| Title | Journal | Date | Author | Abstract | Link |
|---|
| Exploring the drivers of internal labour migration for the regions of Great Britain | Regional Studies | 2024 | Heather Dickey, Marie Carroline Magante | The role of internal migration in reducing regional inequalities is a common feature of classical economic theory and urban economics models. If regional migration is important in reducing spatial disparities, then understanding its causes, and barriers, is crucial. This paper explores the drivers of regional migration behaviour in Great Britain. Findings point to rigidities in housing that deter mobility across regions; and regional differences in the drivers and effects of regional migration. Our paper supports greater focus on spatial disaggregation, since migration studies conducted at the national level ignore important spatial differences in migration behaviour. | View Infographic |
| Urban regeneration projects and crime: evidence from Glasgow | Journal of Economic Geography | 2023 | Daniel Borbely, Gennaro Rossi | This study investigates the effects of urban regeneration on crime, leveraging recent large-scale regeneration projects—called Transformational Regeneration Areas (TRAs)—in Glasgow, Scotland. We employ a difference-in-differences approach that makes use of variation in both the timing of TRA implementation, and in proximity to these areas to measure exposure to urban regeneration projects. We find a large and significant reduction in crime within 400 m of TRAs but this effect fades as we move further away. Simultaneously, we find no evidence of city-wide reductions in crime after urban regeneration. | View Infographic |
| Bubbles in History | Business History | 2023 | William Quinn, John Turner | Bubbles have become ubiquitous. This ubiquity has stimulatedresearch over the past three decades into bubbles in history. In this article, weprovide a systematic overview of research into historical bubbles. Our analysisreveals that there is no coherent approach to the study of bubbles and much ofthe debate has unhelpfully focussed on the rationality/irrationality dichotomy.We then suggest a new framework for the study of historical bubbles, whichhelps us understand the causes of bubbles and their economic consequences. Weconclude by suggesting ways in which business history can contribute to thestudy of historical bubbles. | View Infographic |
| Does reshoring affect the resilience and sustainability of supply chain networks? The cases of Apple and Jaguar Land Rover | British Journal of Management | 2023 | Nishat Alam Choudhary, M. Ramkumar, Tobias Schoenherr, Nripendra P. Rana, Yogesh K. Dwivedi | Extending the notion that reshoring can have a significant impact on a firm's supply network owing to the associated location decisions, we explore how reshoring influences the resilience and sustainability of a focal firm's supply network. While reshoring is triggered by aspects related to both the home (domestic) and the host (foreign) country, frequently more favourable aspects in the home country lead to the reshoring decision. To investigate these dynamics, we construct two large-scale networks consisting of 2066 and 1283 firms, respectively, capturing the supply networks of Apple and Jaguar Land Rover. Both networks have been experiencing the reshoring of previously foreign suppliers to domestic locations. Our investigation captures the network dynamics created by this relocation of tier 1 suppliers for the overall supply chain network, that is, also for higher-tier/sub-tier suppliers. The results reveal, contrary to our expectations, that indirect (sub-tier) foreign suppliers positively influence the network's resilience, with this impact, however, being negatively moderated by their degree centrality, that is, the number of ties a node possesses. In addition, existing indirect (sub-tier) domestic suppliers do not have a significant influence on the resilience of the network. No evidence was found for the impact of reshoring on sustainability. Overall, our study contributes to the reshoring literature by delineating its influence on both the resilience and the sustainability of a focal firm's supply chain network. | View Infographic |
| Driving digital sustainability in global value chains: Multinational enterprises as chief orchestrators | Academy of Management Perspectives | 2024 | Claire Kilpatrick, Kieran M. Conroy | Digital sustainability has the potential to transform how multinational enterprises (MNEs) capture, create and distribute value in their global value chains (GVCs). Yet, a real problem persists in understanding how MNEs drive digital sustainability across their GVCs. This is a complex and evolving process that requires MNEs to coordinate with and collaborate across a multiplicity of globally dispersed partners. Adopting an orchestration perspective, our paper constructs a novel take on digital sustainability in several ways. First, we reimagine the role of MNEs as ‘chief orchestrators’ in GVCs, driving digital sustainability through orchestration activities underpinning coordination and collaboration, which in turn generates opportunities for value capture and creation along the GVC. Second, we disentangle the impact of MNE-driven digital sustainability, unpacking the undesired consequences for GVC partners relating to dependency, power dynamics, transparency and supplier squeeze or exclusion. Our insights temper claims about the transformative potential of digital sustainability, challenging scholars, practitioners and policymakers to reflect on and respond to the double-edged effects of MNE-driven digital sustainability in GVCs. Our arguments are demonstrated through three illustrative cases from firms across industries (agriculture, energy and fast-moving consumer goods). We identify implications for management practice and policy and offer guideposts for future research. | View Infographic |
| Navigating the ‘meaningless’ of social innovation: perspectives of social care practitioners in Scotland | Public Management Review | 2024 | Fiona Henderson, Simon Teasdale | Social innovation is an umbrella concept that allows space for a diverse range of perspectives to co-exist. In this paper, we explore how practitioners negotiate this complexity. Conducting 19 interviews with stakeholders involved in social enterprise and social care in Scotland, we show that almost anything can be conceived of as a social innovation as defined by the European Union. The EU definition can be a useful tool for organisations to demonstrate to funders how and why they are socially innovative. However, in failing to interrogate the power dimension of social innovation, the EU definition neglects any transformative potential. | View Infographic |
| Universities as internationalization catalysts: reversing roles in university–industry collaboration | British Journal of Management | 2023 | Simone Corsi, Feranita Feranita, Mat Hughes, Alex Wilson | University–industry (U-I) collaboration is vital to the development of society. However, this important interaction has become something of a caricature whereby a sequential and unidirectional relationship exists, with universities creating knowledge and industries commercializing it. We address this issue by using the triple helix (TH) perspective and the network-revised Uppsala model of internationalization to demonstrate how this relationship can be reversed. We present an embedded longitudinal case study of a UK–China innovation programme, run by a UK university with the aim of supporting the development of 62 collaborative innovation projects between 58 UK small and medium enterprises and Chinese organizations. The results reveal a pressing need to revisit universities’ third mission: the transfer of academic knowledge to industry. The findings demonstrate universities’ role as internationalization catalysts for firms engaged in U-I collaboration. This signals an important and underexplored component of the TH perspective. The knowledge exchange type in U-I relationships shows a possible reversal in firm and university roles, where knowledge and technology are contributed by firms, and access to markets is orchestrated by universities, which become internationalization platforms. | View Infographic |
| Bank financial sustainability evaluation: data envelopment analysis with random forest and Shapley additive explanations | European Journal of Operational Research | 2025 | Yu Shi, Vincent Charles, Joe Zhu | Ensuring financial sustainability is imperative for a financial institution's overall stability. To mitigate the risk of bank failure amid financial crises, effective management of financial sustainability performance becomes paramount. This study introduces a comprehensive framework for the accurate and efficient quantification, indexing, and evaluation of financial sustainability within the American banking industry. Our approach begins by conceptualizing financial sustainability as a multi-stage, multifactor structure. We construct a composite index through a three-stage network data envelopment analysis (DEA) and subsequently develop a random forest classification model to predict financial sustainability outcomes. The classification model attains an average testing recall rate of 84.34 %. Additionally, we employ SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) to scrutinize the impacts of contextual variables on financial sustainability performance across various substages and the overall banking process, as well as to improve the interpretability and transparency of the classification results. SHAP results reveal the significance and effects of contextual variables, and noteworthy differences in contextual impacts emerge among different banking substages. Specifically, loans and leases, interest income, total liabilities, total assets, and market capitalization positively contribute to the deposit stage; revenue to assets positively influences the loan stage; and revenue per share positively affects the profitability stage. This study serves the managerial objective of assisting banks in capturing financial sustainability and identifying potential sources of unsustainability. By unveiling the “black box” of financial sustainability and deciphering its internal dynamics and interactions, banks can enhance their ability to monitor and control financial sustainability performance more effectively. | View Infographic |
