In this article, we build on recent attempts to theorize about the evolution of boards of directors by juxtaposing firms’ strategies to gain, maintain, and repair legitimacy onto their life cycle to examine how board characteristics change – both symbolically and substantively – to reflect their firm’s evolving legitimating strategy. In doing so, we develop insights contributing to our understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the evolving structure and composition of boards of directors. We suggest that boards fulfill an important role ingrained in the firm’s legitimacy in addition to, and intertwined with, their substantive contribution to the firm’s performance at each life cycle stage. We also address firms’ real ability to effect change in their board as a function of the factors that pertain to each stage of life cycle. We conclude by expounding the implications of this novel framework for future research and managerial practice.

Sharon Winsor was not intent on becoming one of Australia’s leading female Indigenous entrepreneurs, it was rather unexpected. In seeking to escape from an abusive relationship and provide for her family, she turned to her knowledge of native foods and love of ‘wild harvesting’ from her childhood, to develop a thriving business. Her traditional knowledge of harvesting native foods has now led to the creation of products such as lemon myrtle sweet chilli sauce, Davidson plum syrup and cosmetics using ingredients such as Kakadu plum, emu oil, lemon myrtle and wild berry. Sharon now finds herself in a position where increased opportunities for international expansion are demanding increased volume and scale from her rural operations, where she works with Indigenous communities. She faces three key challenges about the future of Indigiearth:

1. 1. How can Indigiearth achieve scale while maintaining profitability and social mission?

2. 2. How can Indigiearth protect its competitive advantage in the face of increased local agricultural competition, as Indigenous crops increase in value?

3. 3. How can traditional knowledge be both shared and protected for community development (jobs and wealth creation) and for future generations?

The New Year is close and Sharon already has received large orders coming in from Europe and there is much interest from China and Japan. These decisions will determine how Indigiearth is structured, with whom it needs to partner to develop the Indigenous food industry, and how it will need to work with stakeholders on the issue of traditional knowledge while meeting the growing needs of the company. Sharon has a passion for her native products and wants to preserve the knowledge and respect that goes into her products – the dilemmas she is facing are putting her under immense pressure. She may choose to expand while maintaining the integrity of her business – but how can this be done?

Trust is frequently espoused as being critical to effective team processes and performance. Yet, few studies have investigated the relationship between trust and team processes, or team effectiveness. There is currently a need to locate propensity to trust (a personality composition variable) and intragroup trust (an emergent state) within mainstream team effectiveness models, not only to provide much-needed theoretical and empirical support for trust's central role in team effectiveness, but also to increase our understanding of how trust influences team effectiveness. This paper argues that trust is a neglected variable within team effectiveness research that requires further empirical investigation.

Based on a contextual framework of the organizational differences between types of research and development entities, this study examines how organizational contexts affect the advent of technology convergence. It demonstrates the effects of research and development entity types and alliances using the multi-assignation analysis of technology domains and rich data on government-supported research and development programs in South Korea. The findings show that technology convergence is likely to occur when a university develops technology alone or in collaboration with another research and development actor. These results reflect the important role of incentive structure and collaboration strategies in increasing the development of converging technologies.

This paper analyses if ownership structure is an important determinant of capital structure decisions, on the basis of two sub-samples of family-owned and non-family owned SMEs, and using panel data models. The results suggest that family ownership is an important determinant for: i) the variations of short and long-term debt stimulated by financial deficit; ii) the speed of adjustment of short and long-term debt towards the respective target levels; and iii) the relationships between determinants and short-term debt and long-term debt. In general, the capital structure decisions of family-owned SMEs are closer to what is forecast by trade-off theory than those of non-family owned SMEs, whereas the capital structure decisions of non-family owned SMEs are closer to the forecasts of pecking order theory than those of family-owned SMEs.

The integration of work ethic theories with religious beliefs and Hofstede’s national culture typology implies that Islamic work ethics peculiarly support social symbiosis and collectivism. On the contrary, present globalized workplace is pragmatically driven by individualism. To sort out these concerns, this cross-cultural study links Islamic work ethics to individualism at globalized workplace and examines the moderating influence of employee religiosity and nationality. A stratified sample of 307 employees from leading multinational corporations operating in United States, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom and Pakistan participated in the study. The study found a strong positive relationship between Islamic work ethics and individualism, and no significant interaction effect of employee nationality and religiosity was observed. Together, the findings suggest that Islamic work ethics advocate a great deal of individualism, and can benefit the multinational corporations in managing their diversified workforce with a view to get maximum advantage of the opportunities offered by globalization.

