Leadership research largely ignores the really big issues facing our species, such as climate change, the now rapid growth of new technologies that are already transforming the world of work, and the possibility that an insufficiently reformed banking system will inflict a worse crisis on us than it did in 2008. We also have a proliferation of leadership constructs that often look remarkably like those they are trying to replace. There is much heat but little illumination. The dominant methodologies that the field employs are part of a wider crisis in management studies where many of our claimed results are invalid and/or unreliable, unreproducible and offer little guidance for practice. I conclude that radical changes are needed if we are to play a serious role in improving the world in which we live. Let's take Ken Parry's lead, and make a difference.

In business the future is not predetermined, and the unexpected often happens. So how should entrepreneurs (and businesses) try to address that future uncertainty? This paper suggests that there are two main options:

1. 1. The often-preferred approach seeks to reduce uncertainty by forecasting and planning, using ‘left-brained’ logic and analysis.

2. 2. The alternative way seeks to live with, and to benefit from, uncertainty by using ideas derived from exploration, effectuation, antifragility and ‘trial and error’.

This paper compares the two approaches and considers their rationales and potential effectiveness. It suggests that forecasting and planning has many drawbacks and is often not the best way to operate in uncertain conditions. Nevertheless, it is often advocated and its thinking seems to have been adopted as the default philosophy for business. Therefore if, as has been suggested, uncertainty is the norm, do we need to advocate adopting a different way of thinking?

Drawing from social exchange theory, this study proposes the effects of perceived leader narcissism on employees' voice behaviors (promotive voice and prohibitive voice) via organizational justice depending on the conditions of employees' trust in leader. Through investigating 257 employees and conducting a scenario study in China, this research shows that perceived leader narcissism is negatively related to prohibitive voice. The relationships between perceived leader narcissism and voice behaviors are moderated by trust in leader, and perceived leader narcissism is positively related to employees' voice behaviors when trust in leader is low. Results also show that organizational justice mediates the relationships between perceived leader narcissism and voice behaviors. The indirect effect of perceived leader narcissism on voice behaviors via organizational justice is moderated by trust in leader. This study has important implications for explaining the relationships between perceived leader narcissism and employees' voice behaviors and contributes to the social exchange theory by illustrating trust in the partner in exchange relationship as a boundary condition of norm reciprocity violation.

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.’

As several previous studies have shown, the provision of work–life benefits (WLB) varies between organisations; while some organisations provide a comprehensive range of WLB, others do not. Our research aims to identify and examine the influences on the provision of WLB in an organisation. Recognising the potential for different goals and agenda, we propose that it is necessary to understand the perspectives of WLB held by managers and by employees. To inform our research, we have drawn upon the complementary theoretical bases of strategic choice theory, stakeholder theory and the resource-based view of the firm. Using multiple methods of data collection and including management and employee perspectives, qualitative case studies were undertaken with two Australian subsidiaries of large multinational firms. We develop and refine a framework that identifies the influences on the provision of WLB. This framework is a useful guide for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and manage WLB.

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 research is aimed at analyzing the relationship between the underlying dimensions of boundaryless (boundaryless mindset and organizational mobility preference) and protean (self-directed and values-driven) career attitudes and subjective career success, within today's complex and dynamic organizational context in which careers are unfolding. Drawing on a sample of 150 Spanish professionals from the Catalonia region, which enabled hypotheses testing by means of hierarchical regression analysis, the research results suggest that self-direction in managing one's career and vocational development is instrumental in achieving subjective career success. Organizational mobility preference was found to be negatively associated with individuals' perceptions of the success achieved in their careers. Furthermore, the study suggests some future research lines that could draw more light upon the hypothesized relationships.

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.

In this editorial, we are delighted to introduce the seven papers in this Special Issue. Each article considers various aspects of how management research can assist in the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in different contexts. Starting from a desire to provide a mechanism to drive real research outcomes for management research, this editorial considers the SDGs and their implementation/adoption in universities and businesses to date. It then introduces the different contexts for management research and the SDGs explored in the seven articles in the Special Issue. Finally, in a Postscript at the end of this Special Issue, we look at current progress against the SDGs, how COVID-19 has impacted this progress and what the future may hold for the links between management research and the SDGs.