| Societal attitudes toward service robots: Adore, abhor, ignore, or unsure? | Journal of Service Research | 2024 | Vignesh Yoganathan, Victoria-Sophie Osburg, Andrea Fronzetti Colladon, Vincent Charles, Waldemar Toporowski | Societal or population-level attitudes are aggregated patterns of different individual attitudes, representing collective general predispositions. As service robots become ubiquitous, understanding attitudes towards them at the population (vs. individual) level enables firms to expand robot services to a broad (vs. niche) market. Targeting population-level attitudes would benefit service firms because: 1) they are more persistent, thus, stronger predictors of behavioral patterns, and 2) this approach is less reliant on personal data, whereas individualized services are vulnerable to AI-related privacy risks. As for service theory, ignoring broad unobserved differences in attitudes produces biased conclusions, and our systematic review of previous research highlights a poor understanding of potential heterogeneity in attitudes toward service robots. We present five diverse studies (S1-S5), utilizing multinational and ‘real world’ data (Ntotal = 89,541; years: 2012-2024). Results reveal a stable structure comprising four distinct attitude profiles (S1-S5): positive (“adore”), negative (“abhor”), indifferent (“ignore”), and ambivalent (“unsure”). The psychological need for interacting with service staff, and for autonomy and relatedness in technology use, function as attitude profile antecedents (S2). Importantly, the attitude profiles predict differences in post-interaction discomfort and anxiety (S3), satisfaction ratings and service evaluations (S4), and perceived sociability and uncanniness based on a robot’s humanlikeness (S5). | View Infographic |
| How and when perceptions of top management bottom-line mentality inhibit supervisors’ servant leadership behavior | Journal of Management | 2023 | Mayowa T. Babalola, Samantha L. Jordan, Shuang Ren, Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Wayne A. Hochwarter, Gbemisola T. Soetan | Extending existing bottom-line mentality (BLM) perspectives, we provide a new theoretical account of how supervisors’ perceptions of top management BLM influence supervisors’ servant leadership (SL) behavior. Using role theory, we propose that these perceptions inhibit supervisors’ SL behavior by reducing their SL role conceptualization or the extent to which supervisors consider SL part of their work responsibility. Further, given that the process underlying the relationship between perceived top management BLM and supervisor SL behavior may be explained by social learning theory and human adaptive capacity perspectives, we examine the incremental validity of supervisor SL role conceptualization versus supervisor BLM and empathy as mediating mechanisms. We also propose low perspective-taking among supervisors as a boundary condition that exacerbates the negative effect of perceived top management BLM on SL role conceptualization, which then results in less servant leader behavior. Data from two multiwave field studies in China and the United Kingdom provided some support for our hypotheses. Across unique cultural contexts, our findings highlight the value of a role theory perspective in understanding perceptions of top management BLM. We discuss critical theoretical and practical implications of these findings and avenues for subsequent research. | View Infographic |
| How green human resource management affects employee voluntary workplace green behaviour: An integrated model | Human Resource Management Journal | 2024 | Yiwei Yuan, Shuang Ren, Guiyao Tang, Haochen Ji, Fang Lee Cooke, Zhining Wang | Green human resource management (GHRM), a set of HRM practices targeted at environmental goals, has been proposed as the key to achieving organisational sustainable development. However, the mechanisms through which GHRM influences employee green behaviour are not yet well understood. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, this study presents an integrated model revealing the mixed effects of GHRM on employees' voluntary workplace green behaviour (VWGB). Path analysis based on two studies undertaken in China largely supported our hypotheses. Specifically, GHRM was found to positively influence employees' VWGB through environmental commitment, while simultaneously decreasing their VWGB through emotional exhaustion. Meanwhile, supervisory support for environmental behaviour mitigated the impact of GHRM on emotional exhaustion as well as the relationship between GHRM and employee VWGB via emotional exhaustion. This study contributes to the GHRM literature in particular and organisational environmental management literature in general. | View Infographic |
| Inter-union solidarity and strategic group identity: insights from works councils in the French car industry | Work, Employment and Society | 2024 | Ruth Reaney, Niall Cullinane | In many countries, unions, with conflicting political identities, compete for works council positions. However, inter-union solidaristic forms of cooperation can occur within these same institutions. This article advances the concept of strategic group identity to explain the makeup, success, failure and longevity of inter-union cooperation in this context. Based on case studies of inter-union conflict and cooperation on works councils in the French automotive industry, the article highlights the importance of inter-union identity congruence in examining responses to shared threats. Several implications for understanding inter-union solidarity are developed. | View Infographic |
| Organizations offering line manager training in mental health and presenteeism: a secondary data analysis of organizational-level data | Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology | 2025 | Teixiera Dulal-Arthur, Juliet Hassard, Jane Bourke, Maria Wishart, Craig Bartle, Stephen Roper, Vicki Belt, Stavroula Leka, Nick Pahl, Louise Thomson, Holly Blake | Presenteeism (working while ill) due to mental ill-health is estimated to be one of the largest economic costs to employers. We seek to investigate the relationship between line manager training in mental health (MH) and presenteeism trends at work. The aim of this study was twofold: (i) to examine the relationship between the provision of a new and emerging workplace MH and wellbeing (MH&WB) initiative - line manager (LM) training in MH - and presenteeism as reported by organisations, and (ii) to examine the reasons for presenteeism, and organisational-level strategies used to action it. To address these questions, we conducted a secondary data analysis using panel data from 7139 firms in England over four time points (2020-2023). Probit regression analysis revealed that organisations offering LM training are less likely to report presenteeism. Our analysis revealed that providing LM training may increase awareness and readiness to tackle presenteeism within the organisation, but this does not always translate into actionable strategies. Limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed. | View Infographic |
| Strengthening the theoretical perspective on action in routines research with the analytical philosophy of agency | Journal of Management | 2023 | Piotr Tomasz Makowski | This conceptual paper presents the analytical theory of agency (ATA), an overlooked philosophical approach to the concept of action, to develop its theoretical basis in routines research in which the constructs of action and agency play crucial roles. It expounds, in the framework of ATA, the ideas of the spectrum of intentionality, kinds of action, and collective agency, which help advance the rigor of action-theoretical concepts in routines research as well as reveal the rationale of the microfoundational approach to routine actions. To uncover the developmental potential of ATA, the article discusses the most crucial conceptual challenges for routines research; it also briefly examines the limitations and future work related to using ATA in the management field. | View Infographic |
| Are the good spared? Corporate social responsibility as insurance against cyber security incidents | Risk Analysis | 2023 | Vassiliki Bamiatzi, Michael Dowling, Fabian Gogolin, Fearghal Kearney, Samuel Vigne | Despite the increasing consensus that socially responsible behaviour can act as insurance against externally induced shocks, supporting evidence remains somewhat inconsistent. Our study provides a clear demonstration of the insurance-like properties of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in preserving corporate financial performance (CFP), in the event of a data (cyber) breach. Exploring a sample of 230 breached firms, we find that data breaches lead to significantly negative CFP outcomes for low CSR firms, with the dynamic being particularly pronounced in consumer-sensitive industries. Further, we show that firms increase their CSR activities in the aftermath of a breach to recover lost goodwill and regain stakeholder trust. Overall, our results support the use of CSR as a strategic risk-mitigation tool that can curtail the consequences of data breaches, particularly for firms operating in consumer-centric environments. | View Infographic |
