Digital governance is a public concern, yet under private control. After numerous scandals, all stakeholders in the European Union (EU) agreed to establish a “novel constitution for the internet” that would effectively constrain the power of large platforms. Yet the Digital Services Act (DSA) ultimately legitimized and institutionalized their position as the gatekeepers of the internet. Why? We argue that platforms prevailed thanks to their ability as intermediaries to quietly shape the available policy options. Our “platform power mechanism” combines institutional and ideational sources of business power to show how big tech drew on its entrenched position as an indispensable provider of essential services and promulgated the idea of itself as a responsible and neutral intermediary. We follow the unfolding of platform power through a process-tracing analysis of Google and Meta’s activities with respect to DSA legislation from its announcement (2020) to its adoption (2022). Besides contributing a reconceptualization of the DSA as a regulatory capture, we integrate the notion of platform power into a “regulator–intermediary–target” model and demonstrate how gatekeepers have exploited information asymmetries to share “the public space.” Our analysis thus supplements established approaches that have derived regulators’ deference to platforms from the tacit allegiance of consumers.

Recent controversies over “woke” businesses have challenged traditional partisan political alignments, leading to increased criticism on the right of corporate political activity. This paper explores how the public evaluates corporate political activity, focusing specifically on whether individuals believe corporations are doing too much (or too little) to advance social and political goals. We are especially interested in how social identities and pocketbook considerations shape perceptions of corporate political activities not explicitly tied to social issues. Does racial resentment, for example, influence perceptions of corporate political activity designed to increase worker wages or improve health care? Or are the effects limited to efforts to achieve racial equality? We find that racial resentment and hostile sexism have spillover effects, affecting perceptions of corporate political activity across issue areas. Partisan affiliation, political ideology, and personal pocketbook considerations, in contrast, play a more limited role. Previous research has demonstrated the effect of racial resentment and sexism on support for welfare policies. We add to this literature by showing that racist and sexist opposition extends to corporate political activities that might not be explicitly identified as socially progressive.

This study employs social cognitive theory to examine the dynamics of ethical climate, environmental passion, and low-carbon behaviours among Malaysian public servants based on data from 407 employees across 37 departments. Although ethical climate did not have a direct impact on low-carbon behaviour, a significant association with environmental passion was observed. Additionally, environmental passion exhibited a noteworthy relationship with low-carbon behaviour, and emerged as a mediator between ethical climate and low-carbon behaviour, with green mindfulness moderating this relationship. These findings underscore the importance of nurturing environmental passion and green mindfulness to promote low-carbon behaviour among employees and aid organisations in addressing environmental challenges. By addressing these empirical gaps, this study contributes to the literature on low-carbon behaviour and offers both theoretical insights and practical implications for sustainability initiatives.

The current study examined how happiness is affected by optimism, self-efficacy, and occupational compromise (OC), among young workers (aged 20–30 years) in the post-Covid-19 pandemic period. A sample of 211 young people (aged 20–30 years) who were currently or formerly employed participated in the study. The research findings indicate negative correlations between (a) the optimism and self-efficacy of the employees to their OC and (b) between their OC to their sense of happiness. In addition, as hypothesized, positive correlations were found between (a) feelings of optimism and self-efficacy to the degree of happiness and (b) between optimism and self-efficacy. Finally, the study tested a mediation model that indicated optimism as a mediating variable in the relationships of self-efficacy and OC with happiness. In light of these findings, several conclusions emerged from the study. First, according to general trends in the Israeli economy, even among young workers, who make up the new generation of workers in the post-Covid-19 period, there is a reduction in the degree of OC in order to achieve happiness. But this depends on several personality elements, such as their feelings of optimism and self-efficacy. Second, in accordance with the mediation model tested in the study, it seems that optimism has a central role in enhancing happiness among young workers in the post-Covid-19 era, at the beginning of their career path. Eventually, it appears that the reduced OC and elevated happiness among young workers in the post-pandemic period, has the potential to shape the future job market as filled with content employees that can also improve their organizations’ economic output.

