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In Chapter 1, we critically reviewed the foundations of the free enterprise capital system (FECS), which has been successful primarily because of its wealth and asset accumulation potentiality and actuality. In this chapter, we critically argue that this capacity has been grounded upon the profit maximization (PM) theories, models, and paradigms of FECS. The intent of this chapter is not anti-PM. The PM models of FECS have worked and performed well for more than 200 years of the economic history of the United States and other developed countries, and this phenomenon is celebrated and featured as “market performativity.” However, market performativity has not truly benefitted the poor and the marginalized; on the contrary, market performativity has wittingly or unwittingly created gaping inequalities of wealth, income, opportunity, and prosperity. Critical thinking does not combat PM but challenges it with alternative models of profit sharing that promote social wealth, social welfare, social progress, and opportunity for all, which we explore here. Economic development without social progress breeds economic inequality and social injustice. Economic development alone is not enough; we should create a new paradigm in which economic development is the servant of social progress, not vice versa. Such a paradigm shift involves integrating the creativity and innovativity of market performativity and the goals and drives of social performativity together with PM, that is, from market performativity to social performativity.

The purpose of this paper addresses the issue of inconsistent findings regarding the impact of consumers' need for touch (NFT) on webrooming behavior. It investigates the moderator of maximization by drawing on maximizing mindset theory.

Three studies were carried out to test the hypothesized relationships. The first study investigated the impact of autotelic NFT on webrooming intention. The second study examined the impact of instrumental NFT on webrooming intention. The third study tested all hypotheses by the structural equation modeling approach.

The results confirm moderation by consumers' maximizing mindset. The moderated mediation analyses show that the interaction effect of autotelic NFT and maximization influences webrooming intention indirectly via anticipated sensory pleasure. Likewise, the interaction effect of instrumental NFT and maximization influences webrooming intention indirectly via product fit uncertainty.

The study draws on maximizing mindset theory to show that consumers' autotelic NFT and instrumental NFT drive their webrooming intentions depending on the activation of their maximizing mindset. The nonsignificant relationship between autotelic NFT and webrooming intention in the context of satisficers explains the conflicting findings reported in the literature. Consumers' affective and cognitive responses were also studied to uncover the underlying mechanisms of their webrooming intention. This research contributes to the literature by enhancing the understanding of webrooming behavior.

Hazel Kyrk’s contribution is the most advanced formulation of the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon, an approach to the analysis of consumption that, originated from Veblen’s theory, was developed in the US in the early 20th century. This approach was part of a wider stream of empirical analyses of consumption expenditure that had begun more than a century earlier.

Along with elements that can be traced back to the neoclassical tradition, in Keynes’ analysis of consumption, we find original elements. The dependence of consumption expenditure on the level of income, which is essential for asserting the principle of effective demand, can also be found in a long tradition of empirical studies. In qualifying this relationship, Keynes uses theoretical elements echoing key insights of the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon. There is no documentary evidence that Kyrk or the economics of the social relevance of consumption came to Keynes’ attention. It is possible, however, to develop reasonable speculative considerations to argue a link between Keynes’ elaboration and both the empirical literature on the determinants of consumption and the economics of consumption as a social phenomenon.

The purpose of this article is to synthesize the topics, conceptualizations and measurements of value-based management (VBM) and to suggest a research agenda covering its next evolution as sustainable governance.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of 80 seminal studies published between 1979 and 2022. The authors synthesized the studies by their conceptualizations of VBM in an inductively developed framework.

The authors find that scholars explore diverse topics related to VBM with a prevailing focus on shareholder primacy. There is a paucity of studies that focus on the integration of shareholder maximization and stakeholder management practices. The authors explain which studies will form a promising foundation for advanced research on sustainable governance that will reach beyond current VBM research.

