Is entering a nascent foreign platform market second after a global pioneer a disadvantage or a strategic opportunity? While prior research suggests that pioneering firms in foreign markets accrue first-mover advantages, burgeoning studies point to an increasingly short-lived benefit. This paper adds to the extant discourse on second-mover advantage by exploring how foreign second-mover digital platform ventures establish legitimacy in an underdeveloped context where a global pioneer has already gained legitimacy and shaped local expectations. Data for our enquiry, including 53 interviews with managers and drivers and publicly available sources, comes from a qualitative case study of a second-mover ridesharing platform in Ghana. Our analysis of the data reveals three legitimation pathways adopted by the second-mover digital platform firm to secure legitimacy advantages from stakeholders—pragmatic, sociopolitical, and moral paths. We find that these pathways are co-enacted through continuous relational and adaptive engagement with relevant stakeholders. We propose a relational–adaptive framework that contributes to the ongoing discourse at the intersection of digital platform internationalisation, legitimacy, and foreign second mover strategies in underdeveloped market contexts.

Migrant care workers (MCWs) are increasingly relied upon in contemporary care economies, yet they often labour under restrictive immigration regimes and precarious employment conditions. This article explores how non-EU MCWs employed under the Health and Care Worker visa scheme in the UK cope with these constraints in their everyday work. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 20 West African MCWs and informed by practice theory, the study conceptualises coping as an enacted social practice rather than an individualised response to stress. The analysis identifies three interrelated forms of coping: collective and relational practices, hybridised caregiving practices and tactical acts of micro-resistance. These practices, we argue, illuminate how MCWs navigate legal dependency, workplace surveillance and devalued care labour while exercising limited but meaningful forms of agency. The article extends practice theory to migrant labour and coping literature, with implications for practice further highlighted.

Attempts to eliminate unlicensed artisanal and small-scale mining have resulted in an asymmetric conflict between the state and miners. While much literature has explored this tenuous and sometimes conflictual relationship, the dynamics remain under-theorised. Drawing on de Certeau’s articulation of strategies and tactics as our analytical prism, we theorise and categorise the situated actions of, and relationship between, the state and miners, and their potential implications for livelihoods and the extractive economy. Our contribution highlights two distinct temporal frames of engagement that have often culminated in ‘showdowns’ between the state and miners: powerful structures played out in the form of formalisation and military action that re-enact the marginalisation of artisanal mining operators, and miners’ practical subversive responses to the system through ‘bribery’ and ‘hide and mine’. Emphasising the power in miners’ resistance and its domination in localised quotidian worlds, we delineate why the strategies of mining governance regimes, especially in weak institutional contexts, have failed to achieve their intended purpose. Premised on the notion that there are no clear winners in the battle between strategies and tactics, we invite policymakers to temper their romanticised views of current artisanal mining governance strategies, emphasising the strengthening of relational ties with informal-artisanal operators.

Although firms that integrate a sustainability orientation (SO) may experience a significant improvement in their resource efficiency, many, particularly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), still struggle with the complexities of incorporating sustainability into their business models. SMEs, particularly those in resource-constrained regions, struggle to depend on their sustainability approaches to achieve better sustainable innovation (SI) outcomes. Anchored in the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study examines how organisational resilience-conceptualised as a three-order construct: behaviour, resources and capabilities-clarifies the relationship between SO and SI in SMEs. These relationships are examined using two-wave time-lagged data from 232 SMEs. The model was tested using a symmetrical approach (Smart-PLS) to explain the one-dimensional effect and an asymmetrical approach (fsQCA) to clarify the different aspects of resilience, whose presence or absence is necessary and sufficient to cause SMEs' SI outcomes. The symmetrical result reveals that resilience resource and capability mediated the relationship between SO and SI. These interaction effects are identified as full mediation, as SO reports a non-significant effect on SI after the mediation process (beta = 0.016; p > 0.05). With the asymmetrical results, whereas resilience behaviour and SO reported an insignificant relationship in the path analysis, the fsQCA revealed that resilient behaviour had the most significant impact on the configuration analysis, as its presence was required in three of the four generated solutions. These findings offer theoretical and practical insights into how SMEs can leverage resilience to translate sustainability strategies into better innovation outcomes.