Research has shown that the relationship between economic freedom and corruption is rather complex. While some studies suggest a negative relationship, others show the matter to be more nuanced. While more regulations are known to foster corrupt institutions, a competitive market can also incentivize bribery and corruption. Our study examines the role of economic freedom as it relates to perceived corruption, measured via a survey for India. Using firm-level data, we explore the relationship between perceived corruption in the formal sector and economic freedom across Indian states. In our baseline results for Indian firms, we find a significantly negative relationship between perceived corruption and lagged economic freedom. These results hold when we design matching models and include a number of potentially confounding factors to control for identification issues. Additionally, we show that small and young firms and those with sole ownership perceive greater benefits from higher economic freedom. In contrast, older firms perceive higher corruption when economic freedom is higher. This lends support to the idea that competition facilitated by economic freedom can increase rent seeking behavior. Our study contributes to the literature by emphasizing that the relationship between economic freedom and corruption in India is layered, with firm characteristics playing a crucial role.

This paper examines the population of corporate directors of Britain at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the period 1881-1911 the corporate form became the most common mode of business organisation for large businesses. As their number increased, the population of directors expanded and reflected an increasingly diversified corporate landscape. Based on a large-scale dataset, this paper analyses the characteristics and networks of this wider population of directors. The study goes beyond previous work, which has mainly focused on elite directors or prominent companies, and shows three key findings. First, the population of directors was very connected into a large network, complete isolation from this network was rare. Second, over 1881-1911 director interlocks with banks became less important for most sectors, while interlocks with other financial institutions such as trusts became increasingly important. Insurance companies stood out as the most connected sector spanning smaller local companies and larger international ones. Third, during the period studied there was a shift from director clusters that were mainly based on proximity, to those that were connected through industries.

Turn-of-the-century America witnessed many forgotten risk-making experiments that probed the limits of insurability by stepping beyond the familiar fields of life, fire, and marine insurance. One attempted to underwrite firms’ lost profits during strikes.

The ensuing debates on strike insurance’s practicability revealed scientistic expectations of never-ending actuarial progress that united an otherwise-divided business community. Yet attempting to realize strike insurance quickly meant grappling with the limits of insurability. Labor strife’s fuzzy causality involving human agency forestalled the homogenous classification that underlay actuaries’ averaging. Thus, strike underwriters sidestepped actuarial ratemaking to offer uniform premiums to those deemed acceptable risks. This solution not only left them susceptible to adverse selection and moral hazard but also highlighted the limits of insurers’ ability to transform uncertainty into commoditized risk, more broadly.

Recognizing these limits has important historiographical implications. Based largely on studies of life insurance—the gold standard of insurability—the rise of financial risk management has claimed a central place in the history of American capitalism. This literature thus threatens to obscure the ongoing significance of unclassifiable, unquantifiable uncertainty. Uncovering forgotten risk-making projects like attempts to establish strike insurance, where Americans grappled with the limits of insurability, is thus a crucial corrective.

Investment banks collaborated with health care entrepreneurs and managers in the 1990s to add a costly layer of investor-owned corporations to the US medical delivery system. In capitalizing and consolidating physician practices, publicly traded Physician Practice Management Companies (PPMCs) incorporated elements of the broader capitalist economy. Companies such as PhyCor, MedPartners, and FPA Medical Management turned to the equity and debt markets to generate shareholder profits and capital for acquisitions. Contemporary theories of financial economics reinforced their activities. PPMCs collapsed after shareholder lawsuits accused them of reporting false figures to the SEC and banks withdrew their credit. Physicians were both accomplices and victims in the process that made the medical delivery system less equitable, less effective, and more expensive. Although this experiment in medical capitalism failed, it widened the door for Wall Street to build new ways to profit from health care.

