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Motivated by the advancements in the discussions of environmental, social, and governance globally, this study aims to improve the knowledge of corporate sustainability motivations and engagement through a qualitative cross-company case study analysis of two consumer goods multinationals, Natura & Co. headquartered in Brazil, and The Coca-Cola Company, headquartered in the USA. The cases were chosen to compare the two companies’ corporate sustainable development (SD) motivations, one headquartered in an emerging and the other in a developed country. This study also assesses the balance between these corporations’ global and local sustainability agendas, comparing their worldwide engagement promises to their actual deliveries vis-à-vis national-institutional arrangements. As contributions to the field, comparing the cases surfaced valuable insights and additional theoretical abstractions on corporate sustainability, including proposing a new SD-engagement typology.

How national culture induces entrepreneurship and business growth remains elusive in research. Questions remain, for example, how can we determine whether a given national culture is good or bad for entrepreneurial activities? What are those pro-entrepreneurship national culture dimensions that could be promoted across nations? These questions are yet open for discussion. The purpose of the study seeks to address these questions and unveil how various national cultural dimensions affect entrepreneurship in different national contexts.

The systematic literature review (SLR) method is meticulously applied. Key terms related to Hofstede’s national culture dimensions are traced alongside entrepreneurial aspects associated with entrepreneurial actions and orientations. By developing series of search queries from these terms, studies within the Web of Science and EBSCO databases are explored.

The review reveals that individualism, long-term orientation, low power distance, feminism, indulgence and low uncertainty avoidance dimensions of culture enable and foster entrepreneurial activities across countries. This study proposes that they be considered Hofstede’s pro-entrepreneurship cultural dimensions. The research suggests that countries endowed with more of these cultural factors tend to create favorable conditions for entrepreneurship. The authors argue that the bundling of these cultural dimensions makes a difference in entrepreneurial performance, not the isolated effect of individual dimensions.

The study reveals the intricate relationship between national culture and entrepreneurship, a relationship that is particularly crucial in today’s globalized work environment and cross-cultural entrepreneurship. The findings underscore the significant role of national culture in shaping the entrepreneurial activities of nations. To enhance the effectiveness of entrepreneurial practices, it is essential to consider the cultural context of societies. While the review does not identify a specific national culture dimension that distinguishes developing countries from developed ones in terms of entrepreneurial performance, it does suggest that promoting pro-entrepreneurship national cultural dimensions, rather than individual dimensions in isolation, can create a fertile ground for entrepreneurship to thrive.

This study significantly advances the understanding of the relationship between national culture and entrepreneurship, considering Hofstede’s six national cultural dimensions and their respective and concurrent influences. This research provides a clearer framework for understanding and promoting cultures that support entrepreneurship, particularly by focusing on how cultural “bundling” rather than isolated traits can drive success in entrepreneurship across different countries. The study also offers practical suggestions to stakeholders on how to promote a pro-entrepreneurship national culture. The use of the SLR methodology enhances the reliability of the findings, shedding light on the most critical national cultural dimensions that must be configured to achieve the maximum returns from entrepreneurial endeavors.

Internal corporate venturing is a vehicle for firms to realize strategic and financial goals through entrepreneurial ventures. Prior research presents a strategic process in which individual managers make rational choices based on their formal roles and top-down corporate objectives. Recent work has challenged this by adopting a relational approach using a macro-level perspective highlighting cultural and institutional logics. This study augments and develops this relational approach by contributing a micro-level perspective by focusing on managers engaged in developing ventures in large organizations. The data show how internal corporate venturing (ICV) actors use discursive practices to make sense of their relationship contexts and develop interpretive repertoires to give sense to their decisions and shape their future strategies. The data illustrate how corporate venturing actors make sense of their uncertain experience and develop insider-outsider strategies by balancing three competing interpretive repertories, which form the basis of strategies supporting an entrepreneurial future in an organizational context.

Forty-two interviews were conducted with ICV actors, including senior directors of corporate venturing units in multinational corporations and their venture project leaders. The authors conducted a micro-level study through an interpretive sensemaking analysis of managers' “talk.” Interviews are considered through three lenses: “functional talk” (why they said it), “interpretive themes” (what they said) and “interpretive repertoires” (how they said it).

