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The purpose of this article is to analyse the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality by focusing on motivational and incentive aspects.

The paper applies a game‐theoretic model of procurement decisions allowing for variable degrees of vertical integration and confronts the implications of its analysis with HR outsourcing data on a large sample of German firms.

The paper presents evidence for HR service quality being generally higher when procured from an external instead of an in‐house provider. Furthermore, the relationship between HR outsourcing and service quality is considerably stronger if the provided services are complex and if the potential for monitoring an internal provider is low.

The findings have immediate practical implications concerning the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services: the more complex the HR service under consideration and the lower the potential to monitor its in‐house provision, the more attractive is the external provision of HR services.

While most of the literature on HR outsourcing is based on transaction cost theory or follows a resource‐based approach, this paper uses a game‐theoretic model to analyse the make‐or‐buy decision of HR services, allowing the incentives of an internal or external provider to deliver high‐quality services to be focused on. Furthermore, for the empirical analysis the paper uses an original data set comprising more than 1,000 German firms.

The purpose of this paper is to report on two research studies that explored how older adult residents in assisted living facilities in the United Kingdom (UK) experienced changes to their social activity and well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

A qualitative design was used and combined interview data from 13 residents across five assisted living facilities in the UK. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Four themes were developed. The first theme “being locked in” explores the reduction in social contact and feelings of imprisonment experienced by assisted living residents. The second theme “keeping everyone safe” discusses the ways in which isolation was rationalised by older adults through drawing on narratives around safety and protection of others. The third theme “finding new ways to connect” illustrates how learning new skills enabled assisted living residents to maintain connections with others and highlights the novel opportunities for connection presented by communal living. The final theme “keeping a positive outlook” underlines how positive thinking and hope for the future enabled residents to cope with isolation.

The findings from this study present a novel insight into the experience of assisted living residents during Covid-19 restrictions. While it is known that isolation during lockdowns had negative well-being implications for community-dwelling older adults, this study highlights some of the ways that communal living was protective for assisted living resident well-being.

There is evidence that music programmes can have a positive impact on people in contact with the criminal justice system. However, little attention has been paid to the potential role of music programmes as people leave prison and re-enter the community. Providing support for former prisoners “through-the-gate” is important to aid resettlement and reduce the risk of reoffending. This paper aims to present research on a programme called Sounding Out: a two-year, London-based programme providing ex-prisoners with longer-term rehabilitative opportunities upon their release to bridge the gap between life inside and outside of prison.

The study aimed to understand the impact of the Sounding Out programme on ex-prisoners from the perspective of participants, staff and family members. Semi-structured interviews took place with 17 people: ten participants across two Sounding Out projects; six members of staff – three from the Irene Taylor Trust, two musicians and one former prison worker; and one family member of a participant.

The research provides an understanding of the impact of involvement in a carefully designed programme of music creation, skills development and work placements. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in three key themes: personal impact, focus and direction and interpersonal relationships. The findings are consistent with the body of research that demonstrates the impact of music programmes on prisoners.

The current study adds to the relatively limited body of evidence on the role of music programmes in the reintegration of former prisoners into the community.

The focus of this chapter lies in exploring the views Greek Higher Education academics delivering marketing modules in state universities hold with regard to how they conceptualise ‘creativity’; it also examines whether and how academics incorporate teaching creativity in their curriculum and professional practices. Various concepts and contexts pertaining to creativity in education are introduced, emphasising creativity enhancement through marketing teaching and learning. Although educators recognise the critical role of creativity, the methods to enable the cultivation of students’ creativity remain elusive. In the light of these matters, a qualitative approach has been adopted with online structured interviews, which led to the formation of a thematic map through NVivo; the reflexive thematic analysis applied resulted in five final themes, entailing nine sub-themes, which in turn reveal the core patterns and Greek marketing academics’ perceptions on teaching creativity, along with their instructional practices and the challenges they face in this endeavour.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay between firm boundary decisions and the management of both efficiency and flexibility and the implications this has for modular design in the provision of advanced services.

A single case study in the defence industry employs semi-structured interviews supplemented by secondary data. Data are analysed using thematic analysis.

The findings provide a process model of boundary negotiations for the design of efficient and flexible modular systems consisting of three phases; boundary ambiguity, boundary defences and boundary alignment.

The study provides a process framework for boundary negotiations to help organisations navigate the management of both-and efficiency and flexibility in the provision of advanced services.

Drawing upon modularity, paradox and systems theory, this article provides novel theoretical insight into the relationship between firm boundary decisions and the management of both-and efficiency vs. flexibility in the provision of product upgrade services.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of how the institutions of family and culture play out in shaping family business practices. This study focusses on family business led by poor entrepreneurial women in a context of extreme poverty.

The methods included participant observation, focus groups and interviews in two poor villages in South-East Nigeria. Thematic analysis was used to develop insight about how the institutions of family and culture shape family business practices.

The analysis demonstrated that the family, with associated responsibilities and norms, is a powerful institution that determines women’s role and business behaviours. Poor entrepreneurial women depend on the family to run their business, but also use the business to sustain the family. They make use of their limited resources (e.g. time, money, skills) to meet families’ basic needs and pay for necessities such as children’s education. These are family priorities, rather than maximising profits.

