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The purpose of this paper is to explicate how the processual third context learning approach provides new understandings and dimensions to the well-established terminology within the fields of inter-organizational learning and university–industry collaboration. These understandings and dimensions are empirically informed by an analysis of a collaboration between Aalborg University and Bang & Olufsen, a Danish loudspeaker manufacturer.

To fulfill the research purpose, a case study based on a participatory data collection strategy was applied in the collaboration between Aalborg University and Bang & Olufsen. Data were collected through a qualitative multimethod approach, comprising semi-structured interviews, field observations and field notes. Phenomenologically inspired content analysis revealed the themes outlined and discussed.

The third context framework was useful in outlining the complexity of a bidirectional collaboration. The inter-organizational learning processes were, for example, influenced by the actors’ recurrent inquiry of perplexities regarding the purpose and content of the collaboration. The extracted empirical findings are discussed and related to the fields of inter-organizational learning and university–industry collaboration, thereby explicating how a processual learning perspective provides new understandings and dimensions to collaboration across organizations.

The paper contributes empirically informed processual-learning dimensions to the literature on inter-organizational learning and university–industry collaboration.

Quality management (QM) can support organisations in contributing to sustainable development. As a result of an expanding focus from customers towards stakeholders within QM, the perspectives to consider multiply. Understanding how practices and tools for process management are specifically affected by this increase in perspectives is key to creating the right conditions for improvement initiatives that support sustainable development.

This paper constructs a typology wherein the use of process management practices and tools is described in nine distinguished system contexts. Inductive discrimination is used to differentiate the system contexts and different use cases for process practices and tools.

Using the system of systems grid (SOSG), mainstream business process management (BPM) practices are positioned in a simple unitary context, whilst sustainability challenges also involve more complex contexts. Addressing these challenges requires integrating new tools and methods from paradigms outside of traditional functionalist business process management practices.

This paper highlights the necessity to consider system contexts when developing feasible practices and tools for effective process management.

Practical implications are that quality practitioners aiming to exploit the potential in process management to support sustainability get support for planning and conducting process improvement initiatives aiming to consider several stakeholder perspectives.

This paper presents a new typology for understanding the context of QM process initiatives and BPM in light of a contemporary sustainability focus.

All entrepreneurs interact simultaneously with multiple entrepreneurial contexts throughout their entrepreneurial journey. This conceptual paper has two central aims: (1) it synthesises the current literature on gender and entrepreneurship, and (2) it increases our understanding of how gender norms, contextual embeddedness and (in)equality mechanisms interact within contexts. Illustrative contexts that are discussed include entrepreneurship education, business networks and finance.

This conceptual paper draws upon extant literature to develop its proposed conceptual framework. It provides suggestions for systemic policy interventions as well as pointing to promising paths for future research.

A literature-generated conceptual framework is developed to explain and address the systemic barriers faced by opportunity-driven women as they engage in entrepreneurial contexts. This conceptual framework visualises the interplay between gender norms, contextual embeddedness and inequality mechanisms to explain systemic disparities. An extra dimension is integrated in the framework to account for the power of agency within women and with others, whereby agency, either individually or collectively, may disrupt and subvert the current interplay with inequality mechanisms.

This work advances understanding of the underrepresentation of women entrepreneurs. The paper offers a conceptual framework that provides policymakers with a useful tool to understand how to intervene and increase contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. Additionally, this paper suggests moving beyond “fixing” women entrepreneurs and points towards disrupting systemic disparities to accomplish this contextual embeddedness for all entrepreneurs. By doing so, this research adds to academic knowledge on the construction and reconstruction of gender in the field of entrepreneurship.

This article introduces the special issue of Learning and Development in Highly-Dynamic VUCA Contexts. The issue reviews the concept of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), highlights its implications for the learning and development function and argues that learning and development play a critical role in helping organisations, people and the societal context in which they operate to work within and navigate VUCA contexts.

The contributions to this special issue propose a novel learning and development framework that will inform L&D as the provision of training, learning and development activities in organisations within highly dynamic VUCA contexts and ensuring a strong external focus including organisational, people, community, economic and societal sustainability.

We, the authors, propose seven features of a strategic sustainability L&D function and L&D professional role that are a fit with highly dynamic VUCA contexts.

The proposed framework has important implications for the way in which L&D is structured, its key priorities and plans and the competencies of L&D professionals to add value to all stakeholders. We also emphasise that the work on the L&D function in highly dynamic VUCA contexts needs to be broader and move beyond a performance orientation.

