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Despite the growing interest regarding the Brazilian rice industry, there is not much literature focusing on the role of the institutions in the process of technological capability accumulation and in the formation of the technological trajectories within this industry. This paper aims to discover the role of local institutions in the generation and dissemination of knowledge for creating the technological capability that can define different technological trajectories, using the Brazilian rice industry as an empirical field.

To achieve said objective, this paper uses secondary data (documental research) and a multiple case study design based on primary empirical evidence (content analysis and direct observation) about the Brazilian rice industry.

The paper’s main contribution is the empirical application of a framework that allows us to evaluate the institutions’ roles and activities and how these capabilities evolve as the firms’ technological levels progress and the technological trajectory is formed. Regarding aspects related to public policy, the authors found some implications that are mainly related to the need to consolidate this type of institution in developing countries with the goal of strengthening its technological capabilities, allowing these countries to operate on the technological boundary and to compete with developed countries.

There are few attempts to relate the technological capability, technological trajectories and institutions in the Brazilian rice industry. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the novelty of this study lies in the analysis of these theoretical approaches in this industrial sector, more specifically, in the Brazilian rice industry.

This study aims to assess National Health Service (NHS) decision-making protocols during the pandemic, with two primary objectives: (1) to establish whether decision-making protocols changed during the pandemic and (2) to evaluate if these changes could inform future decision-making strategies beyond the pandemic. By focusing on the shift from traditional to emergency decision-making processes, this research seeks to derive actionable insights for enhancing policy and practice in crisis conditions.

We employ a mixed-methods approach, gathering data through an online survey targeted at senior NHS decision-makers involved in the pandemic response. Our survey collected quantitative and qualitative data to assess changes in decision-making protocols. The analysis included statistical techniques to quantify changes and thematic analysis to explore their implications, providing a detailed understanding of decision-making adaptations during the crisis and their potential future impact.

Our findings clarify the role of the NHS values and constitution, which prioritize patient welfare, dignity and equitable access to healthcare, guiding all decision-making. During the pandemic, the urgency to respond swiftly necessitated modifications to these guiding principles. Traditional processes were adapted, allowing for more rapid decision-making while still aligning with the core values, effectively balancing immediate response needs with long-term healthcare commitments.

Our research contributes to decision-making under crisis conditions within a healthcare context and brings together a theoretical background which has accommodated the development of models and approaches that can be utilized by both service and manufacturing organizations. In addition, we have sought to bring together the importance of decision-making protocols under crisis conditions using observations from respondents who experienced decision-making at a senior level prior, during and beyond the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has assisted in the models developed in this paper. In addition, our empirical research demonstrates the importance that the values of the organization have upon decision-making and how such values need to be adjusted in the light of crisis operations.

Our research provides insightful observations relating to the pressures upon decision-making protocols under crisis conditions and provides senior decision-makers with an approach to realigning values to cope with unusual and highly pressurized operating environments. Notably, there is a clear requirement for decision-makers to communicate clearly to staff the need to temporarily alter the modus operandi to reflect crisis operations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore decision-making in the NHS during a pandemic and to clearly demonstrate how such decision-making needs to be adapted to reflect the nature and scope of delivering a complex healthcare service under crisis conditions.

The purpose of this study is to present the overall trend and dynamics in global mergers and acquisitions activity while suggesting future research avenues in this domain. The analysis covers two aspects to examine the main contours of the domain, that is performance analysis followed by thematic cluster analysis.

Bibliometric analysis has been used for examining 1,433 publications extracted from the Scopus database to identify the research trend between 2000 and 2021. With the help of VosViewer (a bibliometric software), bibliographic coupling, citation, co-authorship, keyword and network analysis have been carried out.

The analysis reveals that most of the research on cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMA) is concentrated in the context of developed markets, USA and UK being the largest. Most of the research till date is confined to wealth effects, value creation, corporate governance, socio-cultural aspects and various determinants of CBMA, all from the standpoint of the acquirer.

The present study highlights numerous opportunities for future research based on empirical analysis. There exists a dearth of studies around CBMA in the context of emerging nations which provides a relatively unexplored field to carry out research work.

The study makes use of a comprehensive list of keywords to have an extensive analysis. This is a pioneering study that has used bibliographic coupling of documents for content analysis and to the best of authors’ knowledge, no previous works on cross-border acquisitions have performed bibliographic coupling for this.