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Increasingly, we believe, B schools are at a crossroads and will have to take a hard look at their value propositions. (Datar et al., 2011)

Increasingly, we believe, B schools are at a crossroads and will have to take a hard look at their value propositions. (Datar et al., 2011)

While this was said more than a decade ago, it could not be further from the truth even today. In early 2020, the pandemic, a black swan-like event, struck suddenly, forcing educational institutions to adapt in the blink of an eye. Business schools (B-Schools) too had to transition and adapt to a new learning normal. Platforms like Webex, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc. became the new classrooms across the globe. The pandemic forced the industry to change and enabled the adoption of technology much faster than what was estimated. The metaphor of the chrysalis is apt in the context of B-Schools as they emerged out of the pandemic. The new order required B-Schools to relook at teaching pedagogy, learning mechanisms, methodologies for evaluation, collaborations, and industry connect. While digital literacy gave way to digital citizenship, there was a need to nurture it responsibly. As students move forward in their journey of becoming digital citizens, it becomes necessary to evolve norms and practices that will be acceptable.

As the application of crowdsourcing contests grows, leveraging the participation of superstars (i.e. solvers who have outstanding performance records in a crowdsourcing platform) becomes an emergent approach for managers to solve crowdsourced problems. Although much is known about superstars’ performance implications, it remains unclear whether and how their participation affects the size of a contest crowd for a crowdsourcing contest. Based on social contagion theory, this paper aims to examine the impact of superstars’ participation on the crowd size and studies how this impact varies across solvers with different heterogeneity in terms of skills, exposure and cultural proximity with superstars in crowdsourcing contests.

This paper uses secondary data from one crowdsourcing platform that includes 6,587 innovation contests to examine superstars’ main and contextual effects on the crowd size of a contest.

Our results reveal that superstars’ participation positively affects the crowd size of a contest in general. This finding suggests that social contagion is a fundamental mechanism underlying crowd formation in crowdsourcing contests. Our results also indicate that in contests that involve multiple superstars, superstars’ effect on crowd size becomes negative when we simultaneously consider other solvers’ heterogeneity in terms of skills, exposure and cultural background, and this negative effect will be intensified by increases in the skill gap, extent of exposure and cultural proximity between superstars and other solvers in the same contest.

Our research enhances the understanding of the influence of superstars and the mechanism underlying the emergence of contest crowds in crowdsourcing contests and contributes knowledge to better understand social contagion in a competitive setting. The results are meaningful for sourcing managers and platform supervisors to design contests and supervise crowd size in crowdsourcing contests.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development underscores eradicating global poverty (Goal#1) and empowering women and girls (Goal#5) to foster sustainable, inclusive communities (Goal#11). The World Bank recognises female entrepreneurship as a catalyst for global economic growth, poverty reduction and gender equity. This chapter delves into the challenges hindering female entrepreneurship, obstructing poverty alleviation and community sustainability efforts worldwide. Public–private collaborations are crucial to support women in launching start-ups, adopting new technologies, enhancing digital skills and accessing financing in the era of Industry 4.0.

Our focus is on women entrepreneurship in BRICS nations due to their diverse growth trajectories and global economic significance. Employing a qualitative approach, we analyse public and private initiatives promoting female entrepreneurship in BRICS countries. Our findings highlight both commonalities and distinctions in their strategies and policies, implicitly contributing to poverty reduction and social and economic growth. This chapter not only identifies barriers faced by women entrepreneurs but also underscores factors fuelling their ventures. It offers a practical toolkit for scholars, policymakers and practitioners (entrepreneurs and consultants) to devise tailored strategies and actions for local growth and intervention. The study comprises four parts: the introduction, setting the chapter's goal and previewing outcomes; the second part, exploring female entrepreneurship as a key to poverty alleviation and community sustainability; the core, the third part, unveiling in-depth BRICS country analysis; and the conclusion, summarising implications and highlighting avenues for further research.

In light of the growing emphasis on sustainability in higher education, this paper aims to explore the effectiveness of sustainability university rankings, specifically focusing on sustainable development (SD), to understand their impact on advancing universities’ sustainability goals and address gaps in practical implications and limitations.

This study examines sustainability rankings in higher education (HE) through document analysis. Chosen for significance, these rankings were evaluated for regional participation, criteria and the top 20 universities. The method involved scrutinising official ranking websites for diverse perspectives on sustainability. The results are classified into three categories: regional participation, assessment criteria and top universities in the latest iterations.

The findings show that sustainability rankings are widely spread, and their existence has led to an increased motivation for universities to further engage in efforts in the field of SD. This study offers suggestions for optimising the role of promoting SD principles and practices in HE.

This comprehensive assessment sheds light on rankings’ operations and success levels. It makes a significant contribution to the literature, providing an unprecedented overview of analysed rankings and on sustainability assessment and their impact. This analysis will be valuable for universities towards the integration of SD principles and practices into the HE environment.