This study analyzes direct lobbying in the Chilean Congress, contributing to the debate over which legislators are targeted by interest groups. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset constructed from legally mandated records of lobbying meetings, we test theoretical implications predominantly derived from the US context within a different presidential democracy. The focus is on the legislative targets of business and labor groups. The results reveal a marked preference for lobbying allies, aligning with recent theories of information transmission and legislative subsidies. This pattern holds true for both business and labor groups and highlights the significance of ideological alignment for legislative lobbying in Chile. Additionally, the study finds that legislators with influential positions, such as those on key committees or centrally located in the bill collaboration network, are more frequently targeted. This research provides key insights into the dynamics of legislative lobbying in a non-US context, underscoring the generalizability of established theoretical frameworks.

Access to heterogeneous knowledge resources is suggested in the literature as an important explanation of firm innovation and performance. The exchange of knowledge, however, can be a complex managerial challenge, especially between different epistemic communities. Our research focuses on the concept of epistemic communities to illuminate the complexity of tensions that arise in heterogeneous knowledge exchange in alliances, thus filling a gap in the literature. Using the Straussian grounded theory case study approach, our research investigates the emergence of horizontal, vertical, and inter-organizational epistemic tensions and explores management controls as instruments to guide the knowledge exchange in intermediary-driven research and development alliances. We find that the source of multiple epistemic tensions is rooted in the natural social behaviors of epistemic community members and further shows how these behaviors influence the effective use of inter-organizational management controls in facilitating heterogeneous knowledge exchange.

Successful employment outcomes are often beyond the reach of people with disabilities, but relatively little is known about the factors that best enable the achievement of this goal. Using survey data from 803 people with and without disabilities, we examine the association of eight factors with successful employment outcomes. Using regression tree analysis, five factors emerged as statistically significant predictors of successful employment outcomes for people with disabilities: corporate culture and climate, job characteristics, government support, employer attitudes, and societal attitudes. Key interrelationships between factors include: (1) government support linking with corporate culture and climate; and (2) job characteristics linking with corporate culture and climate. Findings are relevant to organisations and governments to inform policy and practice to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities.

In this special issue titled ‘Sustainability and SMEs: Opening the black box’, we compile eight articles that dissect the multifaceted relationship between small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and sustainability. This special issue promoted interdisciplinary research at the intersection of the design, management, organisation, and reporting of sustainable actions in the context of SMEs. Stemming from the need to apply different theoretical and analytical lenses to the study of sustainability in SMEs than in large corporations, each paper provides unique insights into the formal and informal approaches, drivers, barriers, and enablers of sustainable practices in SMEs. The collection not only furthers the dialogue on the role of SMEs in sustainable development but also paves the way for future research directions and practical applications in this dynamic and still underexplored field.

State-sponsored cyber attacks are increasingly attracting attention in the literature, with many analysts interested in the firm-level economic implications of these attacks. Nevertheless, the bulk of these studies focus on firms directly targeted in the attacks. In this paper, I examine the broader, often overlooked ripple effects of these attacks on third-party entities like cybersecurity service providers who are frequently at the frontlines of dealing with these attacks. Leveraging data on cyber attacks and stock market returns for a sample of U.S. based cybersecurity defense contractors from 2000 to 2020, I empirically demonstrate that an escalation in the intensity of state-sponsored cyber attacks prompts a behavioral shift among investors and regulators, leading to increased co-movement in firms’ stock returns. This paper thus adds a novel dimension to our understanding of the complex interplay between state-sponsored cyber attacks and the market dynamics of cybersecurity defense contractors, with important implications for national cybersecurity.