Despite extensive investment in entrepreneurial support organisations (ESOs), ostensibly similar support arrangements often generate markedly different outcomes for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Existing research explains support through programme architectures, governance arrangements, network structures, and performance outcomes, yet offers limited insight into how support is actually accomplished in everyday practice, particularly in resource-constrained environments characterised by institutional fragmentation and limited organisational slack. Drawing on the recent turn to practice in contemporary social theory, this study examines how business support becomes workable under such conditions. We analyse 58 interviews with scientists, technology transfer officers, policymakers, financiers, and entrepreneurs across six ESOs in the Global South, complemented by observations and documentary evidence. Our findings identify four interrelated organising practices through which support is accomplished: parsing resource needs, entrepreneurial framing of academic work, prioritising appropriate technologies, and orchestrating relational ties. Rather than operating as discrete interventions, these practices function as mutually reinforcing accomplishments through which actors align materials, meanings, and competencies in situ. We contribute by re-theorising business support as a situated organising accomplishment rather than a programmatic intervention, organisational capability, or support architecture. This perspective opens the black box of support enactment, explains why ostensibly similar support arrangements generate heterogeneous outcomes, and reveals how resource constraints actively shape the forms of organising through which support becomes workable. In doing so, we extend scholarship on ESOs and technology transfer while offering practitioners a diagnostic vocabulary for strengthening support under conditions of constraint.

We are delighted to introduce this special issue, the purpose of which is to develop a deeper understanding of the operational outcomes of the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) industry. Each of the articles in the collection contributes important insights to our understanding of the dynamics of ASM operations and, collectively, they provide important benchmarks for subsequent research on this phenomenon. In different ways, they explore how different stakeholders and institutions shape the ASM space and influence outcomes despite the existence of formal rules and structures meant to formally regulate ASM operations. In doing so, they shed considerable light on how formalisation mechanisms can shape – or fail to shape – the ASM world in which both formal and informal operators exist.

This article explores the dynamics of climate change and artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), and its manifestations in livelihood diversification in the agriculture sector. Integrating the concept of 'livelihood diversification' with discussions on 'cocoa-climate variations' in Ghana, we empirically examine how climate effects have created a space and conditions for labour shifts from the agrarian to the ASM economy. The article offers explanatory power to explore how climate-related shocks can become key push factors of farmers' diversification strategies, highlighting their consequences for the environment and farm yields, and, in turn, their implications for livelihoods.

This paper examines how rural cultural revitalization in China is shaped through the local implementation of national policy, development agendas, and commercial investment. Rather than viewing national policy as a uniform force, it explores how policy goals related to cultural protection, public cultural services, and rural development are translated into local projects. The study combines critical discourse analysis of major national policy documents issued between 2021 and 2024 with a documentary case study of Gongcheng in southern China. The findings show that national policy frames rural culture through interconnected logics of protection, improvement, and development. These policy orientations provide a flexible framework that local governments can adapt through tourism promotion, investment attraction, and wellness-related initiatives. In Gongcheng, cultural resources such as ethnic traditions, food culture, ecological landscapes, and health-related knowledge have increasingly been incorporated into development strategies and market-oriented projects. While these initiatives can enhance cultural visibility, infrastructure, and economic opportunities, they may also create unequal access to cultural decision-making, representation, and economic benefits. The paper argues that the key challenge of rural cultural revitalization lies in how policy is mediated through local governance and state–market arrangements. It concludes that more inclusive approaches are needed to strengthen local participation, improve benefit-sharing, and support rural communities as active contributors to cultural development.

Drawing on contemporaneous microstoria narrated by Black model minorities (BMMs), this paper theorizes the legging up burden: the implicit expectation that BMMs, positioned as token representatives of their race, will provide mentoring and support to organizational members with whom they share ethnic identities. We show how this burden reveals a central paradox in organizational diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) practices. While mentoring initiatives are framed as mechanisms for redressing inequality, they often obscure the very structural conditions they purport to address by displacing responsibility for change onto minoritized professionals. As a result, organizational power relations remain intact and largely unexamined. Our primary contribution to the diversity literature is the development of the legging up burden as a critical analytic construct that illuminates how identities, racialized expectations, and organizational practices become interwoven to valorise model minorities as symbols of progress while simultaneously compromising their autonomy and authenticity. We further contribute to Black scholarship by demonstrating how inclusion-oriented practices can reproduce tokenism, undermining the promise of meaningful and transformative inclusion.

