Abstract This special issue is dedicated to EURAM by its College of Fellows to commemorate EURAM's 25th birthday. It focuses on the future of the management educational and research (MERE) context and the role of institutions within it. As a professional academy, EURAM is one of those institutions that helps shape both organisations and individuals within it. A brief history of its ambition and contribution follows, and this is accompanied by an explanation of the evolution of this project. Primarily, it is designed to examine the world in which EURAM operates, shaped and controlled as it is by institutional pressures that can restrict strategic flexibility and reinforce a particular way of doing business. Faced with a portfolio of powerful external pressures, the future of the MERE is likely to change rapidly, and adaptability by business and management schools will be an important strategic weapon. Hence, the issue looks to explain the emergence of the shape of the present MERE domain through its moulding by institutional norms and the ‘rules of the game’ that they consciously or unconsciously reinforce. Then, the main papers in this collection are presented in an outside–in manner. They begin with the future imaginings of what the MERE might look like by examining the drivers of change that impact upon it. Then, through a series of articles that examine the types of business schools that might emerge into this new world, their responses to past and present institutional pressures, especially through accreditation, to new agendas in both sustainability and employability. The common themes are identified, as is the danger of ignoring impactful, localised responses in favour of uniform conformity and a prevalence for the status quo .
Abstract Inter‐organisational projects (IOPs) are a core organisational form through which complex, cross‐sectoral and cross‐boundary collaboration is coordinated and enacted across organisations and society. As a prevalent form of temporary organising, IOPs bring together diverse actors operating within distinct and often incompatible temporal structures shaped by different rhythms, pacing, sequencing and time horizons. As such, they constitute paradigmatic contexts for temporal complexity. This complexity arises from the interaction of heterogeneous temporal structures, modes, rhythms and temporal arrangements. It generates multiple, divergent evolving temporal demands across synchronic and diachronic dimensions that actors must continuously align with and negotiate. However, despite its centrality, temporal complexity remains under‐theorised. We develop a recursive process theory of temporal complexity in IOPs and advance a conception of such projects as complex timescapes. We distinguish between structural temporal complexity, rooted in the inherent characteristics of IOPs, and dynamic temporal complexity, arising from contextual conditions that activate latent temporal paradoxes into salient temporal tensions. We further theorise temporal reflexivity as a multilevel meta‐capacity through which actors critically examine and reshape temporal assumptions and coordination practices, and we show how such interventions generate provisional temporal settlements alongside unintended consequences. In addition, we theorise how these outcomes recursively reshape the temporal conditions of organising, producing ongoing cycles of activation, response and restructuring. Overall, our work offers a conceptual lens for understanding temporality in complex, multi‐actor organisational settings.
Abstract Multinational enterprises need high‐status expatriates to enhance their workforce and improve coordination and control. Such employees face personal and socio‐political challenges that require the creation and sustenance of multipartite mutual trust between organisations and their expatriates, as well as host country nationals. Nevertheless, there have been few studies on how trust related to such individuals is formed, developed, maintained or breached and no comprehensive analysis. Our objective is to synthesise organisational and interpersonal trust with expatriation across the full life cycle and to develop a conceptual framework for future research and practice. We conducted a Boolean search using ProQuest Central and applied exclusion criteria to examine 46 relevant empirical articles. This review reveals that most research only considers part of the expatriation life cycle, being rather limited to the time spent in the host country. We examine expatriation through a trust lens and synthesise two complementary literature streams to offer a holistic conceptual framework spanning predeparture, on‐assignment and repatriation stages.
