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Integrating transaction costs economics and task-technology fit theory, this study distinguishes two categories of social media–enabled interactions, namely task-related interactions and tie-related interactions, and explores the match between these two and firms' use of contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes in interfirm governance.

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, this study collaborated with a professional market research firm and collected responses from Chinese manufacturing firms in a survey. In Study 2, this study designed a scenario-based experiment and collected 239 participants from the Credamo platform.

This study categorized social media–enabled interactions into task-related interactions and tie-related interactions and conducted two studies to reveal that the safeguarding purpose of contract specificity is amplified by tie-related interactions, whereas the coordinating purpose of contract specificity is strengthened by task-related interactions.

This study assumes that firms permit and encourage the use of social media. However, some firms might prohibit the use of social media due to risk issues, or their partners may be prohibited from using social media.

Given that social media–enabled interactions have joint effects with contracts in achieving safeguarding and coordinating purposes, a firm's employees should match their goals with an appropriate type of social media–enabled interactions.

This study enriches the interfirm governance literature by uncovering the roles of these two types of interactions in matching contract specificity to achieve safeguarding and coordinating purposes, which provides actionable insights for managers in governing interfirm relationships.

This study aims to investigate the conflicting views in supply chain and strategic management literature regarding cooperative supply chain relationships (CSCR) and firm performance. Supply chain literature suggests a universally positive impact of CSCR on performance, irrespective of a firm’s strategy. In contrast, strategic management literature contends that the effectiveness of CSCR depends on their alignment with the firm’s competitive strategy. The research aims to clarify this disparity, offering insights into the strategic use of CSCR for enhancing firm performance.

This paper theorizes the integration of perspectives for the impact of CSCR on firm performance by examining the relationships considering the alignment of cost leadership and product differentiation strategies with supplier and customer relationships. Plant-level survey data is analyzed using regression techniques to test four hypotheses.

All four main relationships (cost leadership, product differentiation, supplier relationship and customer relationship) on firm performance are statistically significant. However, cost leadership firms are better aligned to their chosen strategy when they have strong relationships with suppliers, whereas similar relationships with customers create misalignment, negatively influencing firm performance. In contrast, product differentiators benefit by investing in relationships with customers rather than with suppliers.

A firm’s performance does not solely depend on its CSCR efforts but on aligning them with the firm’s overall strategy. Therefore, managers need to be cognizant of the firm’s competitive strategy when investing in CSCR. Failing to do so could negatively impact firm performance and, eventually, its ability to compete in the marketplace.

Scholars have advocated for the importance of examining competing perspectives of phenomena, both within and across various bodies of literature, as cross-disciplinary analysis often brings enhanced focus and depth, leading to improved understanding. This research is one of the initial efforts to empirically analyze the varying perspectives on CSCR in supply chain and strategic management literature. This cross-disciplinary approach can yield a more integrated perspective.

Literature on the relationship between social performance and economic performance of social enterprises has long been inconclusive. This paper aims to investigate whether and, if so, how social performance contributes to economic performance of social enterprises. Specifically, drawing from the resource-based view and signalling theory, the study examines how the development of reputation, which enables social enterprises to signal the enterprises' stakeholders' commitment towards social causes, mediates the relationship between the two.

Employing a quantitative research design, data were collected from a sample of 164 social enterprises in the UK and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results illustrate that whilst the direct relationship between social and economic performance is inconclusive, social performance contributes indirectly to improve economic performance through improving social enterprise reputation.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first of this kind in the context of social enterprises which sheds light on the long-standing conflicting literature on the relationship between the dual objectives (i.e. social and economic) by providing reputation as the mediating variable.

Cyber-attacks that generate technical disruptions in organisational operations and damage the reputation of organisations have become all too common in the contemporary organisation. This paper explores the reputation repair strategies undertaken by organisations in the event of becoming victims of cyber-attacks.

For developing the authors’ contribution in the context of the Internet service providers' industry, the authors draw on a qualitative case study of TalkTalk, a British telecommunications company providing business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) Internet services, which was a victim of a “significant and sustained” cyber-attack in October 2015. Data for the enquiry is sourced from publicly available archival documents such as newspaper articles, press releases, podcasts and parliamentary hearings on the TalkTalk cyber-attack.

The findings suggest a dynamic interplay of technical and rhetorical responses in dealing with cyber-attacks. This plays out in the form of marshalling communication and mortification techniques, bolstering image and riding on leader reputation, which serially combine to strategically orchestrate reputational repair and stigma erasure in the event of a cyber-attack.

Analysing a prototypical case of an organisation in dire straits following a cyber-attack, the paper provides a systematic characterisation of the setting-in-motion of strategic responses to manage, revamp and ameliorate damaged reputation during cyber-attacks, which tend to negatively shape the evaluative perceptions of the organisation's salient audience.

This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Brazil.

The authors conducted a detailed historical case study spanning 1988–2005 and encompassing the period leading up to Brazil’s FCTC ratification. The authors collected qualitative data from various sources to triangulate and develop a comprehensive historical account.

