Search results

Skillful management of employees after a merger or acquisition (M&A) is one of the key aspects to ensuring a successful deal, and most notably to ensure talent retention. This paper aims to describe how Bristol Myer Squibb (BMS) efficiently integrated Celgene after it bought the company for a near-record $74bn in 2019. The authors explain the structural elements applied during the premerger phase (acquisition experience, partner location and portfolio alignment) and the subsequent postmerger decisions to ensure rapid integration (choice of the leadership team, cultural integration and the communication strategy).

This paper adopts a single-case approach of the second largest acquisition in the pharmaceutical industry. It analyzes the management and talent retention decisions taken to ensure rapid integration of Celgene while ensuring that employees felt engaged in the process. This was achieved despite the consideration challenges posed by the COVID-19 global lockdown.

M&As are well known for the HR challenges they generate such as change management, cultural clashes and increased employee turnover. This paper demonstrates how BMS was able to overcome these hurdles, combining a fast speed of integration with managerial dexterity.

This paper offers a concise and clear outline of the management strategies used by BMS to ensure a successful integration strategy. This approach included a strong respect for the human as well as financial and strategic aspects of the deal. For even greater clarity, this paper offers a diagrammatic representation of the strategy of BMS to improve the speed of integration.

Digital media and mobile apps are constantly used concerning social interaction and maintaining social bonds. The most popular platform used for these practices is WhatsApp (Statista, 2022) a cross-platform instant messaging service for mobile devices. Like other instant messaging services, WhatsApp permits its users to create groups to have an interaction between (usually) a restricted number of people. This chapter will focus on young adults' everyday life and their mediated interactions using WhatsApp groups composed exclusively of people of the same gender. Considering these groups as communities of practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and gender as something that is doing with interaction (Butler, 2004; Connell, 2005; Mac an Ghaill, 1994), this chapter will concentrate on how young adults perform and (re)shape masculinities and femininities using mobile apps. Starting from the analysis of 46 online interviews with young adults living in Italy, this chapter will focus on homosocial practices in WhatsApp groups underling how gender identities are performed in these specific digital spaces, to what extent uses intertwine with WhatsApp's affordances and which kind of (the idea of) masculinities and femininities are reproduced by users practices. The interviews show how digital homosocial groups are usually carried out as a humourous act between friends, as a form of social consolidation, as an attempt to gain or maintain peer status or preserve hegemonic/dominant ideas of femininity or masculinity and as a safe space where performing what for some interviewees is the real essence of being men or women.

The term corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not new as it has its root in the past, but now it becomes more complicated today. It has been observed that CSR is the building block of social capital and globalisation is the main factor which has forced the market and business to interact with the people either they are from their own place or from different part of the country. At the time of interaction, people interact with the differences of their cultures, beliefs and they have different hopes from the companies and its place in society. This reality of interaction with many differences provides us a direction to explore the cross-cultural variations and to know how it helps in creating the social responsibility policy by the government in different countries and its implementation by business people, employees and other stakeholders. This theoretical review is aimed to explore the role of institutionalisation theory for increasing the social capital and ensuring positive CSR practices in cross-cultural scenario.

This chapter proposes that artificial general intelligence (AGI), once fully deployed, will pose existential questions for higher education institutions as they currently operate. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of the theory of technological determinism and disruptive innovation theory, the authors attempt to project how higher education institutions will be impacted by recent and upcoming developments in AI by juxtaposing current operations against expected future transformations. This chapter comes in four parts. In Part 1, the authors briefly review the advancements in AI technology, focusing on the distinction between artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) and AGI. Part 2 introduces the theory of technological determinism and disruptive innovation theory as a framework for conceptualizing the magnitude of the transformations expected to overtake higher education and their inevitability in some fashion. In Part 3, the authors tentatively juxtapose a series of expected AI-driven disruptions against their current forms. These disruptions will affect the academic infrastructure, instructional practice, curriculum design, grading and assessment, graduation pathways and global accessibility. Finally, the authors consider the implications of these transformations, which, taken together, amount to recasting the university system and constitute an invitation for theorizing these disruptions, assessing their impact and mitigating their effects. This chapter offers a dual contribution to the book. The first is conceptual, and it allows policymakers, educators and stakeholders to use existing theoretical frameworks to understand, imagine and possibly steer the direction of academic institutions so our futures are aided by AGI and not determined by it. The second contribution is practical. Identifying how and where disruptions will occur helps the authors oversee the transition to the new academic landscape with as much foresight and forethought as possible.

This study investigates the antecedents of supply chain resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the effects of government assistance and disruption intensity in long-term disruptions.

This study collected data from 626 SMEs in Australia in 2022 and analysed data using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The study empirically confirms that digital capabilities, prior experience in disruptions, supplier proximity and relationships are antecedents of supply chain resilience of SMEs, with supply chain robustness as a mediator. It further confirms that SMEs' access to government assistance positively moderates the relationship between digital capabilities and supply chain robustness. The disruption intensity moderates the relationships between supplier proximity and supply chain robustness with supply chain resilience. Severe disruptions weaken the effects of prior disruption experiences and supplier relationships on supply chain resilience.

The findings inform SME practitioners of the importance of building supply chain robustness, leveraging their prior experience, supplier proximity and relationships and capabilities and flexibility for dynamic supply chain structures when disruptions are intense.