| Comparative configurational process analysis: a new set-theoretic technique for longitudinal case analysis | Organizational Research Methods | 2024 | Christian Rupietta, Johannes Meuer | In the past 20 years, researchers have significantly advanced various management fields by examining organizational phenomena through a configurational lens, including competitive strategies, corporate governance mechanisms, and innovation systems. Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has emerged as a primary method for empirically investigating organizational configurations. However, QCA has traditionally struggled to capture the temporal aspects of configurational phenomena. In this paper, we present configurational comparative process analysis (C2PA), which merges QCA with sequence analysis. We introduce the concept of configurational themes—recognizable temporal patterns of recurring combinations of explanatory conditions—to identify and track the temporal dynamics among these phenomena. We also outline configurational matching—a method for empirically identifying these themes by distinguishing theme-defining from theme-supporting conditions. C2PA allows researchers to explore the temporal dynamics of configurational phenomena, such as their stability, emergence, and decline at critical junctures. We illustrate the application of C2PA through a study of shareholder value orientation and discuss its potential for addressing key questions in management research. | View Infographic |
| Unboxing maturity models: A set-theoretic perspective on e-Government configurations over time | Journal of Strategic Information Systems | 2025 | F. Iannacci, S. Karanasios, G. Viscusi, R. McManus, C. Rupietta, C.W. Tan | This study conceptualizes e-Government maturity from the theoretical lens of strategic change. Drawing on a multiplicity of theories, it undertakes a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the drivers of e-Government maturity over the 2010–2020 decade. It bypasses partially conflicting findings about the contribution of human capital to high levels of e-Government maturity by showcasing instead two configurations of conditions where human capital investments become a non-trivial necessary condition over time. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed by zooming in on the configurational patterns emerging over time and, by extension, refining the notion of ‘turning point’ discussed in the literature. | View Infographic |
| Three centuries of corporate governance in the United Kingdom | Economic History Review | 2024 | John D. Turner | As articulated by Adam Smith, one of the central issues facing companies is that managers will not run the business in the interests of its owners and will misuse resources. This ultimately has a detrimental consequence for the wealth of the nation. This survey reviews the nature and evolution of the corporate governance of UK public companies over the past 300 years. It makes two principal arguments. First, because the separation of ownership and control was one of the rationales for the introduction of the corporate form, we should not be surprised that corporate ownership has generally been diffuse. Second, over time, the way in which owners ensure that managers act in their interests has gradually changed from a system in which shareholders monitored and exercised voice to one where there was more reliance on external forces and exiting ownership. | View Infographic |
| Leveraging digital tools to foster resilience in the charity sector: the case of eBay’s charity connect initiative | Information Systems Journal | 2025 | Michelle Richey, Jade Wendy Brooks, M. N. Ravishankar | Digital tools can help mitigate serious threats to social and economic activity created by external shocks and reduced government funding. This paper complements Information Technology for Development (IT4D) studies of resilience by focusing on how the introduction of new digital tools can sustain both economic and social activities, potentially leading to further adaptations. It investigates eBay's Charity Connect initiative, which supported the UK charity sector to continue selling donated items during the COVID-19 lockdown. The findings present three pathways-outcomes used to foster resilience through introducing new digital tools: interim resilience, bounded resilience and enhanced resilience. Using conservation of resources theory, the paper explains the difference between these outcomes and discusses how balancing stress and resource investment can help leverage digital tools and foster greater digital resilience. | View Infographic |
| Evolutionary multi-objective optimisation for large-scale portfolio selection with both random and uncertain returns | IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation | 2025 | Weilong Liu, Yong Zhang, Kailong Liu, Barry Quinn, Xingyu Yang, Qiao Peng | With the advent of Big Data, managing large-scale portfolios of thousands of securities is one of the most challenging tasks in the asset management industry. This study uses an evolutionary multi-objective technique to solve large-scale portfolio optimisation problems with both long-term listed and newly listed securities. The future returns of long-term listed securities are defined as random variables whose probability distributions are estimated based on sufficient historical data, while the returns of newly listed securities are defined as uncertain variables whose uncertainty distributions are estimated based on experts’ knowledge. Our approach defines security returns as theoretically uncertain random variables and proposes a three-moment optimisation model with practical trading constraints. In this study, a framework for applying arbitrary multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to portfolio optimisation is established, and a novel evolutionary algorithm based on large-scale optimisation techniques is developed to solve the proposed model. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms in large-scale portfolio optimisation. | View Infographic |
| Digital connectivity for work after hours: Its curvilinear relationship with employee job performance | Personnel Psychology | 2023 | Shuang Ren, Jia Hu, Guiyao Tang, Doren Chadee | Using digital technologies for work-related matters during nonwork time is an increasingly common behavior in contemporary workplaces. Despite the prevalence of digital connectivity (DCON) in today's organizations, its implications for employee job performance remain under-specified. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory and the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” (TMGT) meta-theoretical principle, we theorize that DCON has an inverted U-shaped relationship with employee job performance through the mediation of social capital development (SCD) and emotional exhaustion (EE). The results of two studies with different designs support our theoretical expectations. Specifically, we found that increases in DCON associate with higher SCD, lower EE, and higher job performance up to an inflexion point, after which more DCON has detrimental effects. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are fully discussed. | View Infographic |
| 'Divergent work ageing' and older migrants' (un)extended working lives | Work, Employment and Society | 2024 | Sajia Ferdous | This article theorises older ethnic minority women’s work attitudes and labour market behaviour from an intersectional cumulative perspective within the extended working lives contexts. Empirical evidence has been drawn from interviews with South Asian British Muslim women aged between 50 and 66 living in Greater Manchester, UK. The findings show that the cohort’s ageing process is asynchronous with the British work ageing outlook as their cultural understanding of working age, age roles and successful ageing defies the extended working lives philosophies, and cumulative factors including caring responsibilities, legacy inequalities, and health issues present additional challenges for extending their work lives. Their culture- and context-specific work ageing process remains absent in the UK’s labour market discourse and policy landscape. The article theorises their idiosyncratic work ageing including non-conformist attitudes to extending work lives by proposing a ‘divergent work ageing’ model that can guide policymakers in creating inclusive labour market policies. | View Infographic |
| Navigating the twisted path of gaslighting: a manifestation of epistemic injustice for Palestinian women entrepreneurs | Human Relations | 2024 | Wojdan Omran, Shumaila Yousafzai | What exactly is gaslighting and how does it play out in the gendered context of women’s entrepreneurship? We contribute to Stern’s three-stage model of gaslighting by presenting a contextualised perspective through a ‘twisted path’ of gaslighting that maps out gaslighting interactions and consequences, reflecting how our findings coincide with, depart from and enrich this model; meanwhile identifying primary and subsequent (secondary and tertiary) gaslighting interactions. By examining gaslighting through the lens of epistemic injustice and testimonial injustice, we explain why some women entrepreneurs succumb to gaslighting, while others strategically employ testimonial smothering and infrapolitics as an empowered agential strategy rather than a disenfranchised consequence. Considering the lack of research on gaslighting in entrepreneurship, our geopolitical context emphasises the role of spatial position and identity within multiple systems of injustice, such as occupation and patriarchy, adding novel insights theorised and grounded in lived experiences. In doing so, we disrupt the influence of western feminism by embracing a postcolonial feminist perspective and promoting social justice through centring the voices of 40 internally displaced Palestinian women entrepreneurs. Policy implications underscore the need to raise awareness of gaslighting, facilitate its identification and promote preventive measures to hold gaslighters accountable. | View Infographic |