The attention-based view contends that executives possess limited attentional capabilities that must be carefully allocated across different strategic issues. Although many scholars contend that narrow strategic attention breadth leads to better performance, others argue that broad strategic attention breadth may be more beneficial due to better opportunity scanning. We posit that the relationship between strategic attention breadth and performance will be inverted U-shaped, where strategic attention breadth is positively related to firm performance up to an optimal point, after which firms will see declining benefits due to executive cognitive overload. Furthermore, we propose that executives’ assessment of strategic opportunities will be influenced by the firm’s corporate social responsibility perspective, as the firm’s environmental and ethical commitment may mitigate executive blind spots and enhance opportunity selection. We support our hypotheses with multiple measures of firm performance and a content analysis of annual reports corresponding to a 5-year longitudinal sample of 2,245 S&P 500 firms.

Learning orientation emphasizes the importance of learning from any experience. It is grounded on commitment to learn, shared vision, open‐mindedness, and knowledge sharing. Organizational knowledge management literature based on social complexity theory posits that learning orientation makes companies generate new knowledge through spontaneous multi-level iterations and self-organization. Challenges related to the current business environment requires companies to constantly adjust to remain competitive. Still, the mechanisms making learning-oriented companies more capable to develop innovative product have been scantly explored. Pertinent literature actually conjectures this relationship as spontaneous, directed, and unmediated. Moreover, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)rarely represent the context of analysis of research on this topic. Frequently lacking resources to systematically pursue product innovation, SMEs rely on solutions deriving from the combination of internal knowledge and external sources; thus, these companies depend on learning orientation principles to remain innovative. In this vein, the research aims to understand how learning orientation allows product innovation in SMEs through the achievement of strategic flexibility. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse data from 300 British SMEs. The results demonstrate the mediating role of strategic flexibility in the relationships between learning orientation and product innovation. The importance of innovation culture also emerged.

While employees actively seek out workplaces that offer meaningful work experiences, the concept of meaningful work remains notably underexplored within the turnover literature. The present study addresses this gap by examining the role of work meaningfulness among knowledge workers and its direct and indirect effects on turnover intentions and job satisfaction through the lens of self-determination theory. Our findings show significant effects on turnover intentions and job satisfaction, with work meaningfulness emerging as a stronger predictor of job satisfaction, while still contributing to reducing turnover intentions. Most extant literature focuses on sources and ways to enhance work meaningfulness. We contribute to more recent research on its relationship with its outcomes especially the link with turnover intentions, offering insight into a relationship that has produced few, but conflicting,results.

While unethical acts are common in the business world, we know little about how employees react when they observe coworkers caught engaging in unethical behavior. This is both theoretically and practically relevant, given that many supervisors take unethical behavior in the workplace very seriously. Drawing on appraisal theory, we argue that observing a coworker caught engaging in unethical behavior elicits feelings of schadenfreude. Then, this positive feeling spills over to a separate task and enhances performance. Finally, we suggest that trait empathy can weaken this effect because individuals with high trait empathy are more likely to understand the motivations of the person caught. Across two studies, our results showed that perpetrators getting caught increased schadenfreude among observers, which then increased their subsequent task performance. However, trait empathy did not significantly affect these results. Our work contributes to the literature on unethical behavior and emotions in the workplace.

Drawing on job-demands resources and self-consistency theories, this study investigates individual and contextual factors influencing managers’ intrapreneurial intention (INI). We focus on the role of personal resources (organization-based self-esteem and proactivity) related to INI. Further, we analyze job resources (top management support and role clarity) shaping INI, and their interaction with proactivity. Our data comprises 193 Kosovan managers employed in companies varying in size and industry. The results show that organization-based self-esteem and proactivity are positively related to INI. Additionally, proactivity serves as the underlying mechanism, mediating organization-based self-esteem-INI relationship. Furthermore, job resources – top management support and role clarity – strengthen the likelihood of INI among proactive employees, suggesting a moderated mediation model.

By jointly examining individual and contextual antecedents of INI, this study contributes to the debate of who the intrapreneur is and what nurtures his/her inclinations. Furthermore, this is among the few studies to examine INI using a managerial sample and in an emerging economy context.