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We conduct a literature review on forms of organizing that address grand challenges, which are operationalized as the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, as this framework is universal and widely adopted. By analyzing the articles that match our criteria, we identify six differentiable organizational forms: movements, temporary organizations, partnerships, established organizations, multi-stakeholder networks, and supranational organizations. These six forms are differentiated based on the two following categories: organizing segment and communicational technological approach. Our analysis shows that tackling a grand challenge often starts with collectives as a protest culture without any expected goal, besides sending an impulse to others. This impulse is received by criticized institutionalized organizations that have the capacity and resources to address the problem properly. However, new challenges arise as these organizations inadequately resolve these problems, thereby leading to conflict-laden areas of tension, wherein emergent organizations complement institutionalized organizations that have created the first infrastructure. To solve the most complex problems, a trichotomous relationship between different forms of organizations is necessary. Moreover, communicational technological approaches become more sophisticated as grand challenges increase in complexity.

This chapter centers on the global leadership of enterprises and their strategic business decisions as they interact with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in constructing a supranational global governance regime to address complex global issues. As the world faces myriad issues that transcend state borders, negative externalities of globalization, such as climate change and pandemics, are straining the current system and threatening vulnerable populations. To better understand how firms address these challenges, we present a stakeholder framework involving multinational enterprises (MNEs) in a supranational context and examine their relationships with IGOs, international nongovernmental organizations, and NGOs. A typology of firm behavior is introduced to describe four strategic responses to increased pressure for corporate social responsibility that represent the extent to which firms take leadership roles. Case studies illustrate each of the four archetypes, namely the collaborator, the complier, the counteractor, and the combatant. The situational strength of global governance organizations can have an influence on which strategic response MNEs choose, and ultimately on how MNEs decide to engage in socially responsible behaviors. The interrelatedness of MNEs and global governance organizations will continue to grow as humankind grapples with complex global issues that threaten our way of life. The 4 Cs of MNE strategic responses inform how firms may choose to respond to these challenges.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the role of market-based transformative service initiatives (TSIs) during the refugee crisis and shed light on how such TSIs increase inclusion of refugees in service systems by using market forces while creating broader benefits for service organizations themselves.

This paper uses the case of the World Food Program’s (WFP) Dalili smartphone application targeting Syrian refugees in the context of Lebanon. A mixed-methods approach, including in-depth interviews with the retail managers of the local supermarkets and statistical cross- and intra-regional analysis on the retailing mix elements of the local supermarkets was adopted for the empirical investigation.

The results show that the WFP’s Dalili TSI increases service inclusion of refugees by facilitating their access to the essential food services easier and at affordable prices and helps them integrate into the host community. Furthermore, such market-based TSIs were shown to have broader benefits for other stakeholders in the food retail ecosystem including retailers and nonrefugee shoppers as they are successful in improving the retailing management standards of the participating supermarkets by decreasing the average retail price of the merchandise, increasing their variety and assortment, increasing promotional offers and improving the customer service level.

This research fills the gap in the literature for empirical investigation on the impact mechanism of market-based TSIs on service inclusion and well-being of refugees. In contrast to the majority of TSIs studied in the literature that are designed by governments or nonprofit organizations in the areas such as higher education, health care and humanitarian aids, this study focuses on the case of TSIs developed by supranational organizations using market forces in the food retail ecosystem. Furthermore, the findings suggest that TSIs could also benefit the service organizations that offer such initiatives.

The findings of this paper have implications for service organizations and policymakers and their ability to design effective market-based TSIs during the refugee crisis.

The studied case in the context of TSIs in the food retail ecosystem and the empirical approach used are academically novel. Moreover, focusing on the refugee crisis in the Middle East region is rather understudied in the service research literature.

This chapter grapples with questions of agency in the development of African higher education, with a special focus on the Association of African Universities (AAU), an organization outside of formal education policymaking on the continent. Through the lens of rhetorical institutionalism, findings illustrate how the AAU has adopted and adapted competing institutional logics to exert influence over development policymaking. Next, I will discuss how systems of persuasion were cultivated and symbols employed to establish the legitimacy of the organization in a heterogeneous institutional field that includes universities, development agencies, nongovernmental organizations, supranational arrangements, and the influence of international financial institutions. This enabled the AAU to extend institutional logics into African higher education. This case study seeks to upend the pervasive crisis narrative that perpetuates both the impotence of African institutions and the stewardship of outside development elites. Finally this chapter considers the implications of this critical case study for development discourse and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore the interactions of key stakeholders and their impact upon corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in the Zambian copper mining sector. In particular, the authors examine the power dynamics that emerge in the stakeholder interactions.

The authors analyse the stakeholder interactions based on the varying degrees of stakeholder salience and critical collaboration potential, and draw on rich evidence from 43 interviews with multiple stakeholders involved in CSR in the Zambia mining sector.

