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This paper engages with the important work of Raškovic (2024). The authors agree with Raškovic’s (2024) argument that international business (IB) policy is well positioned to inform and address many of society’s wicked problems, including modern slavery. Beyond supporting this position, the purpose of this paper is to highlight IB’s internal and ongoing debate regarding multinational ownership and control, and how this unresolved theoretical issue can hinder the contribution of IB policy in addressing wicked problems.

By leveraging prior literature, this paper synthesises opposing views on the extent of control that multinational enterprises (MNEs) exert across global value chains (GVCs). The authors then demonstrate why these conflicting perspectives should be resolved to fully realise the task that Raškovic (2024) has laid out for IB policy.

This study argues that IB is steeped in a tradition where ownership has been a proxy for meaningful control. Rising GVCs have complicated this relationship, and while IB recognises this, the field remains short of explicating a set of robust conditions that can detect control in the absence of ownership. Given that responsibility is often based on an assumption of who has control, this ongoing and unresolved debate limits IB’s utility in advancing appropriate policy interventions to tame wicked problems.

This paper makes a contribution by bringing together diverse perspectives on the ongoing debate regarding MNE control in GVC. It demonstrates how this seemingly abstract debate can have significant implications for IB’s role in addressing society’s grand challenges. The authors further suggest that embracing interdisciplinarity and novel analytical tools can assist in demystifying the opaqueness of GVCs and resolving the control “fuzziness” that confuses responsibility boundaries across the GVC.

International business (IB) education typically focuses on the multinational enterprise (MNE) and how it navigates varying institutional setups for its own benefit. This reductionist and MNE-centric approach underplays the influence these firms have on the societal and environmental fabric of the geographies they are operating in. This paper aims to propose integrating systems thinking into IB education to address this shortcoming with the intention to setup IB education to engage with wicked grand challenges.

This conceptual paper offers an approach for integrating complexity, criticality and diversity into IB education through teaching systems thinking capabilities.

Integrating systems thinking into IB education allows for a more realistic appreciation of IB’s contribution to addressing grand challenges. The authors propose a systems thinking perspective to IB education and offer how systems thinking capabilities could be taught in IB.

Grand challenges are characterised by wicked problems. Addressing them requires a multilevel, cross-disciplinary approach that takes into consideration the inter- and intradependencies of all actors within a system.

Technologies are dramatically reshaping various aspects of the store space, modifying design, services and usage. Accordingly, several studies tackled technology impact on each of these aspects, investigating design, service and usage singularly, but lacking a holistic viewpoint. Thus, this paper aims to identify the different dimensions of the store space (levels) and assess the impact of technology introduction on store space dimensions (levels).

The research employs a qualitative approach based on direct observations of apparel brand stores located in London between March and April 2023. Data collection followed a structured observation protocol covering store information, adopted technologies and their effects across various store space levels, i.e. consumption activities, service environment and customer experience.

Results show that the store space can be defined as the sum of different dimensions consisting of consumption activities, service environment and customer experience. Accordingly, technology introduction holistically influences each of the three store space levels as follows: (1) first, technologies redefine how activities are performed or alters the location where certain activities are consumed; (2) within the service environment, technologies replace traditional elements, fill empty spaces and enhance the atmospherics; finally, (3) customer experience is enhanced in hedonic and/or utilitarian terms due to technology adoption.

This paper defines the space as a dynamic entity, providing a deeper understanding of how the store space is produced, from a holistic point of view and the role of retail technology in this process.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a big impact on organisations globally, leaving organisations with no choice but to adapt to the new reality of remote work to ensure business continuity. Such an unexpected reality created the conditions for testing new applications of smart home technology whilst working from home. Given the potential implications of such applications to improve the working environment, and a lack of research on that front, this paper pursued two objectives. First, the paper explored the impact of smart home applications by examining the factors that could contribute to perceived productivity and well-being whilst working from home. Second, the study investigated the role of productivity and well-being in motivating the intention of remote workers to use smart home technologies in a home-work environment in the future.

The study adopted a cross-sectional research design. For data collection, 528 smart home users working from home during the pandemic were recruited. Collected data were analysed using a structural equation modelling approach.

The results of the research confirmed that perceived productivity is dependent on service relevance, perceived usefulness, innovativeness, hedonic beliefs and control over environmental conditions. Perceived well-being correlates with task-technology fit, service relevance, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude to smart homes, innovativeness, hedonic beliefs and control over environmental conditions. Intention to work from a smart home-office in the future is dependent on perceived well-being.

The findings of the research contribute to the organisational and smart home literature, by providing missing evidence about the implications of the application of smart home technologies for employees' perceived productivity and well-being. The paper considers the conditions that facilitate better outcomes during remote work and could potentially be used to improve the work environment in offices after the pandemic. Also, the findings inform smart home developers about the features of technology which could improve the developers' application in contexts beyond home settings.

Big 4 professional services firms increasingly lay claim to recruiting and including staff of diverse genders, cultures, ages and sexualities. Drawing on Foucauldian insights, this study explores how LGBTIQ+ staff navigated shifting technologies of client power, at the time marriage equality was legislated in Australia.

This article explores changing experiences of LGBTIQ+ staff and allies, through 56 semi-structured interviews undertaken through 2018–2019.

Technologies of client power were central to shaping workplace experiences for LGBTIQ+ staff. However, each firm was also keen to carve unique and bold responses to changing societal attitudes regarding sexuality and gender. These progressive moves did not sit comfortably with all clients, and so this article provides insight into the limitations of client privilege within professional services firms. For staff, this increasing complexity of sometimes opaque, contradictory and shifting technologies of client and firm power, enabled agency to explore a sense of self for some, but continued to exclude others.

