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When is it more profitable for multinational manufacturers to manufacture in high-cost environments and when in low-cost environments? While the literature offers many cues to answer this question, too little empirical research directly addresses this. In this study, we quantitatively and empirically investigate the financial effect of companies' production footprint in low-cost and high-cost environments for different types of production networks.

Using the data of 770 multinational manufacturing companies, we analyze the relationship between production footprints and profitability during four calendar semesters in 2018 and 2019 (N = 2,940), investigating the moderating role of companies' production network type.

We find that companies with networks distinguished by both high levels of product complexity and process sophistication profit the most from producing to a greater extent in high-cost countries. For these companies, shifting production to low-cost countries would be associated with negative performance implications.

Our findings suggest that the production geography of companies should be attuned to their network type, as defined by the companies' process sophistication and product complexity. Manufacturing in low-cost countries is not always the best choice, as doing so can adversely affect profits if the products are highly innovative and the production processes are complex.

We contribute to the scarce empirical literature on managing global production networks and provide a data-driven analysis that contributes to answering some of the enduring questions in this critical area.

Purpose: Leaders must come up with new ideas and motivate their people to welcome new beginnings if they are to adapt to the changing demands of the business. Organisations face challenges in navigating the vast array of possibilities and choices in the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) world. This chapter explores various leadership styles, highlighting leadership initiatives in the context of (VUCA) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methodology: Secondary sources were used to collect information and data, including published articles, journals, newspapers, reports, books, and websites. The logical progression was used to comprehend the idea of VUCA leadership and strategies.

Findings of the Study: The VUCA accurately depicted the global landscape after COVID-19. It offered a valuable framework for examining strategy and leadership in a swiftly evolving world. To portray the dynamic characteristics of the corporate environment and to lead, many businesses use VUCA. Furthermore, this study highlights the VUCA leadership essential skills needed for effectively navigating VUCA circumstances.

Practical Implications: This study focuses on VUCA leadership practices and strategies in the workplace. The chapter outlines six key competencies: setting goals, being prepared, putting the customer’s needs first, flexibility and adaptation, decision-making, and collaboration and teamwork. These skills are essential for corporations to endure and thrive in VUCA circumstances. Corporate leaders are encouraged to integrate these skills into their repertoire, equipping themselves to confront challenges in a volatile environment.

This chapter analyzes the efficiency levels of a circular economy (CE) with an emphasis on transaction costs. It examines the governance aspect of CE activities in comparison to the predominant linear value creation. Extant CE research in business studies tends to be descriptive and lacks a theoretical foundation, particularly in understanding CE management. Transaction cost theory explains efficiency in economic organizing, lending itself to the study of arrangements that maximize resource efficiency at continued economic virtue. The conceptualization proposes that CE transaction costs are greater than those within the linear economy (LE), primarily due to the uncertainties about reciprocal dependencies, looping material complexities, exchanging novel information, and increased contracting efforts. Geographically bounded and institutionally homogeneous CE initiatives may curb these rising costs. By bringing efficiency concerns into CE analysis, the chapter demonstrates the applicability of transaction cost theory and highlights CE relevance to international business by pointing out spatial choice implications.

This study examines how health-conscious consumers utilize nutrition facts panel labels when purchasing food products, focusing specifically on the dimension of ethical evaluation. It aims to understand how ethical considerations influence the decision-making process of consumers who prioritize health. By analyzing the impact of ethical evaluation on label usage, the study sheds light on the significance of ethics in consumer behavior in the context of purchasing packaged edible oil.

Empirical data were collected using an online survey and a non-ordered questionnaire. In total, 469 valid responses were obtained. The study used SPSS version 27.0 and SmartPLS version 3 for demographic analysis and structural equation modeling.

The findings suggest that three factors – perceived benefits, perceived threats, and nutrition self-efficacy, positively impact the use of NFP labels. However, perceived barriers negatively influence the use of NFP labels. In additionally, ethical evaluation mediates the usage of NFP labels.

In the health belief model, ethical evaluation functions as a mediator and has a greater influence on NFP label use. This study provides a framework for marketers to promote consumer health consciousness by encouraging them to incorporate NFP labels.

This study is one of the first attempts to demonstrate that ethical evaluation mediate health beliefs and the use of nutrition labels.

This study investigates the relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and the time to Initial Public Offering (IPO), which stands as an entrepreneurially risky choice, particularly challenging in family firms. We also investigate the moderating role of family ownership dispersion (FOD).

We draw on an integrated theoretical framework bringing together the upper echelons theory and the socio-emotional wealth (SEW) perspective and on hand-collected data on a sample of Italian family IPOs that occurred in the period 2000–2020. We employ ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and alternative model estimations to test our hypotheses.

BGD positively affects the time to IPO, thus, it increases the time required to go public. FOD negatively moderates this relationship. Our findings remain robust with different measures for BGD, FOD, and family business definition as well as with different econometric models.

The article develops literature on family firms and IPO and it enriches the academic debate about gender and IPOs in family firms. It adds to studies addressing the determinants of the time to IPO by incorporating gender diversity and the FOD into the discussion. Finally, it contributes to research on women and outcomes in family firms.

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.

The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.

When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.

Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.

Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.

This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.

Climate change requires the reduction of direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a task that seems to clash with increasing supply chain complexity. This study aims to analyse the upstream supply chain complexity dimensions suggesting the importance of understanding the information processing that these may entail. Reducing equivocality can be an issue in some dimensions, requiring the introduction of written guidelines to moderate the effects of supply chain complexity dimensions on GHG emissions at the firm and supply chain level.

