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As the warehouse is increasingly viewed as a strategic component, retailers’ willingness to invest in automated warehouse systems (AWS) has increased. These investment decisions are influenced by well-known operational factors, but strategic factors, which have received limited attention in warehousing literature, also play a pivotal role. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how strategic factors influence AWS investment decisions in retail.

Based on a theoretical foundation of technology adoption, strategic intent, and automation strategy, an abductive multiple case study is conducted with eight purposefully selected retailers that had implemented or were in the process of implementing a large AWS.

The study ranks 10 competitive priorities and 21 AWS evaluation aspects and shows how the firm’s strategic intent and the AWS investment decisions can be connected via the formulation of a warehouse automation strategy. The findings reveal the content for such a strategy – including 7 categories and 17 considerations – related to, for example, technology innovativeness, efficiency versus adaptiveness, technology-supplier relationships, control and ownership, and risk exposure. The study empirically shows how manager characteristics and owner strategies influence retailers’ AWS investment decisions. Four strategic intent profiles are abductively developed: reliability and delivery service; profitable deliveries; scalable logistics for volume growth; and platform building for logistics services. The study also provides evidence of a reciprocal relationship between strategic intent and AWS investment decisions.

The study is conducted with a limited number of Swedish retailers, indicating a need for additional studies to test the findings across different contexts.

The study offers a framework for formulating a warehouse automation strategy. As a foundation for developing the framework, the study shares empirical insights from retailers in the forefront of AWS implementation.

The study contributes as a conversation changer by showing the importance of shifting from a tactical-operational focus to a strategic perspective on warehouse configuration in general and on AWS investment decisions in retail in particular.

This paper aims to further our understanding of policy–practice gaps in organizations from an organizational learning perspective. The authors conceptualize and analyze policy–practice gaps in terms of what they label the dual challenge of organizational learning, i.e. the organizational tasks of both adapting ongoing practices to prescribed policy demands and adapting the policy itself to the needs of practice. Specifically, the authors address how this dual challenge can be understood in terms of organizational learning and how an organization can be managed to successfully resolve the dual learning challenge and, thereby, bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations.

This paper draws on existing literature to explore the gap between policy and practice. Through a synthesis of theories and an illustrative practical example, this paper highlights key conceptual underpinnings.

In the analysis of the dual challenge of organizational learning, this study provides a conceptual framework that emphasizes the important role of tensions and contradictions between policy and practice and their role as drivers of organizational learning. To bridge policy–practice gaps in organizations, this paper proposes five key principles that aim to resolve the dual challenge and accommodate both deployment and discovery in organizations.

Because this is a conceptual study, empirical research is called for to explore further and test the findings and conclusions of the study. Several avenues of possible future research are proposed.

This paper primarily contributes by introducing and elaborating on a conceptual framework that offers novel perspectives on the dual challenges of facilitating both discovery and deployment processes within organizations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Industry 4.0 (IR 4.0) operates within the context of the post-COVID-19 environment and its impact on the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the manufacturing industry in a developing economy. By delving into this subject, the authors aim to understand the mechanisms through which IR 4.0 influences various facets of sustainability within the manufacturing sector.

A cross-sectional research design is used using purposive sampling and hypotheses were developed based on seminal theories and literature. Data was collected from 191 Malaysian manufacturing firms that use IR 4.0 technologies. The partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used to explore how post-COVID uncertainty environment impacts manufacturing sustainability through IR 4.0 adoption.

During the highly uncertain era of the post-COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of IR 4.0 adoption has had a favorable effect on the manufacturing industry, enhancing process efficiency, automation and data granularity. However, it is worth noting that automation does not significantly contribute to environmental sustainability and data granularity does not have a noteworthy impact on economic sustainability. On the other hand, process efficiency has a positive and significant influence on all three dimensions of sustainability. Moreover, data granularity positively affects environmental sustainability, whereas automation positively impacts both social and economic sustainability.

This study emphasizes the importance of policy interventions to harness the transformative power of IR 4.0 and address the identified concerns. In addition, the findings offer valuable insights for mid-level operational managers, enabling them to actively participate in the creation of sustainable policies in partnership with top management. It is expected that these actions, which involve making necessary adjustments in the manufacturing process, will yield tangible outcomes for sustainable development.

This study offers valuable insights into the relationship between the uncertain post-COVID-19 environment, referred to as hyper-uncertainty and the adoption of IR 4.0 in the context of manufacturing sustainability.

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are tools in the hands of governments for the pursuit of their political agendas. This feature is driving accounting scholars’ attention to SOEs’ relationship with the United Nations Agenda 2030. However, few contributions in literature have approached the topic. This study aims at understanding which determinants impact the contribution of SOEs to Agenda 2030.

