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This study investigates organizational climate under the thriving at work perspective using a network approach. The authors demonstrate how organizational climate functions as a complex system and what relationships between variables from different dimensions are the most important to characterize the construct.

By surveying 119,266 workers from 284 companies based in Brazil, the authors estimated a Gaussian graphical model with LASSO regularization for the complete dataset and for two subsets of cases randomly drawn from the whole dataset. The walktrap algorithm was applied for community detection, and a strong model for measurement invariance was fit to test whether the organizational climate is perceived similarly across groups.

Results show that the networks estimated for both groups are quite consistent, with similar number of communities and items detected. The same pattern was found for the expected influence of each item. Measurement invariance was confirmed, showing that organizational climate is perceived similarly in both groups. The most important community detected and whose items have higher levels of centrality was organizational commitment, followed by a community centered around macro-organizational aspects covering cultural integrity, organizational agility and responsible leadership.

Studies in the field have attested to the possibility of investigating the phenomenon from four (Campbell et al., 1970) to over 80 dimensions (Koys and DeCottis, 1991). As a result, since several dimensions have been produced to investigate organizational climate, there is no consensus on the quality and number of dimensions that should be considered to measure such a vast and multifaceted construct. Built on thriving at work perspective, eight dimensions were devised to cover a wide range of characteristics that distinguish organizational climate, including those related to Industry 4.0 (Coetzee, 2019). However, one may argue that a few dimensions, namely social responsibility, diversity and inclusion, or even more items describing work-life balance could expand the depth and breadth of the instrument and potentially trigger new associations that might eventually impose a new logic to the comprehension of climate as a system. Future studies combining the dimensions investigated in this study with other dimensions are therefore highly recommended for an even more comprehensive investigation.

The results of this investigation show how to apply psychological networks to gain insights into different variables and dimensions of organizational climate. These findings can be used for the development of organizational policies focused on the most relevant aspects of organizational climate. This information would allow organizations to go beyond simply describing the individual frequencies for each item and could even be used to create a weighted scoring model that could prioritize variables with higher levels of centrality.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates organizational climate using psychological networks; it provides a better understanding of the relationships established between items from different dimensions as opposed to the common cause framework whose focus is on the investigation of dimensions separately.

Aldo Leopold's idea of a land ethic was inspired by his work in game management. The land ethic merged ecology with an aesthetic and ethical sensibility. This chapter traces the origins of the idea to Leopold's efforts to devise incentives for private landowners to share their land with wildlife. Scholars have failed to account for how Leopold's affection for the institution of private property shaped his ethical philosophy. Although the land ethic is conventionally understood as a defense of the rights of animals, plants, and the environment they inhabit, it was also a defense of property rights. The limitations of the land ethic as philosophical basis of wildlife management and conservation stem from these contradictory purposes. Although Leopold's ecological aesthetic may help people to visualize an alternative to the violent simplification and diminished biodiversity of the modern form of capitalist agricultural commodity production, his emphasis on voluntary mechanisms has detracted from the objective of liberating wildlife and the land they inhabit from human exploitation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of investor confidence on mutual fund performance in two relatively vulnerable but leading emerging markets, India and Pakistan.

A pooled ordinary least squared (OLS) model is used to look at two alternative measures of investor confidence and test for the relationship between investor confidence and mutual fund returns. To check the robustness of the findings, the authors also implement two-stage least squares and generalized method of moments techniques to control for unobserved heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity problems in the regressors.

The paper finds that the returns of mutual funds are positively associated with investor confidence and an interaction effect exists between investor confidence and persistence in performance. The paper also confirms that returns from mutual funds are associated with different fund characteristics such as fund size, turnover, expense, liquidity, performance persistence and the fund’s age. These findings remain robust to alternative model specifications and measures of investor confidence.

While the previous literature mainly focuses on mutual fund characteristics and the macroeconomic determinants of mutual fund returns, this paper demonstrates that investor confidence plays an important role in determining mutual fund performance. The authors attribute this finding to two relatively unique features of the emerging markets in the study. A lack of awareness of mutual funds as being a low-cost investment vehicle and the interplay of cultural and behavioral changes have prevented investor’s savings from being channeled into investment products, away from gold or property.

In the closing decades of the twentieth, and at the start of the twenty‐first, centuries, attention has again turned to the critical role of intuition in effective managerial decision making. This paper examines the history of intuition in management thought by tracing its origins to Chester I. Barnard. This paper reveals not only the intellectual roots linking Barnard’s conceptualization of intuition in management thought to, among others, the influential works of the economist and sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto; Lawrence Henderson’s influence on Barnard through Henderson’s leadership and direction of the Harvard Pareto Circle; the works of the early pragmatist John Dewey; Humphrey’s The Nature of Learning; and Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Further, Barnard’s conceptualization of intuition foreshadowed by nearly two decades nearly all of Polanyi’s thinking and elaboration of tacit knowledge. This paper also examines Barnard’s and Simon’s differing views on intuition and provides a brief overview of contemporary research on intuition in managerial decision making.