The novelty of our study is the use of the Contingent Resource-Based View to understand the effects of firm and supply chain-level antecedents on supply chain robustness and resilience, considering the contextual contingencies of disruption intensity and government assistance. The focus on long-term disruptions extends the conventional supply chain resilience studies on supply and demand disruptions of small scale. We also explore the firm-level effects of government assistance, which extends the commonly tested economic-level effects. Furthermore, we investigate supply chain robustness and resilience as different but connected constructs, deviating from common approaches. The finding that the relationship between digital capabilities and supply chain robustness, not the relationship between digital capabilities and supply chain resilience, becomes stronger with higher access to government support shows the importance of this approach to investigating specific effects.

This bibliometric study aims to analyze publication trends, active countries, collaborations, influential citations and thematic evolution in learning analytics (LA) research focused on higher education (HE) during and after the COVID-19 lockdown period.

From the Scopus database, this bibliometric analysis extracts and evaluates 609 scholarly articles on LA in HE starting in 2019. The multidimensional process identifies the scope impacts, advancing the understanding of LA in HE. An analysis of co-citation data uncovers the key influences that have shaped the literature. This study uses the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory to suggest future research directions and organizational adaptations to new LA technologies and learner responses to LA-enabled personalized interventions.

Learning analytics are becoming important in the HE environment during and after the COVID-19 lockout. Institutions have used LA to collect socio-technical data from digital platforms, giving them important insights into learning processes and systems. The data gathered through LA has assisted in identifying areas for development, opening the path for improved student success and academic performance evaluation and helping students transition to the workforce.

The study’s concentration on the post-COVID-19 timeframe may lead to paying attention to potential pandemic developments. Nonetheless, the findings provide a thorough picture of LA’s contributions to HE and valuable ideas for future study initiatives. Future research with the SOR framework suggests areas for additional study to maximize LA’s potential in diverse HE situations.

This study adds to the growing corpus of knowledge on learning analytics in HE, especially in light of the COVID-19 lockdown and its aftermath. By using bibliometric analysis, the study provides a complete and evidence-based understanding of how LA has been used to address challenges related to HE. This study uses bibliometric analysis and SOR theory to appraise and map HE learning analytics research. The selected study themes can help scholars, educators and institutions shape their future efforts to improve teaching, learning and support mechanisms through learning analytics.

This paper examines to what extent blockchain creates legitimacy and trust in different modes of public governance. It posits that while blockchain aims for political legitimacy through decentralising, immutable and consensus-based mechanisms, the execution of these mechanisms is limited in legitimating governance, which has knock-on effects on trust. It provides an original contribution by recontextualising and reframing blockchain as a governance mechanism that should, and must, perform a legitimating function in order to engender trust.

The research adopts a comprehensive framework for understanding the legitimacy of blockchain governance, positioning it in terms of co-governance, self-governance and hierarchical governance modes. It systematically analyses blockchain whitepapers, legislation, government documents and other sources in three paradigmatic case studies where blockchain governance failed. These cases are then used to assess blockchain according to three key characteristics of decentralisation, immutability and consensus.

The research finds that blockchain’s use in governance settings still relies on legitimacy conferred from other sources – namely state – in order to generate trust. Significant limitations in its de facto political decentralisation, immutability and consensus protocols can create failures in co-governance, self-governance and hierarchical-governance applications, thus limiting the legitimation function of blockchain in facilitating political trust.

These findings are significant in highlighting blockchain’s limitations as a decentralised, immutable and consensus-driven legitimating tool, which has knock-on effects on trust in technology and governance more broadly. It also has broader implications in more clearly highlighting the interconnectedness of political trust and legitimacy in governance processes.

Autistic individuals are employed and access higher education opportunities at significantly lower rates than their nondisabled peers (US Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2023; Newman, 2015). Schools are an optimal setting for intervention as most individuals access the school setting. However, traditional support to facilitate postsecondary transition effectively, such as transition plans, is currently lacking (Greene, 2018; Hughes et al., 2023). The authors of the present chapter conducted a systematic review to identify school-based interventions available for autistic youth intended to support the transition from high school to higher education, entrepreneurship, and employment. The data extraction methods used by the authors identified 19 articles on interventions. Across all studies, the authors found variation in the extent to which researchers addressed entrepreneurial skills and identified two key skill development areas across different intervention modalities: employability skills and interpersonal communication skills. Based on these results, the authors discuss available school-based programming intended to prepare autistic youth for postsecondary careers and entrepreneurial opportunities and the implications of existing interventions for practitioners and researchers interested in improving outcomes for autistic students as they transition to the workplace, particularly entrepreneurial endeavors.

This paper examines students’ educational choices in vocational education and training (VET) to understand the low reputation of vocational education in China. By analysing the individualisation of these choices within structural and individual relationships, the study explores how the decline of state endorsement and the shift towards rational, individualistic actions influence students' decisions.

Multiple types of data were collected in this study, including administrative records, interviews and autobiographical stories, which were analysed using individualisation theory.

The research indicated three historical periods of the educational choice of Chinese VET students. Stage one (1978–1991) saw vocational education treated as “the first choice” for graduates. Stage two (1992–2000) was marked by the polarisation of educational choice during the social transition from a socialist planned economy to a market economy. During this period, more students started to choose academic high schools over vocational schools, even though the latter still had certain advantages for attracting the better-performing students. The third stage (2001-now) is a time in which vocational education is viewed as “the last choice” under the socialist market economy system. During this period, junior high school graduates prefer to enrol in academic high schools rather than in vocational schools. Aligned with the overall individualisation trend in Chinese society, vocational education decisions situated between societal structures and individuals are also experiencing a shift towards more micro-level individualized behaviours.

The paper provides a historical analysis of education and training provision in China and the complexity of students’ educational choices, revealing the influencing factors across different stages.

This paper draws a comprehensive analysis of the developmental trajectory of vocational education in China across different historical periods, notably under the socialist planned economy and the socialist market economy systems.