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This paper aims to shed new light on the contextual embeddedness of intersectional entrepreneurs, i.e. entrepreneurs situated at the intersection of multiple marginalized diversity attributes, beyond simply business strategies and decisions. Taking an emic perspective on everyday practices as intersectional entrepreneurs, it uncovers neglected dimensions of the contextuality of intersectional discriminations.

The study presents qualitative data analysis results of in-depth narrative interviews with six intersectional entrepreneurs, all LGBTIQA* entrepreneurs with further diversity dimensions. It provides an emic view of intersectional entrepreneurs, in their everyday lives and the contexts, in which they develop their businesses.

Intersectional entrepreneurs face different burdens induced by social structures along the entrepreneurial process. While access to the niche market is more difficult and they lack community support, their realization of intersectional discrimination is crucial for the development of business strategies. Simultaneously, intersectional entrepreneurs use their specific diversity attributes to develop their business, yet this proximity of their identity and the business contents has severe consequences for their mental state. Intersectional entrepreneurs adjust to the balance of opportunity and vulnerability.

As intersectional entrepreneurs are barred from conventional institutional support and also have limited access to resources from their respective social networks, there is an urgency to provide specific support for such entrepreneurs.

This paper aims to explore how employees reconceptualized their time and space to order and structure their lives in an unprecedented scenario of nonvoluntary work from home.

Set in the context of lockdowns due to the pandemic scenario, the study uses a constructivist approach to collect data through in-depth online interviews to understand how employees coped with the challenges emanating in a nonvoluntary work from home situation. The respondents were purposively selected to reflect a diverse pool in terms of gender, familial responsibilities and age/tenure.

The findings present temporal and spatial themes that provide several insights into how employees made sense of time and space as resources to navigate their challenging work-home roles.

In the present study, the authors found that when boundaries get violated, it does not necessarily manifest in the form of dissatisfaction with one or the other domain. The respondents in the current study show-cased adjustment mechanism to cope with the boundary permeability that happened. They adopted ways in which they could safe-guard their multiple identities in the situation they found themselves in, do justice to the salient roles in their lives, emerge as more empathetic humans and look forward to a brighter and more hopeful future. This opens-up a possibility of studying the theory behind human behavior in crisis-like situations and the degree of acceptance that people show when they find themselves in undesirable-unalterable situations.

A mental reorientation is required on the part of both employees and employers to navigate smoothly in this new “normal” and find more sustainable solutions to the problem if the remote working or hybrid mode of working becomes mainstay. Clear demarcations between work and nonwork time are a key element to ensure proper work schedules for remote workers. Offline meetings and get-togethers can be organized on a periodic basis to facilitate employee interaction and engagement. Participation of employees in key decisions becomes more important in such situations as it makes employees feel more connected with their work space.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is original as it is set in a completely unprecedented situation of lockdowns (during the pandemic) that affected the lives of everyone in some way or the other. The findings of the study are unique and insightful, as they help understand the sense-making mechanism adopted by people to successfully navigate through the crisis.

Gymnasts worldwide have turned to media to speak out about their experiences of abuse in sport. More formally, services to report abuse have been recognised as important; however, we know little about athletes' experiences of the process. Therefore, we consider in this chapter how (former) athletes experience the process of reporting abuse and maltreatment. This chapter begins with a narrative poem that was created using direct quotes from an interview with a former gymnast, Lisa (pseudonym), who described her involvement with her national gymnastics federation's reporting process. We then examine reporting services and discuss the reasons why (former) athletes may not report abuse and maltreatment. As a conceptual framework, we present the pixie model of women's artistic gymnastics (WAG) as the root of the culture of fear, control and silence that prevents gymnasts from reporting their experiences, and discuss factors that enable the reporting of abuse and maltreatment. To illustrate the ways the WAG pixie model shaped Lisa's reporting experience, the poem presented at the outset of this chapter is extended to a narrative about her engagement with reporting processes. The chapter concludes with a call to put abuse and maltreatment on the sports governance agenda, the development of trauma-informed processes and further research on reporting abuse in sport.

This paper aims to explore how homeworking influences employee engagement in a German service company during the COVID-19 pandemic and to provide recommendations for organisations on how to secure employees’ engagement remotely.

This paper adopts a qualitative research design in a case study setup with a German service company. A refined framework links homeworking and engagement based on the data collected from interviews and surveys.

