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This article develops a benefit curve and a cost curve that relate the strength of a CEO’s social tie to its benefits and costs respectively, and thereby develops a cost-benefit framework for understanding the strengths of CEO social ties. In particular, this framework helps address the basic, yet largely unanswered questions of why one tie is stronger than another and why a CEO utilizes social ties to a greater extent in one context than in another.

As a conceptual paper, this article develops a cost-benefit framework for understanding the strengths of CEO social ties.

This article suggests an important shift of research focus and a different way of thinking regarding tie strength. Specifically, it suggests that the more fundamental question might not be whether a social tie is beneficial or one tie is more beneficial than another, but rather what its optimal strength is, given the underlying relational factors such as resource dependence and demographic similarity. Relatedly, the question might not be whether a CEO’s level of utilization of social ties has a more positive effect on firm performance in one context than in another, but rather what the optimal level of utilization is, given the contextual factors such as environmental uncertainty.

This article addresses a widely accepted, yet potentially misleading understanding of the relationship between a tie’s strength and its benefits (i.e. the strength of weak ties argument). By doing so, it develops a benefit curve that integrates into a coherent, parsimonious function three seemingly conflicting key ideas in the literature (i.e. the overall notion that social ties are beneficial, the strength of weak ties argument, and the liability of strong ties argument). Relatedly, it develops a coherent framework for understanding the strengths of CEO social ties.

This chapter presents a research study which explored the experiences of teenage secondary school girls in England whose schooling was disrupted by the pandemic and implementation of lockdowns. We begin by setting the context for school-based research with children and argue children and young people experience ever-increasing pressure to act as redemptive future agents and thus sites of capital accumulation. Despite this we go on to argue that there were important moments, practices and experiences of care during the lockdown periods that can be harnessed to help resist the capitalist logics that exert such pressures upon current school children. We explain the process of using arts-based methods to engage pupils in discussing their experiences and how these methods are based on caring practices which we argue are essential for research on care. Our findings suggest the girls had positive experiences of schooling and lockdowns and we present some significant examples of caring agency that young people demonstrated in contrast to the negative media discourses about home learning. We do not seek to obscure the difficulties that these young people experienced, but in highlighting their caring agency, we demonstrate the complexity of lockdown experiences and illustrate the role and importance of care in the unbounded space of the school.

The appearance of social media in small and medium enterprise (SME) business operations seems to be increasing in recent years. SME owners have started to understand that digital marketing tools can benefit their businesses significantly. Hence, in this study, we explore further the relationship between organisations and customers, and how SMEs use social media as an opportunity to develop their enterprises. We report the results by relying on qualitative methods to explore the insights from a wider stakeholder perspective. The findings contribute to the existing literature in agreement with the latest theories that SMEs in Greece are aware of the hidden opportunities and try to apply branding with the combination of social media. This study explores further the role of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in a business transition, customers' experience and competitive business advantage.

The extant literature emphasizes that the perspective of bricolage is significantly augmenting the core of entrepreneurship research, and, per se, it has made considerable contributions to understanding resource mobilization and organizational processes in entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurial bricolage literature lacks a unified and holistic conceptual framework that could represent a coherence of diverse bricolage forms and their related capabilities in entrepreneurship. To address this issue, this study aims to develop a comprehensive typology framework of entrepreneurial bricolage based on the theoretical synthesis of the prior research.

By comparing and synthesizing the existing bricolage forms into a holistic and persistent typology, the authors present an integrated framework of 13 bricolage capabilities that contributes to resource acquisition and resource mobilization as well as facilitate the entrepreneurial processes of opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation in firms.

The study synthesizes a wide array of research on entrepreneurial bricolage for shaping the resource acquisition and resource mobilization processes in entrepreneurial ventures and presents a typology-based framework for further discussion and research. By mapping the existing research and relevant dimensions into a typology-based entrepreneurial bricolage framework, the study extends and contributes to the current theorizing and conceptual building.

The study would help practitioners and researchers to recognize bricolage capabilities and the common ties among them, leading to further advances in entrepreneurship theory and practice.

As the body of knowledge regarding entrepreneurial bricolage has grown, so has the number of its different forms, concepts and constructs. The authors recognize that there is distinctiveness as well as overlaps among diverse forms, concepts and constructs of entrepreneurial bricolage. Further, the authors identify a new bricolage capability that has not until now been positioned in the extant frameworks.