| Women entrepreneurs negotiating identities in liminal digital spaces | Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice | 2023 | Grainne Kelly, Maura McAdam | Our article conceptualizes the experiences of women entrepreneurs through exploring how they negotiate an entrepreneurial identity in liminal digital spaces. Providing empirically textured narrative portraits of women’s experience of transitioning from employment to a digital entrepreneurial career, this article counters the ascendant rhetoric celebrating the democratizing promise of digital technologies. We present a more critical analysis of the experience of self-doubt and existential precarity including the ways in which gender norms permeate the intimate structures of women entrepreneurs’ everyday lives and selves. We also develop the concept of liminality by illustrating how women digital entrepreneurs cope with liminality through identity play and identity work. | View Infographic |
| Paradoxical transparency? Capital market responses to exploration and exploitation disclosure | Research Policy | 2022 | Lane Matthews, Mariano Heyden, Dan Zhou | We draw on information risk theory and paradox theory to examine the additive and combined effects of disclosing exploration and exploitation information on cost of equity capital. We build on theory that presupposes that the information disclosed by a firm about its innovation activities will reduce information risk of investors. However, we contend that disclosure of exploration and exploitation innovation activities could convey potentially paradoxical expectations about a firm's future value. Based on longitudinal data of the UK FTSE 350 firms from 2011–2016, we show that firms tend to disclose more information related to exploration than exploitation. However, the bulk of market benefits are driven by exploitation rather than exploration disclosures—except for R&D-active firms that are rewarded for exploration disclosure. We also find that the combined disclosure is negatively associated with cost of equity capital, with the sub-population of R&D-active firms particularly accruing synergies from combined disclosure of both exploration and exploitation. These findings suggest that the market differentiates between exploration and exploitation information in addressing information risk, more so than previously assumed. We discuss implications for information-type-dependency in information-risk theory, the outward projection of internal paradoxes, capital market valuations of disclosure by R&D-active firms, opportunity-seeking by large publicly listed corporations, and policy implications. | View Infographic |
| Bankruptcy in the UK: Do managers talk the talk before walking the walk? | British Journal of Management | 2024 | Yousry Ahmed, Mohamed Elsayed, Bin Xu | This study examines whether managers employ the annual report textual disclosures as a conduit to communicate the probability of future corporate bankruptcy or to intentionally mislead stakeholders due to impression management incentives. We conduct various examinations around the information content of the tone conveyed by textual disclosures in the unstructured UK annual reports and the probability of corporate bankruptcy. We document that firms that communicate a more net positive tone are associated with lower bankruptcy risk. Importantly, this association is found to be stronger for firms whose managers have a lower incentive to mislead investors due to better board monitoring, stringent stock market regulation, and Big 4 audits. We also offer complementary evidence that firms conveying a more net positive tone exhibit higher future performance and earnings persistence, and lower future performance volatility. These firms are also less likely to exhibit extreme corporate policies and receive a qualified auditor’s opinion. Overall, this study sheds light on whether managers tend to inform or misinform (bury their heads in the sand) about corporate bankruptcy. | View Infographic |
| The govern(mentality) of financial reporting reform: lessons from UK central government | Public Management Review | 2025 | Elaine Stewart, Ciaran Connolly | Drawing on the concept of governmentality and Dean’s (2010) analytics of government, this paper examines how public sector financial reporting reform has shaped forms of power, rationales and practices in United Kingdom (UK) central government. Informed by semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in the implementation, oversight and day-to-day application of the financial reporting regimes, the results illustrate accounting’s constitutive power and the challenges in determining the accounting boundary. Given ongoing public sector accounting reform globally, learning from the UK experience, where such practices have been commonplace for many years, can help identify what is (or not) effective and under what circumstances. | View Infographic |
| Place-based industrial strategies in the context of the Northern Ireland Protocol | Regional Studies | 2024 | Graham Brownlow, Leslie Budd | As a lagging regional economy that underperforms the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland represents a number of continuing challenges that have a long history. In recent years, technologies and processes associated with Industry 4.0 have had little impact with a few exceptions. Yet these activities have become central to industrial policy and strategies in the last two decades, in spite of the path-dependent nature of the economy. The underperformance is exacerbated by Brexit and increased hybridity of the economy due to the Northern Ireland Protocol that appears to be a form of industrial policy to be analysed. | View Infographic |
| Public art tourism: atmospheric stories in city margins | Annals of Tourism Research | 2023 | Hilary Downey, John F. Sherry Jr. | Cities play a pivotal role in progressing cultural tourism, embracing everyday life, where particular cityscapes afford a diversity of cultural practices. The ethnographic storying of two city public artworks presents a backcloth of historical, cultural and religio-political outlooks. Public art and idiosyncratic atmospherics provide conflicting narratives of how pubic art attends wider religion-tourism concerns. Both public artworks observe ‘together-apart’ imaginings of a past-present legacy. This study traces their effect, through researcher short vignettes, visual culture and poetic reflection. This study contributes to the religion-tourism nexus, drawing on political, cultural, religious and social perspectives, which underpin these urban tourism sites. Public art has to make sense, have cultural competence and resonate with citizens. | View Infographic |
| The anatomy of a bubble company: the London Assurance in 1720 | Economic History Review | 2024 | Graeme Acheson, Michael Aldous, William Quinn | The London Assurance Company (LA), which incorporated during the bubble of 1720, experienced more dramatic price movements in its shares than the South Sea Company. This paper examines how incorporating during the bubble affected its long run performance. We show that the bubble in the Company’s share price was partly attributable to changes in market structure during the share issuance process. As a result of the bubble, the Company’s original subscribers, who had been curated for expertise and political connections, overwhelmingly exited during 1720 and were replaced by unsuccessful speculators. Analysis of LA shareholder behaviour up to 1737 suggests that this loss of shareholder expertise had detrimental consequences for the Company’s performance. These results demonstrate how a bubble in the shares of a newly created company can lead to an exodus of value-adding investors, damaging the company’s long-term prospects. | View Infographic |
| Public service management reform: an institutional work and collective framing approach | Public Management Review | 2024 | Julie Bertz, Martin Quinn, John Burns | Research on how public service management copes in difficult times is needed. This paper theorises how collective action frames are created to nurture new practices in challenging contexts. The case concerns an Irish local authority, the 2008 financial crash and subsequent severe austerity. We draw on institutional work to make sense of collective action created for reform, actors’ reflexivity of their situated logics, and institutional embeddedness. This paper contributes by: (1) adding to knowledge of how public service management reform is implemented in difficult times, and (2) combining institutional work with framing concepts to understand how such reform processes unfold. | View Infographic |
