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ECOM, Inc., is our fictitious name for the industrial products division of a real Fortune 500 corporation. Over the past ten years the company, and indeed the whole industry, has witnessed little technological innovation and no significant developments in operations or strategic planning. ECOM operates in a highly competitive environment with no dominant market leader, and it has suffered operating losses for the past three years. While ECOM has recently divested itself of a medium‐sized plant, senior management continues to be concerned about the under‐utilization of the remaining four production facilities. The situation could seriously affect both profitability and employee morale.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.

Generation A individuals with Asperger's (high-functioning autism) might increase their chance that their skills fit with job requirements (person-job fit) by considering various nonacademic and popular lists of Asperger's-friendly jobs. Asperger's “celebrity” and professor Temple Grandin's list of 51 jobs was investigated using Asperger's-related job characteristics from the US Department of Labor's O*NET job description database. Using a factor analysis resulting in six Asperger's-related job characteristics, social orientation was the only factor that significantly predicted Grandin's judgment of what is an Asperger's-related job based on a binomial logistic regression analysis. Another analysis using O*NET data showed a wide variety of jobs that were most and least associated with each of the six factors. Study limitations and future research follow the analyses.

The study of international business has become increasingly important in recent years. So important that the American Assembly of the Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has called for the internationalisation of business curricula. In 1992 and beyond, successful business people will treat the entire world as their domain. No one country can operate in an economic vacuum. Any economic measures taken by one country can affect the global economy. This book is designed to challenge the reader to develop a global perspective of international business. Globalisation is by no means a new concept, but there are many new factors that have contributed to its recently accelerated growth. Among them, the new technologies in communication and transport that have resulted in major expansions of international trade and investment. In the future, the world market will become predominant. There are bound to be big changes in the world economy. For instance the changes in Eastern Europe and the European Community during the 1990s. With a strong knowledge base in international business, future managers will be better prepared for the new world market. This book introduces its readers to the exciting and rewarding field of international management and international corporations. It is written in contemporary, easy‐to‐understand language, avoiding abstract terminology; and is organised into five sections, each of which includes a number of chapters that cover a subject involving activities that cross national boundaries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that can facilitate agility in higher education and to analyze the interrelationship between the factors.

A structured model of factors facilitating agility in higher education was developed using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM). Cross-impact matrix multiplication (MICMAC) analysis helped in classifying the factors on the basis of their driving and dependency power.

An extensive literature review and expert opinion helped in identifying eight enablers that can promote agility in higher education. The ability to sense the environment, organizational structure, adoption of ICT, organizational learning, human resource strategies, leadership, readiness to change and collaboration with the stakeholders were the eight factors identified. The structural model revealed leadership as the most crucial enabler followed by human resource strategies and organizational structure.

The model has incorporated and prioritized all the crucial drivers of agility that can help universities and colleges design, adopt and implement policies and practices that would facilitate agility.

So far, the research on agility in higher education has looked into each factor in isolation. This research provides a comprehensive list of the factors and establishes the interplay between the factors making this study new and original.

This study aims to read ritual performances, built forms and cultural undertones of traumatic migration in the settlements of people at the periphery of mainstream history at Mattancherry in Kochi, India. Interactions between their culture, faith, location, ethnicity and community enterprise are explored. This study is essential in the context of negative social perceptions of internal migration and migrants.

The methodology is ethnography and includes interdisciplinary fieldwork of transect walks, participant observations, unstructured interviews and architectural documentation. Secondary references were community publications and scholarly journals.

Constant resilient rebuilding was possible through shared identity and community enterprise. Community temples, monastic institutions, volunteer groups and emerging high-net-worth individuals contributed to nurturing this identity. The temple rituals encouraged an egalitarian outlook. Throughout the settlement’s existence, the centrality of the temple and its religious activities remained constant. Community cohesion and endogamous practices create a cultural island distinct from the general population. Community enterprise also meant contribution to prosperity as productive citizens in the region and beyond.

Religion and shared history-based ethnic community enterprise for survival and prosperity postmigration are observed in this settlement. The conducive entrepreneurial atmosphere is set in its historical, cultural and religious context. This study can, therefore, provide insights for policymakers and academia about the interactions between culture, faith and history during the entrepreneurial process. The cultural context is explored as a backdrop of community enterprise posttraumatic migration, informing societal perceptions about migration and migrants.

