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The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of paradoxes, underlying tensions and potential management strategies when integrating digital technologies into existing lean-based production systems (LPSs), with the aim of achieving synergies and fostering the development of production systems.

This study adopts a collaborative management research (CMR) approach to identify patterns of organisational tensions and paradoxes and explore management strategies to overcome them. The data were collected through interviews and focus group interviews with experts on lean and/or digital technologies from the companies, from documents and from workshops with the in-case researchers.

The findings of this paper provide insights into the salient organisational paradoxes embraced in the integration of digital technologies in LPS by identifying different aspects of the performing, organising, learning and belonging paradoxes. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate the intricacies and relatedness between different paradoxes and their resolutions, and more specifically, how a resolution strategy adopted to manage one paradox might unintentionally generate new tensions. This, in turn, calls for either re-contextualising actions to counteract the drift or the adoption of new resolution strategies.

This paper adds perspective to operations management (OM) research through the use of paradox theory, and we (1) provide a fine-grained perspective on why integration sometimes “fails” and label the forces of internal drift as mechanisms of imbalances and (2) provide detailed insights into how different management and resolution strategies are adopted, especially by identifying re-contextualising actions as a key to rebalancing organisational paradoxes in favour of the integration of digital technologies in LPSs.

The present study, drawing on boundary theory, attempts to investigate entrepreneurs’ work–life balance (WLB) in terms of how they manage and construct the borders between their non-work and work lives.

The current qualitative study is grounded on in-depth interviews with 30 entrepreneurs currently living and working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). When selecting the interviewees, the authors used purposeful sampling to ensure a diverse sample of interviewees with respect to nationality, age, gender and the nature of their business.

The findings suggest that most interviewees believe an entrepreneurial career can contribute positively to their lives. However, some individuals question whether it is possible to have some level of WLB while managing entrepreneurial businesses in the UAE’s competitive environment. Further, some entrepreneurs prioritize “work” over “family life,” indicating a love for their work and a lack of desire for any boundaries. Working long hours and managing a successful business over a longer period of time is also found to be negatively related to WLB.

Entrepreneurship has become a desirable career option, thus stimulating much research attention. However, little is known about entrepreneurs’ WLB challenges, especially regarding whether entrepreneurship improves individuals’ WLB. The present study uses boundary theory to understand how subjective insights regarding WLB and effective boundary management might address this gap.

This paper presents the phenomenographic analysis of students' approaches to learning in the first year architectural design coursework; thereby correlating contextualization in the architectural curriculum.

This paper reviews phenomenographic data of first year architecture students' learning experience through a comparative analysis of first- and fourth-year students' approaches to learning in the design studio; further co-relating this analysis to the final classification involving all five years of students' learning approaches in the architecture program.

Five meta-categories of the comparative analysis and nineteen meta-categories of the final classification are evaluated using first-year students' learning approaches – to understand the importance of contextualization in curriculums of architecture.

This phenomenographic analysis of first-year students' learning experience represents the onward journey from surface-to-deep approaches to learning that is encountered in their learning approaches, pertaining to the design process in the design coursework during five years of architectural education.

This paper systematically extends the discussion of first year architecture students' engagement in the design process that leads to deep learning; further delving into the static dimension of knowledge and its extension to the dynamic dimension of knowing architecture.

Within food industry several changes and innovations are affecting the management of the entire supply chain (production, logistics, etc.). As strategy for the survival and competition, digitalization has assumed a crucial role during the pandemic emergence by causing the reconfiguration of traditional chains and business models. Framed in these premises, the research analyses how digital technologies have innovated the sub-chains of bakery products and pasta within food industry with reference to customers' interactions, delivery and marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic emergence.

Moving from a critical literature review about the perspectives of digital technologies within the tradition of food industry, action research has been adopted to analyze in deep a case study of the start-up “ArteBianca Delivery” located in South Italy. Through this method, researchers have been deeply involved within the start-up to face the challenge of transforming the marketing and customer care into digital ones due to the COVID-19 restriction.