This paper explores the dynamics of governance that underpin the survival of developed-context-informed digital platforms in contexts characterized by underdeveloped markets and informality. We argue that despite considerable research into various governance strategies that digital platform firms (DPFs) adopt to address formal institutional and market voids, there remains limited understanding of how DPFs respond to the constraining realities of informality in underdeveloped markets. We fill this lacuna by undertaking a qualitative case study of a ridesharing platform in a context fraught with market voids and informal practices that do not comply with the governing rules of the platform, yet are socially legitimized. Our findings reveal that governance in such contexts adaptively emerges from attending to and learning from the unfolding micro activities and behaviors of platform participants, which are enacted through the dynamic interplay of digital (changes involving the digital platform architecture) and nondigital (changes involving relational arrangements) responses. We discuss the implications of our findings for the theory and evolving discourse on digital platform governance.

Drawing on organisational information processing theory, this study examines how manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies use performance measurement systems (PMS) to manage the tension between environmental sustainability and financial constraints. Using two-wave survey data from 275 emerging economy SMEs and lagged financial performance data, we find that environmental performance mediates the relationship between both diagnostic and interactive PMS use and financial outcomes. Reconceptualising diagnostic controls as forward-looking tools, our findings challenge the traditional view of these systems as retrospective financial monitors by showing how they support the integration of environmental indicators into strategic decision-making. In contrast, while interactive controls foster sustainability-oriented learning and cross-functional dialogue, their overuse in financially constrained firms can reduce financial performance due to increased complexity and decision-making strain. These findings advance organisational information processing theory by introducing a contingency perspective on interactive controls, showing that their effectiveness depends on firm-specific constraints. The study also highlights a temporal misalignment between learning processes and the timing of financial returns in SMEs.

Purpose This paper aims to explore how a competitive pluralist approach, that values differences as much as consistencies, could bring the strengths of core theories back into strategy practice. Design/methodology/approach Differences in the fundamental underpinnings of theories, such as resource-based view, activity-based view and dynamic capabilities, and their recent developments, are often glossed over and this results in shallow application. However, in a turbulent world where traditional sources of advantage have waned, the authors unpack the insights that can be gained from the core theories. Findings Strategy practice and teaching are hindered by the prevailing monist paradigm that forms the structure of many strategy courses and textbooks. The power to generate valuable insight is diminished by selected elements from different "schools of thought" being force fitted into a model at odds with practice. Originality/value It is argued that rather than adding complexity such an approach strips out the complication and confusion added by a flawed integration. As a result, deeper understanding and more robust strategic thinking is generated. In teaching the approach encourages greater critical thinking and analysis - core learning objectives for many business courses - and less dissonance for students with both commercial and non-commercial business experience.

There is a long tradition of research on university-industry collaboration, but recent developments—including expanded academic engagement, the rise of new intermediaries and platforms for science-industry engagement, the revitalization of corporate science, and the development of mission-oriented research policies—call for fresh investigation. These changes have raised new questions about ways to align diverse knowledge transfer practices, foster meaningful collaboration, and support evolving academic engagement and corporate science practices. The papers included in this Special Issue examine science-industry relations at three levels. At the micro level, they look at how individual motivations, identities, and engagement practices shape knowledge exchange and research productivity. At the meso level, they explore organizational structures, strategic intent, and governance mechanisms that enhance scientific development and innovation. And at the macro level, they investigate ecosystem-wide dynamics, including intermediaries, living labs, and broader policy landscapes that foster interdisciplinary co-creation and legitimacy-building. Together, these perspectives underscore the transformative potential of science-industry collaboration while illustrating the inherent complexities of the process. Reflecting on these insights, this Special Issue proposes an agenda for expanding methodological approaches, contextualizing research across diverse settings, developing novel theoretical anchors, and addressing Grand Challenges through more integrated and inclusive collaborations.

