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This chapter provides an introduction to the world of family companies and family constitutions from a legal perspective. It first studies the legal types of business organizations that family firms have chosen across time and jurisdictions. It then illustrates how early predecessors of family constitutions evolved in the late Middle Ages and what modern family constitutions look like in different countries today. Further considerations are devoted to the governance framework of family firms. The chapter concludes by exploring the potential legal effects of family constitutions under German company and contract law.

The successful implementation of quality management in organizations is dependent on people, particularly leaders. It seems as if leaders' affective states (attitudes and commitment) in the military were connected to their capability to inspire people and a group (corps training unit) to achieve a common goal. The research reported in this article was aimed at examining officers in corps training units' attitudes towards, and commitment to quality management in training in the South African Army.

Focus group interviews were conducted with a sample of 49 officers on various levels (senior, junior and warrant officers) at six South African Army corps training units.

The findings indicate that the attitudes of leaders played a significant role to ensure that quality management of training is conducted effectively. Participants experienced that leaders in the South African Army were mostly responsible for the negative attitudes of officers in corps training units. Inadequate leadership support and lack of trust contributed to a lack of transparency and poor communication that resulted in poor commitment among officers at corps training units. The investigation further revealed that a positive affective state (attitudes and commitment) of leaders is essential in ensuring effective quality management of training.

The potential usefulness of this research may provide insight into how leaders' affective state could be improved to ensure effective quality management. This research may also be of interest to other organizations that conduct in-house training.

With a focus on the position of EU mobile workers in the Dutch meat industry, this article discusses the multi-level State efforts to enhance protection of workers who experienced limited protection of existing State and private enforcement institutions. The COVID-19 pandemic, with virus outbreaks at Dutch meat plants, fuelled public and political will to structurally improve these workers' precarious work and living conditions. Yet, the process of policy change is slow. The authors show it is the gradual transformation in the institutional environment that the State needs to counter to become more protective for EU mobile workers.

Using the gradual institutional change approach and the concept of State ignorance, the authors examine State responses drawing on interviews with expert stakeholders in the public and private domain, public administration records and newspaper articles.

Through knowledge creation, boosted social dialogue mechanisms, enhanced enforcement capacity and new housing legislation, the Dutch State focuses on countering gradual institutional change through which existing institutions lost their effectiveness as protectors of EU mobile workers. The organization of work is, nevertheless, not (yet) fundamentally addressed with tighter public legislation.

The findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of the State as multifaceted actor in institutional change processes towards increased protection for EU mobile workers.

The use of modern technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, commonly known as “Industry 4.0” (I4.0), is believed to have considerable potential for product customisation. In this context, this paper aims to explore whether or not using these technologies impacts customer participation (CP) in a firm's new product development (NPD) process.

To empirically test the proposed relationships, the authors collected the North Italian manufacturing firms' data and applied regression analysis.

Empirical results indicate that, on the one hand, the technologies have their specific and individual impacts, and on the other hand, the firms which use more I4.0 technologies allow more customer participation in their product design and production process. This positive impact is more robust in product design than in the production process.

Managers aiming to benefit from CP should broaden the scope of adopting I4.0 technologies and consider different roles concerning the design and production phases of the new product development process. Recognising the importance and allowing CP in NPD will enable firms to meet the customised demands.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, the proposed relationships of this study have been extensively debated theoretically in the I4.0 context but never empirically tested before. It is one of the few studies which discusses the strategic adoption and the combined use of I4.0 technologies to create more opportunities for product customisation.