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This article explores differentiation in the responses of precarious workers to the instability and uncertainty imposed on their work by employing organizations. Our focus is on the ways in which different workers respond to precarious working conditions, with a particular interest on marginalised groups who have been especially overlooked by studies of workforce precarity.

Employs an approach akin to grounded theory in an exploratory research design and utilizes in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 56 precarious workers.

Finds that different precarious workers, with divergent characteristics and resources, facing differing working conditions, and diverse structural constraints vary in the ways in which their strategies of surviving precarious work are manifested. Uncovers three differing forms of precarious workers who each employ a different range of tactics and strategies in work.

Generates insights into differentiation of precarious workers in their responses to the ambiguous, challenging and, in many ways, subjugating conditions of their working conditions.

The societal, economic and personal costs of aggression are indisputable. Impulsivity and childhood trauma (CT) play a role in aggression but less is known about the potential mechanisms underlying these associations. This study aimed to investigate the influence of CTs and impulsivity on aggression in the general population.

A total of 178 participants (aged 18–86, M = 30.93, SD = 14.50) including 65 men (36.5%), 110 women (61.8%), 3 participants self-identified (1.7%)(n = 2 nonbinary, n = 1 gender fluid) of the UK adult population completed an online survey. Questionnaires measured impulsivity (Short UPPS-P), adverse childhood experiences (CT Questionnaire) and aggression (Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire).

Emotional neglect and abuse were the most endorsed CTs (abuse and neglect). As predicted, results showed the impulsivity facet “negative urgency” was associated with the behaviour, emotions and cognitions of aggression. Findings showed a distinct effect of both impulsivity and emotional abuse on physical aggression, which may reflect a pathway in which impulsivity influences adverse childhood experiences and future violence. Types of aggression may have potentially distinct pathways. This study discusses the reasons for these observed results and future research.

The originality/value of the paper lies in the acknowledgement of the role of negative and positive urgency in behaviours related to emotional dysregulation. It also highlighted the importance of examining different types of aggression. There was a distinct effect of both impulsivity and CTs on physical aggression and hostility. Further research in larger samples should examine pathways in which impulsivity mediates the effects of adverse childhood experiences and adulthood aggression. These collective insights can help further our understanding of the role adverse and traumatic events in childhood and impulsivity has on aggression and may be relevant to tailored support and intervention strategies for individuals expressing aggressive behaviours.

This study aims to examine the effect of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade on economic complexity in Africa.

Panel data from 34 African countries between 2003 and 2022 are used. This study analyzes the data using a two-stage least square proposed by Lewbel (2012) and Driscoll and Kraay (1998) estimator based on robust standard errors and panel quantile regression via moments proposed by Machado and Silva (2019).

The results show that Chinese FDI and trade effectively upgrade economic complexity in Africa. Also, there is an inverted-U-shaped relationship between Chinese trade and economic complexity, thus revealing evidence of the trade Laffer curve.

Despite the intense debate on the Chinese-African economic relationship, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no known study has examined the implications of Chinese FDI and trade on economic complexity in Africa. Therefore, this study fills this lacuna found in the literature and suggests that Chinese FDI and trade are veritable tools for technology diffusion and innovation, which are capable of upgrading economic complexity in Africa. However, the Chinese-African trade relationship should be complemented with sound trade policies for the sustainability of the beneficial effect of Chinese trade on economic complexity in Africa.

This study aims to examine conditions in both inter- and intra-alliance contexts within an oligopolistic alliance industry operating across multiple markets. It focuses on how a focal firm’s optimal performance depends on nuanced evaluations of the trade-offs associated with coopetitive synergy, and on decisions about whether to collaborate or compete with its members.

The authors analyze the six leading global container shipping firms within two major alliances (The Grand Alliance and the New World Alliance) from 2003 to 2010, gathering 7,825 news articles from the Cyber Shipping Guide, a comprehensive global container shipping business database in Japan.

The findings reveal the following: (1) the focal firm cooperating with members of a rival alliance decreases the level of inter-alliance competition. (2) The focal firm cooperating with members of a rival alliance increases the level of intra-alliance competition. (3) Increased inter-alliance competition negatively impacts the performance of the focal firm. (4) Increased intra-alliance competition negatively impacts the performance of the focal firm.

Global container shipping firms should make optimal decisions about which firms to cooperate with, focusing on those that contribute to the focal firm’s overall synergies and thus performance.

This study contributes to the literature on coopetition in strategic alliances by extending the concept of dynamic coopetition to include strategic alliance groupings, and by examining how focal firm members cooperate in both inter- and intra-alliance contexts.

This paper presents a realist evaluation of leadership within an integrated care system (ICS) in England. This paper aims to examine which aspects of leadership are effective, for whom, how and under what circumstances.

Realist evaluation methodology was used, adopting prior realist review findings as the theoretical framework to refine explanations of how and why leadership within an ICS is effective. Between January and November 2023, 23 interviews with ICS leaders took place, alongside 7 meeting observations and documentary analysis. The Realist And Metanarrative Evidence Syntheses: Evolving Standards (RAMESES) guidance informed the study design, conduct and reporting.

