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This case is used in Darden's required first-year course, “Strategic Thinking and Action.”

In 2015, Steve and Heidi Crandall, the founders of Devils Backbone Brewing, LLC (DBB), were looking back on eight years of unanticipated success and significant growth. DBB had created a destination, a brand, and beer that drew people from all over, and it was the largest craft brewery in its region. The entire community, not just loyal beer drinkers, had supported DBB. In addition to funding and zoning accommodations, so many local residents had built their own economic lives around what had been their “little brewery that could.”

But the success had brought challenges, specifically in terms of growth. DBB was consistently not meeting demand in its existing markets and was receiving complaints about out-of-stocks. The Crandalls and their team had to figure out how to grow with, or preferably ahead of, demand for DBB's product. Should DBB build further capacity despite an already exhausted line of credit? Should it employ a contract brewer despite the local authenticity concerns such a move might stir up? Or should it just keep trying to manage business within its existing footprint, comfortably serving its loyal customer base?

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the agri-food sector are continuously transforming their global value chains (GVCs) to address sustainable development challenges of food security (SDG2) and climate change (SDG13). However, the central role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in (re)creating GVCs across multilevel stakeholders through innovative approaches to solve sustainability challenges remains under investigated. This explorative study investigates how international NGOs influence the transformation of large-scale industrial animal agriculture to a more sustainable (cell-based) agri-food GVC. The authors conducted a case study on the Good Food Institute (GFI), an international NGO, that has been an active player in the transition to alternative sources of protein to solve animal-based agriculture sustainability issues. The results show that an international NGO can contribute to the transition to a more sustainable GVC and can enhance the GVC’s innovation capabilities.

The practical need for understanding and improving team resilience has increased, and more research is needed to provide an evidence-base for guiding organizational practices and policies. In this chapter, the authors highlight what we see as critical challenges and opportunities for advancing the science of team resilience. We focus on conceptual and methodological challenges involved in conducting field-based research on team resilience, as the authors believe field-based research is a particularly critical approach for advancing the science of team resilience. The authors first provide a brief review of recent theoretical work in defining team resilience. Then the authors describe key challenges that must be managed in field studies seeking to refine and capitalize on this critical area of research to provide solutions capable of supporting individual, team, and organizational outcomes. These challenges include defining trajectories of resilient team performance, understanding the consequences of repeated episodes of team resilience, formal specifications of events precipitating resilient team performance, measuring the event appraisal and communication process, and adopting measurement methods with high temporal resolution. Finally, the authors provide directions for future research to address these gaps.

The purpose of this study is to revisit the conventional wisdom about a key contribution [i.e. strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis] in the field of strategic management. The societal context and the role of academics, consultants and executives is taken into account in the emergence of SWOT analysis during the 1960–1980 period as a pivotal development within the broader context of the satisfactory, opportunities, faults, threats (SOFT) approach. The authors report on both the content and the approach, so that other scholars seeking to invigorate indigenous theories and/or underreported strategy practices will thrive.

Applying a historiographic approach, the authors introduce an evidence-based methodology for interpreting historical sources. This methodology incorporates source criticism, triangulation and hermeneutical interpretation, drawing upon insights from robust evidence through three iterative stages.

The underreporting of the SOFT approach/SWOT analysis can be attributed to several factors, including strategy tools being integrated into planning frameworks rather than being published as standalone materials; restricted circulation of crucial long-range planning service/theory and practice of planning reports due to copyright limitations; restricted access to the Stanford Research Institute Planning Library in California; and the enduring popularity of SOFT and SWOT variations, driven in part by their memorable acronyms.

In the spirit of a renaissance in strategic planning research, the authors unveil novel theoretical and social connections in the emergence of SWOT analysis by combining evidence from both theory and practice and delving into previously unexplored areas.

Caution is advised for scholars who examine the discrete time frame of 1960–1980 through mere bibliometric techniques. This study underscores the risks associated with gathering incomplete and/or inaccurate data, emphasizing the importance of triangulating evidence beyond scholarly databases. The paradigm shift of strategic management research due to the advent of large language models poses new challenges and the risk of conserving and perpetuating academic urban legends, myths and lies if training data is not adequately curated.

Based on the trait activation theory, the current study systematically integrates how autonomy interacts with proactivity to influence the relationship between ethical leadership style and employee creativity.

Using simple random sampling and questionnaires, a sample of 475 engineering employees of 3 leading telecommunication companies in Ghana were obtained. The analysis was done using structured equation modeling (SEM), using SmartPLS.

The results showed that ethical leadership style provides employees with job autonomy which facilitates individual creativity. Employee proactivity also moderates a positive relationship between autonomy and creativity such that high-proactive employees are well placed to produce more creative outcomes when given autonomy. At the individual level, personal characteristics determine the degree of creativity.

The current study implies that telecommunication companies should put in more efforts to train and encourage leaders to be ethical in leaders' dealings with employees and employees must be rewarded for taking initiative.

With a focus on the integrative approach from a developing economy, this work is novel in exploring how contextual and personal features impact creativity.

The intensity of carbon emissions has led to the serious problem of global warming, and the consequences in terms of climatic disasters are gaining increasing attention worldwide. As the energy sector is responsible for most global emissions, developing clean energy is crucial to combat climate change. This study aims to examine the relationship between corporate governance and renewable energy (RE) consumption and explore the interaction between RE production and RE use.

The study adopts an econometric framework of a panel model, followed by the robustness check using alternative methods, including logit regressions. The bivariate probit model is used to analyze the interaction between the decision to use and the decision to produce RE. The analysis is based on a sample of 3,896 firms covering 45 countries worldwide.

The results reveal that appropriate governance mechanisms positively impact RE consumption. These include the existence of a sustainability committee; environmental, social and governance-based compensation policy; financial performance-based compensation; sustainability external audit; transparency; board gender diversity; and board independence. Firms with appropriate governance mechanisms are more likely to produce and use RE than others. Finally, while RE use positively impacts firm value and environmental performance, the authors find no significant effect on current profitability.

This study goes beyond previous research by exploring the impact of multiple governance mechanisms. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first study examining the relationship between RE use and firm value. Overall, the findings suggest that RE transition requires, first of all, establishing appropriate governance mechanisms within companies.

With the great changes brought by information technology, there is also a challenge for the elderly's acceptance. This study aimed to determine the antecedents of elderly people's usage intention of financial artificial intelligent customer service (FAICS) and to examine the relationships between various factors and thus to help them better adapt to the digital age.

A mixed method, including the qualitative and quantitative study, was utilized to explore answers of the research questions. As the qualitative study, the authors used semi-structured interviews and data coding to uncover the influencing factors. As the quantitative study, the authors collected data through questionnaires and tested hypotheses using structural equation modeling.

The results of data analysis from interviews and questionnaires suggested that perceived anthropomorphism and virtual identity of elderly users have a positive impact on their perceived ease of use, and the perceived intelligence of elderly users positively influences their perceived ease of use, satisfaction and perceived usefulness. Additionally, the elderly's cognition age can moderate the effects of perceived usefulness and satisfaction on their usage intention of FAICS.

This study contributes to the literature by taking the elderly group as the research participants and combining those influencing factors with technology acceptance model and information systems success model. The findings provide a basis for accelerating the promotion of FAICS and help address the problem that the elderly have difficulty adapting to a new technology.