Higher education centres are facing escalating risks, such as increasing competition from a growing number of higher education organisations, as well as greater exposure to more complex regulatory frameworks and external evaluations. Consequently, university risk management has assumed increasing significance. However, the scope, antecedents, constituent elements and the underlying processes of risk management in universities still remain unclear. This article draws on risk management literature and institutional theory to explain the dynamics of risk management strategies in universities. The former allows us to identify three key elements of university risk management-internationalisation, formalisation and human capital development-while the latter helps explain how these elements interrelate. Data from 107 Latin American universities reveal that faculty internationalisation strategies are associated with three dimensions of human capital development-faculty teaching development, faculty research development and faculty knowledge transfer development-and that risk management formalisation partially mediates this relationship. These findings underscore the potential of institutional theory and risk management literature to explain the functioning of risk management in higher education. Overall, our theoretical framework and empirical evidence highlight that institutional pressures shaping university risk management-such as rules, norms, conventions and cultural systems-originate both from the academic sphere and from the business sector.
Abstract In recent times, disruptive and technological innovations have accelerated the emergence and growth of new industries. Such developments have altered the dynamics of private and public interactions, leading to new forms of cross‐sector collaborations witnessed by the growing body of literature straddling many disciplines. Such multiple perspectives have resulted in a fragmented body of knowledge. Despite recent advances in the field of cross‐sector collaborations, scant attention has been given to understanding how public and private interactions contribute to new industries development. This study aims to synthesise knowledge on this topic, providing a holistic and multidimensional view of how public and private interactions have been and can be designed to assist the development of new industries. Specifically, this review addresses three questions: (1) How have public and private actors been interacting to develop new industries? (2) What factors facilitate and hinder these public and private interactions? (3) How have public and private interactions addressed the unique challenges of new industries? This study deepens our understanding of public and private interactions in new industry emergence and development by proposing a conceptual framework, unifying the fragmented perspectives across the literature thereby providing a theoretical premise to guide future research, policy and practice.
Abstract Strategic human‐capital (SHC) research has explained why human capital can be strategically valuable. It has been less precise about how organizations convert human capital into value that is realized, legitimate, and appropriable. This paper leverages current discussions in SHC to develop a conversion‐centered agenda around three frontier challenges: artificial intelligence and SHC, causal attribution, and middle management. Across these domains, the same stock of human capital can produce different consequences because organizations differ in how they configure work, relationships, authority, selection, and recognition. Fruitful avenues for future research can focus on the mechanisms that mediate conversion: work design, relational infrastructure, reconfiguration, selection architecture, authority allocation, and visibility and recognition. These mechanisms shape career, legitimacy, distributional, and collective outcomes, including how surplus is divided between firms and employees. The framework grounds SHC in a matching logic while sharpening its account of value creation, value capture, and surplus distribution.
Abstract This study contributes to the literature on the circular economy (CE) and small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) by advancing both theory and empirical evidence on the role of contextual factors. Theoretically, it refines institutional and cultural contingency perspectives by showing that national innovation systems and societal norms do not uniformly enhance the effectiveness of financial support for CE adoption. Instead, these contextual factors shape the impact of public and private financial resources in an asymmetric and selective manner. By jointly considering formal institutions, such as a country's innovation level, and informal institutions, such as social indulgence, the study offers a more nuanced framework to explain cross‐country variation in SMEs' engagement with CE practices. Empirically, the study analyses Flash Eurobarometer data from 26 European Union countries collected in 2015, 2017 and 2021. The results indicate that greater public and private financial support is associated with higher levels of CE engagement among SMEs. In addition, the findings reveal that national innovation levels positively moderate the relationship between public financial support and CE actions, whereas social indulgence negatively moderates the relationship between public support and CE development. Overall, the study provides comparative evidence highlighting the importance of tailoring financial support policies to national institutional and cultural contexts.
