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Translating lesson study (LS) into a new country comes with implementation challenges. Scotland is no exception to this. We explore how researchers have adapted and developed parts of the LS cycle to enhance collaborative advantage.

We present two LS cases: one exploring English lessons with 7–8-year-olds and the second exploring fractions with 8–9-year-olds. Both cases were mapped against an LS conceptual model. The cases were analysed using collaborative advantage theory to identify elements that supported collaboration or caused collaborative inertia.

Collaborations are impacted by input factors, such as planning and feedback tools, which influence the development of processes and emergent states. Shared cognition emerged as a dominant theme influencing collaborative advantage in LS and was related to the development of shared mental models, joint endeavour and psychological safety. It is hypothesised that additional adaptations, such as a mock lesson, may minimise collaborative inertia by revealing hidden differences in team members' interpretation of meaning.

A novel approach to combining collaborative advantage theory with advances in the conceptualisation of LS offers new insights into the features and complexities of collaboration within LS in Scotland.

The chapter discussed the comprehensive integration of whole life cycle (WLC) principles in construction, mainly focusing on its application in stealth construction. It outlined the challenges of implementing WLC practices, emphasising the need for proactive planning and meticulous execution. The study highlighted key aspects of the WLC in stealth construction, including considerations for building design, energy transmission, visibility management, and security countermeasures. Additionally, it underscores the importance of addressing environmental protection, health and safety, project delivery duration, economy, and aesthetics throughout the construction process to ensure the development of resilient, sustainable, and visually appealing structures that meet the needs of present and future generations.

We investigate the relation between corporate culture and the likelihood of discontinuing business operations.

We rely on regression analysis in our study.

We find a significant negative relation, suggesting that firms with strong corporate culture are less likely to discontinue business operations. To enhance the incremental contributions of our study, we delve into the moderating role of corporate culture on the aforementioned relation and identify several factors that, when coupled with corporate culture, could indirectly impact the decision-making process regarding discontinuing operations. We also find that the negative relation between corporate culture and discontinued operations is mainly driven by firms with lower earnings performance, and this relation becomes stronger for high-tech firms. Lastly, we find that stronger culture is associated with a larger magnitude of discontinued operations for firms reporting discontinued operations, and this positive association is largely driven by firms reporting income-decreasing discontinued operations.

Our analysis adds to two independent streams of research: corporate culture in management literature and discontinued operations in accounting literature. Prior research, in particular, focuses on examining if and how managers exploit discontinued operations to manipulate earnings. By showing a significant negative impact of corporate culture on the likelihood of discontinuing business operations, our research undoubtedly adds to the body of understanding regarding the factors that lead managers to discontinue certain operations.

A number of global crises, including financial crisis, global warming, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, have taken place over the past few decades. These have forced firms, the world over, to remodel their business processes to produce goods and services cost-effectively while retaining their competitive advantage and ensuring continuous improvement of organisational performance. To this end, frugal innovations, whose origins can be traced to India, are becoming increasingly prevalent in both developed and emerging economies due to their cost effectiveness. This chapter, therefore, explores how firms can deploy frugal disruptive technologies and modernised digital tools such as artificial intelligence (AI), social media, cloud computing, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), machine learning (ML) and robotics to create sustainable competitive advantage and improve organisational performance within the African context. These frugal disruptive technologies have made significant inroads in a number of developed economies bringing dynamism, efficiency, continuous quality improvement, speed, operational excellence and wider market reach in product and service delivery. Based on an analysis of the empirical evidence from the various case studies, it is concluded that the deployment of frugal disruptive technologies and modernised digital tools have a significant positive impact on firms' efforts to create sustainable competitive advantage and continuously improving their performance. The chapter ends by articulating some limitations and the implications for theory, policy and practice.

Firms use design capability across the globe to compete and increase sales, e.g. Apple. However, the payoff from design know-how has been overlooked thus far. Academic research lags in this space despite the intersection of sales, technology and design in practice. This paper provides researchers and managers with implications of the interplay between design capability and technological market conditions to enhance a firm's sales.

Firms' capability design, and sales impact have been studied in this paper across different technological market conditions. Primary technological conditions of the industry under which firms operate are captured, which are technological intensity (TI), technological competitive intensity (TCI) and technological maturity (TM). Their interplay has been studied using panel data analysis, examining fixed and random effects.

Design is an important, interesting and non-imitable capacity that yields positive firm execution results. It provides an urgent differentiator and improves deal development. This study found that all four hypotheses are generally supported. The main finding is that, provided underlying technology is good, design significantly improves sales, but design alone cannot substitute for poor technology.

The results of this study link the three technological environment conditions, namely, TI, TCI and TM with sales growth. The authors find that design can and does add to superior performance, provided technological excellence exists prior. But, in the absence of good technology, design alone will hinder performance.

This paper examines the effect of firm design capability on sales growth. The paper finds a positive moderating effect of TCI and TM but a negative moderating effect of TI. The researchers believe these aspects of the design have not been studied before.

Drawing on the health belief model and affective events theory, the main objectives of this study are to: (1) analyze which health beliefs about COVID-19 (probability, seriousness and worry) trigger feelings of social isolation; (2) investigate whether psychological capital buffers the escalation of social isolation and (3) analyze the role of the feelings of social isolation as a mechanism that yields drawbacks on mental health, life satisfaction and performance.

Data came from two waves of online surveys administered to 678 employees of a private university in Mexico.

Results of structural equation modeling showed that beliefs of worry of getting COVID-19 trigger social isolation feelings, which, in turn, yields drawbacks on mental health, life satisfaction and performance (i.e. task, creative and organizational citizenship behavior). Moreover, psychological capital buffers the increases in feelings of social isolation generated by beliefs of the COVID-19 severity.

This study provides insightful recommendations for handling future events that might imply social restrictions as a measure of contagion containment.

We contribute to Affective Events literature by linking it to the health belief model. A main criticism of affective events theory is its exogenous blindness and lack of attention to how affect reactions are triggered at work. We address this limitation by bridging health belief model and affective events theory to show what specific health beliefs of COVID-19 produce affects and behavioral reactions in employees.