The authors' research agenda addresses new future topics on conflicting goals within and between shareholder groups, offers specific suggestions for using new research methods and untapped data sources for VBM and paves the way to substantially extend the boundaries of the firm in VBM research to include stakeholders, strategic alignment and new sustainability measures.

Embeddedness has gained prominence in entrepreneurship studies. However, the notion that the embeddedness metaphor relates to “market” structures prevails in studies in the area. Entrepreneurship scholars still know little about whether entrepreneurs are eventually embedded in other structures whose relationships go beyond the restricted dimension of the interested actor’s assumption. This study aims to propose investigating the social structures in which a specific type of entrepreneurship, the religious one, is embedded.

The research was qualitative, using interviews as an evidence collection instrument. A total of 17 entrepreneur-pastors responsible for business churches in Brazil and eight parishioners took part in the study.

Religious entrepreneurs are embedded in market structures, corroborating a perspective that associates embeddedness with the utilitarian notion. At the same time, entrepreneurs are embedded in two other social structures: reciprocity and redistribution.

This article emphasizes the relevance of going beyond the predominant perspective associated with the utilitarian and rationalized understanding of embeddedness in relationship networks.

This study makes essential contributions. Initially, it attests to the utilitarian perspective of Granovetter’s embeddedness while suggesting incorporating two other dimensions into the metaphor. By highlighting this, this article stresses the need to reinterpret the metaphor of embeddedness and how entrepreneurship scholars use it. Further, by emphasizing the need to consider embeddedness in networks beyond its still utilitarian perspective, this paper highlights unexplored opportunities for entrepreneurship scholars.

This article explores the value creation process from player sales in football to understand if the related capital gains correspond to significant increases in the stock value of selling companies. In addition, it aims to detect any potential drivers for higher (or slower) abnormal stock returns.

The authors analyze all the capital gains of the Italian and Portuguese listed football companies (the only ones for which, based on their annual reports, it was possible to trace the net book value for each player sold and, consequently, if any, the related capital gain) from 2012 to 2020 and use event study analysis to calculate the abnormal returns of the football companies' stocks. Moreover, the authors use a multiple linear regression model to identify the factors affecting investors' reactions and value creation process intensity.

The results show that, on average, the capital gains from player transfers in football are positive income components and produce statistically significant higher abnormal returns. In addition, the authors identified some relevant drivers related to their intensity which could guide the choices of corporate executives regarding future disposals of the multi-year performance rights of players in the roster.

This study considers only Italian and Portuguese football listed companies. It would be helpful to consider some of the companies from other countries which are also outstanding from the sports perspective, but, in practice, it was not possible due to the impossibility to trace the net book value of the single footballers sold in those clubs' public financial disclosure.

The value relevance of the capital gains from player trading activities should increase their importance, creating cascade effects on several activities generating value for football clubs (youth sector management, player scouting, technical improvement of the players). In addition, financial data show that the capital gains from player transfers are a basic income of European football clubs nowadays. Their executives consider these operations recurrent and continually search for more valuable transfers. Hence, it is reasonable to think that they (will) choose the players to sell considering both sports and financial aspects.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study exploring the effects of capital gains from player trading activities on professional football clubs' stock value. The results obtained are even more relevant if one considers the importance these income components have in the profit formula of professional football clubs nowadays, also because of the negative repercussions caused by the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

Environment, social and governance (ESG) practices and shareholder activism are making significant strides in the decision-making policies and processes for all firms. This study aims to assess the impact of ESG on the dividend payout decisions of firms in India. In addition, it also aims to determine how shareholder activism influences the impact of ESG on dividend distribution decisions.

The authors gather relevant data from 78 non-financial listed Indian firms from 2016 to 2020. This study undertakes longitudinal data analysis, with fixed effects and calculation of robust standard errors. In addition, the slope test is used to examine the effects of the interaction between ESG and shareholder activism.