This paper finds stark power asymmetries in the relationship between the state, the civil society and mining companies which are exacerbated by a number of factors, including divisions within these key stakeholders themselves. Apart from power imbalances within and between stakeholders, the potential for critical collaboration at the local level is further challenged by the lack of commonly accepted social and environmental frameworks, transparency and accountability of the leadership of stakeholder groups. However, despite these power asymmetries some limited agency is possible, as civil society in particular co-opts previously dormant stakeholders to increase its own salience and, more importantly, that of the state.

This paper contributes to the literature on the key stakeholders’ interactions shaping CSR in developing countries by exploring these issues in a critical industry, the Zambian copper mining sector, on which the state economy is so heavily dependent.

This article explores the range of responses available to international bureaucracies when confronted with demands made by their member states through the study of the World Health Organization (WHO) during the 1970s and 1980s. I show that the WHO bureaucracy successfully addressed the demands of developing countries for health policies compatible with a more equitable world economic order, but in a way that preserved the bureaucracy's own agenda and without upsetting the opposite coalition of wealthy countries. Drawing on insights from the sociology of organizations, this article shows that externally dependent international bureaucracies are able to preserve their autonomous agenda by strategically reframing countries’ demands before responding to them.

This study aims to determine the role of intellectual capital (IC) on financial performance (FP), the mediating effect of high-performance work practices (HPWPs) and the moderating role of big data analytics on the banking sector operating in Pakistan.

This study collected quantitative and cross-sectional data using structured questionnaire forms distributed to selected targeted respondents using a convenient sampling technique. The 518 useable questionnaires were analysed using the SmartPLS software through a structural equation modelling technique to test the proposed research hypotheses.

The study results revealed that IC has shown an impact on FP. The role of HPWP significantly mediates between IC and FP, while the moderating role of big data analytics remains insignificant.

This study highlights IC's role in enhancing FP in the Pakistani banking sector. It will bring a higher quality IC in the banking sector, and they will be better positioned to serve the community. Policymakers need to invest in IC and HPWP and utilise BDA, which will boost FP and uplift the quality of the banking sector.

This study extends the concept of IC and adds the theoretical role of HPWPs and big data analytics in the literature on IC, along with the contextual application. The study also develops a unique role of the integrated IC model theory with a relationship to the banking sector of Pakistan.

The purpose of this study is to revisit the interdisciplinary roots of international business (IB) by challenging the compartmentalized and obscured nature of certain major themes in current IB research. Here, the author broadens IB’s natural scope by introducing the links with global health while preemptively removing the existing limits of critical perspectives.

The study synthesizes ignored common insights from IB and global health governance. It supplies a select composite of emerging themes mostly at the interface of IB and global health as foundational proposals for reengaging IB for radical social change. This is in response to the urgent calls for inquiries into the “extra dimensions” of IB in answering wicked questions of global sustainability, injustice and inequality and other emergent grand challenges whilst embracing novel conceptual, theoretical and empirical opportunities.

This study demonstrates that IB research in its current form is reductive, quintessentially compartmentalized and evidently weak in responding to the emergent wicked problems of global scale. This is because several layers of complex, burning interconnected questions with roots in IB hardly receive exposure in research although they are the very existential and emerging issues with massive impacts on populations both in home and host countries.

This study sets new research agendas for critically studying IB and global health topics of vital relevance to reflect the changing frontiers of knowledge production in the fourth industrial revolution.

This study calls for deeper and broader discussions about the limitless opportunities of cross-fertilization of IB and other disciplines whilst highlighting the heretofore-overlooked connections between IB and environmental and medico-techno-scientific disciplines.

In this paper, the authors challenge traditional views of project management and sustainable development as purportedly complementing each other. Rather, the authors apply a projectification perspective from a multi-disciplinary approach to sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how we can better understand the interface between projects and sustainable development through the study of its practices.

The authors do this by outlining the global and the local dimensions of sustainable development as a business objective. For that reason, the authors also make a distinction between sustainability in projects and sustainable development through project coordination.

From the framing of sustainable development as projectification, the authors contribute with a set of research implications on how to proceed towards a better understanding of sustainable development through project coordination.

The paper contributes to a growing field of interest regarding the interfaces between project management and sustainable development.

The chapter examines the evolution of individual attitudes of the national political (parliamentarian) elite towards a supranational entity such as the European Union in the changing political context during times of economic crisis. General attitudes towards the European integration process and federal/intergovernmental preferences for governance are analysed with a hierarchical approach taking into account individual level data, party characteristics and the country context with a comparative perspective across three time points during the period of the economic crisis. Contrary to expectations, results show that supranational attitudes of the national political elites remained quite stable and the increasing presence of extremist parties in national parliaments did not have a significant effect, while individual drivers of attitudes, such as an instrumental evaluation of the benefits of EU membership and attachment to Europe remained key determinants.