| Informal institutions as inhibitors of rent-seeking entrepreneurship: evidence from U.S. legal history | Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice | 2023 | Andrew Smith, Graham Brownlow | Rent-seeking entrepreneurship occurs whenever an entrepreneur expends resources on activities that benefit their firm while reducing overall economic efficiency. Since rent-seeking ultimately makes nations poorer, we need to know more about how institutions can discourage rent-seeking entrepreneurship. Using historical data from the Unites States, we explore how changes in judicial thinking altered individuals’ incentives to engage in rent-seeking entrepreneurship. Traditionally, entrepreneurship researchers interested in policy issues have paid little attention to changes in judicial thinking. We argue that entrepreneurship researchers who are interested in why levels of entrepreneurial dynamism vary over time should pay more attention to how judges think. | View Infographic |
| Scarring and selection in the Great Irish Famine | Economic History Review | 2025 | Matthias Blum, Christopher L. Colvin, Eoin McLaughlin | How do famines shape the health of survivors? We examine the long-term impact of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852) on human stature, distinguishing between adverse scarring effects and the apparent resilience of survivors due to selection. Using anthropometric data from over 14,500 individuals born before, during, and after this famine, we find that selection effects were most pronounced in areas with the highest mortality rates. Individuals born in severely affected regions exhibited no evidence of stunted growth, indicating that the Famine disproportionately eliminated the most vulnerable. In contrast, stunting is observed only in areas with lower excess mortality, where selective pressures were weaker. These findings contribute to debates on the biological consequences of extreme catastrophic risks, demonstrating how selection effects can obscure long-term health deterioration. More broadly, our study provides a methodological framework for assessing selection in historical anthropometric research. | View Infographic |
| Impact creation approaches of community-based enterprises: a configurational analysis of enabling conditions | Journal of Business Venturing | 2024 | Björn C. Mitzinneck, Jana Coenen, Florian Noseleit, Christian Rupietta | This study investigates which local conditions enable community-based enterprises (CBEs) to create impact. Advancing our limited understanding of the various contexts that enable CBEs to tackle societal issues locally, we investigate supportive conditions across 77 CBEs driving the energy transition in their geographic community. Through qualitative comparative analysis, we identify four condition configurations for CBE impact creation. Across these configurations, we reveal transferable mechanisms helping CBEs to engage community members (Opportunity- and Community-anchoring) and handle the absence of a supportive condition (Circumventing and Compensating). Our study suggests how CBEs can combine these mechanisms to create impact in varied local contexts. | View Infographic |
| Social enterprise as political work: perspectives from the Global South | Public Management Review | 2024 | Yanto Chandra, Simon Teasdale | The political work of social enterprises is often neglected in the ‘West; and is almost completely ignored in the ‘Global South’ where it is assumed social enterprises fill institutional voids––operating in areas where governments and markets are broken. Stimulated by calls for more studies on the political work of social enterprises and our initial discovery of cases that exhibit this aspect of social enterprises operating in the Global South, we conducted an inductive study of nine social enterprises from the Global South. We found that social enterprises in the Global South, similar to those in the west, engage in different forms of paradoxical political work––simultaneously working outside of and with governments, while also critiquing policy. Notably, however, the tactics they employ tend to be more subtle and less visible to the western eye. Our study makes a new contribution to better understand how social enterprises engage with government in different ways to achieve their goals. | View Infographic |
| Turning rebellion into money? Social entrepreneurship as the strategic performance of systems change | Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal | 2023 | Simon Teasdale, Michael J. Roy, Alex Nicholls, Chantal Hervieux | Research SummaryCritical scholars recognize a disjuncture between the problems identified by social entrepreneurs and the solutions they propose. Existing theory treats this as a problem to be rectified at the organizational level. In this essay, we widen attention to the macro-oriented systems change strategies of social entrepreneurs. We develop a dynamic typology showing how strategies are reassembled over time to stimulate or deflect desire for systems change. Deriving inspiration from Goffman, we theorize the ways that different types of systems change actor perform systems change via interaction with their environments. Drawing on illustrative cases on the boundaries of social entrepreneurship, we show how the collective action frameworks developed by systems change actors can be adapted and repurposed by their (systems) audiences: effectively turning rebellion into money.Managerial SummarySocial entrepreneurs often call for systems change to tackle wicked problems such as poverty or climate change. However, the strategies they propose for tackling these problems, such as lending money to poor people are considerably less radical. In this essay, we identify three types of systems change actor distinguished by the degree of systems change they call for. We trace their ideas over time to illustrate how strategies are mediated, and subsequently repurposed through interaction with the systems they seek to change. In conclusion, we call upon researchers and social entrepreneurs to widen their perspectives to incorporate more radical ideas and potentials for systems change, and for greater attention to be devoted to scrutinizing and protecting the integrity of systems change strategies. | View Infographic |
| Estimating non-overfitted convex production technologies: a stochastic machine learning approach | European Journal of Operational Research | 2025 | Maria D. Guillen, Vincent Charles, Juan Aparicio | Overfitting is a classical statistical issue that occurs when a model fits a particular observed data sample too closely, potentially limiting its generalizability. While Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a powerful non-parametric method for assessing the relative efficiency of decision-making units (DMUs), its reliance on the minimal extrapolation principle can lead to concerns about overfitting, particularly when the goal extends beyond evaluating the specific DMUs in the sample to making broader inferences. In this paper, we propose an adaptation of Stochastic Gradient Boosting to estimate production possibility sets that mitigate overfitting while satisfying shape constraints such as convexity and free disposability. Our approach is not intended to replace DEA but to complement it, offering an additional tool for scenarios where generalization is important. Through simulation experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed method performs well compared to DEA, especially in high-dimensional settings. Furthermore, the new machine learning-based technique is compared to the Corrected Concave Non-parametric Least Squares (C2NLS), showing competitive performance. We also illustrate how the usual efficiency measures in DEA can be implemented under our approach. Finally, we provide an empirical example based on data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) to demonstrate the applicability of the new method. | View Infographic |
| Role of substantive and rhetorical signals in the market reaction to announcements on AI adoption: a configurational study | European Journal of Information Systems | 2024 | Rohit Nishant, Tuan (Kellan) Nguyen, Thompson S. H. Teo, Pei-Fang Hsu | How do shareholders respond to technologies hyped in general discourse, e.g., artificial intelligence (AI), if a common understanding is lacking and the technologies are still evolving? Do they respond primarily to substantive signals in technology announcements, such as AI capabilities, or do rhetorical signals also play a significant role? Adopting signalling theory as a theoretical lens, we conceptualise announcements of AI capabilities as substantive signals and linguistic elements in the announcements pertaining to organisational time horizon and risk-reward considerations as rhetorical signals. Departing from the typical focus on bijective relationships, we consider holistic, complex configurations of interdependent factors using the qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) methodology. Notably, announcements pertaining to AI capabilities are not necessarily associated with positive market reactions; in fact, when all three types of AI are included in announcements without explicit consideration of risks, shareholders react negatively. We find that shareholder response is based on joint evaluation of substantive and rhetorical signals, and that these signals interact in a complex way to produce positive and negative market reactions. These findings motivate several propositions for market reactions to IT announcements, providing implications for both theory and practice. | View Infographic |