The historical analysis identified three distinct phases. First, the acquisition of a Brazilian cigarette factory, Souza Cruz, by British American Tobacco dramatically altered power dynamics, strengthening the position of the tobacco industry. The second phase regards the era of dictatorship and the efforts of various actors advocating against smoking and the tobacco industry. The third phase involved Brazil’s re-democratisation and the challenges of securing FCTC ratification, during which fierce industry opposition had to be overcome. Throughout these phases, the authors identified four key strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Brazil to uphold unsustainable practices and products that contradicted public interests instead of reforming them: shaping collective memory, dissimulation, re-presentation and redirecting attention.

This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by examining how Brazil’s position in the global capitalist system has influenced its dependency and how MNCs produce and maintain cycles of poverty and unsustainable practices through the exploitation of power dynamics within the country.

This paper outlines a contemporary conceptual framework for the embedding of experiential learning into a business consultancy module. Experiential learning is a fundamental teaching approach that allows students to apply theory into a working business context.

As a conceptual and not an empirical paper, the methodological approach was to draw upon the literature reviewed and to build a framework to support student learning through a business consultancy module.

Exploration of the literature suggests that there are four elements critical to student learning in experiential learning environments: action, reflection, social and context. A framework has been developed utilising these elements with the interaction between the factors being key to developing learning.

So far, the framework is conceptual, and further research is needed to explore its use when staff members are developing these types of modules and to understand the interaction of the factors over the course of the student learning experience.

The originality comes from the intersection and interaction between the core factors in experiential learning, which enables this framework to move thinking beyond more static models and hence work in a more fluid student learning environment.

The purpose of this study is to understand how executives in technology companies relate to targets for gender equality, especially pertaining to top management.

The study draws on 19 interviews of CEOs, senior line managers and HR directors in ten technology companies operating in Finland. The method is (reflexive) thematic analysis.

Previous studies on the role of executives in promoting gender equality provide somewhat mixed results: while their role is vital, senior leaders may not be inclined to support gender equality targets and measures. Drawing on critical feminist theorizing, this study identifies three ways in which the executives in technology companies related to gender equality targets: endorsing, negotiating and resisting. However, all these responses were constrained by the executives’ assumption that their companies are meritocratic. The study illustrates how executives’ narrow understanding of gender equality and reliance on the presumably well-working systems, combined with underlying doubts about the competence of women, hinder the advancement of women to top management.

While previous studies have evaluated targets to increase the number/percentage of women, both in certain “ideal case” companies and in terms of their effectiveness more broadly, this study discusses how technology company executives navigate these targets in relation to women's assumed “competence”.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have experienced career shocks, especially employees in the hotel industry. To address how to retain talent in the industry, this study aims to examine the joint impacts of employee resilience, work social support and proactive personality on hotel employees’ career change intentions.

A survey questionnaire was developed to test the proposed framework. Data from 339 current hotel employees in the USA was analyzed using the PROCESS model.

Results show a significant three-way interaction, indicating that for less proactive employees, resilience is negatively associated with career change intentions. However, for highly proactive employees, an additional situation cue in the form of strong work social support is required to activate the expression of resilience. Highly proactive and resilient employees who receive strong supervisor or coworker support during the pandemic have lower career change intentions. However, highly proactive employees who receive weak supervisor or coworker support exhibit similar levels of career change intentions, regardless of resilience level.

Hotel managers should consider helping employees enhance their resilience and overcome career shocks by providing training and resources and establishing a learning culture. More importantly, it is essential to offer strong supervisor and coworker support to promote resilience among proactive employees. Hotel managers should actively promote strong work social support, and offer training and counseling opportunities to promote employee retention during the pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine employee resilience in the hospitality field. This study contributes to the employee resilience literature as well as trait activation theory by examining situational cues that can activate employee resilience and by providing empirical evidence to reveal the boundary conditions of how employee resilience impacts career change intentions.

This paper aims to assess COVID-19 as presenting both a crisis and opportunity for police trust and legitimacy by considering the role of police in delivering the legislative requirements of government and enforcing various health orders across Australia and New Zealand.

The research relies on a mixed-methods analysis of national, commonwealth, state and territory policy, corporate police reports, academic commentary and media coverage throughout the pandemic. Survey data gathered during the pandemic relevant to trust and legitimacy in police and government is also analysed.

Five findings relating to police trust and legitimacy are identified. They reveal that police mostly did seize the pandemic as an opportunity to implement practices that enhanced perceptions of trust and legitimacy. However, even where police were able to leverage COVID-19 as an opportunity, the protracted nature of the pandemic posed a challenge for maintaining trust and legitimacy gains. The findings also underscore the importance of a continued focus on building trust and legitimacy post-pandemic to counter any lingering consequences.

The applicability of the findings outside the Australian and New Zealand context may be limited, given differences in jurisdictional legislative frameworks and policing operational environments.

This study identifies good community engagement practice for pandemic policing, contributes to communication strategies for managing trust decay during an emergency, forecasts ongoing trust and legitimacy challenges to policing’s post-pandemic operational environment and enhances aspects of post-pandemic recruitment approaches.

The findings contribute to emerging police practice and research on building and sustaining trust and legitimacy during periods of uncertainty and volatility, such as during and after a pandemic.