed and developed into concept maps through 37 semi-structured interviews with senior managers from different portfolios within 16 public universities in South Africa after #FeesMustFall protests.

Five domains emerged, including (1) looming crisis, (2) crisis onset, (3) crisis triage and containment, (4) (not) taking action and (5) post-crisis reflection. These domains shape a framework for the crisis adaptation cycle.

This study suggests that organisations should pay more attention to understanding emotions in crises and can use the adaptation model to develop their managers. It shows how metaphors can help explain affective and cognitive experiences and how emotions shift and evolve during a crisis. Managers should be aware of early signs of the crisis and its potential impact on their business operation in the looming and recognition stages, analyse the situation and work collectively on possible actions to minimise losses and maximise gains.

This is a rare investigation into the emotions of senior managers in the public sector in a social movement and national crisis via unconventional research methods to advance cognitive appraisal theory in crisis management.

This paper aims to identify the expressions and flows of tacit knowledge in the unstructured decision process. In this type of process, decision-makers use not only the explicit knowledge but also aspects such as intuition, experience and other forms of tacit knowledge. The research developed a qualitative approach, through a study of multiple cases, and applied semi-structured interviews to ten executives. The analysis of data was carried out according to Flores (1994) interpretative analysis of text technique. Results indicated that there was the insertion of tacit knowledge in all unstructured decision-making routines. It was also detected the need to explicitly add the routine of evaluation to the Mintzberg et al.’s (1976) model as elements of tacit knowledge were also identified at this stage of the decision-making process.

The research has taken a qualitative approach, through a study of multiple cases, applying semi-structured interviews to ten executives. The analysis of data was carried out according to technique for interpretative analysis of the text.

Results indicated that there was tacit knowledge in all unstructured decision-making routines. Also detected was the need to explicitly add the routine of evaluation to the model.

It was unable to perform psychological studies to investigate the deepest cognitive and emotional aspects of managers, and it does not address, in depth, some issues that are related to tacit knowledge in decisions and that would be considered relevant.

Although this research was unable to dissect the composition of tacit knowledge in unstructured decision process, a better understanding of the aspects that make up the knowledge in question has been developed, providing some decision-making guidelines to managers.

The language between communications actors can share decision-making rules to assist in the production and process of arguments necessary for the debate, evaluation and attribution of institutionally recurrent decisions.

The original contribution is present in a detailed description of the expressions of flows of tacit knowledge in unstructured decision-making processes, based on the model of Mintzberg et al. (1976). From the influence of tacit knowledge, it was found that the model in question needs to consider the relevance of the evaluation phase, as a stage equivalent to the other described by Mintzberg et al. (1976). These aspects have been better explained in the introduction and conclusion. Participant observation was not possible because the decision had already been taken by the informant at the moment of the interviews.

This Impact Pathways paper aims to provide a timely and structured discussion of real-world problems at Marks and Spencer and in retail in general, evoked through the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The article presents collaborative research based on more than five hours of interviews and several iterative paper writing steps between management scholars and Marks & Spencer’s Head of Procurement - Logistics and Supply Chain. Continuous discussions for more than ten months among the research team assure the timeliness and relevance of the findings. The exceptional position of the executive and his career biography allowed the integration of a variety of intra-organisational and inter-organisational stakeholders.

This paper highlights the impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic on operations and supply chain management (OSCM) in the retail industry, structured in upstream, internal and operational, and downstream and customer perspectives. The paper concludes with a practice-infused research agenda, which aims to trigger relevant research about the current and potential future crises.

Although the research agenda is directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the retail industry, the future research pathways are expected to inform business responses to potential future external shocks other than pandemics and in different industries as well.

Despite a plethora of studies already published on COVID-19 and OSCM, little is known on how the outbreak affects specific firms and industries. This paper offers an overview of COVID-19 related change as it happens at the retailer and in the retailing industry in general. This article is among the first to provide a practice-infused call for research on urgent issues being faced by business leaders directly relevant to our domain.

This paper is an extension of a panel presentation delivered in response to a joint call for panels by the Social Informatics and Information Ethics and Policy Special Interest Groups for the 2022 Association for Information Science and Technology conference. The purpose is to introduce critical race frameworks and tenets as a lens to develop, assess and analyze the social informatics (SI) within information science (IS) research, professional discourse, praxis and pedagogical paradigms. This paper spotlights one of the presentations from that panel, an iteration of Critical Race Theory (CRT) designed specifically for information studies: CRiTical Race information Theory (CRiT).