Abstract Compassion at work, the capacity to notice, feel, interpret, and respond to others' suffering, has attracted increasing attention in management theory, highlighting both the inevitability of pain in organizational life and the value of compassionate responses. However, the literature has largely emphasized reactive responses to manifest suffering (e.g., personal loss), overlooking the extent to which workplace suffering is predictable, organizationally shaped, and therefore preventable. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a proactive lens on organizational compassion that remains anchored in suffering but shifts attention to its earlier, latent stages. We distinguish between pain as a triggering event and suffering as the lived experience that unfolds over time and define preventable workplace suffering as distress that emerges from foreseeable conditions, decisions, or systems within organizations. Building on this distinction, we develop a framework showing how organizational compassion can operate not only reactively but also proactively through anticipating, planning, and organizing to mitigate suffering before it becomes fully manifest. We identify three mutually reinforcing forms of proactive compassion: trained compassion (addressing harmful conduct), compassion by design (embedding care within organizational systems and roles), and anticipatory compassion (supporting employees through necessary but painful organizational decisions). By conceptualizing compassion as a proactive organizational capability oriented toward emerging suffering, we extend compassion scholarship beyond episodic responding and demonstrate how preventing avoidable suffering complements rather than replaces reactive compassion. We conclude by discussing practical implications for management research, organizational design, and practice.
Adopting a paradox perspective and drawing on the job demands-resources (JD-R) model, this study conceptualizes high-performance work systems (HPWS) as human resources (HR) initiatives that deliver demanding resources, proposing a curvilinear relationship between HPWS and employee engagement. In doing so, it sheds light on the dualities employees face under HPWS, helping to explain inconsistent findings in prior research. The study also explores strategies for managing the demanding nature of HPWS-related resources, with a particular focus on workplace social support. Findings based on a sample of 24,385 European employees highlight a key contribution from co-workers but not from supervisors. Overall, the study provides insights into how employees experience HPWS and offers guidance for improving their administration.
Firm innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are key strategic considerations that shape a firm's competitiveness and sustainability. However, studies exploring the relationship between the two are heterogeneous and sometimes obtain contradictory results, making it difficult to draw clear conclusions. This systematic literature review addresses this gap by examining 72 peer‐reviewed studies spanning 2000–2024 to assess the type of relationship (direct, indirect, other), direction (causality), sign (positive/negative), and statistical significance of the innovation‐CSR relationship. The results generally support a positive relationship – especially from CSR to firm innovation‐ although the outcomes vary depending on measurement approach, sector, geographical context, and period. Beyond direct effects, we identify more complex dynamics, notably mediation/moderation processes, which can involve both firm innovation and CSR. Academically, this study clarifies theoretical trends, highlights underexplored frameworks, and contributes methodologically by applying the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Review protocol and the theories‐contexts‐methods framework, which could enrich future research. For managers, we offer guidance with regard to leveraging CSR to foster innovation and in turn improve firm performance. For policymakers, our findings can inform designing frameworks to stimulate sustainable business practices. Finally, for society at large, this study can contribute to aligning corporate behavior with social and environmental objectives.
We examine how a single exploitative employer decision event, conceptualized as a shock, interacts with employees' accumulated perceived employer exploitation to amplify feelings of violation and influence adverse employee reactions. This interaction effect, and its boundary conditions, constitutes the primary theoretical contribution of the study. Drawing primarily on social exchange theory and informed by psychological contract theory, and the unfolding model of turnover as complementary explanatory lenses, we test this model across two experiments and find that feelings of violation resulting from an exploitative employer decision are stronger if the event occurred in the context of a more exploitative employment relationship. The mediating effects of feelings of violation on the relationship between accumulated perceived employer exploitation and an exploitative employer decision, and the employee reactions of turnover intentions and loyal boosterism are novel. Together, these results contribute to advancing research and theory on employer exploitation, psychological contracts, social exchange theory, and the unfolding model of turnover by establishing boundary conditions for the relationship among an affective event, exploitative employment relationship perceptions, and employee reactions. These results advance employer exploitation research by establishing that accumulated exploitative relationship history moderates the intensity of employee reactions to discrete shock events, a distinction prior research has not empirically tested.