It is found in the study that not only does ESG positively impact the dividends but also shareholder activism positively impacts the dividend distribution decisions. Surprisingly, the authors see a significant but negative interaction impact of shareholder activism on the positive association of ESG with dividend distribution decisions. In other words, ESG impacts dividend distribution decisions differently at levels of shareholder activism. When shareholder activism is low, ESG positively influences dividend distribution decisions. However, when shareholder activism is high, ESG negatively influences dividend distribution decisions.

This result has significant implications for all the stakeholders, including shareholders. A shareholder expecting a dividend could decide correctly through the current study’s findings. In cases of high shareholder activism, investors may skip picking a stock if investors expect high ESG to influence the dividend distribution decisions favourably. On the contrary, investors may choose a stock if shareholder activism is low and all else remains the same.

Literature has some evidence of the influence of shareholder activism and ESG (in silos) on the dividend distribution decisions in the firms. This study attempts to contribute by bringing forth the interaction effects of shareholder activism and ESG on dividend distribution decisions.

A growing body of research finds that gig economy platforms use gamification to enhance managerial control. Focusing on technologically mediated forms of gamification, this literature reveals how platforms mobilize gig workers’ work effort by making the labour process resemble a game. This chapter contends that this tech-centric scholarship fails to fully capture the historical continuities between contemporary and much older occurrences of game-playing at work. Informed by interviews and participatory observations at two food delivery platforms in Amsterdam, I document how these platforms’ piece wage system gives rise to a workplace dynamic in which severely underpaid delivery couriers continuously employ game strategies to maximize their gig income. Reminiscent of observations from the early shop floor ethnographies of the manufacturing industry, I show that the game of gig income maximization operates as an indirect modality of control by (re)aligning the interests of couriers with the interests of capital and by individualizing and depoliticizing couriers’ overall low wage level. I argue that the new, algorithmic technologies expand and intensify the much older forms of gamified control by infusing the organizational activities of shift and task allocation with the logic of the piece wage game and by increasing the possibilities for interaction, direct feedback and immersion. My study contributes to the literature on gamification in the gig economy by interweaving it with the classic observations derived from the manufacturing industry and by developing a conceptualization of gamification in which both capital and labour exercise agency.

The present paper aims to focus on the role which German controllers play so far in the process of sustainable transformation in for-profit organizations, the current obstacles to a wider engagement here and ways to overcome these obstacles.

The analysis combines two qualitative study designs. Empirical data is generated via a job advertisement analysis and an explorative survey with 107 subjects from management accounting/controlling and sustainability management. The generated data is interpreted against the background of the theory of institutional logics and Abbott’s (1988) theory of professional jurisdiction.

We find that controllers are in a state of tension. On the one hand, the pressure to integrate sustainability into companies is increasing. On the other hand, they seem to be rather reluctant to get involved. The institutional logics that shape their profession play an important role here, as does an unclear relationship with the sustainability department, which has its own claims here. Based on these observations, we identify the core obstacles to the transformation of the controllers’ profession and discuss solutions which can guide the transformation of this profession.

The present paper provides insights from a unique combination of different quantitative study designs and different perspectives on the possible role that controllers can play in advancing sustainable transformation in companies.

The United Nations' Principles of Responsible Management Education initiative aspires to transform the relationship between business and society by ensuring that the next generation of business leaders are shaped by management education that conceptualises businesses as generators of sustainable value. Simplistic economic models overemphasize the role of narrow profit maximization on the part of firms in generating broader economic wellbeing. More nuanced views of the relationships between firms and the societies in which they operate, such as those that allow for market power in product and labour markets, for the presence of externalities in the production of goods and services, for a role of the state in the provision of public goods, and for the existence of market failures more generally, offer profoundly different advice to aspiring practitioners of responsible management. This article proposes an introductory economics curriculum for management students that gives due emphasis to these more nuanced perspectives and thus equips aspiring business leaders with the skills they will need to build profitable enterprises that also fulfil the objective of generating sustainable value as envisioned by the Principles of Responsible Management Education.