The perceived challenges experienced by the participants through their relationships were identified. Participants emphasized balancing project and organizational role risk in pursuing venture development, leading to a perceived dependent trust relationship between supporters. Three interpretive repertories were identified through which participants positioned their explanations of their relationship contexts in ICV. Participants used these to discursively frame their corporate venturing practices and position their future strategies.

A new framework of corporate venture sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration is provided to explain how managers discursively resolve conflicting relationship pressures while maintaining personal positioning. The paper shows how conflicting interpretive repertoires and personal interpretations are generated through a discursive practice comprising sensemaking and sensegiving reconfiguration processes to shape their future strategies. The paper contributes to theory by explicating the relational perspective of ICV at the micro-level and demonstrates how this is influenced by the discursive practices of managers leading the ICV activity.

This research examines how to enhance financial performance (FP) through the interplay between information technology and their suppliers in the supply chain. On this, the research objective is to assess the role of integration with suppliers (IWS) and integration by suppliers (IBS) in the interface between integrated information technology (IIT) and FP in the supply chain.

A theoretical model was designed, and hypotheses were tested with structural equation modelling and qualitative data from a survey of 205 multi-industry companies from Egypt.

The findings indicate that IIT has a positive significant relationship with financial performance, in this case, partially mediated jointly by IWS and IBS.

This study contributes to the literature by establishing a measurement approach for the proposed duality of supplier integration. A crucial implication of this duality is the requirement of IWS and IBS to enhance the effect of IIT on FP in supply chain partnerships and the fact revealed in our research that IWS precedes IBS in supply chains.

The paper uses key themes from Fox’s writing to reflect on the wave of public sector industrial action that developed in the UK since the early 2020s: specifically the relevance of (1) radical pluralism, (2) historical context, (3) understanding the effects of high inflation and (4) (a breakdown of) trust relations.

The paper draws primarily on evidence from broad public debate but is informed by discussions held with senior union leaders both for a research project and in delivering development training.

Radical pluralism is used as a lens through which to understand declining trust in institutions of pluralist collective industrial relations in the UK public sector, arguing that current developments need to be understood in historical context. An analysis of the industrial action in the early 2020s highlights the ways that a period of high inflation can stress institutions of collective employment regulation, rendering visible the limits of conventional, pluralist industrial relations.

The paper could be extended by more detailed empirical data collection, both in the UK and other national institutional contexts.

Unions need to more consistently focus on issues of power. A stronger focus on power might identify the limitations of pluralist institutions of collective regulation and embed a commitment to building union influence to challenge those existing structures in favour of mechanisms to build workers' power more broadly.

Understanding these disputes as, at least in part, being about the limits to and undermining of trust in collective institutions that regulate work and employment allows us to better understand the forces at play and potential outcomes of these disputes.

The paper makes three key contributions: first, applying Fox’s work in a practical way to contemporary UK industrial relations; second, extending his analyses to public sector industrial relations and third, arguing that power needs to be more centrally located within union objectives in order to reshape industrial relations to radical pluralist ends.

This study aims to examine the relationship between work ethics and organizational performance and investigate the influence of respondents’ career stages on their work ethic among British, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Serbian nations.

This research is based on a survey of British, UAE and Serbian managers, whose task was to assess the dimensions of the multidimensional work ethic profile (MWEP) and organizational performance. Since the MWEP does not analyze work ethics in the context of religion, it is deemed the most suitable instrument for this study because it analyzes work ethics among the three cultures that practice different religions.

The results revealed that national culture impacts work ethics. British managers place greater value on the wasted time, self-reliance and morality dimensions of work ethics. Serbian managers prefer the leisure and delay of gratification dimensions, while UAE managers value hard work ethics more than the other two groups of managers. The study also shows that respondents’ career stage influences their work ethic, and a significant relationship exists between different dimensions of work ethics and organizational performance in all three nations.

