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In many Asian countries, education systems are competitive based on high-stakes examinations. Additionally, due to the traditional one-way teaching styles, classroom practices can be highly authoritarian. The issue in such education systems is the alienation of students. They do not learn about themselves; rather, they work toward and/or get distracted by securing their positions according to the standards set by other people and institutions. Many students are thus disengaged from learning and share one common reason for their disengagement: their sense of loss about the meaning of learning is unheeded and they have no opportunity to voice their opinions. Consequently, various sentiments are prevalent, even extremely negative ones, almost equivalent to mutual hostilities. This chapter conceptually discusses the importance of listening in school reform, with special reference to the cases initiated by Manabu Sato and his fellow school leaders, such as Toshiaki Ose and Masaaki Sato. Their approach is known as school as a learning community (SLC) or lesson study for learning community (LSLC); the latter is used herein. LSLC is now widely practiced in various countries in Asia, including China, Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. LSLC aims to overcome the negative sentiments described above and establish communal relationships for mutual learning and well-being. To achieve this, teachers in the schools running LSLC always start listening to each other. This chapter discusses how listening transforms hostilities into trust.

The purpose of this paper is to further the understanding of how the regulatory foci of the multinational enterprises (MNE) headquarters and the subsidiary lead to internal legitimacy crises. This paper discusses how pragmatic and moral legitimacy crises affect relational social capital.

The paper is conceptual.

This paper highlights the importance of internal legitimacy as well as the motivational orientations of headquarters and subsidiaries for the functioning of MNEs. Internal legitimacy management is crucial for building relational social capital. This study proposes that legitimacy crises are particularly likely to occur in cases of goal incongruence between headquarters and subsidiaries. This study postulates that organizations with a promotion-oriented institutional logic are concerned by the absence of pragmatic legitimacy processes. In contrast, given their aim of protecting the status quo, prevention-oriented institutional logic MNEs are concerned about the absence of moral legitimacy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to explore the relationship between regulatory focus, internal legitimacy and relational social capital.

The authors aim to contribute to current knowledge on women's networks in organizations by exploring the strategies employed by members of women's networks, Human Resources (HR) management and senior line management to negotiate the role of these networks in their organizations.

The authors employ the theoretical perspective of micro-politics to analyze qualitative data they collected in an action research project using open-ended interviews and participant observation. The interviews were conducted with network board and active members, and members of their organizations' HR departments and senior management. Participant observation of the interviewees' interactions took place during facilitated workshops.

Adding to the literature, the authors find that members of the different parties employ different micro-political strategies. Many senior HR and management members demand that the networks' activities contribute to the organizations' diversity aims and bottom line. They largely avoid strategic cooperation with the networks. Most network members, in turn, resist the restricted role of the networks as an instrument to realize their organizations' business case. They claim some freedom to independently decide on the networks' strategies and activities. They resist being attributed tasks and responsibilities that they consider to reside with their organizations. Moreover, they try to sustain cooperative relationships with senior HR and management in an advisory role.

The action research approach enabled the authors to contribute to existing knowledge and extend the micro-politics theoretical perspective to include the collective agency of members of organizational groups and cooperation between these groups.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the scope for action of local human resource managers, who are employed in foreign subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs), for implementing training activities. These managers are situated in relationships to headquarters and the local environment. Related to this is the question whether MNCs contribute to the local skill base by implementing training activities or whether they exploit the existing skill formation system.

This study focusses on German subsidiaries of MNCs with headquarters in the USA and the UK, France, China and Japan. The study is based on 107 expert interviews with subsidiary managers and representatives of local stakeholder organisations, such as educational organisations, chambers, economic promotion agencies and governmental bodies in Germany.

The study reveals that headquarters introduce general schemes for training. In addition to these MNC-internal trainings, local managers use their information advantage over headquarters to implement dual training activities.

The training activities of subsidiaries are dependent on the institutional settings of the host country.

Albeit dual training activities are laborious and tie the local managers down for the medium and long term, the future need of the subsidiary for adequately skilled workforce prompts local managers’ engagement in implementing dual training activities.

Subsidiaries contribute to the local skill base and do not act in a free-rider position, at least in the German variety of capitalism.

The study deepens insights on distanced relations within and how subsidiaries generate scope for action by using this kind of relationships.

This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right.

The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations.

The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings.

The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

The paper aims to provide an understanding of how the transfer of progressive human resource management (HRM) practices may or may fail to render multinational enterprises (MNEs) institutional entrepreneurs creating change in job quality and decent work to underprivileged workers in the low-pay retail sector in Japan.