| The formal rationality of artificial intelligence-based algorithms and the problem of bias | Journal of Information Technology | 2024 | Rohit Nishant, Dirk Schneckenberg, MN Ravishankar | This paper presents a new perspective on the problem of bias in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven decision-making by examining the fundamental difference between AI and human rationality in making sense of data. Current research has focused primarily on software engineers’ bounded rationality and bias in the data fed to algorithms but has neglected the crucial role of algorithmic rationality in producing bias. Using a Weberian distinction between formal and substantive rationality, we inquire why AI-based algorithms lack the ability to display common sense in data interpretation, leading to flawed decisions. We first conduct a rigorous text analysis to uncover and exemplify contextual nuances within the sampled data. We then combine unsupervised and supervised learning, revealing that algorithmic decision-making characterizes and judges data categories mechanically as it operates through the formal rationality of mathematical optimization procedures. Next, using an AI tool, we demonstrate how formal rationality embedded in AI-based algorithms limits its capacity to perform adequately in complex contexts, thus leading to bias and poor decisions. Finally, we delineate the boundary conditions and limitations of leveraging formal rationality to automatize algorithmic decision-making. Our study provides a deeper understanding of the rationality-based causes of AI’s role in bias and poor decisions, even when data is generated in a largely bias-free context. | View Infographic |
| Advancing the sustainability agenda through strategic human resource management: insights and suggestions for future research | Human Resource Management | 2023 | Shuang Ren, Fang Lee Cooke, Günter K. Stahl, Di Fan, Andrew R. Timming | How can human resource management (HRM), as both a scholarly discourse and a corporate strategic function, advance the sustainability agenda? We endeavor to answer this question by drawing together insights gleamed from the emerging sustainable HRM literature. First, we synthesize various conceptualizations and theoretical perspectives on the topic, including frames of reference from strategic HRM, institutional theory and institutional logics, stakeholder theory, and sustainable careers/ life cycle theory. Second, we unpack and contextualize the sustainable HRM literature through the lens of international HRM. Third, we consolidate the extant literature and present an agenda for future research, calling for further exploration of topics that are likely to hit the next high wave of generating new strategic HRM insights and sustainable HRM knowledge. | View Infographic |
| Do moral disengagers experience guilt following workplace misconduct? Consequences for emotional exhaustion and task performance | Journal of Organizational Behavior | 2023 | Babatunde Ogunfowora, Viet Quan Nguyen, Clara S. Lee, Mayowa T. Babalola, Shuang Ren | According to Bandura, moral disengagement facilitates misconduct by minimizing feelings of guilt that normally arise when one contemplates wrongdoing. While trait moral disengagement has been negatively associated with anticipatory guilt, scholars have yet to fully consider its impact on guilt post-misconduct. In this paper, we examine the indirect effects of trait moral disengagement on post-misconduct guilt, and downstream effects on employees' mental health and performance. Lastly, we explore the moderating role of post-misconduct state moral disengagement in shaping the effects of trait moral disengagement. Across three studies, we find that trait moral disengagement is positively linked to guilt following interpersonal deviance, unethical work behavior, and objective cheating behavior. Further, trait moral disengagement is indirectly, positively linked to emotional exhaustion and negatively related to executive function (specifically, the capacity to inhibit distraction during tasks). In a fourth study, we find that trait moral disengagement is positively associated with guilt and subsequent emotional exhaustion when individuals employ little to no state moral disengagement immediately post-misconduct. In contrast, trait moral disengagement is negatively linked to guilt and emotional exhaustion when individuals employ state moral disengagement post-misconduct. We discuss the implications of these findings for advancing moral disengagement theory and research. | View Infographic |
| Investigating the nonlinear and conditional effects of trust - the new role of institutional contexts in online repurchase | Information Systems Journal | 2023 | Haiyun (Melody) Zou, Israr Qureshi, Yulin Fang, Heshan Sun, Kai H. Lim, Elaine Ramsey, Patrick McCole | Trust is paramount to developing and maintaining long-term relationships in all stages of the customer lifecycle, including the repurchase stage. This research goes beyond the simple finding documented in the extant trust literature that the effect of trust will diminish. It sheds light on the role of institutional contexts and develops a nuanced understanding of the boundary conditions under which trust operates in the repurchase stage, where knowledge-based trust becomes more predominant. Drawing on a different theoretical tenet, prospect theory, we find that customers exhibit distinctively different transaction intentions in the two perceptual conditions of high and low trust in institutional contexts. Specifically, the nonlinear relationship between trust and repeat online transaction intention is inverted U-shaped curvilinear when trust in institutional contexts is high, but is U-shaped when trust in institutional contexts is low. With data collected from both e-commerce and mobile banking contexts using two different measures of institutional contexts, we employed a new and advanced latent moderated structural (LMS) equations approach for analysis and provided robust results. Our findings largely confirm the hypotheses and offer theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. | View Infographic |
| Small actions can make a big difference: voluntary employee green behaviour at work and affective commitment to the organization | British Journal of Management | 2023 | Shuang Ren, Guiyao Tang, Shujie Zhang | In the workplace, discretionary pro-environmental actions made by employees are referred to as voluntary employee green behaviour (VEGB). This is increasingly recognised as a contribution to both the environmental and the financial sustainability of the organisation. However, the implications of VEGB beyond its original environmental domain largely remain underspecified, thus constraining the theoretical development of the field and advocacy for organisations in practice. This study thus investigates how VEGB associates with the employee outcome of affective commitment, which especially impacts the psychological relationships that employees develop with their organisations. Drawing on two studies, we found that VEGB was positively associated with affective commitment, as enabled by three mediating mechanisms that enhanced the sense of warm glow and moral credit for employees while protecting them against emotional exhaustion. Moreover, we found that perceived organisational support for the environment served as a boundary condition for VEGB and its mediation by moral credit and emotional exhaustion. Implications for theory and practice are discussed in the paper. | View Infographic |
| Survive the economic downturn: operating flexibility, productivity, and stock crash | Journal of Operations Management | 2025 | Yang Li, Xiaojun Wang, Fangming Xu, Tuan Ho | Operating flexibility supports a firm's resilience strategy during challenging times by enabling them to promptly cut down operating costs associated with unproductive resources. We employ a real options model to formalize this insight. Our empirically grounding analytics motivate a firm-level proxy for downscale operating flexibility (FLEX), which effectively captures the adjustment frictions across different contexts of firms' operations. Using U.S. data between 1961 and 2020, we show that operating flexibility mitigates the risk of stock price crashes, especially during periods of economic recession. Consistent with the loss-curtailment mechanism, the operating flexibility effect is more pronounced for firms with lower productivity/profitability or higher operating leverage and is further amplified during longer and more severe recessions. Managers may avail themselves of our well-tested empirical measure of operating flexibility to guide their efforts in building a more resilient operations structure. | View Infographic |
| Corporate taxes, leverage, and investment: evidence from Nazi-occupied Netherlands | Economic History Review | 2024 | Philip T. Fliers, Abe de Jong, Bert Kramer | We examine the Netherlands around the Second World War, where the occupying Nazi regime overhauled the country's corporate tax regime and introduced a profit tax of 55 per cent. We estimate that the new tax regime cost investors at least 300 million guilders, an amount equivalent to 5 per cent of Dutch GDP in 1940. We demonstrate that the tax introduction changed the financing of Dutch businesses. In particular, we find strong evidence that debt financing increased because it provides a tax shelter. The changes in taxation also led to an after-tax reduction in the cost of debt, which had large real effects on firm investment. After the end of the war, firms with more leverage had higher capital expenditures. | View Infographic |
| British CEOs in the twentieth century: aristocratic amateurs to fat cats? | Business History Review | 2024 | Robin J. C. Adams, Michael Aldous, Philip T. Fliers, John Turner | This article uses a prosopographical methodology and new dataset of 1,558 CEOs from Britain’s largest public companies between 1900 and 2009 to analyse how the role, social background, and career pathways of corporate leaders changed. We have four main findings: First, the designation of CEO only prevailed in the 1990s. Second, the proportion of socially elite CEOs was highest before 1940, but they were not dominant. Third, most CEOs did not have a degree before the 1980s, or professional qualification until the 1990s. Fourth, liberal market reforms in the 1980s were associated with an increase in the likelihood of CEO dismissal by a factor of three. | View Infographic |