This paper aims (1) to create a sense of resonance with Maida Herman Solomon and her ideas, (2) to inspire a reconsideration of current management history (the unquestioned block box of dominant figures, dominant foci and dominant practices), (3) to bring Solomon’s contributions to clinical social work into present discourse in management and organizational studies and (4) to foster recognition for Solomon in her own field of social work, as forerunner in a developing profession. Guiding this study is the question: “What are Solomon’s key contributions and why is she overlooked?”

This paper features a novel methodology, ficto-feminism. The feminism in ficto-feminism is presented as ontology, epistemology, method and mode of writing. Ficto-feminism combines polemical (or prowoman writing) with aspects of collective biography, autoethnography and fictocriticism. As such, the paper contributes to the emerging feminist tradition of writing differently. The approach is an embodied and reflexive approach that engages with history to investigate the absence of women.

Maida Solomon was an educator, researcher, practitioner and advocate. Her contributions to the development and practice of clinical social work spanned over 60 years, and yet, she is little more than a footnote in the history of the field. Her contributions include authoring and implementing graduate programming, which continues to be the taken for granted training; penning some of the most seminal works and advancing theory; introducing academic and scientific approaches, which saw the field professionalize and adopt new standards; and helping to change the way that society thought about mental health and sexual health. A confluence of factors contributes to her marginalization and neglect: gender, ethnicity, the feminized field of social work and the stigmatized focus for her practice.

The paper combines assertive autobiographical and literary strategies to foreground an overlooked female leader in the field of clinical social work, namely, Maida Solomon. Drawing on biographical material, literature, media and archival material, this paper features a fictional but truthful conversation between the present-day author/writer/historian and the posthumous, historical protagonist (Maida Solomon). In so doing, the engagement with history is both one that deconstructs while reconstructing a historical account with both aesthetic and political implications.

In this chapter a typology is presented that typically describes strategic patent management practices in four development categories. The underlying framework integrates patent functions with strategic planning attitudes. Policy makers can apply it to survey the actual use of patents in order to identify the potential for improvement in SME-owned patent exploitation. Managers of these organisations can use it to evaluate the current patent management practice for taking the next step towards a more active use of patents. Operationalisation of the framework into a questionnaire is grounded in a pilot study of three biotechnology firms, differing in size and age. The result has consequently been applied in a case study consisting of 16 small-sized biopharmaceutical companies in the Netherlands. After presenting results from this sample of patent management practices, we present our findings and discuss the validity and use of the typology for the above-mentioned purposes.

This study aims to evaluate and compare the quality of work life (QWL) of nurses, in pre- and post-COVID-19 pandemic situations.

The study adopts a descriptive research design. Data were collected during the pre- and post-pandemic periods. The target sampling unit of the study comprises nurses working in Bangalore city, Karnataka, India. The minimum sample size was determined (Bartlett et al., 2001) as 385. The scale validation is carried out. The factors for the present study were explored using exploratory factor analysis and confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. Model fitness (proposed measurement model) is ensured by using fit indices. The linear regression method was used to measure the level of QWL of nurses.

The present study noted that key factors that affects the QWL of nursing staff are work condition; work environment; work-life balance; compensation and reward; career development; job satisfaction and security; organization culture; relationship among co-workers and stress. Further, it is noticed that QWL of nurses pre-COVID-19 pandemic is 87.2%, while post-COVID-19 pandemic, it is 67%.

Present study can be extended to address the same research question by considering sampling unit such as therapist, technicians and sanitarians who have equally undergone tremendous pressure during pandemic.

The study outcome provides references for organizations engaged in health services to understand the extreme job conditions posed by pandemic. The constructive inspiration (physio-social and organizational support) reinforces the nurses to continue in their professions by decreasing negative impact.

The research paper extends the contributions of Hwang (2002), Nikeghbal et al. (2021), Howie–Esquivel et al. (2022) and Rania et al. (2023) and add to the existing body of the QWL literature. The outcome of the research records the prevailing conditions of pandemic and its effect on changes in work environment with specific reference to health-care sector.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Dimensions of organizational climate vary in their influence of how workers perceive the firm. Adopting an approach which combines psychological networks analysis and Thriving at Work constructs can help practitioners ascertain which dimensions have greatest scope to increase the level of organizational commitment among employees.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

One of the emerging roles of management accountants in organizations is the design and operation of their organization's knowledge management system (KMS) that ensures the strategic utilization and management of its knowledge resources. Knowledge-based organizations face identifiable general risks but those whose primary product is knowledge, knowledge-products organizations (KPOs), additionally face unique risks. The management accountants’ role in the management of knowledge is even more critical in such organizations. We review the literature and survey a small convenient sample of knowledge-products organizations to identify the general risks knowledge-based organizations face and the additional risks unique to KPOs. The general risks of managing knowledge include inappropriate corporate information policies, employee turnover, and lack of data transferability. Additional risks unique to KPOs include the short life span (shelf-life) of knowledge products, the challenging nature of knowledge experts, and the vulnerability of intellectual property. The paper includes recommendations for management accountants in KPOs to develop and maintain competitive advantage through their KMS. These include developing enterprise-wide knowledge policies, fostering collaboration and documentation, addressing knowledge security, and evaluating the effectiveness of the KMS.