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In the article, the author presents the results of biographical research on one of the activists of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” during the period of martial law in Poland (1981–1983). The heroine of this story is Ewa Zydorek, one of many women, trade union activities, whose no less than men led to the victory of democratic opposition and sociopolitical transformation in Poland after 1989. At the same time, the roles of women and men in the prodemocratic trade union and political movement in Poland at the end of communism were different. Many women involved in this movement acted as guards and intermediaries for the interned men. When the internees were released, women moved into the background. Only some women, such as Ewa Zydorek, played an increasingly important role in the social and trade union life of independent Poland after 1989.

Process mining (PM) has emerged as a leading technology for gaining data-based insights into organizations’ business processes. As processes increasingly cross-organizational boundaries, firms need to conduct PM jointly with multiple organizations to optimize their operations. However, current knowledge on cross-organizational process mining (coPM) is widely dispersed. Therefore, we synthesize current knowledge on coPM, identify challenges and enablers of coPM, and build a socio-technical framework and agenda for future research.

We conducted a literature review of 66 articles and summarized the findings according to the framework for Information Technology (IT)-enabled inter-organizational coordination (IOC) and the refined PM framework. The former states that within inter-organizational relationships, uncertainty sources determine information processing needs and coordination mechanisms determine information processing capabilities, while the fit between needs and capabilities determines the relationships’ performance. The latter distinguishes three categories of PM activities: cartography, auditing and navigation.

Past literature focused on coPM techniques, for example, algorithms for ensuring privacy and PM for cartography. Future research should focus on socio-technical aspects and follow four steps: First, determine uncertainty sources within coPM. Second, design, develop and evaluate coordination mechanisms. Third, investigate how the mechanisms assist with handling uncertainty. Fourth, analyze the impact on coPM performance. In addition, we present 18 challenges (e.g. integrating distributed data) and 9 enablers (e.g. aligning different strategies) for coPM application.

This is the first article to systematically investigate the status quo of coPM research and lay out a socio-technical research agenda building upon the well-established framework for IT-enabled IOC.

This study examines the experiences of five German primary schools implementing Lesson Study over a five-year period. When lesson study is to be implemented in Germany, teachers are typically skeptical and do not believe that it will work in their schools. Although four of the schools from our project consider the implementation at their school to be quite successful and report many positive effects, in this article, we focus on the difficulties and strategies for overcoming them. We also report the schools’ recommendations for other schools wishing to implement lesson study.

Using maximum variation sampling, we conducted semi-structured interviews with ten German primary teachers and principals from five schools taking part in the nationwide LemaS project. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content structuring analysis.

The study identified several challenges, ranging from fundamental criticism of lesson study to a lack of resources. All but one school found ways to navigate these challenges. The main themes for success included fostering motivation for lesson study and adequate support from the school leadership.

This study offers examples of strategies of schools to overcome typical hurdles when implementing lesson study. We also present a list of ten recommendations derived from the interviewees that can serve as pragmatic guidelines for practitioners and researchers willing to implement and sustain lesson study.

This study captures the experiences of both teachers and school leaders, providing practical insight for schools wishing to implement the lesson study in a sustainable way.

This conceptual paper aims to present a perspective on how to engineer sustainability through the prism of Industry 4.0 technologies and outline propositions to guide future research.

This study presents a literature review developing four research propositions, focusing on the nine leading technologies underpinning Industry 4.0 to engineer economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions.

The authors derive benefits and challenges of Industry 4.0 technologies across all three business model elements: value creation, value delivery and value capture. The authors derive those for the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. Thereupon, we develop several propositions for future research.

The authors provide suggestions to practice how to better achieve value in all three sustainability dimensions through implementing a business model perspective, ecosystem thinking, societal demands and Data Governance and AI integration.

By linking societal aspects of Industry 4.0 technologies with environmental, and economic aspects, the authors provide several suggestions how to implement Industry 4.0. For instance, policymakers are recommended to support entire ecosystems than isolated solutions.

The paper contributes to extant literature by conceptualising how Industry 4.0 can leverage value in reaching sustainability in all three dimensions and produce broader ecosystems-wide impacts.