A three-year panel data was built with information obtained from Bloomberg, Trucost and Compustat. Hypotheses were tested using random effect regressions with robust standard errors on a sample of 394 SP500 companies, addressing endogeneity through the control function approach.

Horizontal complexity reduces GHG emissions at the firm level, whereas vertical and spatial complexity dimensions increase GHG emissions at the firm and supply chain level. Although the introduction of written guidelines neutralises the negative effects of vertical complexity on firm and supply chain GHG emissions, it is not sufficient in the presence of spatial complexity.

This paper offers novel insights by suggesting that managers need to reconcile the potential trade-off effects on GHG emissions that horizontally complex supply chain structures can present. Their priority in vertically and spatially complex supply chain structures should be to reduce equivocality.

Strategies to promote more sustainable consumer choices have been gaining interest among tourism and hospitality scholars. In particular, behavioral economic theories of decision-making have gained popularity in the past decade, led by behavioral interventions (BIs) such as the nudge movement. This paper aims to present a critical reflection on this recent trend, with a specific focus on whether these BI approaches are an adequate tool to contribute to long-term behavioral changes, one crucial aim of the promotion of sustainable consumption.

Based on a critical review of recent significant academic works in the field, this paper reflects on how nudge principles are applied in the hospitality and tourism sectors, as well as the usual justifications given for their use. This paper then discusses the potential limitations, both theoretical and practical, of using these short-term focused approaches to decisions that intend to have long-term outcomes and aims.

BIs in hospitality and tourism have the potential to create long-term sustainable changes through a more comprehensive view of behavioral factors influencing decisions; however, such approaches would need to be strongly embedded in theoretical arguments that question “how” and “why” behavior change could be sustainable in the long term. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to address these concerns for future research.

This critical reflection proposes a comprehensive framework that will help guide stronger theoretically motivated identification, design and empirical testing of BIs and nudges. Industry can eventually benefit from theoretically stronger interventions that provide a balance between the short-term and long-term influence of BIs to attain customer loyalty and eventually greater value for business stakeholders.

This reflection paper critically reviews the basis of BIs and recommends a framework to strengthen their theoretical arguments. This reflection focuses on the theoretical critique of BIs and nudges to ensure long-term behavior changes are sustainable. The paper also proposes a comprehensive framework that incorporates well-founded theoretical models to enhance BIs and nudge literature.

As the economy re-shapes, so too must the modern organization and its governance. We examine corporate governance codes and their limits in predicting an executive’s performance. We look at the Code of Professional Practice of executive search consultants, the in-built factors that have prevented the sector from becoming a qualified profession, and how to move beyond them. We examine how sustainability is migrating to the heart of modern governance, and present eight reasons to change existing codes and a call for tolerant governance. Mining engineer Henri Fayol is considered the founder of corporate governance. Despite dramatic changes in management during the past 100 years, much of his theory still holds. We take a tour of Fayol’s thinking, how management has evolved, and examine the unstructured shape of things to come: an organic architecture, an emphasis on knowledge capital and an agile leadership culture. We conclude with “change ability” – an evolutionary leap for the chair, CFO, supervisory board and organizations as a whole. The executive search profession finally comes under a harsh spotlight. What’s next for the profession, in light of digitization, its representation on boards, its effect on diversity? And why do executive search firms need to walk the sustainability talk in the way they seek and position leaders?

An earlier form of this chapter by the author was published in Dutch in “Bestemming Boardroom: over zoeken en gevonden worden” (Boom, Amsterdam, 2018).

This survey explores the application of real options theory to the field of health economics. The integration of options theory offers a valuable framework to address these challenges, providing insights into healthcare investments, policy analysis and patient care pathways.

This research employs the real options theory, a financial concept, to delve into health economics challenges. Through a systematic approach, three distinct models rooted in this theory are crafted and analyzed. Firstly, the study examines the value of investing in emerging health technology, factoring in future advantages, associated costs and unpredictability. The second model is patient-centric, evaluating the choice between immediate treatment switch and waiting for more clarity, while also weighing the associated risks. Lastly, the research assesses pandemic-related government policies, emphasizing the importance of delaying decisions in the face of uncertainties, thereby promoting data-driven policymaking.

Three different real options models are presented in this study to illustrate their applicability and value in aiding decision-makers. (1) The first evaluates investments in new technology, analyzing future benefits, discount rates and benefit volatility to determine investment value. (2) In the second model, a patient has the option of switching treatments now or waiting for more information before optimally switching treatments. However, waiting has its risks, such as disease progression. By modeling the potential benefits and risks of both options, and factoring in the time value, this model aids doctors and patients in making informed decisions based on a quantified assessment of potential outcomes. (3) The third model concerns pandemic policy: governments can end or prolong lockdowns. While awaiting more data on the virus might lead to economic and societal strain, the model emphasizes the economic value of deferring decisions under uncertainty.

This research provides a quantified perspective on various decisions in healthcare, from investments in new technology to treatment choices for patients to government decisions regarding pandemics. By applying real options theory, stakeholders can make more evidence-driven decisions.

Decisions about patient care pathways and pandemic policies have direct societal implications. For instance, choices regarding the prolongation or ending of lockdowns can lead to economic and societal strain.

The originality of this study lies in its application of real options theory, a concept from finance, to the realm of health economics, offering novel insights and analytical tools for decision-makers in the healthcare sector.