Just as importantly, using SI as part of the context, the paper also includes a discussion that illustrates research and theory building possibilities as both counter and complement to the technocratic advances that permeate society at every level (macro, mezzo and micro), which can also be reasonably framed as the information industrial complex. Thus, CRiT joins other forms of critical discourse and praxis grappling with deconstructing, decolonizing, demarginalizing and demystifying the influence and impact of information technologies. While CRiT has global intentions and implications, this specific discussion has an extensive American focus.

If we consider the rapid pace in which techno-determinism is moving toward the vise grip of techno-fatalism controlled by frameworks generated from the information industrial complex, we can reasonably consider that humanity on a global basis is living within a meta-large technocratic crisis moment. This crisis moment is both acute and chronic. That is, the technocratic crisis is continuously moving quickly while simultaneously worsening over an extended period of time with no remedies and few responses to substantively address the crisis.

Part of the nature of information and data is measurability. Thus, identifying compatible nomenclature connecting the descriptiveness of intersectionality (a seminal CRT tool) as a qualitative research method to the measurability of data connected to quantitative research, a mixed method approach moves from possible to plausible. Additionally, within IS, there are often opportunities to measure human engagement, such as social media content, search engine use, assessing practices of categorizations, and multiple forms of surveillance data as a short list. Hence, the descriptiveness of intersectional qualitative research “mixed” with the measurability of quantitative research within information settings implies exponential methodological possibilities.

CRiT is multilayered, on the one hand, with the intention of being a discipline-specific, information-specific form of CRT. On the other hand, CRiT theory building is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary based on information as omnipresent phenomena. An ongoing challenge for CRiT theory building is identifying and working within a balance between, practitioners who typically throw anything and everything at practical problems, while scholars often slice problems into such small segments that practical understanding is severely limited. Embracing and integrating the dynamic interplay between developing ideas and using them is the key to evolving CRiT within the social sciences.

There is plenty of room as well as a need for additional narrative discussing or challenging the use or appropriation of information from a technocratic approach, a counter to the information industrial complex.

CRiT is emerging and cutting edge in discussion that addresses the technocratic determinism found in most scholarly discourses.

This study considered the use of video conferencing virtual backgrounds with employees located in a large multinational corporate organisation in Ireland and the USA to discern if background images evoking gendered stereotypes of leadership can cue stereotype threat in female technology workers undertaking a leadership activity, thus negatively effecting performance. This study aims to contribute to the body of research on stereotype threat by establishing whether virtual backgrounds used in video conferencing software are inherently identity safe or whether their use could have a negative performance impact on marginalised groups.

Using a mixed methods research design with 22 participants in two countries working in the one large organisation, using two quantitative methods (an experiment and a survey) and one qualitative method (semi-structured interviews), the study examined the relationship between performance on the leadership activity and exposure to gendered backgrounds on a video conference call.

It found that female leaders undertaking a leadership test experienced more anxiety and achieved lower scores on average when exposed to a male-gendered virtual background compared to male colleagues or female leaders exposed to a female gendered background. It was also found that these leaders were aware of the stereotype of leadership being White and male, and showed symptoms of prolonged exposure to stereotype threat in the workplace. While the authors still are working through a post-pandemic environment, it may be judicious for organisations to restrict the use of virtual backgrounds to identity-safe ones, specifically chosen by the company.

The study makes several practical recommendations, indicating actions which can be taken at the individual, team and corporate levels. Re-running this experiment in a more controlled environment with a larger sample set could yield more definitive, statistically significant results and contribute more to the literature.

Some individual impacts were found via the interviews. Male leaders in the organisation need to do more to mentor and endorse their female colleagues. By doing this, they can counter the negative effects of solo status and the subsequent performance degradations of their female counterparts, while also setting an example for other leaders. Participation in the mentoring programme and initiatives such as Dare and value, inclusion, belonging, and equity should be encouraged and supported. Reverse mentoring should also be encouraged among the population of male leaders to aid in allyship and bias-awareness.

Teams should note that a democratic vote is not always the best way to decide on the names of teams, projects or meeting rooms. These may skew towards niche interests that can serve to alienate members of the team who do not associate themselves with that interest. Rather, the teams should strive to be fully inclusive and educated on the need for identity-safety. Team events may also serve to alienate members if teams are not mindful of the need to be inclusive. Activities, such as “go-kart” racing and physical or competitive team events have been highlighted as unsuitable for some team members, and should be avoided in favour of inclusivity.

A significant body of research has documented the effect to which stereotype threat can be triggered by both the physical environment and by the use of various technology media. However, there is a dearth of research exploring the relationship between stereotype threat, defined as “the concrete, real-time threat of being judged and treated poorly in settings where a negative stereotype about one’s group applies” (Steele et al., 2002, p. 385), and video conferencing software features, such as virtual backgrounds.