This study aims to examine the perception of public works experts on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool to potentially increase the rationality and transparency of public works.

This paper is based on an exploratory quantitative design. It uses an original survey on the use of AI in public works, targeting public works experts from Peru. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings reveal public works experts’ interest in AI, highlighting its potential to improve transparency and efficiency, although labor changes are anticipated. AI monitoring could impact economic and quality control areas, vital in the fight against corruption. Infrastructure, government policies and financial resources emerge as fundamental enablers.

The advent of advanced AI systems has raised promises to help fight corruption through new monitoring capabilities that enhance transparency and rationality. However, few studies have assessed the impact of AI on public works. This paper contributes to this gap by testing a framework that explores how public works experts perceive the use of AI, considering their perceptions, expectations, perceived challenges and opportunities over public works’ rationality and transparency.

Are there smart ways to find heuristics? What are the common principles behind heuristics? We propose an integrative definition of heuristics, based on insights that apply to all heuristics, and put forward meta-heuristics for discovering heuristics.

We employ Herbert Simon’s metaphor that human behavior is shaped by the scissors of the mind and its environment. We present heuristics from different domains and multiple sources, including scholarly literature, practitioner-reports and ancient texts.

Heuristics are simple, actionable principles for behavior that can take different forms, including that of computational algorithms and qualitative rules-of-thumb, cast into proverbs or folk-wisdom. We introduce heuristics for tasks ranging from management to writing and warfare. We report 13 meta-heuristics for discovering new heuristics and identify four principles behind them and all other heuristics: Those principles concern the (1) plurality, (2) correspondence, (3) connectedness of heuristics and environments and (4) the interdisciplinary nature of the scissors’ blades with respect to research fields and methodology.

We take a fresh look at Simon’s scissors-metaphor and employ it to derive an integrative perspective that includes a study of meta-heuristics.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyse the potential of existing buildings in the UK to contribute to the net-zero emissions target. Specifically, it aims to address the significant emissions from building fabrics which pose a threat to achieving these targets if not properly addressed.

The study, based on a literature review and ten (10) case studies, explored five investigative approaches for evaluating building fabric: thermal imaging, in situ U-value testing, airtightness testing, energy assessment and condensation risk analysis. Cross-case analysis was used to evaluate both case studies using each approach. These methodologies were pivotal in assessing buildings’ existing condition and energy consumption and contributing to the UK’s net-zero ambitions.

Findings reveal that incorporating the earlier approaches into the building fabric showed great benefits. Significant temperature regulation issues were identified, energy consumption decreased by 15% after improvements, poor insulation and artistry quality affected the U-values of buildings. Implementing retrofits such as solar panels, air vents, insulation, heat recovery and air-sourced heat pumps significantly improved thermal performance while reducing energy consumption. Pulse technology proved effective in measuring airtightness, even in extremely airtight houses, and high airflow and moisture management were essential in preserving historic building fabric.

The research stresses the need to understand investigative approaches’ strengths, limitations and synergies for cost-effective energy performance strategies. It emphasizes the urgency of eliminating carbon dioxide (CO₂) and greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming and meet the 1.5° C threshold.

This viewpoint aims to contribute to understanding corporate power in two key respects. First, it provides insight into the ways in which transnational corporations continue to operate as vehicles for neo-colonial projects, which are underpinned by exploitation and racial hierarchies. Second, it highlights the significance of investigative journalism in providing a crucial empirical resource for both activists engaged in holding power to account and scholars engaged in critical research into corporate power and civil society activism.

This viewpoint combines an interview with an investigative journalist and the academic commentary provided by the authors in response to the interview.

This viewpoint highlights contemporary mutations in the concentration of corporate power, along three broad themes: the growth of transnational institutions critical to enabling and supporting abuses of transnational corporate power and neo-colonialism; the emergence of corporate-run political territories secured by private security organisations; and the corporate attack on progressive politics. It also analyses the important role of investigative journalism in advancing knowledge of transnational corporate power as well as its role in holding such power to account and the urgent need for new forms of independent journalism to support union activism, whistleblowing and other forms of democratic activism.

This viewpoint engages with an alternative tradition of social critique and the critique of corporate power, which has been underrepresented in the field of international business.