Broad economic and social reform, rapid technological change and increasing global competition have meant that organisations must consider all aspects of their business model in order to successfully create and capture ongoing customer value. In this study it is proposed that business model innovation must always consider and incorporate the symbiotic and interdependent relationship that stakeholders have with an organisation. One particular aspect of economic reform, privatisation, has become an important driver of economic growth in many economies, particularly when linked with the rapid growth of air travel. Privatisation of an airport can generate a radical change in the overall business model for the airport owner and the various stakeholders involved in the operation of the airport. Sydney Airport has restructured its overarching business model to meet the demands of stakeholders. Using feedback from key stakeholders, this research examines the generally accepted view that airport privatisation leads to an improvement in airport performance. Chesbrough's Business Model Framework provides a lens to assist the analysis of Sydney Airport operations before and after privatisation, and provides valuable insights into the impact of privatisation on business model innovation.

An entrepreneur's social capital can be important for their firm's growth. The creation of a network can be largely determined by strategy. This study makes a contribution by developing and testing a model of the firm growth driven by the entrepreneur's social capital that considers the entrepreneur's resource acquisition network ties. In the model a controversial combination of strong and weak tie arguments is proposed. Regression analysis was conducted using structured-questionnaire survey data from small firm entrepreneurs in Slovenia. The findings suggest that firm growth can be influenced by strategic utilization of the entrepreneur's resource-based social capital. In particular, resource network intensity can have a positive influence on firm growth, whereas the central resource ‘network person friendship’ can be negatively related to firm growth.

Queer theory is a relatively new theoretical approach in organizational discourse that we think can uncover power relations and normative and hierarchical processes in diversity management discourse. ‘Heteronormativity’ and ‘performativity’, core concepts of queer theory, critique categorization and fixed identities and thereby problematize and broaden perspectives on current diversity management discourse, especially those associated with organizational constructions of diversity dimensions. In this article, we focus on the discursive and intersectional construction of subject positions and identities within organizations by drawing upon a queer theoretical framework to analyze three companies' codes of conduct that claim to create an inclusive work environment. The deconstructive analysis of these discursive artifacts emphasizes the intersectional power dynamics of and between the categories of sex, gender and sexuality, and can be taken as a point of departure for questioning the heteronormative arrangements of diversity management practices.

We propose that a trust climate will help the employee–customer interface in the retail context. Specifically, we argue that a work climate that is based on trust induces the exercise of discretion by retail managers and discretionary behavior by front-line staff. Managerial and staff discretion is necessary for retail stores to become locally responsive, as store responsiveness is linked to customer satisfaction. Our propositions are derived from interpersonal trust and social exchange theories. The use of a trust climate to analyse the antecedents of customer satisfaction offers another theoretical perspective to study the interface dynamics between employees and customers and thus this paper contributes to ‘linkage research.’

This article investigated how collectivism-oriented human resource management can influence on innovation performance through team reflexivity and team psychological safety. Using a sample of 200 research-oriented teams in Chinese universities, the empirical results clearly indicate that collectivism-oriented human resource management is beneficial to teams’ innovation performance. The results of the mediating model show how team reflexivity and team psychological safety mediate the relationship between collectivism-oriented human resource management and innovation performance. The implications for researchers and practitioners are also discussed.

This paper theorizes that conflict management strategies influence radical settlements in institutional fields. Radical settlements are truces to conflict reached between field constituents that significantly change constituents’ relations and their institutional context. We develop theory on the concept of radical settlements by introducing a typology of conflict management strategies that predicts variance in the likelihood of a radical settlement in institutional fields. We ground this typology within a framework of two key antecedents – ideological salience and field polarization – proposed to influence conflict management strategies. Our paper provides new insights to the literature on conflict and institutional change by shedding new light on the counter-intuitive phenomenon of conflict settlement or cessation as a catalyst for change within institutional fields.

This study analyses whether or not the effect of board independence on a firm's strategic performance is moderated by family involvement in ownership and control. Moderation of the board's size and the independent director ratio are tested under quadratic specifications. The effect of CEO duality with family involvement on long-term sales growth is also measured. The empirical analysis is conducted in the Southern European context using a sample of publicly traded firms that have concentrated ownership structures. The main findings indicate that when nonlinearities are considered, family involvement moderates the relationship between the independent director ratio and firm performance. The optimal proportion of independent directors is lower in family businesses than in non-family ones. However, the results fail to support nonlinearities for board size. We find positive linear relationships between both board size and CEO duality with firm performance, which are not moderated by family involvement.

Our study of entrepreneurial engagement within a depleted New Zealand community contributes to understanding the role of place and legitimacy in entrepreneurial practice. General decline characterised Stanton until a newcomer entrepreneur started several businesses that rejuvenated the town. She became a local economic hero to many stakeholders; but others deployed social narratives of place that drew on different values. Our analysis of interactions shows how perceptions of place legitimise or vilify and we demonstrate how place intercedes upon economically generated legitimacy of entrepreneurial practice. Social constructions of place and notions of embeddedness influenced this entrepreneurial enactment. Conceptually, we challenge ideas about universal legitimacy ensuing from economic entrepreneurial benefits. Our theoretical contribution offers socio-spatial propositions for understanding entrepreneurial legitimacy through place.