This paper identifies several factors that affect engagement whilst homeworking, such as work–life balance, family, work intensification, team environment, leadership, organisational activities and flexible working arrangements. The paper also proposes a refined framework that links homeworking and engagement and offers practical implications for organisations.

This paper is based on a small and homogeneous sample from one service company in Germany, which limits the generalisability of the findings. Future research could use larger and more diverse samples, longitudinal designs and quantitative methods to examine the impact of homeworking on engagement.

This paper contributes to the scarce literature on homeworking and engagement by providing new and up-to-date insights into the homeworking experience and its effect on engagement in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper also offers useful suggestions for organisations on how to adapt their practices and policies to secure engagement in a remote work environment.

This study explores expatriates’ perceptions of the support they receive during crises as they transition to remote work, examining the factors that help them adapt and succeed in these conditions.

Using an inductive approach, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with expatriates in eleven countries and applied reflexive thematic analysis to explore expatriates’ perceptions of organisational and social support during the transition to remote work.

When expatriates transition to remote work as a consequence of a crisis, four factors are crucial for their successful transition and should be actively reinforced by organisations: (1) Awareness of tension between belonging and isolation and uncertainty, (2) Feeling supported, (3) Maintaining a positive approach and (4) JAVA/coffee connections.

Comparative research should follow up on these findings in the post-pandemic world to examine the sustainability of the four factors. Future research should also focus on more homogeneous expatriate groups.

Raising awareness of these factors and providing structured family-level support is crucial for effective assistance.

Our contribution expands the literature on perceived organisational support, traditionally focused on employees, by emphasising the importance of considering support at the family level.

Defensive routines are patterns that describe organizational or individual actions aimed at avoiding embarrassment and threat. They impede organizations from identifying hidden issues and creating new knowledge. Defensive routines are particularly salient in the public sector due to their reliance on procedures and rules. The main objective of this paper is to develop a scale to measure defensive routines as perceived by individuals that can be used for the diagnosis of defensive employee attitudes.

The manuscript applies standard procedures for scale development (i.e. item generation, item validation, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and convergent and discriminant validity checks).

The final scale has two factors: one for the individual and one for the organizational level. The former has two dimensions labeled rigidity and embarrassment avoidance, while the latter has two different dimensions, labeled cover-up and pretense.

The scale can be used as a tool for diagnosis of defensive employee attitudes as part of organizational development initiatives.

By studying the nature of defensive routines, we extend the literature on patterned behavior in the context of psychological safety and blame avoidance, in public sector organizations. Furthermore, understanding the constituents of organizational defensive routines enhances knowledge of the micro-foundations of obstacles to change-related capabilities thus extends theory related to dynamic change capabilities. Ultimately, through the scale development, we provide a tangible output for researchers and practitioners alike, promoting evidence-based practice.

Digital technologies are essential for improving efficiency and unlocking new opportunities in various domains. The purpose of this study is to assess whether digital technologies can ameliorate servitization among manufacturing firms via the interaction of organizational slack and research and development (R&D) intensity.

Drawing on resource-based and service-dominant logic, the study employs a deductive approach and gathers empirical evidence from 1,929 listed A-shares manufacturing firms in the top-seven China mainland industrial provinces spanning the period 2012–2021. It used fixed-effect logistic regression techniques while controlling for various factors to analyze the relationship between digital technologies and manufacturing firm servitization.

The findings revealed that digital technologies significantly ameliorate manufacturing firms' servitization. Moreover, the study uncovers the contingent nature of this relationship, demonstrating that high levels of both internal and external slack, which provide flexibility and support, intensify the direction of digital technologies towards servitization. Additionally, R&D intensity reflects the firm's commitment to innovation, thereby enhancing synergistic effects in the relationship.

This study contributes robust and comprehensive empirical evidence that validates and establishes a clear baseline relationship reflecting the most current digital technology landscape and its implications for manufacturing firms servitization. Moreover, it provides a more patterned understanding of how internal and external slack typologies and R&D intensity contextualize our study’s findings. Additionally, it demonstrates how our theoretical synthesis advances firms’ strategic shifts towards service-oriented business models through digital technologies.

This paper aims to explore the accelerations and constraints libraries, archives, museums and heritage organisations (“collections-holding organisations”) face in their role as collection data providers for digital infrastructures. To date, digital infrastructures operate within the cultural heritage domain typically as data aggregation platforms, such as Europeana or Art UK.