Do managers properly recognize their own expertise? This study explores distortions in self-perception by investigating the presence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that distorts self-assessment, within managerial contexts. Although widely studied in psychology, its implications for management remain underexplored. Drawing on data from two studies, we examine how this bias manifests among managers in both general management and the specialized domain of digital transformation. Our findings indicate that managers are susceptible to both overconfidence and under-confidence. The assumption that managers exemplify organizational excellence does not prevent them from being influenced by these biases. Unlike previous research, which has largely focused on overconfidence, our study addresses both overestimation and underestimation, uncovering the complicated dynamics that make self-assessment so difficult. Additionally, we identify differences in bias prevalence between the two managerial domains, general and more knowledge specific. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on cognitive biases and their relevance in the management field.
This paper advances theory on the strategic dimensions of corporate purpose by exploring how organizations design for a dual-aim purpose-pursuing both financial and pro-social objectives that are inherently in tension. While earlier research highlights purpose as a unifying force that motivates action and guides strategic decision-making, we examine its more complex and sometimes constraining role in strategy execution. Based on a two-decade-long study of Systembolaget, Sweden's state-owned alcohol retailer, we trace three organizational design strategies for enacting dual aims: accepting friction, avoiding friction, and removing friction. By introducing a framework that evaluates organizational designs through effectiveness, efficacy, efficiency, and effort, we highlight how organizational designs not only embody trade-offs but also require scaffolding mechanisms-dialogic practices, capability-building, and governance models-that enable continuous recalibration. Our findings contribute to strategy and organization theory by showing that purpose-driven duality demands a more granular theorization of contextual ambidexterity: from "dynamic shifting" between aims to "transcending" solutions that embed both simultaneously. While Systembolaget represents a special case, the challenges it faces mirror those confronting a growing number of organizations navigating the shift toward multi-dimensional measures of success.
The resilience of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is increasingly vital in today's unpredictable economic landscape. Understanding how different types of crises impact financial performance and recovery time can help entrepreneurs develop effective strategies to navigate challenges. Building on a contingent approach on organizational resilience, this paper explores how external and internal contingencies affect an organization's resilient response when coping with a crisis and tests its hypotheses on an original dataset comprising 417 Italian, German, and French SMEs. Results indicate that crises that are limitedly influenceable lead to greater financial losses and require longer recovery periods. Furthermore, the findings show that the entrepreneur's individual resilience exerts a contingent moderating effect on the resilient response, depending on the environment in which the crisis originated. The study contributes to the process-based perspective on organizational resilience by advancing a contingency approach and adds to the few studies that examine the relationship between adverse events and resilience responses. From a managerial perspective, it suggests that although the individual resilience of the entrepreneur is important, it is not sufficient on its own. Therefore, SMEs should also focus on developing organizational resources to effectively overcome crises.
This essay discusses models of purpose governance to contribute to a fragmented literature, with some authors calling for repurposing business schools (BSs), whereas others consider purpose as too precarious to bring about substantial change. We reflect on our experience with a French BS that has become soci & eacute;t & eacute; & agrave; mission, a new legal structure for purpose-driven companies that commit to incorporate specific governance practices to avoid mission drift. This pioneering example illustrates that purpose enactment requires coping with tensions between normative prescriptions faced by BSs and a more school-based view of 'good management education'. This leads us to outline two forms of purpose governance: in Mode I, 'BS with purpose', purpose is considered 'an add on'-a new quality objective added to the existing ones without changing the logic of governance. In contrast, in Mode II-which emerges from our example-purpose acts as a transformative force affecting all objects of governmentality. It features purpose BSs as those with 'purpose-driven governmentality'. We argue that the radical transformation of BSs requires Mode II, discussing its potential to respond to criticisms against BSs and deal with normative constraints, difficult challenges, and ambivalent requirements. We conclude that the legal obligations of the French soci & eacute;t & eacute; & agrave; mission offer critical conditions for operating in the Mode II paradigm.