Findings provide empirical evidence about the reconfiguration of the traditional business model of a family firm in the food sector into a digital one with the start-up “ArteBianca Delivery”. The marketing, delivery, e-commerce and customer care components of the business models have been supported and enhanced through the adoption of digital tools, such as mobile applications and social technologies useful both for users and for a more urgent digitization of company.

Implications for practice can be identified into the pattern of digital transformation implemented as well as in the opportunity of replication and contextualization of the results to other companies looking for setting up a digital strategy.

Elements of original contribution can be identified into: (1) the exploration of digital transformation in food family firms caused by the pandemic emergence, (2) the contextualization of the digital transformation to the sub-chains of bakery and pasta and (3) the geographical location of the case.

The transition to a circular economy (CE) is a known concern in the context of the textile industry, in which business actors attempt to facilitate circular activities such as textile recycling. However, a lack of established business relationships and networks creates uncertainty for textile circulation. In such business environments, managerial decisions regarding CE may depend not only on normative behaviour but also on heuristics that guide their choices. Since business relationships for textile circularity require interactions between business actors, this study explores how managerial heuristics are shaped in the CE transition within the textile industry and their impact on actors’ interactions within business relationships and networks.

Empirically, this qualitative study is based on interviews with managers representing companies and organisations engaged in business relationships and networks aimed at a CE transition in the textile industry, as well as on publicly available secondary data.

The findings indicate that managerial decisions promoting circularity can be influenced by, besides normative information assessment, factors predominant in (1) the business and regulatory environment, (2) managers’ experience and knowledge obtained during interactions within business networks and (3) the internal strategic approaches of business organisations. This study identifies adaptation, experience, interaction and strategy heuristics that may be utilised by managers in making decisions in the context of uncertainty, such as the industrial transition to a CE.

This study expands the knowledge of heuristics applied to managerial decision making in interacting business firms and institutional organisations aiming to facilitate textile recycling and proposes a heuristics toolbox. The study provides an insight into business actors’ interactions, as well as various factors inside and outside the organisations shaping the managerial decisions. By doing this, the study adds to the literature, highlighting the importance of contextualisation and the interrelation between the individual and business environment levels in business-to-business management.

This paper aims to investigate whether the implementation of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) impacts government functionality. The study will analyse GAI’s positive attributes across different dimensions to comprehensively understand its value proposition for public organisations. Furthermore, the paper will outline the strategic interventions required to integrate GAI effectively within the organisational context of government transformation.

This study measures “government functionality” and “GAI implementation” using abstract macro variables as a second-order formative model. It also includes first-order measurable micro-variables to better understand the concept. In addition, the study introduces “organisational context” as a moderating factor to explain the complex dynamics of integrating GAI to improve government functionality. The study proposes a conceptual framework, which was analysed using exploratory data analysis, with primary data collected through questionnaires.

The study finds a positive correlation between the implementation of GAI and improved government functionality. Furthermore, it found that organisational contextualisation significantly moderates this relationship. All the empirical outcomes align with the prescribed statistical thresholds, concluding that the articulated conceptual framework holds significance.

The study has significant implications for managers, researchers and anyone involved in making, implementing or evaluating decisions related to digital government through GAI. However, the study has limitations, including a limited sample size and contextualisation of the Indian public sector.

The study contributes to existing knowledge by showing that implementing GAI positively correlates with improving government functionality. It further highlights the significance of GAI implementation according to the specific organisational context.

Research on employee non-/compliance to information security policies suffers from inconsistent results and there is an ongoing discussion about the dominating survey research methodology and its potential effect on these results. This study aims to add to this discussion by investigating discrepancies between what the authors claim to measure (theoretical properties of variables) and what they actually measure (respondents’ interpretations of the operationalized variables). This study asks: How well do respondents’ interpretations of variables correspond to their theoretical definitions? What are the characteristics of any discrepancies between variable definitions and respondent interpretations?

This study is based on in-depth interviews with 17 respondents from the Swedish public sector to understand how they interpret questionnaire measurement items operationalizing the variables Perceived Severity from Protection Motivation Theory and Attitude from Theory of Planned Behavior.