This paper aims to discuss the scholarship over the past 30 years on what used to be called Melanesian warfare or “tribal fighting” and is termed in this paper “intergroup conflict” in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. The paper categorises the drivers of intergroup conflict that make up the landscape for conflict in the Highlands. It starts with cultural factors and the understandings about conflict that have long been used to explain such violence, then adds newer factors. It argues that while the individual existence of each driver is important, far more important is the way in which they interact with each other in reinforcing feedback loops that propel the actors involved towards violence.

The paper is based on a thorough review of the scholarly and grey literature on the topic, drawing from the fields of anthropology, criminology, political science, law, justice and peacebuilding.

The overall finding of the paper is that the nature of intergroup conflict, its scale and dynamics, has changed considerably over the past 30 years, most prominently in the entanglement of the state with local-level conflicts. This has significantly affected the nature of intergroup conflict today, deepening the attractors towards violence and conflict, while weakening the ability of existing state and non-state systems to prevent it. The picture that emerges is one in which the interconnectivity of factors promoting violence has intensified, the rate of change is accelerating and levels of violence are amplified.

This paper is an original work.

This study aims to examine the effect of political conditions on the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance in two sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, Ghana and Kenya.

This study used a panel data methodology, examining data from a sample of 72 companies (Ghana: 25 and Kenya: 47) from 2018 to 2022. This study used panel quantile regression and the Huber M-estimation robust least squares regression methods.

The research reported that larger boards, diversity and ownership concentration do not affect business performance while board independence improves corporate success in both countries. The findings about chief executive officer (CEO) duality were mixed. In Ghana, CEO duality has a positive effect on firm performance, but in Kenya, the study finds that CEO duality hurts firms’ performance. The results found that higher levels of institutional ownership decreased firm performance in both countries. The research found that Ghana’s political environment had a greater impact on corporate governance and business performance nexus than Kenya’s.

The research is limited to Ghana and Kenya. This study emphasises the necessity for governments in both countries to maintain a stable political environment, implement policies that encourage economic and policy continuity and reduce political uncertainty to improve business conditions.

This study emphasises the necessity for governments in both countries to maintain a stable political environment, implement policies that encourage economic and policy continuity, and reduce political uncertainty to improve business conditions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is unique because it is the first in SSA to address a research gap by investigating a comparative analysis of the relationship between corporate governance, political environments and firm performance in two distinct countries with different political situations.

This study aims to investigate the impact of stakeholders’ nonfinancial resources (NFRs) on companies’ profitability, filling a significant gap in the literature regarding the role of NFRs in value creation.

Data from 76 organizations from 2017 to 2019 were collected and analyzed. Four primary NFRs and their key value drivers were identified, representing core elements that support different dimensions of a company’s performance. Statistical tests examined the relationship between stakeholders’ NFRs and financial performance measures.

When analyzed collectively and individually, the results reveal a significant positive influence of stakeholders’ NFRs on a firm’s profitability. Higher importance assigned to NFRs correlates with a higher return on sales.

This study contributes to the literature by empirically bridging the gap between stakeholder theory and the resource-based view, addressing the intersection of these perspectives. It also provides novel insights into how stakeholders’ NFRs impact profitability, offering valuable implications for research and managerial practice. It suggests that managers should integrate nonfinancial measures of NFRs within their performance measurement system to manage better and sustain companies’ value-creation process.

We examine whether the social capital of the area where a firm’s headquarters is located affects that firm’s credit rating. Given that credit rating agencies only infrequently visit a firm’s headquarters, it is pertinent to investigate whether this soft information is considered.

In order to test whether social capital affects firms’ credit ratings, we estimate the following model using an ordinary least squares regression: Rating_it = β₀ + β₁ Social Capital_it + ∑ Controls_it + Industry fixed Effects_i + State−year fixed effects_it + ε_it. We follow recent accounting and finance research and measure societal-level social capital at the county level (Jha & Chen, 2015; Cheng et al., 2017; Hasan et al., 2017a, b; Jha, 2017; Hossain et al., 2023). We use four inputs to calculate social capital: (1) voter turnout in presidential elections, (2) the census response rate, (3) the number of social and civic associations and (4) the number of nongovernmental organizations in each county.