| Nonstandard errors | Journal of Finance | 2024 | Albert J. Menkveld, Anna Dreber, Felix Holzmeister, Juergen Huber, Magnus Johannesson, Michael Kirchler, Sebastian Neusüß, Michael Razen, Utz Weitzel, Fincap Team, Fearghal Kearney, Tony Klein, Liangyi Mu | In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data-generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence-generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty—nonstandard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for more reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer-review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants. | View Infographic |
| Why did shareholder liability disappear? | Journal of Financial Economics | 2024 | David A. Bogle, Gareth Campbell, Christopher Coyle, John D. Turner | Why did shareholder liability disappear? We address this question by looking at its use by British insurance companies until its complete disappearance. We explore three possible explanations for its demise: (1) regulation and government-provided policyholder protection meant that it was no longer required; (2) it had become de facto limited; and (3) shareholders saw an opportunity to expunge something they disliked when insurance companies grew in size. Using hand-collected archival data, our findings suggest investors attached a risk premium to companies with shareholder liability, and it was phased out as insurance companies expanded, which meant that they were better able to pool risks. | View Infographic |
| Zero hours contracts and self-reported (mental) health in the UK | British Journal of Industrial Relations | 2024 | Egidio Farina, Colin Green, Duncan McVicar | This article examines associations between precarious contract types and a range of self-reported health measures for the UK. We focus on zero hours contracts (ZHCs), an extreme form of precarious employment that has grown rapidly in the UK over the last decade, and on mental health. We demonstrate that workers employed on ZHCs are more likely to report a long-term health condition than workers employed on other types of contract, with the main driver being that they are almost twice as likely to report mental ill health. These associations survive conditioning on an extensive set of observable individual, job and contextual characteristics, and are robust to sensitivity analysis designed to explore the likely extent of bias due to unobserved confounders. We discuss potential explanations for these associations, from sorting of workers with poor health into ZHC employment to detrimental effects of ZHC employment on health, drawing on additional instrumental variables estimates to do so. Finally, we discuss potential policy implications. | View Infographic |
| Relationships between community-led mutual aid groups and the state during the COVID-19 pandemic: complementary, supplementary, or adversarial? | Public Management Review | 2024 | Jack Rendall, Maeve Curtin, Michael J. Roy, Simon Teasdale | This research explores ways public service ecosystems developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on relationships between community-led mutual aid groups and the state. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and mobile ethnographic methods with 30 participants from the public sector and three mutual aid groups across Scotland. We show how relationships between mutual aid groups and the state–whether complementary, supplementary, or adversarial–shifted over the course of the pandemic. Our findings add nuance to understandings that presuppose mutual aid as antagonistic, highlighting ways that mutual aid groups may be brought into existing public service ecosystems. | View Infographic |
| Epistemic injustice and epistemic resistance: an intersectional study of women’s entrepreneurship under occupation and patriarchy | Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice | 2024 | Wojdan Omran, Shumaila Yousafzai | Women face unique challenges in their quest to achieve business success relative to men. Applying the theories of epistemic injustice and intersectionality, this study collectively analyzes the overlapping impacts of identities that complement gender at multiple levels in the context of the oppressive, interconnected power structures of occupation and patriarchy. Our findings explain how the impact of institutional oppressors, through structural and normative discrimination, may cause some Palestinian women entrepreneurs to internalize and accept injustice while others tap into available resources to engage in epistemic resistance. | View Infographic |
| Creativity development and Mode 2 theory development: Event system and experiential learning perspectives | Human Resource Management Journal | 2024 | Anastasia Kulichyova, Stefan Jooss, Thomas Garavan | Literature on academic-stakeholder collaboration in the context of HRM is scarce and highlights the challenges linking theory to practice. Drawing on Mode 2 research, we theorise how a structured intervention enables the generation of theoretical insights concerning the development of employee creativity knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs). Utilising event system theory, we reveal how the novelty, criticality, and disruption of a structured intervention fuel an experiential learning process. This process facilitates the development of important individual and team-based creativity KSAs and is sustained through a learning mindset. We develop insights about theories-in-use, HRM theory development, and the micro processes involved in an academic-stakeholder collaboration including areas of potential tension. From a practice perspective, we highlight the value of structured interventions for creativity KSA development and a strategy to facilitate academic-stakeholder collaboration. | View Infographic |
| Does competitive action intensity influence team performance via leader bottom-line mentality? A social information processing perspective | Journal of Applied Psychology | 2024 | Shuang Ren, Mary B. Mawritz, Rebecca L. Greenbaum, Mayowa T. Babalola, Zhining Wang | Leader bottom-line mentality (LBLM) exists when leaders solely focus on securing bottom-line outcomes to the exclusion of alternative considerations. Our research examines why leaders adopt LBLMs and the implications of this focused leadership strategy on team sales performance and pro-environmental behavior. Utilizing social information processing theory, we examine LBLM as a mediator and contend that competitive action intensity in the work environment provokes LBLM, which then signals to teams the importance of raising sales performance and reducing pro-environmental behavior. We also suggest that leader performance reward expectancy (i.e., perceptions that rewards are directly tied to high performance) serves as a first-stage moderator and team performance reward expectancy serves as a second-stage moderator, with higher (vs. lower) levels of each strengthening the indirect effects of competitive action intensity, through LBLM, onto team sales performance and pro-environmental behavior. Utilizing field data from a large pharmaceutical company (Study 1) as well as an experimental causal chain design (Studies 2a and 2b), we found support for our theoretical model. | View Infographic |
| Being aware of death: how and when mortality cues incite leader expediency versus servant leadership behaviour | Journal of Management Studies | 2024 | Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Mayowa T. Babalola, Moazzam Ali, Shuang Ren, Muhammed Usman, Zhining Wang | The COVID-19 crisis has been associated with existential concerns regarding mortality. These concerns, described as ‘mortality cues’, can influence people's emotions, behaviours, and the quality of leadership in organizations. Using the contingency model of death awareness (CMDA; Grant and Wade-Benzoni, 2009), we provide new evidence on how mortality cues can incite negative and positive leadership behaviours via two forms of death awareness: death anxiety and death reflection. Specifically, we theorize that mortality cues can increase leader death anxiety, giving rise to leader expediency (a leader's use of unethical practices to expedite work for self-serving purposes); however, mortality cues can also facilitate leader death reflection and, consequently, servant leadership behaviour. We further suggest that leaders’ responses to mortality cues depend on their psychological capital (PsyCap), such that leaders with high (vs. low) PsyCap respond to mortality cues with less expediency (via death anxiety) and more servant leader behaviours (via death reflection). We support our hypotheses through three separate studies using an experiment, time-lagged data from healthcare workers, and daily diary data from non-healthcare professionals. We conclude that mortality cues have a double-edged influence on leadership behaviour. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings. | View Infographic |
