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This practice forum paper aims to present a theoretical framework to better develop the required supply chain management (SCM) competencies and the workforce needed for managing public health supply chains.

This framework is driven by iterative systems thinking, a deeper consideration of the SCM labor market and a comprehensive mapping of human resource system requirements. The framework centers around three tools. A labor market analysis assesses factors influencing supply of and demand for health SCM workers in a country context. To improve supply of and demand for workers, the SCM Professionalisation Framework provides reference documents to establish health SCM as a recognized profession. The human resources for SCM Theory of Change explains and assesses the conditions required to achieve optimal workforce performance at the organizational level. The Ministry of Health in Rwanda applied these three tools sequentially to assess and improve the supply and performance of its health SCM workforce.

The authors describe this framework, how the tools were applied in Rwanda, and early impressions of the results.

Practitioners can apply this approach to improve SCM competence and promote the attractiveness of health SCM positions by formalizing their professional status. This could lead to a pool of individuals who seek SCM qualifications and, in time, overcome the current shortage of health SCM workers. Employers can apply this approach to structured roles and workforce needs to meet health SCM system requirements. This would lead to a greater demand for and use of appropriately trained personnel.

This paper presents a novel, iterative, systems-thinking approach to develop human resources in public health supply chains. Rwanda is the first country to apply all three tools using this framework.

Chocolate production and cocoa supply chains are rife with social and environmental challenges. Chocolate companies commonly make claims that their products are “sustainable”, giving little guidance on what this means. The aim of this paper is to conduct a scoping review to synthesise the accounting literature related to the chocolate industry and sustainability and develop a research agenda for accounting scholarship.

The scoping review followed Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) five-stage framework for a scoping review. Nineteen accounting journals were searched for literature on “chocolate OR cocoa AND sustainability” from 2000 to 2023. A total of 171 papers were identified through the search, of which 18 were deemed relevant and included for thematic analysis. The themes are analysed using a conceptual framework on accountability.

Analysis of the relevant literature revealed three distinct perspectives on sustainability in the chocolate industry. These include critique on the problems related to top-down accountability approaches in the chocolate industry; that accountability mechanisms have fallen short in managing sustainability challenges; and that sustainability interventions are driven by profit motives. The themes further reveal a lack of accountability in the industry for marginalised voices.

The scoping review methodology used in this study offers insights into the diverse perspectives on sustainability in the chocolate industry. This research adds valuable knowledge to the field by uncovering nuanced issues around accountability and sustainability and highlighting the need for future research for accountability for sustainable chocolate production.

Positive psychology helps us understand the knowledge required to contribute to adolescents' societal development and adjustability. Adolescence is the crucial stage to work on for a balanced personality. The present study concerned adolescents' self-strength, happiness, and help-seeking behaviour. The authors aimed to explore the relationship between adolescents' self-strength and happiness and investigate the mediational effect of adolescents' help-seeking behaviour on their self-strength and happiness.

The research design of the current quantitative study was correlational, and 809 adolescents from China and Pakistan participated in the present study. Data were personally collected from participants through self-developed scales.

We deployed Pearson correlation and simple mediation using SPSS software and found a linear, positive, strong (r = 0.654, n = 809, p = 0.000 < 0.01) and statistically significant correlation between adolescents' self-strength and happiness. The authors also found a significant indirect effect of help-seeking on adolescents' self-strength and happiness at (β = 0.373, t(907) = 7.01).

Using self-reported scales to gather information was one of the study's limitations. Adolescents may have misunderstood the notion or construct narrated in words or responded biasedly despite the bilingual scales.

This study offers social and practical implications for educators, parents, and school administrators to address the development of adolescents' personalities using a positive psychology lens.

The findings are of significant importance for teachers working in the elementary schools. They may work on adolescents' self-strength, happiness, and help-seeking to develop balanced personalities.

Mass markets, bureaucratic hierarchy and impersonal factories have provided the foundation for Western capitalism during the past three to four centuries, but long before this, the Islamic bazaar fulfilled many of these functions effectively if not admirably despite substantial cultural, political and economic challenges. Paradoxically, bazaar-like arrangements are reappearing in some of the most advanced sectors of the postmodern world at the same time they persist or surface in several other settings. The purpose of this paper is to consider the causes of this persistence and what it means for managers?