This study examines the effect of board gender diversity (BGD) and sustainability committees on environmental performance. Using a quantile regression approach and a sample of publicly listed firms in Italy, we find that BGD and sustainability committees have different effects on firms' environmental performance over different points of conditional distribution. This shows that BGD and sustainability committees have greater quantitative impact in firms performing better environmentally and are positively related to environmental performance. We further discover that large Italian firms that reach a critical mass of three female directors maintain a stronger attitude towards environmental sustainability. Overall, the results confirm that BGD and sustainability committees enhance board effectiveness and help promote sustainable environmental initiatives. This study provides empirical evidence from a context that has not yet been investigated. It further augments the literature by employing a quantile regression approach, mostly unexamined by previous studies.

Much organisational decision-making is embedded in hierarchical structures and leadership, even though hierarchies are limited in how they deal with increasingly complex issues. This paper explores links between identity formation, and the subsequent development of shared leadership. It explores how a programme to develop shared leadership changed a public science organisation, from one dependent on hierarchical leadership, to one that also used shared leadership to better address the complex public context. Using Day and Harrison’s levels of leadership identity framework, this study first examines the processes of a development programme at individual, relational, and collective levels. Results reveal cascading growth in leadership identities through processes such as job crafting and contagion. Despite the resulting positive processes, inherent paradoxes of power, goals, and attitude underlying shared leadership development are also identified. Within these paradoxes, tensions between vertical hierarchy versus dispersed networks, task performance versus job crafting, fatigue versus revitalisation, and cynicism versus evangelism were found.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals to 2030 call for action by the globe to tackle some of the most pressing problems facing humanity. There is a key role for business in helping to meet the goals, and in particular, small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for over 90% of global businesses. Many organisations that were already engaged in addressing sustainability prior to the release of the SDGs will need to shift their approach to accommodate the new framework, including SMEs like Sydney Theatre Company (STC). This paper explores the use of the SDG Compass as a tool for making that shift by revisiting a previous case study on STC's sustainability journey since 2008 to assess the efficacy of the SDG Compass as a guide to addressing the SDGs. It finds that the SDG Compass is prohibitively complex for SMEs which could impede engagement with the SDGs by SMEs.

Regulatory reforms and changing community expectations about organizational behaviour have increased the emphasis on the role of culture in organizational compliance. This conceptual paper proposes a framework that captures the complexities of the relationship between compliance and culture by drawing from two theories relevant to organizational culture: Neo-Institutional Theory and the Competing Values Model. By integrating elements of these theories, three core dimensions of compliance culture are identified: legitimacy, permeability and control. These core dimensions provide for a pluralist approach to theorising around compliance culture. In addition to its theoretical contribution, the paper concludes that there may be practical utility in linking organizational compliance outcomes with performance on the three core dimensions. It is also suggested that compliance culture profiles using these dimensions may be used to predict how organisations might need to respond to regulatory reforms.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-2019)-induced changes in the workplace present a timely opportunity for human resource management practitioners to consider and remediate the deleterious effects of noise, a commonly cited complaint of employees working in open-plan office (OPO) environments. While self-reports suggest that OPO noise is perceived as a stressor, there is little experimental research comprehensively investigating the effects of noise on employees in terms of their cognitive performance, physiological indicators of stress, and affect. Employing a simulated office setting, we compared the effects of a typical OPO auditory environment to a quieter private office auditory environment on a range of objective and subjective measures of well-being and performance. While OPO noise did not reduce immediate cognitive task performance compared to the quieter environment, it did reduce psychological well-being as evidenced by self-reports of mood, facial expressions of emotion, and physiological indicators of stress in the form of heartrate and skin conductivity. Our research highlights the importance of using a multimodal approach to assess the impact of workplace stressors such as noise. Such an approach will allow HR practitioners to make data-driven recommendations about the design and modification of workspaces to minimize negative effects and support employee well-being.

Employees committed to their organizations are more likely to contribute better and remain longer with their companies. This study examines how to build such organizational commitment through job characteristics, leadership and empowerment. Using a sample of 605 knowledge workers from four countries and various industries, this study probes how leadership complexity and psychological empowerment transform the impact of job characteristics on affective commitment. Results indicate that psychological empowerment partially mediates the effects of job characteristics on affective commitment and that leadership complexity moderates the influence of job characteristics and empowerment on affective commitment. Theoretical and practical implications of the research findings are discussed