Historically, global events have always provided a setback to the existing mechanism of any business operation. The magnitude of such variation may be different from industry to industry but sustainable outlook afterwards any global crisis calls for a re-look into strategies. Similar experience persisted when sudden drop of brick-and-mortar stores during corona crisis came into picture. Post corona, the entire working style of supply chain companies revisited a virtual set-up. The delivery partners like Dunzo, Blinkit, Zypp, Delhivery, Ecomexpress have transformed the way logistics used to work before COVID-19. On the other hand, recent Russia–Ukraine war has posed further global challenges like that of food shortage, supply challenges, global inflation, recessionary trends worldwide. An investor earlier confident of exponential wealth creation in supply chain companies may have to rethink about resilient strategies while creating a portfolio with companies from supply chain industry. In the present study, a comparative analysis has been made by use of exponential Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to explore the impact of both these crisis on returns from supply chain companies. The output of this chapter shall be beneficial for investors, asset management companies, investment brokers and other portfolio managers.

This paper explores the association between directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance) and management tone manipulation.

This study uses data from A-share listed non-financial companies from 2009 to 2021 as its sample for empirical tests. In addition, the study relies on text analysis and the construction of models to investigate the relationship between D&O insurance and management tone manipulation.

The authors find that the purchase of D&O insurance will lead to management tone manipulation in the “management discussion and analysis” part of companies’ annual reports, and operating risk and agent cost are the two paths for the effect. Further analysis shows that having a male CEO and employing high-quality auditors can weaken the positive impact of D&O insurance on tone manipulation.

This paper provides a new approach for studying the literature related to D&O insurance and management behavior, and the findings enrich our understanding of the influencing factors and the mechanism of management tone manipulation, thus revealing policy implications for further standardization of the terms and system of D&O insurance in China.

Value creation in management education has been argued to happen throughout an academic programme. This study adopts a learner-centric value-perspective approach that advances the view that value creation is not a unitary occurrence but accrues in different forms in each phase of the learner journey process. As learners progress through a management programme, we focus on four key phases in the learner’s journey – pre-admission, pre-programme commencement, programme duration, and post-programme completion. These phases correspond to the learner’s transitioning from a prospect to having secured admission to actively attending classes to having graduated. Accordingly, in each phase of the learner journey in an Indian management education programme, this study (a) maps the institute’s actions, (b) identifies the learner touchpoints, and (c) evaluates the potential learner engagement levels from the respective touchpoints. This study categorizes the emergent value in each phase in the learner journey as the exploration of value, the commencement of value, the formation and augmentation of value, and the accrual of value. The study then concludes with identifying future research areas. Such an approach to deconstructing value can aid management institutions in nurturing talented and engaged learners.

This study explores technology trends and challenges in the liner shipping industry through the lens of blockchain technology, addressing gaps in the literature with a comprehensive analysis. By examining blockchain applications in shipping and port contexts, the research fills a significant void, covering trend identification, legal considerations, and implementation challenges. This study extends to examining links between current blockchain projects, revealing trends and challenges in technology applications. The conclusion synthesizes implications and future trajectories of this transformative technology within the broader context of Industry 4.0, positioning this research at the forefront of advancements in maritime technology and supply chain management (SCM).

The extensive brand associations research lacks organisation when it comes to the used information cues. This paper aims to systematically map and categorise the brand knowledge associations’ components and develop a typology applicable to any brand.

Using the restaurant and hotel industries in four different European cultural clusters as contexts, this work uses well-established systematic qualitative analysis approaches to categorise, code and model pictorial content in two studies. A four-stage sampling process identified Instagram brand-posted signals (photos), 243 from 26 restaurants in Madrid, Paris and Rome for study one and 390 from 29 hotels in Moscow, Berlin and Stockholm for study two. Adhering to relevant guidelines, the manual coding procedures progressed from 246 for restaurants and 231 for hotels initially generated free information coding inductive codes to a theory-informed categorisation. Quantitative analysis complemented the qualitative analysis, revealing the information cues relative utilisation.

For both studies, the analysis produced a typology consisting of two high-level and five lower-level brand knowledge association categories, namely: (a) brand characteristics consisting of the brand as a symbol, the brand as a product and the brand as a person, and (b) brand imagery consisting of user imagery and experience imagery. The five lower-level categories comprise of sub-categories and dimensions, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the brand associations conceptual structure relevant to brands operating in any industry.

Researchers can use this typology to holistically encapsulate brand associations or design projects aiming to deepen brand knowledge association aspects/dimensions understanding.

Managers can use this typology to portray brands. Some of the identified lower-level categories and/or sub-categories and dimensions are likely to need customisation to fit specific contexts.

The suggested categorisation offers a solid, comprehensive framework for effectively categorising and coding brand knowledge associations and proposes a new theory in the form of a typology.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need for educational innovation and digitalization during crises where many educational institutions were forced to shift to online and remote learning. This chapter is a discursive review of problems and solutions and key trends that have emerged because of crises. One of the key benefits of educational innovation and digitalization during crises is the ability to continue providing education and learning opportunities to students even when traditional face-to-face learning is not possible. Educational institutions need to invest in building resilient online learning ecosystems to ensure that education can continue uninterrupted even in the face of unforeseen disruptions. This ecosystem should include robust technological infrastructure, a diverse range of digital resources and tools, and training and support for educators. Ultimately, a resilient online learning ecosystem is not just a response to crises but a proactive investment in the future of education.