The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has profoundly reconfigured the contemporary workplace, redefining the interactions among human employees, AI systems, and organizational processes. Yet, most research adopts a tool-centric view, overlooking how AI’s emergence as an alternative working agent reshapes managerial attention and employee welfare. Drawing on the attention-based view (ABV) and a dual-agent model, we theorize that AI adoption activates two opposing mechanisms: a human attention gain mechanism, where collaboration needs heightened focus on employees and increased employee-related corporate social responsibility (ECSR), and an AI attention shift mechanism, where deep AI embedding redirects attention toward AI, suppressing ECSR. Using panel data from 2575 Chinese listed firms (2013–2023), we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between AI adoption and ECSR. Moreover, industry AI substitution risk sharpens and left-shifts this curve, while top management team (TMT) functional diversity and employee stock ownership flattens and right-shifts it. These findings advance research on AI adoption, managerial attention, and employee-focused CSR by illuminating how attention allocation in dual-agent contexts shapes ethical and strategic outcomes, offering actionable insights for balancing human–AI integration with sustained employee welfare.

Smallholder farmers in developing economies are key suppliers in agri-food value chains, yet often lack capabilities to meet quality, reliability, and sustainability expectations. This paper presents a systematic literature review of empirical studies on farmer development, conceptualised as supplier development at the farm gate to examine who builds farmers’ capabilities, which initiatives are implemented, and with what sustainability outcomes. Searches of a multidisciplinary library discovery service and Scopus identified 15 studies reporting implemented farmer development initiatives and farmer-level outcomes in developing economies. The synthesis shows that capability building is dominated by government and non-governmental organisation-led programmes, typically bundling training, extension, input provision, and financial support, while buyer-led initiatives are rare and performance is measured mainly in economic terms, with social and environmental dimensions under-specified. The review positions smallholder capability building within supply chain management and argues that building smallholder capabilities is both a development imperative and a strategic supply chain task.

Housing and human capital represent two major forms of household wealth. This article investigates the potential for housing speculation to crowd out household investment in children’s education, an endeavor that only pays off in the long run. To address endogeneity concerns, we exploit the unintended spillover effect of staggered house purchase restrictions (HPR) in China. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that HPR reduce educational investment of households in nearby unregulated cities. We also provide evidence consistent with a housing speculation channel. These findings shed new light on the socioeconomic consequences of housing market booms.

We examine whether free-speech protections influence corporate environmental performance. Using the staggered enactment of U.S. anti-SLAPP statutes in a stacked difference-in-differences design from 1990 to 2019, we find that these laws significantly reduce firms’ toxic emissions without curbing economic activity. Anti-SLAPP enactments also promote environmental investment through green innovation, abatement spending, and waste reduction management, and strengthen governance via improved sustainability oversight, ESG-linked executive pay, employee training, and supply chain management. The effects are stronger when stakeholder monitoring is stronger and when managerial incentives embed sustainability goals. Overall, free-speech protections generate powerful environmental benefits.

The incorporation of algorithmic systems into organizations is reconfiguring decision-making processes and raising new ethical challenges related to transparency, impartiality, and accountability. This study maps the field of algorithmic ethics in organizational contexts through a co-citation–based bibliometric analysis of 1,437 Web of Science publications (search conducted on August 20, 2025). The analysis identifies 12 thematic clusters and reveals a robust intellectual structure, with high modularity (Q = 0.726) and a high weighted mean silhouette value (S = 0.894). The findings highlight the centrality of algorithmic management, responsible artificial intelligence, and explainability, as well as bridging works that connect technical, normative, and management-oriented perspectives. The study advances an integrative conceptual model and a future research agenda that point to the emergence of algorithmic ethics as an institutional logic of organizational governance. For managers, the results underscore the need to embed algorithmic ethics within organizational decision-making and control systems.

Applying the New Entrepreneurial History framework, this paper examines how ArcBest Corporation, an integrated logistics firm based in Fort Smith, Arkansas, became the last legacy less-than-load (LTL) carrier operating in the United States. It argues that the firm’s enduring viability is partially the product of an internal distributed agency among executives over a century that involved continual entrepreneurial processes: Envisioning and valuing opportunities informed by the multiplicative form of values, strategically reallocating and reconfiguring resources, and legitimizing novelty to stakeholders in response to profound market and regulatory shifts. These entrepreneurial processes, paired with the company’s commitments to a unionized labor force, informed executives’ strategic decisions that transformed the carrier from a regional hauler into a national, technologically sophisticated, integrated logistics provider. In applying the new entrepreneurial history to ArcBest, it considers how entrepreneurial opportunities are enacted within the context of a single firm over time.

This article is based on comments that I submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as one of eight peer reviewers of OMB’s 2023 draft revisions to Circular A-4, “Regulatory Analysis.” Since that time, OMB issued a final version of Circular A-4, which was then rescinded in January 2025. This article summarizes some of my main comments on the 2023 draft version that I submitted as a peer reviewer, along with a “prologue” that summarizes some of the main issues raised in my peer review and an “epilogue” recognizing both the initial revision of Circular A-4 that was initially adopted, as well as the 2025 decision to rescind the revised version and return to the 2003 version of the circular. The 2003 Circular continues to provide useful guidance, but could have been improved by expanding the scope of regulatory impact analysis in ways discussed in my peer review comments.

Traditional leadership theories often portray influence as stable traits or behaviors, yet complex organizations require leadership to be understood as an emergent, feedback-driven process that co-evolves with contextual demands and follower motivation. This study conceptualizes servant leadership as a nonlinear, adaptive process rather than a fixed style, integrating Complexity Leadership Theory with the Job Demands Resources model and Regulatory Focus Theory. Servant leadership is theorized as an enabling mechanism through which shifting job demands and resources are translated into employees’ promotion and prevention orientations, shaping person-job fit, satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, initiative, and experienced responsibility. Using a two-phase longitudinal design, Phase 1 tested simple and serial mediation with structural equation modeling, and Phase 2 employed a cross-lagged panel model to examine reciprocal feedback dynamics. Results support a four-path process in which servant leadership differentially activates promotion and prevention focus and participates in ongoing feedback loops.

This paper explores the ontological relationship between descriptive and normative by drawing on the perspectives of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. Through Wittgenstein’s concept of “grammar” and Heidegger’s notion of das Man, we see that normativity shapes human perception and interpretation, making descriptive neutrality unattainable. Descriptions are always informed by norms and norms evolve by descriptions. This intertwined relationship has significant implications for business ethics, since ethical conflicts can now be reframed as lack of normative references. Ultimately, the paper proposes a perspective of moral perspectivism.

Coordinated urban and rural development is crucial for reducing inequality and achieving common prosperity. Using panel data from 57 counties in Zhejiang Province from 2015 to 2019, this study examines the impact of digital economy development on the urban–rural income gap, with particular attention to its role in digital poverty alleviation and the underlying transmission mechanisms. The results show that while digital economy development contributes to poverty alleviation by significantly increasing household income in both urban and rural areas, it simultaneously widens the urban–rural income gap. The analysis of mechanisms reveals that nonagricultural employment (NAE), innovation, and entrepreneurship mediate this relationship, disproportionately benefiting urban areas. The heterogeneity analysis further indicates that human capital (HC) and business environment (BE) disparities amplify the widening effect of digital economy development on the urban–rural income gap, while improved infrastructure reduces barriers to resource flow, mitigating the gap. These findings highlight the dual effects of digital economy development, offering critical policy insights for promoting digital poverty reduction while addressing regional disparities to achieve common prosperity.