The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, to identify and encapsulate the enablers that can facilitate technology integration in higher education and second, to understand and analyze the interplay between technology agility enablers.

The study used the Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM) approach to construct a theoretical model of the technology agility enablers in higher education and MICMAC analysis for ranking and segregating the enablers based on their dependence power into four categories: Autonomous, Dependent, Linkage and Independent.

The study helped identify eight technology agility enablers, with the Covid-19 pandemic as the most significant enabler. The Covid-19 pandemic has catalyzed the diffusion of technology across the education sector in India, including tertiary higher education. The study revealed government initiatives and institutional commitment as other enablers that can promote technology agility in higher education.

The results of this study would assist the policymakers and management of universities and colleges in understanding the important enablers that can facilitate technology integration in higher education.

Research in the past on technology adoption in higher education has looked into each enabler in isolation. This research provides a comprehensive view of the enablers and has attempted to establish a multidirectional interplay between the enablers.

Purpose: Innovation is a multi-dimensional phenomenon influenced at the organisational level by internal and external factors that can determine how innovative an organisation can be, determining a firm’s business performance. This chapter measures and predicts how innovative a company can be, considering key internal factors using modern data analytics/science.

Need for Study: The increasing challenge of modern business operations is affected by how quickly, sustainably, effectively, and efficiently companies can innovate to mitigate the dynamic challenges of current business environments and evolving customer needs. The ability to predict, measure, and manage innovation becomes necessary to ensure that businesses are fit for purpose.

Methodology: A model was designed following the study hypotheses and statistically tested. A historical data sample from the OECD global industry dataset for eight years was used for the analysis. The ordinary least square method was used to test for model fit. Also, in machine learning engineering, predictive analysis using the multivariate linear regression analysis method was carried out.

Findings: The results support the hypotheses that an organisation’s capacity to be innovative can be measured and predicted, and it is influenced by a good number of internal factors or independent variables at various degrees.

Practical Implications: Managers must understand how to measure and predict innovation metrics to manage innovation better, ultimately leading to better business outcomes and performance. Also proposed are new measurement matrices for innovation management: innovation capacity (I_C), business innovation value (BIV), innovation creation factor (ICF), and a practical data-driven innovation management and prediction system.

There is growing recognition that numerous business drivers contribute to financial performance and investment returns but they are not included in a company's profit and loss statements. In the investment industry, these wider sets of value drivers are known as environment-social- governance (ESG) factors. A small number of specialized ESG rating agencies provide information to investors about the extent to which firms' behaviors are socially responsible. However, a major criticism of these rating agencies is the lack of transparency in their methods. This paper aims to examine the issues of subjectivity, transparency and uniformity of ESG ratings by exploring the methods used to assess ethics performance by an Australian rating agency.

A case study was conducted on an Australian ESG rating provider, Regnan. The data for the analysis were sourced from internal Regnan documents.

The paper found that a level of subjectivity is inevitable in ESG ratings and the call for uniformity may inhibit innovation, but these issues can be addressed by increased transparency of the rating methods.

Further research is required to understand what level and, combination of, uniformity and transparency is sufficient to satisfy stakeholder requirements for ESG information.

The discussion of the factors underlying the ethics performance rating may prompt more open and transparent debate on how to assess ethical performance of companies, and increase investor confidence in ESG ratings. It may also provide more direction to companies on how to strengthen their ethical performance.

There is growing recognition that numerous business drivers contribute to financial performance and investment returns but they are not included in a company's profit and loss statements. These “ESG” factors can account for up to 66 percent of the market value of globally listed companies. In response to calls for more transparency on how ESG factors are assessed, and how ethical performance is appraised, this paper attempts to lift the veil on ESG rating methods.

Organizational researchers have long recognized the important role that top managers play within entrepreneurial firms (Ireland, Hitt and Sirmon 2003). Utilizing Covin and Slevin’s (1989) conceptual framework, the current study explores three key entrepreneurial characteristics of top managers and the impact these characteristics have on firm performance. Specifically, we argue that top managers with a high tolerance of risk, those who favor innovative activities and those who display a high degree of proactiveness will positively impact firm performance. In addition, this study examines the influence of top managers’ prestige, structural and expert power on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. We conclude the study with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggestions for future research in this area of study.