This study contributes to the theory by analyzing work ethic and its relationship with organizational performance and respondents’ career stages in three nations that share business interests. It addresses a research gap by comparing work ethics in developed, developing and a country in socio-economic transition.

The study of mindfulness is still shown to be of interest in different aspects of organisations and/or businesses. Therefore, this study aims to present an integrative, multi-level model of mindfulness based on a holistic approach that can contribute to better governance practices and lead to competitive advantages.

To fulfil this aim, an extensive integrative review of the literature, from the main articles about this topic, was made.

This study shows that the concept of mindfulness, a conscious presence or full attention and its relation with organisations or firms’ personal, behavioural and social characteristics, in the current context of great adversity, uncertainty and unpredictability, is of interest at the individual, organisational and social level.

This conceptual study has important implications for both practice and theory. It demonstrates that mindfulness significantly impacts the manager/business person’s ecosystem at the individual, organisational and social levels, particularly in relation to Sustainable Development Goals.

This study introduces a comprehensive theoretical model that explains this relationship and organises information from a multi-level perspective. This approach can contribute to the advancement of theory by clarifying and discussing the role of mindfulness at the individual, organisational and societal levels. It also identifies opportunities and outlines future research directions, aiming to promote more sustainable development.

This study aims to explore academic women’s silence from the perspective of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), by examining the triadic influences of the individual, environment and behaviour, which impacts their silence. The study examines how women use personal, proxy and collective agency (Bandura, 2018) to reduce silence.

Interviewing 22 academics (20 women, 2 men) at a leading Polish university, this study used the Gioia et al. (2013) method to analyse the interviews, creating first- and second-order codes and final aggregated concepts.

This study finds, from an environmental perspective, that societal-level gendering, which is underpinned by critical social factors and institutional logics that are part of Poland’s culture promoting gender stereotypes and family values influences women’s silence. There is clear evidence for the regression of women’s rights, which compounds women’s silence. These societal-level factors influence a hierarchical, bureaucratic organizational structure, alongside gender segregation. From an individual perspective, reasons for silence include socialization, fear, women’s lack of power, inequality and self-silencing to mitigate harassment or discrimination. Collective agency was a strongly mentioned theme to help reduce silence, which includes implementing training and development initiatives, creating a safe platform to voice concerns, structural transformation and cultural change.

This study contributes to literature regarding women’s silence by exploring reasons for silence through the lens of Bandura’s social cognitive theory and agentic perspective, which demonstrates how silence could be reduced through collective action, in the understudied context of Poland, which highlights how country context intersects with organizational context and individual experience, influencing women’s silence.

The purpose of this study is to establish whether all the dimensions of entrepreneurial resources matter in fostering the well-being of women entrepreneurs.

An explanatory research design was used to collect data through a questionnaire survey of 283 women entrepreneurs who benefited from the Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP). This study used Statistical Package for Social Sciences to analyze the data.

Study results show that social and human capital matter unlike financial capital in boosting the well-being of women entrepreneurs.

This study provides maiden empirical evidence on contribution of entrepreneurial resource dimensions in fostering the well-being of women entrepreneurs, unlike extant studies that mostly focused on entrepreneurial resources as a global variable. This was done using evidence from Uganda, a developing context where the government and other stakeholders are still grappling with improving the well-being of women as a pathway for social-economic development.

The existing literature highlights challenges in measuring social impact within social and solidarity economy organisations, particularly regarding the social return on investment (SROI) methodology. This paper aims to address the barriers to SROI implementation while exploring the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing the measurement of social impact.

This review-based paper synthesises research on SROI methodology limitations and recent AI developments while focusing on ethical considerations. Drawing from these domains, the study constructs a conceptual framework to guide future research.

The study identifies necessary enhancements to existing AI systems for social impact measurement and explores how advances in generative AI could refine current tools and address SROI constraints. It advocates for open AI models to address ethical concerns.

This study pioneers the integration of social impact assessment and AI, an innovative intersection in the academic literature. The growing disparity between academia and the rapidly evolving AI industry is highlighted and scholarly discourse is enriched through theoretical deliberations and innovative technological solutions.