This paper uses the categories of Geertz’s classic ethnographic description of the Sefrou suq in Morocco buttressed with other relevant sources to compare the attributes of the institutions of classic capitalism described by Weber to the Islamic Bazaar and similar hybrid manifestations found in diverse settings today.

This study suggests five lessons for modern bazaaris: It is never totally about the money – the importance of multiple currencies in creating productive exchanges. The promise and dangers of clientelism – working with trusted collaborators speeds cooperation but poses the danger of stifling innovation. Private lives, public bonds – how the mechanisms of the bazaar permit diverse partners to collaborate successfully. Everyone is a broker – how participants in the bazaar search out creative opportunities for exchange. Creating safe, random interaction – how the physical and social design of the bazaar safely brings together rivals.

These conclusions are drawn from existing ethnographic, historical and theoretical sources.

Contemporary managers dealing with environments where neoclassical markets and hierarchies no longer work or never fully arrived need to do the same, only more carefully, more consistently and more intentionally.

The legacy of the Islamic bazaar as a viable alternative to mass capitalism and a humanizing force has generally not been recognized in mainline management thought, especially in light of the erosion of the dominant metaphors of market and hierarchy in the postmodern world.

This study aims to represent the initial impact analysis of a human resource development (HRD) intervention – the Center for Human and Organizational Potential (cHOP) – for faculty and staff at an academic medical center in the Midwestern US. cHOP seeks to unleash faculty and staff potential and advance organizational outcomes by fulfilling employees’ basic psychological needs, posited by self-determination theory (SDT, Ryan and Deci, 2000): competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Using Cianciolo and Regehr’s (2019) layered analysis framework as a guide, the authors conducted a program evaluation to analyze, in-depth, the nature and impact of two representative cHOP programs: Accelerate and BOOST. Specifically, the authors examined whether the implementation of these programs was consistent with SDT, as reflected in participants’ reported program experiences (i.e. “Did the intervention, in fact, occur as intended?”). The authors also examined program outcomes and opportunities for improvement based on program participants’ voices (i.e. did the intervention, implemented as intended, work?). Because SDT is a theory of individual motivation, the authors identified a need to evaluate outcomes at the individual level and beyond, broadly exploring what would happened if program participants’ basic psychological needs had been addressed. The aim was to determine the potential downstream consequences of intrinsically motivated faculty and staff, while promoting divergent thinking on program impact and sustainability.

Participants reported experiences suggest that Accelerate and BOOST addressed all three psychological needs and strengthened their intrinsic motivation to advance their leadership and career development and improve the performance of their teams and departments. These outcomes suggest the potential for impact at the individual level and beyond, such as the institution and external, professional societies.

The study assessed two representative programs among cHOP’s many offerings. A comprehensive study of cHOP’s impact, directly linking psychological need fulfillment and organizational impact, is beyond the scope of a single study and requires further research.

The authors suggest expanding scholarly discussions in the HRD and health professions education (HPE) literature to characterize the promise of HRD-HPE partnerships and to account for their impact more fully.

The study contributes to both HRD and HPE scholarship by providing a layered account of academic medical center (AMC) faculty and staff development using an HRD approach; and examining the impact of a theory- and evidence-based novel HRD intervention (i.e. cHOP) at the individual level and beyond in an AMC context.

This paper aims to apply a socio-ecological systems framework to demonstrate that pastoral adaptation to climate change necessitates a comprehensive approach.

The authors evaluated the depth of knowledge regarding pastoral adaptation in Africa using bibliometric and content-based analyses.

The analysis of 40 eligible articles, conducted through R Studio, revealed a significant emphasis on climate change adaptation measures. However, there was a noticeable scarcity of research on the role of governance, policy and institutional interventions.

The scope of the research is limited to the African continent.

This research shed light on how inadequate governance structures and insufficient institutional support, particularly in terms of skills and capacity-building, hinder pastoral communities’ resilience. These limitations may potentially affect pastoral livelihoods adversely, with severe consequences for food security and poverty levels in Africa.