In this paper, we explore how the practices of agricultural chain actors within the contingencies of the Covid-19 crisis, may have contributed to precarious rural livelihoods and the agrarian economy. Developing our contribution in the context of Ghana's agricultural sector, which is grappling with socio-economic and sustainability challenges such as land degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss, we identified salient survival practices in the actions adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic which resulted in short-term gain, but also accounted for the long-term intractable decline in production and for producers' wellbeing. Explicating a fine analysis of how individual practices induced by the pandemic may have contributed to foster a decline in the agrarian economy, our study goes on to shed light on the devastating outcomes of the pandemic on rural livelihoods and the agrarian economies often marked by weak institutions and underdeveloped markets.

Riding on the back of the country's maker movement, Chinese central government launched a 'mass innovation and mass entrepreneurship' initiative to promote innovation and entrepreneurship across the country. This top-down initiative has contributed to an explosion of innovation incubators focusing on digital technologies and their broader implications for everyday social and cultural life in a globalised era. In this paper, we explore the focal role of these new breed of Chinese innovation incubators in shaping the internationalisation agenda of firms and how their innovation processes play out in the digital innovation environment. Data for the inquiry comes from ethnographic interviews with loosely coupled actors in the Chinese digital innovation ecosystem and two of the most prominent innovation incubators. We found innovation incubators as orchestrators of a new breed of innovation networks that provide safe crucibles for 'Maker' ideation, experimentation, and prototyping. Our study suggests that these Chinese innovation incubators, over time, have come to play an intermediary role in linking Chinese traditional manufacturing industries to digital technologies, capital, and talents. These innovation incubators, by virtue of their extended relational networks, provide opportunities for Chinese firms to tap into international markets otherwise overlooked by their competitors.

How do women negotiate and express authenticity in professional contexts where their presence and identities are largely rendered (in)visible? We draw on intersectional invisibility as our conceptual lens to explore how women early career researchers subjectively negotiate authenticity given prevailing conditions of visibility, invisibility and hypervisibility at work. Based on semi-structured interviews with recipients of the Organisation for Women in Science from Developing Countries (OWSD)-Elsevier award, we illuminate how (in)visible conditions shape the subjective negotiation of authenticity, informing the agentic capacity of women researchers to express themselves authentically in professional settings. Our findings reveal the negotiation of authenticity is closely tied to gender performance in a manner that aligns with perceived professionalism. This entails compartmentalising personal values when feeling invisible, experiencing a heightened awareness of context-specific boundaries when visibility increases and enacting adaptive agency when hypervisible. We thus posit authenticity as a continuous process of ongoing identity construction and negotiation rather than a static ideal.

In this paper, we examine how managers 'make meaning' of business tournament rituals (BTRs)- recognitionbased contests in which participating firms get social endorsements and winners receive prestigious awards. In exploring two UK BTRs, we found that managerial orienting systems, made up of beliefs about the identity of their firm, competitors, and customers, and what it takes to compete in their environments, drive managers to compete in BTRs. Their interpretive view of BTRs as sources of strategic capabilities and hard market power, we argue, is constructed, and projected to the viewing public through a set of four distinct but 'durationally indivisible' temporal frames: validating identity and values, competence signalling, product/service differentiation, and market and industry visibility; these may operate in combination or serially account for the observed managerial preoccupation with BTRs. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research.

Purpose Recent years has seen rising interest in the metaverse as a technological domain that has potential for value co-creation and capture in contemporary marketplaces. This paper aims to provide insights into how firms can conceive the value creation potentialities and navigate challenges presented by the metaverse. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on extant research on the metaverse to explicate strategic potentialities and cautionary landmines of the metaverse. It goes on to conceptualise the metaverse product-service innovation canvas on which value could be created, captured or dissipated for contemporary organizations. Findings This paper presents a conceptual characterisation of the metaverse that explicates how organizing expedience, timing and approaches to meaning-making and sensing of this novel technological form may serially combine to determine patterns of (dis)advantage for firms operating in hyper-competitive business landscape. Originality/value Positioning the metaverse as a technological platform on which value creation modes are positioned, this paper presents a conceptual model that offers practical insights into transitional pathway through which value could be captured in the metaverse.