The study was limited to rural Africa, in particular to a small sample of rural women entrepreneurs in South-East Nigeria, and as such, the findings are not necessarily generalisable, but may be at a conceptual level.

The study has highlighted the need to tailor micro-enterprise development programmes that facilitate change, add values to entrepreneurial activities and support women to fulfil their roles and ease institutional pressures affecting rural women economic activities. In short, such programmes need to account for cultural institutions.

This study presents insights of the influence of institutions (family and culture) in business led by rural Nigerian women.

This research fills a gap in the family business literature by offering conceptual insights about how the institutional obligations of family mean that micro-enterprising should be conceptualised as an entity, rather than as a family in business or the family business.

The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of why the poorest, most disadvantaged groups such as rural African women, benefit less from microfinance. The authors focus on the perception and experiences of ordinary rural entrepreneurial women on microfinance in a context of extreme poverty and where family responsibility and economic activities are closely intertwined.

The authors purposefully sampled 15 poor females with small businesses in two Nigerian villages. The key characteristic guiding the sampling was that the respondents had to be poor. The authors held two focus groups and ten interviews to capture their experience and understanding of microfinance. The authors used thematic analysis to establish patterns in the data.

For poor entrepreneurial women, a livelihood for survival, putting food on the table and paying school fees are priorities, not business growth. They see microcredit as debt and a great risk that could lead to irreversible losses. Family responsibilities for basic consumption needs of the household can affect their ability to repay loans; perceived dangers of microcredit may outweigh potential benefits.

The theories, especially functionalist economic theory, do not take account of microfinance users’ experiences.

Microfinance should be aware that the poorest perceive microcredit differently and should eliminate the intimidating barriers raised to them. Instead of providing a means for the poor to alleviate poverty or coping strategies for them to manage cash flows and risks, microfinance causes fear and anxiety by demanding high rate of return in a very short period of time.

The very poorest, who should be the beneficiaries of microfinance, are less likely to be able to benefit. The condition of poverty creates different realities for those at the base of the pyramid.

This research questions the neoliberal rationality assumptions that microfinance rest on; the paper fills a gap in the literature, i.e. how the potential borrowers themselves living in deep-rooted poverty perceive and experience microfinance.

This study compared approaches to school closures in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru), describing the impact on the health and educational wellbeing of school-age children and youth, and evaluating their approaches in regard to continuing education through the pandemic.

We collected 75 publicly available documents including scientific and gray literature (government documents and news releases), that referred to school closures and their impact on children’s health and wellbeing. We did thematic analyses using open, axial, and selective coding and applied the latest Health Promoting Schools standards and indicators to the findings.

Results showed that countries followed epidemiological reasons for prioritizing school closures while adopting some policies that abide by Health Promoting School principles. While they emphasized the need to reopen schools so that instruction could continue, school closures were among the longest in the world. The most significant impacts on wellbeing identified in the four countries were related to food security and mental health.

This study focused on a particular set of documents, and it may not capture the full spectrum of relevant information in different contexts or regions.

By comparing school closures approaches among four Latin American countries, this study highlights the importance of context-specific interventions. In a post-pandemic era, lessons learned from these experiences should help foster more resilient and inclusive educational systems and explore the paths forward for following the new Health Promoting Schools framework in the region.

Cross-country qualitative analyses on this topic are rare. This study adds to the knowledge base by eliciting lessons for future health education research and policy efforts.

This study analyses the effects of firm efficiency on firm performance and how controlling shareholders moderate the link between the two variables.

This study employs data envelopment analysis to estimate firm efficiency and the panel regression method to assess the hypothesised relationships among 1,295 firm-year observations of publicly listed firms in Malaysia from 2015 to 2019.

The results indicate that firm efficiency (technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency) has mixed relationships with firm performance (return on assets, market-to-book ratio and operating cash flows), all of which are being moderated by controlling shareholdings.

This study highlights the importance of assessing firm efficiency as the key success factor for improving firm performance. Industrial managers should manage efficiently their resources or operating costs in achieving their corporate financial goals. Moreover, this study notes the presence of controlling shareholders, who can be either self-interested or company goal aligned.

This study suggests becoming efficient in transforming inputs into outputs is a prerequisite before investigating accrual-based and cash-based firm performance measures, and the presence of controlling shareholders matters in these regards.

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of healthcare professionals’ practice, where learning is taking place when a digital artefact is implemented for identification of patients’ cognitive impairment. The use of digital artefacts is increasing in various workplaces, to include professionals in healthcare. This paper aims to explore the following research question: How is the professional learning unfolding in patient-based work when a digital artefact transforms the practice?

Various data collection methods are used for this study, consisting of dialogue meetings, interviews and a reference-group meeting. Thematic analysis is used to inductively bring forth the themes of the collected data.

Professionals’ knowledge and experience are of vital importance in learning and changing work practices. Together with their ability to reflect on changes, their knowledge and experience constitute the prefiguration when the introduction of a digital application brings about indeterminacy in the work practice.

This paper makes a contribution to practice-based research as it consolidates previous research and identifies professionals knowledge and learning in a healthcare context. This can be used to further explore and advance the field, as well as to establish the evidence-based importance of transforming practices based on implementation of digital artefacts.