A comprehensive understanding of the challenges pastoralists face in Africa to adapt to climate change will assist in defining high-level policies and interventions to improve pastoral communities’ adaptation actions.

The study used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses approach to ensure a thorough and systematic investigation. Furthermore, using an established framework and clearly defined methods will greatly aid in replicating the research.

This paper aims to explore the development of the US steel industry from the 19th to the 20th century by applying the Schumpeterian perspective on the concept of creative destruction. It introduces Game Theory as a means to describe patterns of strategic situations and entrepreneurial decision-making in an emerging industry.

Based on a narrative literature review of Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction, four historical case studies have been designed. These historical case studies build the basis for game-theoretically analysis and evaluation. In doing so, the authors identify games with different payoff matrices that take place while an industry emerges, reflecting different layers of creative destruction.

Emerging industries, as this paper highlights, go through several stages of development until they reach full maturity. With Schumpeter, these stages can be studied through an entrepreneurial lens, highlighting different patterns of decision-making in each respective stage. This paper adds to a better understanding of emerging industries. Furthermore, this paper provides a methodological repertoire that can also be applied to other cases as well, such as the emergence of contemporary digital industries.

The paper provides a horizontal overview of how Game Theory can be applied to analyze industrial epochs and how the concept of creative destruction works in industry and transforms industry. It introduces Game Theory to management and business history as a sound methodological base to analyze and evaluate strategic situations and entrepreneurial decision-making.

The paper presents a comprehensive method to act in the different stages of an industrial epoch and how to act. The games applied in the particular layers of creative destruction give an insight into the analysis of strategic situations and strategic decision-making in the industry.

This paper provides a horizontal perspective on strategic games that can be used as an analysis methodology in the field of entrepreneurship and applied in contemporary industries. It connects historical cases out of the US steel industry with Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction and Game Theory.

The process performed during a financial statement audit is critical but is unobservable to external stakeholders. This can create challenges in assessing the quality of individual audit engagements. This study’s objective is to introduce and investigate an archival measure based on publicly available information that proxies for audit process ineffectiveness.

We proxy for audit process ineffectiveness using errors in the audit report. We examine audit reports to identify errors because the audit report represents the auditor’s primary communication with financial statement users and is subject to rigorous preparation and review. We first examine if typical factors influencing audit process ineffectiveness are associated with audit report errors. We then examine whether audit reports containing errors are associated with audit quality measures.

We find that errors are more likely to be present in audit reports when time pressure exists and less likely when auditors exert more effort and when audit engagement risk is higher. Results also show that errors in audit reports are positively associated with financial reporting misstatements, measured by subsequently disclosed Big R restatements and out-of-period adjustments.

Collectively, our evidence suggests that an audit report containing an error is a suitable proxy for audit process ineffectiveness. This proxy has audit quality implications because inattentiveness in one area of the audit process could indicate inattentiveness in another area.

This paper aims to examine the research conducted between 1938 and 2023 on applying Gestalt principles in management research, focusing on publishing and citation trends in this field.

A systematic literature review was conducted using PRISMA criteria, forming a three-phase strategy. A total of 394 articles from the Scopus database were reviewed. Bibliometric analysis involving co-citation and co-word analysis was used to explore the intellectual structure of the research area.

Eight application clusters were identified through co-citation analysis using Gestalt as a keyword. Co-word analysis revealed key themes and keywords over the period. Substantial literature exists on topics like organization, strategy, physical servicescape, coaching, learning and human resource management. However, Gestalt principles are minimally applied to online retail, social media, website design, mobile app design and emerging areas like Industry 4.0.

The study suggests that Gestalt principles can enhance marketing, communication, decision-making and leadership, according to the study. Understanding Gestalt concepts and how different industries adapt and apply them helps enable cross-industry learning, where successful strategies from one sector can be creatively implemented in others to solve problems.

This study fills a significant gap in the literature by highlighting the underexplored application of Gestalt principles in emerging business and management sectors. It provides a comprehensive discussion on future research directions and identifies specific areas where Gestalt principles can be innovatively applied, offering fresh insights and expanding the theoretical and practical understanding of their utility in modern business contexts.