The findings highlight two overarching infrastructural contexts influencing leadership in ICSs: the impact of the post-COVID-19 pandemic legacy and the differences between health and social care regulatory and financial environments. Findings demonstrate that ICS leaders identified a strong sense of purpose as crucial for guiding decisions and creating a psychologically safe environment for open, honest discussions, fostering calculated risk-taking. Whilst a shared vision directed priority setting, financial pressures led to siloed thinking. Leadership visibility was linked to workforce morale, with supportive leadership boosting morale amidst evolving ICS landscapes and confidence in data-driven decisions supported prevention activities. However, financial constraints hindered responsiveness and innovation in addressing health inequalities.

By examining ICS leadership post-COVID-19 pandemic and amidst varying regulatory and financial environments, this study contributes to the emerging literature on systems leadership and offers practical guidance for leaders navigating the complexities of integrated care.

We expand the recent literature on the dynamics of capital structure decisions by investigating the impact of national culture on firms' optimal debt ratios and their dynamic re-adjustment process. To this end, we aim at estimating firm-specific speeds of leverage adjustment, allowing for heterogeneous dynamics in firms' capital structure.

We use dynamic panel data estimators to analyze the impact of cultural factors on the dynamics of debt ratios.

We show that national culture affects the optimal level of leverage and the dynamic rebalancing of debt ratios, both directly and indirectly, by altering the effect of firm characteristics and macroeconomic factors on firms' financing behavior. Firms converge faster towards the optimal leverage in countries with a stronger attitude to conform with the norm, while they are slower where there is a higher propensity to intellectual autonomy. A higher risk aversion and long-run propensity induce over-levered firms to reduce leverage faster, making the adjustment process strongly asymmetric. Moreover, national culture also produces indirect effects by mitigating the impact of asymmetric information on capital structure decisions. Indeed, firms in more individualistic countries display a lower speed of adjustment and a stronger effect of firm characteristics associated with higher agency costs. On the contrary, firms in countries with a higher tendency to conform to social norms, less individualistic and more long-term oriented have a higher adjustment speed and appear to suffer less from agency issues. Our results therefore highlight how national culture affects agency problems within firms, thus suggesting the adoption of country-specific corporate governance provisions accounting for the effects of local cultural traits on managers' behavior.

We expand the capital structure and governance literature by showing how cultural traits impact on the dynamics of debt ratios. In particular, we show how cultural traits may mitigate or exacerbate the role of agency issues on firms' behavior, hence suggesting that cultural factors may interact with governance rules in shaping firms' decisions. Therefore, our work highlights how policy-makers should include cultural aspects when defining regulation concerning corporate governance.

This study seeks to develop a clearer understanding of the motivational factors affecting Saudi female business undergraduates' choice of pursuing entrepreneurship.

The research adopts a quantitative approach to gain general understanding of the students' perceptions with regard to their motivations to pursue entrepreneurship. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire survey administered to 214 female business undergraduates at Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University (PMU) in Al-Khobar, to investigate their perceptions of entrepreneurial motivations. Descriptive statistics and factor analysis were used to identify the motivational factors. Multiple regression analysis was used to reveal relationships between the motivation factors and entrepreneurial motivation of female business undergraduates.

The study revealed four generalised entrepreneurial motivations among Saudi female business undergraduates: personal motivational factors with an emphasis on freedom and social status; business motivational factors such as financial rewards and security; social motivational factors manifested in the influence of the community, roles and family; and environmental motivations which were mainly associated to education, the market knowledge and ability to access finance.

The study was restricted to female students at PMU University. Thus, generalisation of the results could be limited. The findings of the study could be useful to relevant authorities to enhance and boost entrepreneurship for female students and hence to contribute to the national Vision 2030.

This study is among those few studies located in the MENA region that explore Saudi female university students' attitude towards entrepreneurship. It adds to the authors' understanding on the four generalised factors by highlighting the importance of the family's role and entrepreneurship education in motivating Saudi female students towards entrepreneurship engagement. It also contributes to the understanding of these motivations that could be applied in other similar contexts.

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of principal leadership (PL) on teacher professional learning (TPL) with the possible mediation of teacher trust (TT) and teacher agency (TA) using a broader set of data collected from published research.

The study uses meta-analytic structural equation modelling to compare weighted effect sizes between variables produced by research across different periods and contexts. The bilateral relations of PL with study variables were first examined, and then the model-data fit was tested for both the proposed and the two alternative models.

The results showed that PL had a significant and “very large” effect on TPL, TT and agency; PL affected TPL mostly indirectly over TT and agency. TT and agency collectively predicted nearly half of the variance in TPL.

The study uses a novel and advanced methodology to investigate the relationships among the study variables using data from 59 studies with a sample size of 67,035 participants from around the world. The results contribute to the literature, offering a more global understanding of the interaction of PL, TPL, trust and agency.