The authors found that respondents’ interpretations in many cases differ substantially from the theoretical definitions. Overall, the authors found four principal ways in which respondents interpreted measurement items – referred to as property contextualization, extension, alteration and oscillation – each implying more or less (dis)alignment with the intended theoretical properties of the two variables examined.

The qualitative method used proved vital to better understand respondents’ interpretations which, in turn, is key for improving self-reporting measurement instruments. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is a first step toward understanding how precise and uniform definitions of variables’ theoretical properties can be operationalized into effective measurement items.

This paper aims to contribute to this special issue on interpretivist research methodologies and the phygital consumerist landscape by exploring some underlying issues within the specific context of luxury consumption. The paper starts with a critique of current research, drawing particular attention to problems of reductionism, poor representativeness and weak contextualisation in research that adopts a positivist epistemology. The paper then highlights some of the contributions that interpretivist scholarship is making, and can potentially make, to our understanding of the experiential and humanistic aspects of luxury consumption, presented in a nuanced, discursive and deeply contextualised manner.

This commentary is informed by an in-depth examination of the methodology and approach adopted in the 327 most-recently published academic articles on luxury (from late-2021).

This opinion piece suggests the need for a sea-change in the way that scholars approach luxury research in online, offline and hybrid phygital settings to capture and convey its true complexity, diversity, contingency and contextuality and its emotional and symbolic character, and to help ensure that it delivers findings that are of relevance and value to luxury industry practitioners.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to look comprehensively and critically at the methodological approaches adopted by academics writing in the field of luxury consumption.

This research seeks to unveil an integrative perspective on talent management (TM) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly through a multilevel approach and within the French context. Drawing on dynamic capability theory and focusing on French SMEs as a rich domain for multilevel studies, the research aims to elucidate how these enterprises operationalize TM while addressing and integrating their distinct capabilities and requirements, internal dynamics and challenges.

Through an integrative study based on a qualitative approach, we collect data from 15 French SMEs. In total, 20 semi-structured interviews with individuals from different levels, managing and working in SMEs, were conducted and analyzed thematically to identify patterns across all SMEs. Companies and interviewees represented a variety of sectors such as telecommunication, high-tech, circular economy, etc.

We present an integrative multilevel approach through TM in French SMEs, describing how SMEs operationalize TM. Across three main levels (organizational, collective and individual) and key SMEs’ capabilities, our results underscore the significance of top management commitment capabilities and SMEs' assessment capabilities, the involvement of line managers in facilitating strategic agility and cultivating the talent ecosystem and the outcomes of TM in driving SMEs' reconfiguration, extending beyond mere TM-level integrations and articulations. We address these findings for foreign SMEs intending to enter the French context and SMEs’ actors on the importance of contextual issues and level articulations while calling for future research focusing on group-level and managers’ roles in TM.

This article moves the TM research towards an integrative multilevel view in SMEs as a fertile ground for studying multilevel TM. As part of recent studies on TM in French SMEs within the broader European competitive context, it expands the integrative approach in SMEs by accommodating the unique requirements, the multilevel dynamics and the challenges that they encounter with TM, especially when compared to multinational enterprises (MNEs).

This paper seeks to demonstrate the pedagogical potential of incorporating virtual reality (VR) and primary sources in social studies education. It seeks to highlight how VR can enhance student engagement, foster critical thinking and provide immersive contextualization for historical events. Despite acknowledging challenges, this paper advocates for the purposeful adoption of VR technology in the classroom to enrich the teaching and learning of history.

This paper explores the integration of virtual reality and primary sources in social studies education by providing a detailed lesson plan that could be used as a model for this type of teaching, as well as other resources and opportunities to do so. It highlights the potential of VR to enhance engagement, historical thinking and historical empathy.

Integrating virtual reality and primary sources can support student engagement, critical thinking and historical empathy. There are also challenges that can be mitigated through careful planning.

This paper provides teachers with a pedagogical model and resources for integrating VR and primary sources, along with challenges and methods for mitigating those, in their secondary social studies classroom.

This paper offers a unique model for combining virtual reality and primary sources for secondary social studies educators. It provides an example lesson plan exemplifying its application and emphasizing VR’s potential to support teaching and learning.