While performance management systems are ubiquitous in organisations, their impact on employees' subjective well-being remains highly contested in management research. This paper examines how directive practices in performance management systems influence employees' subjective well-being by using self-determination theory as a theoretical framework for our analysis and in particular the three needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. Using data from 65 semi-structured interviews with academics from schools of business and management in universities in the United Kingdom, we identified four subjective well-being themes: feelings of inadequacy, resigned compliance, cognitive dissonance and self-inflicted pressure. The findings indicate that directive practices in performance management systems generally thwarted the satisfaction of academics' needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, which is negative for their subjective well-being based on self-determination theory. However, on occasion, directive practices in performance management systems helped academics to partially fulfil the needs for competence and relatedness when academics were able to meet their performance targets. We contribute to the literature by drawing on self-determination theory to provide a novel analysis of the underexplored area of the effects of directive practices in performance management systems on employees' subjective well-being.
This work aims to investigate the role of chief philosophy officers (CPOs), which is growing albeit still emerging, and unveil the mechanisms through which they help firms in implementing a more reasoned decision-making process. Like other humanistic disciplines, philosophy offers great help to organizations, in particular in challenging times, where the speed of technological progress may lead companies to take rushed decisions that they may not fully control. Based on the collection of documents, participation in ad hoc conferences, and interviews with managers working in the field, the study reveals how CPOs may help organizations in adopting a more thoughtful and reasoned approach to decisions and actions. We identify eight mechanisms activated by CPOs to guide thoughtful strategic change, ease human interactions, and enhance knowledge sharing and innovation processes.
The physical structures of megaprojects-such as mega-canals, metros, railway lines, bridges, tunnels, and iconic opera houses-hold a profound capacity to generate aesthetic experiences with enduring societal impact. Yet, research on megaprojects has predominantly focused on functionality and economic rationale with aesthetics being pushed to the margin or framed in negative terms. We address this gap by reconsidering the notion of the aesthetic sublime, understood as deep experiences of awe, fear, and fascination that may invoke both unsettling existential contemplation and feelings of elevation. Integrating insights from foundational philosophical accounts of the sublime with environmental aesthetics and streams of megaproject research, we develop a framework that identifies five key qualities through which the aesthetic sublime can be manifest in megaproject structures: immensity, timelessness, immersion, melancholy, and the common land. Through this vocabulary, we advance an understanding of megaproject structures not only as technical and economic enterprises but also as aesthetic phenomena that influence how people experience and create meaning from the built environment and, ultimately, how they understand themselves and their place in the world.
This article builds on prior research on corporate social responsibility (CSR), particularly within the food and luxury sectors. Using institutional theory, it examines how Michelin-starred chefs act as institutional entrepreneurs, shaping CSR institutionalization in luxury gastronomy and beyond. A six-year longitudinal exploratory study of luxury gastronomic restaurants provides empirical insights into CSR dynamics in this industry. The findings suggest that CSR practices related to people, planet, and policy have been fully "institutionalized" across luxury gastronomy. Additionally, the study identifies two emerging CSR categories-community and cultural heritage-representing "embryonic" CSR practices. Unlike previous studies that argue luxury and CSR are incompatible, this research demonstrates that luxury gastronomy and sustainability can coexist, with Michelin-starred chefs driving this evolution.
Organizational-professional conflict (OPC) occurs when organizations encourage professionals such as doctors, accountants, and lawyers to behave in ways that are not consistent with their professional norms. This may lead to unethical behavior, while it also reduces job satisfaction and increases turnover intentions. We take a novel approach for understanding OPC by examining the role played by formal and informal controls within the organization in which the professional is working, as well as the strength of the broader professional field of which the professional is a member. Using a sample of 449 qualified professional employees from a wide range of organizations and industries, we find that (1) formal behavior control does not influence OPC, (2) formal output control is positively linked to OPC, (3) informal social control reduces OPC, and (4) a stronger professional field mitigates the impact of output and social controls. The results extend recent insights into OPC while guiding professional organizations in terms of how their control systems may reduce the negative consequences of OPC amongst key employees.