This study highlights the significance of investigative journalism in providing a crucial empirical resource for both activists engaged in holding power to account and scholars engaged in critical research into corporate power and civil society activism.

These implications entail developing a critique of transnational corporate power and neo-colonialism, enriching democtratic oversight and journalism, and supporting freedom of expression and democratic activism.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, minimal research has explored the critical role of investigative journalism in uncovering and holding transnational corporate power accountable. This paper therefore offers a highly original contribution by addressing this significant yet underexamined area.

Consumer researchers have studied a number of asymmetries between gift-givers and gift-recipients. However, one unexplored potential asymmetry concerns gift-givers’ and gift-recipients’ perceptions of the importance of selecting a good (vs. bad) gift. This paper aims to study this uninvestigated facet of gift-giving.

Five experimental studies tested the hypotheses. In each study, participants assumed the role of giver or recipient and read a gifting scenario. Study 1 explored participants’ views on the importance of selecting a good gift by asking them directly. Studies 2-4 instead operationalized the importance of selecting a good gift through participants’ choices between gifts. Studies 1-4 also examined our proposed mechanism pertaining to givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift. Study 5 examined a theoretically relevant boundary condition: the nature of the giver-recipient relationship.

Givers regard it as more important than recipients that a good gift be selected. Critically, this mismatch can manifest as givers making choices that do not align with recipients’ preferences. Drawing on contextualized self-enhancement theory, this study shows that this asymmetry is driven primarily by givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift as opposed to overestimating the positive implications of giving a good one. Consistent with this account, the effect attenuates when the giver and recipient have a negative (vs positive) relationship and thus givers are not concerned with the negative implications of giving a poor gift.

The findings enrich the field’s understanding of gift-giving psychology by introducing contextualized self-enhancement theory to the gift-giving literature and demonstrating that givers worry more than they should about the negative implications of giving a bad gift. This study also sheds light on the important role that the nature of the giver–recipient relationship plays in gift-giving phenomena. Limitations of this work are that there are some potential boundary conditions and control variables that the authors did not explore, such as potential cultural differences and the income levels of the giver and recipient.

This research suggests that gift-givers should not worry as much as they do about the negative implications of giving a bad gift. In many cases, things may not turn out as bad as givers anticipate when they deliver a less-than-ideal gift. This study also shows that givers sometimes make choices that do not match recipients’ preferences, out of a fear of the negative implications that may arise from giving a bad gift.

This research adds to the gift-giving literature by studying a new facet of gift-giving: whether it is more important to givers or recipients that a good gift be selected. In addition, this work introduces contextualized self-enhancement theory to the gift-giving literature and documents two new asymmetries between givers and recipients: first, givers put more importance on the selection of a good gift than recipients; second, givers overestimate the negative implications of giving a bad gift.

Share repurchase programs are the most important form of payout, yet the implications of incomplete share repurchase programs have not been examined in previous literature. This study tests whether incomplete share repurchase programs are seen as a positive or as a negative signal by investors.

The perception of incomplete share repurchase programs by algorithmic traders, institutional investors and analysts is analyzed with structural equation models, seemingly unrelated regressions, propensity score matching and buy-and-hold abnormal returns on data from share repurchase programs in the United States. In contrast to previous literature, algorithmic trading is appropriately estimated as a latent variable, leading to more reliable results. Furthermore, decisions about share repurchases and dividends are appropriately modeled simultaneously and iteratively, based on findings from previous literature.

The results show that sophisticated investors such as algorithmic traders, institutional investors and financial analysts avoid incomplete share repurchase programs over a long-term investment horizon. Thus, incomplete share repurchase programs are interpreted as negative signals. Additional analyses reveal that share repurchase programs are not completed due to insufficient cash flow, as a result of financial difficulties. Overall, this implies that financial managers should be careful to announce share repurchase programs they know cannot be completed, similar to dividends that cannot be maintained over a long-term horizon.

This study is the first to consider incomplete share repurchase programs. The findings are of interest to scholars and practitioners, as this study goes beyond narrow repurchase program announcement windows, and instead focuses on the longer-term investment horizon over the life of the share repurchase program, which is often ignored in prior research.