The paper draws on survey questionnaire data and interviews with workers and management in a foreign retailer in Japan.

The findings suggest that even where MNEs may provide some measurable material improvements in job quality, in this case equal pay for equal work, the total outcomes are nevertheless shaped by institutional context and constraints. In this case, the improvement in pay was intertwined with flexibility demands that were possible to meet for some workers but not others. In particular, women with care responsibilities and competing demands on their time were not able to experience “decent work” in the same way as others.

The study had a relatively low response rate, due to lack of discretion over time experienced by workers in Japan, as well as limited data on program outcomes, with interviews conducted with a small number of participants.

The study suggests that spaces and opportunities exist for MNEs to diverge from dominant practices in given host country locations and exercise a level of agency as emissaries of decent work but successful outcomes require a very thorough understanding of individual worker experiences within the institutional constraints of given environments.

The study offers insights into the complexities of initiatives by MNEs to contribute to the provision of decent work, particularly for workers in underprivileged positions including women in low-pay sectors such as retail, as firm-level practices lead to variable outcomes when filtered through local institutions.

The study brings together a focus on firm-level practices that inform much of the international HRM and international management scholarship with an emphasis on the experiences of workers, which is pursued in the sociology of work, to investigate whether MNEs can be actors in the realising of the Sustainable Development Goals around decent work.

This study examines the relationship between subsidiary autonomy and the MNE subsidiary initiative collaboration (i.e. entrepreneurial initiative resource support, the subsidiary seeks and receives from the MNE). It proposes some underlying mechanisms as external embeddedness, and MNE organizational structures to explain the relationship between subsidiary autonomy and the MNE subsidiary initiative collaboration. The study draws on paradox theory arguing how at both the subsidiary and the parent MNE levels certain paradoxes are handled.

Survey data are collected in a time-lagged fashion from 429 foreign subsidiaries in New Zealand. Data are analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Results show that the relationship between subsidiary autonomy and the receipt of MNE resource support for initiatives is positive, and this is more likely the case where the subsidiary is managed under simple structures (i.e. subsidiary reports to corporate headquarters, regional headquarters or mandated units) rather than complex structures (i.e. a matrix or a network). Furthermore, an increase in subsidiary autonomy positively influences MNE initiative resource-seeking, and this is more likely the case where the subsidiary is less embedded externally.

The study is one of the first of studies that has applied paradox theory to MNE–subsidiary relationships regarding autonomy and MNE collaboration on initiatives. The study extends research on MNE–subsidiary collaboration on subsidiary initiatives as existing research is limited on this domain. The study contributes by showing how external embeddedness, and the complexity of organizational structures determine the relationship between subsidiary autonomy and MNE subsidiary initiative collaboration.

This study aims to investigate the degree to which trust influences job satisfaction and job performance by building on research in the organizational sciences about the relationships between interpersonal trust relationships, cognitive empowerment, job performance and job satisfaction. This study's primary research question is: What factors contribute to job satisfaction and job performance?

Data are collected through a field survey. The data set has 738 responses from employees who work in the financial sector in Turkey. Structural equation modelling was used to validate the hypotheses.

This study's main findings are that when considering job satisfaction and job performance, cognition-based trust (CBT) has a strong influence on both constructs, whereas affect-based faith has a medium effect on job satisfaction and no significant effect on job performance.

In an organization where trust is established, knowledge exchange will be facilitated and knowledge management will be done correctly. Therefore, trust is a critical factor for knowledge management. On the other hand, knowledge is an important key factor for job performance. Trust has two parts: affect-based trust and CBT. Psychological empowerment has four variables: impact, competence, meaningfulness and self-determination. This study aims to investigate the relationships between psychological empowerment, trust, job satisfaction and job performance.

The authors’ contention in this paper is that the expression of subsidiary strategy in IB literature has become fragmented and incomplete. Therefore, this study aims to propose a rethink on how IB scholarship approaches the important issue of subsidiary strategy by holistically examining the discrete and integrated set of activities, choices and decisions that constitute the subsidiary strategy process for, in this context, assuming a competence-creating role within the multinational enterprise (MNE).

A conceptual model is designed to illustrate the holistic process of subsidiary strategy from assigned to assumed role and how a subsidiary can navigate a pathway to elevated performance and survival.

The paper identifies the key integrated elements that constitute a holistic strategic process that can enhance a subsidiary’s standing within the MNE and maximise its survival prospects.

Particular focus is placed on subsidiaries that strategise to advance their internal corporate role to competence creator via upgraded knowledge capabilities.

This paper offers a roadmap for IB scholars to contribute to a future discourse around the subsidiary strategy process for assuming a competence-creating role.