W provide evidence that social capital has a causal effect on credit ratings. Interesting is that this effect is not merely localized to firms near credit rating agencies. We also find that the effect of social capital on credit ratings is concentrated among firms with moderate levels of default risk. For firms with extremely low or extremely high default risk, social capital appears irrelevant to credit ratings, suggesting that social capital plays a larger role in more ambiguous contexts or when greater judgment is required. We demonstrate that the effect of social capital on credit ratings disappears when the rating agency has extensive experience in a particular region. This result is consistent with rating agencies stereotyping certain regions of the USA and using that information to inform their ratings when they have less experience in the region. Finally, we find that while social capital is associated with credit ratings, it has no association with future defaults.

Though we cautiously followed prior studies and were confident in our data construction process, it is possible that we are measuring social capital with error.

Our findings suggest that credit rating agencies could benefit from reevaluating how they incorporate non-financial information, such as social capital, into their assessment processes, potentially leading to more nuanced and equitable credit ratings. Additionally, firms could use these insights to bolster their engagement with local communities and stakeholders, thereby enhancing their creditworthiness and attractiveness to investors as part of a broader corporate strategy. The findings also underline the need for regulatory frameworks that foster transparency and the inclusion of social factors in credit evaluations, which could lead to more comprehensive and fair financial reporting and rating systems.

Recognizing that social capital can influence economic outcomes like credit ratings may encourage both communities and firms to invest more in building and maintaining social networks, trust and civic engagement. By demonstrating how social capital impacts credit ratings, our research highlights the potential to address inequalities faced by regions with lower social capital, guiding targeted social and economic development initiatives. Moreover, understanding that regional social capital can influence credit ratings might affect public perception and trust in the impartiality and accuracy of these ratings, which is essential for maintaining market stability and integrity.

Our research provides fresh insights into how social capital, an intangible asset, influences credit ratings – a topic not extensively explored in existing literature. This sheds light on the dynamics between social structures and financial outcomes. Methodologically, our use of the 9/11 attacks as an exogenous shock to measure changes in social capital introduces a novel approach to study similar phenomena. Additionally, our findings contrast with prior studies such as Jha and Chen (2015) and Hossain et al. (2023), by delving deeper into how proximity and familiarity impact financial assessments differently, enriching academic discourse and refining existing theories on the role of local knowledge in financial decisions.

The purpose of this study is to begine to address this question. The concept of the ideas-informed society (IIS) represents a desired situation in which citizens actively and critically engage with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. Its successful actualisation is dependent on high-quality educational opportunity at all stages of the life course. Social networks represent our connections to one another. Features of our social networks impact on how we engage with ideas. For instance, homophily dictates that individuals form networks with others seen as being like themselves. A key question, however, is whether there are forms of homophily that, by the nature of those they bring together, promote ideas engagement by individuals and the implications of consequent networks for the IIS?

This study re-analysed survey data from 1,000 voting-age citizens in England. Focusing on friendship networks, the authors used a structural equation model approach to explore the existence and potency of homophilic friendship networks; whether such networks drive respondents’ ideas-engagement with friends; and whether ideas discussions with friends impacts on the importance respondents place on staying up to date.

Political homophily has the strongest influence on whether people discuss new ideas with their friends (ES = 0.326, p < 0.01). In turn, ideas discussion has a significant impact on the extent to which people value engaging with ideas (ES = −0.345, p < 0.01).

The authors consider whether ideas-related discussion within politically homophilous networks is problematic for the IIS and what is required from education systems if we are to build individuals’ capacity to engage with ideas while escaping echo chambers.

This study examined whether officers’ perceptions of the effect of BWCs on procedural justice, police lawfulness, police legitimacy, compliance with police and law, and cooperation with police differed by type of law enforcement agency.

The data were collected from a survey administered to 152 police officers from State Police, City Police, University Police, and Sheriff’s Office.

The multivariate analyses found that City Police officers hold significantly more positive perceptions than University Police (on police legitimacy and cooperation with police), State Police (except for police lawfulness, on all other outcomes), and Sheriffs’ Office officers (on procedural justice and police legitimacy). Additionally, Sheriffs’ Office officers hold significantly more positive perceptions than University Police (on police legitimacy, cooperation with police, and compliance with police) and State Police (on police legitimacy, cooperation with police, compliance with police and law). No significant difference was found between University Police and State Police officers.

This is the first study that examines whether officers’ perceptions of the outcomes differ by type of law enforcement agency.