The proposed strategic sustainability role for the L&D function expands theoretically our understanding of how L&D can have impacts at the nexus of the organisation and highly dynamic VUCA contexts, in addition to broadening the constellation of stakeholders that it potentially enhances.

In this final chapter, we summarize the core challenges to leadership in complex organizational systems as well as the lessons that we believe leaders can learn from the contributions presented in this book. Building on Complexity Leadership Theory (Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009), we argue that high levels of complexity characterize the contexts described, and that they are unusual because they deviate from the setting of standard business organizations. Since these contexts are not often discussed in the general leadership literature, there seems to be a largely unused potential in terms of leadership learning. Specifically, in order to better contextualize leadership, scholars and practitioners need to take organizational complexity into account. With reference to the underlying structure of the book, core challenges to leadership are proposed, clustering around four main foci: sports and competition, high risk, creativity and innovation, care and community. Subsequently, we derive six lessons for leadership: adaptability, perseverance, handling paradox, leading with values, inventing the future, and sharing responsibility. We thereby hope to stimulate fruitful discussions that put leadership into context and capitalize on complexity theory as an innovative approach to leadership research and practice.

This chapter compares two protected natural parks as specific experiential contexts providing two different experiences for visitors: extraordinary and memorable versus ordinary and mundane (Carù & Cova, 2006, 2007). Each experiential context enables the distinction of actual visitors’ experiences (Pine & Gilmore, 1999) inside each park. A qualitative study collected information to differentiate each protected natural park based on three dimensions: the geophysical environment, the recreational practices, and product and service offer management. A quantitative study analyzed the effect of a specific experiential context through a comparison of actual visitors’ experiences on four dimensions (esthetics, escapism, education, and entertainment) in both countries (500 in each country). Results of the qualitative study show that the Taiwanese park provides an experiential context with more extraordinary and memorable experiences while the French park provides an experiential context with more ordinary and mundane experiences. The results of the quantitative study show the distinction of actual visitors’ experiences inside each park: more immersion through esthetics and escapism in Taiwan and more absorption through education and entertainment in France. Each park manager has to build one’s own positioning and should offer a unique experiential context based on the three dimensions to provide more extraordinary and memorable or more ordinary and mundane experiences. this study highlights the interest of an analysis framework of experiences adapted from Carù and Cova (2006, 2007) and Pine and Gilmore (1999) underlining the link between experiential context and actual experiences.

The flow of human capital into and out of organizations is a crucial aspect of organizational functioning, yet the bulk of the theory and research adopts a US-centric perspective. The purpose of this edited volume is for scholars embedded in contexts around the world to describe the relevance and implications (or lack thereof) of turnover theories in their particular context. We take a broad view of talent, focusing on the departure of human capital in general without necessarily restricting the analysis to those who disproportionately contribute to organizational success, and the authors focus on institutional contexts and culture because of their role in shaping employee norms and behaviors. We partnered with author teams embedded in countries and regions with a focus on capturing variance in contexts across the GLOBE clusters: Anglo (England), Confucian Asian (China; South Korea), Eastern European (Bulgaria), Germanic European (Germany), Latin American (Mexico), Latin European (Spain), Middle Eastern (Turkey), Nordic European (Denmark), Southern Asian (India), and Sub-Saharan African (South Africa). We provided each author team discretion to express their own voice, while also providing a common set of goals across chapters for consistency of contribution: a description of the institutional, legal, and cultural context as it relates to employee mobility, a review of context-specific research literature leading to a description of how the mechanisms and processes in prominent turnover theories may operate differently in a particular context, and implications for research and practice related to talent turnover and retention. Considering the contributions as a set, we identify important themes and overarching recommendations for scholars interested in studying employee retention and turnover around the globe.

Ideology is discussed as the missing link between material practices and symbolic constructions in defining institutional logics. Institutional streams are proposed as disembedded institutional logics traveling as ideologies that are taken for granted. They affect specific (inter)action contexts on a global level providing institutional entrepreneurs and workers with symbolic elements to translate into local institutional arrangements. Such translations can give rise to institutional change. Local translation of nonlocal elements advances the interests of the elites of the “sending” institutional context, as well as it may advance those of the receiving one. Dominant transnational streams may or may not coalesce to form a global world order.

Recently scholars have been interested in examining social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and cultural intelligence, but none have examined all these in a comparative study of cultures. Here an empirical examination is conducted of a high-context culture, India, versus a low-context culture, the United States. Linear regression was conducted and findings indicate that the hypothesized relationships, that high-context cultures will have a higher social, emotional, and cultural intelligence, are not supported. In fact, social intelligence was found to be higher in the U.S. sample. Managerial implications and avenues for future research are presented.