This study investigates how the transition to remote work during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is experienced by employees. We investigate to what extent perceived work stressors relate to psychological strain through perceptions of social support, work–life conflict, and adjustment to remote work. The findings expound the mechanisms underlying psychological strain in the context of sudden organizational change. Specifically, this study shows that both challenge stressors and hindrance stressors have negative impact on adjustment to remote work, whereas hindrance stressors are more strongly negatively related to social support. The study further demonstrates that there is hardly any buffering impact of job control, work structuring, and communication technology use on the implications of these work stressors. These findings contribute to our theoretical understanding and provide actionable implications for organizational policies in facilitating employees' adaptation to remote work.

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.

Customer relations provide a valuable link between customers and the companies who produce the products they buy and the services they use. Every organisational member carries out actions which reflect the existence of counter-knowledge (i.e., obsolete knowledge and inappropriate knowledge structures) which in turn can lead to detrimental effects on customers. A decision to reorientate counter-knowledge takes an extended period of time to produce significant results as this process involves the integration of existing capabilities with newly acquired knowledge. Crucially, however, it also involves the unlearning of capabilities which are no longer relevant. Unlearning is the process by which firms eliminate old logics and behaviours and make room for new ones. With the development of this paper, we intend to address the following question: How can managers help to correct counter-knowledge in order to foster customer relations? These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of 164 small and medium enterprises in the Spanish construction industry. Our results show that an unlearning context (i.e., the examination of lens fitting, the framework for changing individual habits and the framework for consolidating emergent understandings) is an important solution for the process of counteracting the negative effects of counter-knowledge (e.g., misunderstandings and misconceptions). The results also shed light on a tangible means for managers to enhance customer relations through unlearning practices.

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.

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.

The knowledge-based view of the firm portrays knowledge assets as the basis of sustainable competitive advantage. However, leveraging the knowledge available to the firm is not straightforward. The transfer of best practices within the firm or the replication of a certain routine poses challenges for managers. Causal ambiguity of knowledge makes it difficult to transfer practices into other contexts within the firm. In this paper, a new framework is proposed that identifies four antecedents to causal ambiguity: complexity, tacitness, relevance to the existing knowledge base, and the locality of knowledge. The paper concludes with the implications of the framework.

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.

As a transformative service, aged care has the capacity to create uplifting changes and improvements to the quality of life for individuals and communities. Recent studies have, however, highlighted the pressures faced by aged care workers and the impact that these pressures have on employee wellbeing and quality of care. This paper explores the relationship between employee wellbeing and service quality. We present a model for the aged care sector which suggests that by identifying and implementing appropriate HRM strategies both employee wellbeing and service quality will be enhanced thus ensuring that this transformative service meets the needs of its many stakeholders. Essentially, we argue that employee wellbeing is directly linked to service delivery outcomes and overall business performance and that HR practices that address issues such as learning and development, employee voice and involvement and workplace health and safety play a significant role in enhancing and maintaining employee wellbeing.

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.

This research provides a better understanding of the factors driving the choice of governance structures and human resource management (HRM) practices within services franchising arrangements. A qualitative multiple case study approach was favoured so as to obtain a clearer picture of the main issues and parameters. Nineteen franchisors using predominantly pure franchising, predominantly pure company-owned, plural, and predominantly multiple unit growth strategies were interviewed. Major contrasts have been identified, suggesting that system size, industry maturity and the nature of market demand impacts upon the choice of system governance structure. Generally, less mature and smaller networks rely upon predominantly single unit franchising strategies and less sophisticated HRM practices to foster local market innovation, build brand value and support rapid unit growth, while predominantly company owned strategies are favoured in environments of low competition and minimal demand uncertainty. In comparison, more mature systems use hybridised franchising forms and sophisticated HRM strategies to accommodate the competing demands of local market innovation, systemwide adaptation and system uniformity.

Professor Steven Poelmans is a leading international expert on the frontiers of work–family research contributing to theoretical and practice advancements. He is the Academic Director of the International Centre of Work and Family (ICWF) at IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, which has worked for more than a decade with numerous organisations in Spain, Latin-America, and various countries around the globe to create a family-responsible environment. In this conversation, Steven Poelmans responds to questions from Thomas Kalliath and Paula Brough (Guest Editors) on a range of theoretical and practice issues currently facing the field including measurement of work–life balance, work–life balance theory, engagement with industry, the role of organisational culture and strategic management in influencing work–life balance.