To analyse SOEs’ contribution to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) through their disclosures, this study adopted a panel data analysis to explore two levels of drivers impacting SOEs practices. Furthermore, to highlight SOEs’ differences from private sector entities, this study used a comparative approach.

Results revealed how hybrid and private environments are differently impacting the contribution to the SDGs. Moreover, it emerged how hybridity through board characteristics impacts SOE disclosure quality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to empirically test how corporate governance characteristics influence SDGs’ contribution via sustainability reporting in SOEs.

Sustainable development must address the challenge of ensuring decent work for all (SDG 8) and promoting good health and well-being (SDG 3). This study aims to assess the relationship between decent and meaningful work and their impact on work engagement and job satisfaction among adult workers. Decent work goes beyond mere employment, encompassing standards for a fulfilling life, including fair compensation and workplace security, while fostering personal development and social integration. Following the psychology of working theory (PWT), decent work is a prerequisite to the attainment of meaningful work, viewed as a positive belief system about one’s work and its potential positive impact on life and the world.

A sample of 276 adult workers, aged 21–70 years (M = 43.55, SD = 11.76), was surveyed to explore the association between decent and meaningful work and the following impact on work engagement and job satisfaction. Structural equation modelling was employed.

The study identified meaningful work as a crucial mediator between decent work and the outcomes of work engagement and job satisfaction.

The findings highlight the importance of cultivating meaningful work experiences to enhance workplace well-being.Organisations should prioritize interventions to promote both decent and meaningful work to align with sustainable development goals and improve employee satisfaction and engagement.

Our findings emphasize the pivotal role of decent work and, consequently, meaningful work in shaping employees’ well-being.

The way in which managers differ when confronted with risky options or when evaluating different alternatives constitutes a fundamental part of organizational risk management. This study aims to investigate how managerial risk-taking attitudes (i.e. ethical and financial risk-taking as a trade-off between benefit and riskiness) change over time and based on gender.

The authors conducted a cross-sectional study on a sample of Italian executives and measured their perceptions of risk-taking, risk perception and risk-benefit, all referring to the company they worked for in the ethical and financial domain. The study also collected demographic data to gather information on age and gender. The authors analyzed data collected using multilevel analysis.

The results show that perceived benefits are the main drivers of risk-taking attitudes in both domains. Age and gender are not significant direct predictors of risk, but interactions with domains reveal insightful patterns.

Overall, this study highlights the need to assess the whole pattern of relationships emerging from the range of situational variables characterizing a specific population. Concerning the organizational context, it means addressing the role of organizational variables in influencing risk-taking so as to determine the extent to which organizational policies are indeed effective in fostering efficient organizational risk management.

This study aims to analyse the differences between professional interaction mediated by video conferencing and direct professional interaction. The research identifies diverging interests of office workers for the purpose of addressing work ethical and business ethical issues of professional collaboration, competition, and power in future hybrid work models.

Based on 28 qualitative interviews conducted between November 2020 and June 2021, and through the theoretical lens of phenomenology, the study develops explanatory hypotheses conceptualising four basic intentions of professional interaction and their corresponding preferences for video conferences and working on site.

The four intentions developed on the basis of the interviews are: the need for physical proximity; the challenge of collective creativity; the will to influence; and control of communication. This conceptual framework qualifies a moral ambivalence of professional interaction. The authors identify a connectivity paradox of professional interaction where the personal dimension remains unarticulated for the purpose of maintaining professionality. This tacit human connectivity is intertwined with latent power relations. This plasticity of both connectivity and power in direct interaction can be diminished by transferring the interaction to video conferencing.

The application of phenomenology to a collection of qualitative interviews has enabled the identification of underlying intention structures and the system in which they affect each other. This research identifies conflicts of interests between workers relative to their different self-perceived abilities to persevere in competitive professional interaction. It is therefore able to address consequences of future hybrid work models at an existential and societal level.

This study aims to investigate the drivers of the internationalization scope of born global from the digital and software solution sector in an emerging economy context, which presents an unexplored avenue of research. This study endeavors to understand the individual and market-level drivers of internationalization scope. Relying on the effectuation and causation framework and reactive/proactive driver typology, this paper sheds light on the individual decision-maker’s makeup and market conditions that influence the changes between strategies in the internationalization process.

A qualitative multiple case study approach is used to explore drivers of the internationalization scope of born globals. Seven born globals from the digital and software solution sectors were depicted, and interviews with their founders were conducted.

Study findings support the utilization of effectuation theory in explaining the scope of internationalization of born globals. Furthermore, the findings attest that the two decision-making logics are interchangeable. On the market level, several context-specific factors have stirred the diversity of markets pursued by born globals. The findings evince that the founders of the born globals perceive the domestic market as small and underdeveloped; therefore, they seek more developed, easily accessible, distant markets.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the internationalization of born globals in an emerging economy context. We find that born globals change their strategies iteratively with the stage of internationalization.