| Financially insecure and less ethical: Understanding why and when financial insecurity inhibits ethical leadership | Human Relations | 2023 | Yuanmei (Elly) Qu, Mayowa T Babalola, Chidiebere Ogbonnaya, Shuang Ren, Lu Chen, Mengxi Yang | With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, among other crises (e.g., Russia–Ukraine conflicts and recession projections) threatening organizations’ financial conditions across the globe, supervisors may not only encounter challenges such as job cuts that test their ethical leadership, but also experience financial insecurity themselves. However, our knowledge of why and when supervisors’ ethical leadership behaviors may be affected in such a situation remains quite limited. In this research, we draw on uncertainty management theory (UMT) to examine the potential influence of financial insecurity on ethical leadership. Specifically, we suggest that financial insecurity triggers anxiety in supervisors, which inhibits their demonstration of ethical leadership. We also propose organizational pay fairness as a boundary condition for this process, such that supervisors who perceive their pay as fair are less susceptible to the anxiety resulting from financial insecurity than those who perceive their pay as unfair. Results from two multi-source, multi-wave studies supported our hypothesized model. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings. | View Infographic |
| Theory-driven perspectives on generative artificial intelligence in business and management | British Journal of Management | 2024 | Olivia Brown, Robert M. Davison, Stephanie Decker, David A. Ellis, James Faulconbridge, Julie Gore, Michelle Greenwood, Gazi Islam, Christina Lubinski, Niall G. MacKenzie, Renate Meyer, Daniel Muzio, Paolo Quattrone, M. N. Ravishankar, Tammar Zilber, Shuang Ren, Riikka M. Sarala, Paul Hibbert | The advent of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has sparked both enthusiasm and anxiety as different stakeholders grapple with the potential to reshape the business and management landscape. This dynamic discourse extends beyond GAI itself to encompass closely related innovations that have existed for some time, for example, machine learning, thereby creating a collective anticipation of opportunities and dilemmas surrounding the transformative or disruptive capacities of these emerging technologies. | View Infographic |
| Human resource management in the age of generative artificial intelligence: perspectives and research directions on ChatGPT | Human Resource Management Journal | 2023 | Pawan Budhwar, Soumyadeb Chowdhury, Geoffrey Wood, Herman Aguinis, Greg J. Bamber, Jose R. Beltran, Paul Boselie, Fang Lee Cooke, Stephanie Decker, Angelo DeNisi, Prasanta Kumar Dey, David Guest, Andrew J. Knoblich, Ashish Malik, Jaap Paauwe, Savvas Papagiannidis, Charmi Patel, Vijay Pereira, Shuang Ren, Steven Rogelberg, Mark N. K. Saunders, Rosalie L. Tung, Arup Varma | ChatGPT and its variants that use generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have rapidly become a focal point in academic and media discussions about their potential benefits and drawbacks across various sectors of the economy, democracy, society, and environment. It remains unclear whether these technologies result in job displacement or creation, or if they merely shift human labour by generating new, potentially trivial or practically irrelevant, information and decisions. According to the CEO of ChatGPT, the potential impact of this new family of AI technology could be as big as “the printing press”, with significant implications for employment, stakeholder relationships, business models, and academic research, and its full consequences are largely undiscovered and uncertain. The introduction of more advanced and potent generative AI tools in the AI market, following the launch of ChatGPT, has ramped up the “AI arms race”, creating continuing uncertainty for workers, expanding their business applications, while heightening risks related to well‐being, bias, misinformation, context insensitivity, privacy issues, ethical dilemmas, and security. Given these developments, this perspectives editorial offers a collection of perspectives and research pathways to extend HRM scholarship in the realm of generative AI. In doing so, the discussion synthesizes the literature on AI and generative AI, connecting it to various aspects of HRM processes, practices, relationships, and outcomes, thereby contributing to shaping the future of HRM research. | View Infographic |
| Judging a book by its cover: understanding the phenomenon of fake news propagation from an evolutionary psychology perspective | Journal of Association of Information Systems | 2025 | Ashish Kumar Jha, Rohit Nishant | With fake news now a serious concern facing researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike, research is increasingly exploring the factors that lead to its proliferation. However, there is limited research on the role of temporal orientation. i.e., emphasis on time. This paper examines whether a future temporal orientation (FTO), defined as a relative emphasis on the future observed in fake news titles and content, is associated with fake news sharing. We bring arguments grounded in evolutionary psychology to understand the underlying rationale driving this phenomenon. Our analysis of a Twitter dataset comprising 465519 tweets suggests that FTO characterizes fake news and is positively associated with fake news sharing. Notably, fake news titles and the accompanying text differ in their FTO. Specifically, we show an inverted U-shaped relationship between fake news sharing and the difference in FTO between the title and accompanying text. As a practical implication of this analysis, efforts to limit the spread of fake news should pay more attention to how such news emphasizes the future. | View Infographic |
| What can we learn from historical pandemics? A systematic review of the literature | Social Science & Medicine | 2024 | Aine Doran, Christopher L. Colvin, Eoin McLaughlin | What are the insights from historical pandemics for policymaking today? We carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of pandemics that occurred since the Industrial Revolution and prior to Covid-19. Our literature searches were conducted between June 2020 and September 2023, with the final review encompassing 169 research papers selected for their relevance to understanding either the demographic or economic impact of pandemics. We include literature from across disciplines to maximise our knowledge base, finding many relevant articles in journals which would not normally be on the radar of social scientists. Our review identifies two gaps in the literature: (1) the need to study pandemics and their effects more collectively rather than looking at them in isolation; and (2) the need for more study of pandemics besides 1918 Spanish Influenza, especially milder pandemic episodes. These gaps are a consequence of academics working in silos, failing to draw on the skills and knowledge offered by other disciplines. Synthesising existing knowledge on pandemics in one place provides a basis upon which to identify the lessons in preparing for future catastrophic disease events. | View Infographic |
| Understanding dark side of artificial intelligence (AI) integrated business analytics: assessing firm’s operational inefficiency and competitiveness | European Journal of Information Systems | 2022 | Rana, N.P., Chatterjee, S., Dwivedi, Y.K., and Akter, S. | The data-centric revolution generally celebrates the proliferation of business analytics and AI in exploiting firm’s potential and success. However, there is a lack of research on how the unintended consequences of AI integrated business analytics (AI-BA) influence a firm’s overall competitive advantage. In this backdrop, this study aims to identify how factors, such as AI-BA opacity, suboptimal business decisions and perceived risk are responsible for a firm’s operational inefficiency and competitive disadvantage. Drawing on the resource-based view, dynamic capability view, and contingency theory, the proposed research model captures the components and effects of an AI-BA opacity on a firm’s risk environment and negative performance. The data were gathered from 355 operational, mid-level and senior managers from various service sectors across all different size organisations in India. The results indicated that lack of governance, poor data quality, and inefficient training of key employees led to an AI-BA opacity. It then triggers suboptimal business decisions and higher perceived risk resulting in operational inefficiency. The findings show that operational inefficiency significantly contributes to negative sales growth and employees’ dissatisfaction, which result in a competitive disadvantage for a firm. The findings also highlight the significant moderating effect of contingency plan in the nomological chain. | View Infographic |
| Why are corporations terminated? A century of evidence from the Netherlands | Business History | 2025 | Christopher L. Colvin, Abe de Jong, Philip T. Fliers, Florian Madertoner | We identify all 196 Dutch exchange-listed corporations that halted their operations and ceased to exist between 1903 and 1996. We then explain these terminations using unique hand-collected accounting and governance data and regression techniques suited to long-run comparative analysis. Although Dutch bankruptcy laws remained unchanged across the twentieth century, patterns of corporate exit shifted markedly: shareholder-induced voluntary liquidations predominated before WWII, while creditor-driven bankruptcies became the norm thereafter. Our analyses suggest this transformation reflected a broader redefinition of corporate purpose, from a liberal shareholder-centric model before WWII, to a stakeholder-focused paradigm that emerged among Dutch business leaders in the post-war period. We further find that the Dutch government’s industrial policy initiatives in the 1970s did not succeed in reducing corporate failures. Our findings underscore how shifts in corporate purpose can fundamentally reshape business outcomes, even in the absence of formal legal changes. | View Infographic |