Semi-structured interviews with 18 individuals in 8 UK collections-holding organisations and 2 international aggregators.

Discussions about digital infrastructure development often lay great emphasis on questions and problems that are technical and legal in nature. As important as technical and legal matters are, more latent, yet potent challenges exist too. Though less discussed in the literature, collections-holding organisations' capacity to participate in digital infrastructures is dependent on a complex interplay of funding allocation across the sector, divergent traditions of collection description and disciplinaries’ idiosyncrasies. Accordingly, we call for better social-cultural and trans-sectoral (collections-holding organisations, universities and technological providers) understandings of collection data infrastructure development.

The authors recommend developing more understanding of the social-cultural aspects (e.g. disciplinary conventions) and their impact on collection data dissemination. More studies on the impact and opportunities of unified collections for different audiences and collections-holding organisations themselves are required too.

Sustainable financial investment across the heritage sector is required to address the discrepancies between different organisation types in their capacity to deliver collection data. Smaller organisations play a vital role in diversifying the (digital) historical canon, but they often struggle to digitise collections and bring catalogues online in the first place. In addition, investment in existing infrastructures for collection data dissemination and unification is necessary, instead of creating new platforms, with various levels of uptake and longevity. Ongoing investments in collections curation and high-quality cataloguing are prerequisites for a sustainable heritage sector and collection data infrastructures. Investments in the sustainability of infrastructures are not a replacement for research and vice versa.

The authors recommend establishing networks where collections-holding organisations, technology providers and users can communicate their experiences and needs in an ongoing way and influence policy.

To date, the research focus on developing collection data infrastructures has tended to be on the drive to adopt specific technological solutions and copyright licensing practices. This paper offers a critical and holistic analysis of the dispersed experience of collections-holding organisations in their role as data providers for digital infrastructures. The paper contributes to the emerging understanding of the latent factors that make infrastructural endeavours in the heritage sector complex undertakings.

The nature of construction works has a negative impact on physical, mental and emotional well-being and makes it difficult for the construction industry to attack and retain its workforce. The current study seeks to integrate the current knowledge focused on work–life balance (WLB) in the industry into an understandable whole.

An interpretivist philosophical approach was adopted using a bibliometric review and a narrative review of existing studies from both Scopus and Google databases. The Visualisation of Similarities viewer (VOSviewer) was used to prepare co-occurrence maps from the bibliographic data garnered.

The study reveals that the prominent factors influencing the WLB of the construction workforce are organizational culture, salary earned, heavy workload, long working hours and inflexible working time. The recent WLB discourse is on organisational commitment, job satisfaction and workplace dynamics. While WLB areas for further exploration are job stress, safety performance, employee attrition and an ageing workforce. Meanwhile, Africa and South America are still lagging in WLB research.

The findings reported here will assist stakeholders in identifying appropriate WLB initiatives that can be used to improve the well-being of the construction workforce. Also, the gaps in knowledge for further research were highlighted.

The findings reveal current trends and a road map for future studies on WLB in construction. It also reveals prominent factors influencing the WLB of workers in the construction industry.

This paper aims to systematically review the literature on knowledge leakage through social networks in the past decade to find existing gaps, identify potential risk factors while, ultimately, proposing ways of mitigating these factors.

This study adopted Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis as guide for searching relevant scholarly publications. Subject-specific and -related research papers were obtained from three databases, namely, Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCOhost. The review data was generated from the search results while adopting specific criteria to either accept or reject a particular publication during the search process.

Technological, operational and human knowledge factors are some of the risks resulting from knowledge leakage. Highlights of the paper include strategies for mitigating these factors, including continuous training, creating awareness, banning social media usage at work and reinforcing nondisclosure policies. This study also found potential gaps from the literature, categorized as topical, geographical, industrial, theoretical, methodological and conceptual gaps while proposing ways of addressing these gaps using specific research questions. These questions set the direction for future studies on knowledge leakage and social networks.

Implications of the findings are laid out, particularly the idea of developing actionable managerial plans for preventing knowledge leakage from occurring in organizations in the first place. The systematic, rigorous, transparent and methodological procedures used throughout the entire research process strongly suggest that the findings and conclusions are legitimate. While the findings were not drawn arbitrarily, they potentially offer windows of opportunities for bridging the six potential gaps identified in this paper.