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This paper explores key factors influencing high-performing, sustained growth, high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South Korea.

A qualitative study is adopted to explore seventeen founder owner-managers of high-tech SMEs who sustained consistent employment growth, greater than the industry average, for seven years. Within the sample, those with higher (10% or over) employment compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) over this period are also compared to those with lower rates.

The study suggests that proactive approaches, such as flexible organization, risk management, fast decision-making and international market entry, are seen as important contributing factors to sustained growth. These findings contribute to a better theoretical and empirical understanding of sustained high-tech SME growth, in a country with a strong entrepreneurial and internationally competitive information technology sector. Also, collaboration across the SME was perceived as making an important contribution to staff development and growth, consistent with stewardship theory.

The sample is based on successful high-tech SMEs, so there are limitations in extrapolating results to other types of firms, sectors or countries.

Key factors identified in this study can be considered by entrepreneurs seeking to achieve sustainable business. These also provide improved understanding for policymakers into the complexity of factors related to sustained and high growth of technology-based SMEs, which many countries are keen to foster to aid national economic growth.

The research provides new evidence exploring the diverse perspectives of founder owner-managers, on the sustained growth and failure in South Korean high-tech SMEs, and how these have changed since the inception of their business.

Despite being conjointly stronger in their synergies in the past, there is still a significant gap between management and organization studies and sociology. The temporal lag is also, on occasion, a substantive lag. The emergent sociological concept of emotional reflexivity has recently been used in organizational studies. The question that animates this contribution concerns the nature of this translation, reception, and extension; thus, we ask how organization studies have been using the sociological concept of emotional reflexivity? We will examine recent seminal sociological studies on emotional reflexivity to answer this inquiry and consider some organizational studies citing these. We describe the reception of sociological ideas of emotional reflexivity in management and organization studies literature. By analyzing the differences and disconnections produced within this discourse, it will be possible to understand that emotional reflexivity is rarely addressed in emotional encounters between people and other modes of being in modern organizations. We introduce narrative fiction as a method; the narrative focuses on the relationships between humans and other beings in the workplace dynamics of a vocational school. The story tells how Charlie, a deaf student, changed his life after entering the vocational school and becoming involved with different pedagogical teaching-learning strategies. Adopting two deaf dogs, which had both suffered from past unsuccessful adoption experiences, produced life-enhancing emotional reflexivity. We conclude with a research agenda scoping further directions.

In this chapter, we seek to bring greater attention to language-based stigma at work and how it affects employees speaking English as their second language. We integrate research findings across multiple disciplines, including management, psychology, linguistics, education, and business ethics, identifying three major themes and knowledge gaps in this research domain. Based on the multidisciplinary knowledge integration, we suggest six promising future directions for organizational and business ethics scholars to pursue. We call for more empirical research focusing on how language-based stigma may harm nonnative English speakers (NNESs) with and without actual mistreatment or discrimination at work and how organizations may intervene to support NNESs. We hope our chapter will spark conducive conversations about mitigating language-based stigma in the workplace.

The primary objective of this chapter is to synthesize and organize prevailing theoretical perspectives on metacognition into a framework that can enhance understanding of metacognitive phenomena, with the aim of stimulating future research in the field of organizational behavior and human resources management (OBHRM). The author starts with a review of the history of metacognition research, distinguishing it from related theoretical constructs such as cognition, executive function, and self-regulation. Following this, the author outlines five constituent elements of metacognition – metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive experiences, metacognitive monitoring, a dynamic mental model, and metacognitive control – with discussions on their interrelationships and respective functions. Two approaches to metacognition, a process approach and an individual-difference approach, are then presented, summarizing key questions and findings from each. Finally, three broad directions for future research in OBHRM are proposed: examining metacognitive processes, considering mechanisms beyond learning to explain the effects of metacognition, and exploring both domain-specific and general metacognitive knowledge and skills. The implications of these research directions for personnel and human resources management practices are discussed.

In Canada today, Francophone minority communities (FMCs) outside Québec exist in every province and territory and cross all sectors of Canadian Francophonie (French-Canadians, Francophone immigrants, Francophone Métis as well as Francophile anglophones). Besides their linguistic immersion in primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions, these Francophones living outside Quebec counter linguistic assimilation and affirm their place in Canada's bilingual and multicultural society through their cultural productions (music, theatre, dance, cuisine, literature). In this study, we take up the case of L'Association, La Girandole d’Edmonton, a cultural association dedicated to the teaching and promotion of French-Canadian dance in Edmonton (Alberta) to examine the multiple challenges such organizations face despite the crucial role they play in ensuring the vitality of linguistic minority communities in Canada.

This research contributes to the existing literature on the connection between trust and investment activities by exploring the effect of trust in the retirement system on dwelling investments.

This study utilizes data including 28 OECD countries from 2009 to 2020, and employs panel fixed effects and GMM estimators.

The analysis reveals a negative relationship between trust in the retirement system and investment in dwellings. Notably, this is found to be more evident in countries that promote neo-liberalized welfare systems.

The implications of our results are particularly relevant for policymakers and international construction firms.

The primary contribution of this paper extends the “trust–pension investment behavior” nexus. We explore whether individuals with diminished trust in the retirement system consider investing in the property market as an alternative means to safeguard their financial well-being during retirement.