Little attention has been directed to exploring challenges for staff of sexual and gendered diversity within professional services firms, or to exploring how staff navigate changing perceptions of client power.

Drawing on the reciprocity principle of social exchange theory situated within Service-dominant Logic, this study aims to examine how customers’ perception of knowledge sharing in co-production, their inherent scepticism and prosocial orientation relate to their willingness to co-create and provide feedback on services. The authors also explored the interplay between these factors to identify conditions in configurations comprising scepticism, which may help navigate its adverse effects.

The authors surveyed 556 online and offline mobile payment service users. They used a combination of partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to assess the relationships among variables, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify configurations associated with feedback behaviour.

The study determined that customer perception of co-production knowledge sharing is positively associated with willingness to co-create and feedback behaviour. Additionally, prosocial orientation positively affects this relationship, while scepticism has an adverse effect. Willingness to co-create mediates the relationship between customer perception of co-production knowledge sharing and feedback behaviour. The fsQCA findings revealed configurations for potentially navigating doubts regarding feedback. To encourage valuable customer feedback, businesses may consider promoting a collaborative and supportive atmosphere, emphasising shared advantages or building trust even among hesitant and doubtful individuals.

This study uniquely examines how both prosocial tendencies and scepticism relate to customer feedback behaviour in co-creation by using a hybrid PLS-SEM/fsQCA approach to identify co-existing conditions in configurations comprising scepticism that may help navigate its adverse effects and leverage customer feedback for business improvement.

Taking an organizational perspective, this paper aims to understand how organizations respond to such strong and concurrent societal effects, and to answer the question, “How should researchers conceptualize the symbiotic relationship between society and business during a catastrophic societal event?”

The authors highlight through numerous examples, the impact of COVID-19 on society is well-evidenced in the research. They also draw on such evidence of the effects of catastrophic societal events like COVID-19 to support the appropriateness of this conceptualization.

The authors found that organizations that use both short- and long-term activities concurrently are better able to tackle the concurrent short- and long-term effects of catastrophic events like COVID-19.

The authors use ambidexterity theory, supported by evidence derived from organizational responses to COVID-19, to offer a new and more comprehensive conceptualization that frames the concurrent and interrelated short-term and long-term organizational response to a catastrophic societal event. Further, they highlight the importance of studying such organizational responses in the context of the organization’s referent groups.

The paper aims to address a gap in foresight study and practice relating to the lack of unifying theoretical systems frameworks capable of examining empirical data from across a wide range of different ecological, social, political and economic systems. It attempts to develop a new “collective forward intelligence” that can not only make sense of these disparate trends and processes as symptoms of a wider planetary system but also, on this basis, construct accurate and plausible future scenarios to underpin national and international decision-making.

This study conducts a transdisciplinary integration of C. S. Holling’s adaptive cycle with phase-transition phenomena across biology, physics and chemistry, applied on societal and civilisational scales. A systems methodology is then applied to integrate historical and empirical data across the energy, food, transport, materials and information sectors of civilisation’s production system.

The paper develops planetary phase shift theory as a new collective forward intelligence framework for foresight study and practice, formalising the notion that humanity has arrived at an unprecedented historic and geological turning point. It finds that multiple global crises across both earth and human systems are symptoms of the last stages of the life-cycle of global industrialisation civilisation, which is the potential precursor either for collapse, or for a new civilisational life-cycle that may represent a new stage in the biological and cultural evolution of the human species.

The research sets out a new empirically grounded theoretical framework for complex scenario analysis. This can develop more robust approaches to foresight study and practice, scenario development and forecasting. It suggests the need for a new research programme to understand the dynamics of the planetary phase shift and its diverse implications for societies, industry, technology and politics. The research is limited in that the current paper does not explore how it can be applied in this way. It identifies broad scenarios for a post-industrial civilisational life-cycle but does not identify the variety of complex subsets of these.

The paper provides powerful practical implications to develop new methodology based on planetary phase shift theory for strategic planning, risk assessment and management, as well as public policy and decision-making.

The paper suggests the urgency and necessity of bold and radical societal transformation and implies key areas for civil society to focus on in innovating new values, worldviews and operating systems with a focus on the next life-cycle.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper provides the first integrated transdisciplinary theoretical and empirical framework to understand how the interplay of earth system crises, societal change and technology disruptions is driving large-scale civilisational transformation with complex local ramifications.

Supply chain collaboration (SCC) is an important element that contributes to enhanced performance. Nonetheless, there is still a need to understand its role in servitization implementation and outcomes. This study aims to address this gap by looking at the impact of SCC on servitization and performance when considering service levels (base, intermediate and advanced).

Following a quantitative research design, data were collected from firms in pharmaceutical sector.

Moderation effects were tested. Results suggest that SCC is a crucial moderator when it comes to the influence of service levels on servitization consequences and performance, particularly to advanced and intermediate services.

This study contributes to the literature by providing further empirical evidence of the impact of intermediate and advanced services shedding light into the moderating role of SCC.

The purpose of this paper is to address four interrelated questions: what is the prevalence of ageism amongst employers? What are the factors conditioning employers’ age stereotypes? To what extent are ageist attitudes among employers translated into discriminatory recruitment, retention and firing practices? And what factors can moderate the stereotype–discrimination interaction?

The paper draws on a survey conducted among Danish employers; 2,525 completed the survey questionnaires; response rate 25 per cent.

The major finding is that ageist stereotypes among employers do not translate into discriminatory personnel management practices.

The findings may be specific to Denmark. Denmark is renowned to be a non-hierarchical, egalitarian society, which may have implications for personnel management practices.

Contrary to this study, most studies analysing ageist stereotypes do not assess the extent to which stereotypes are translated into discriminatory personnel management practices in the workplace.