Since the 1990s, growing interest in the relationship between clusters and economic growth has highlighted the importance of understanding their internal structures and life cycles. Still, the mechanisms underlying cluster emergence remain largely unknown, especially regarding the influence of public policies in this initial stage. This paper examines the emergence of a metalworking cluster in the Spanish steelmaking pole of Asturias, focusing on Francoist industrial policy and the regime’s relationship with regional firms.

Findings indicate that Asturias presented favorable conditions for cluster formation since the late eighteenth century. However, only the establishment of the national steelmaking champion Ensidesa in 1950 triggered the appearance of self-reinforcing dynamics, finally boosting the cluster’s emergence. This process resulted from the indirect externalities generated by the steel industry and was never part of the Francoist industrial agenda. Despite the recognized sector’s potential, the regime prioritized strategic base industries and systematically ignored calls for direct support for metalworking firms.

In the business ethics and management literature, it is widely recognized that corporate sustainability is a complex concept that remains strongly contested. While some scholars highlight the current utility of the concept when used contextually, others claim that new conceptual foundations must be sought in order to improve the concept. In this article, I demonstrate that these contextualist and foundationalist strategies for conceptualizing corporate sustainability both must confront the ongoing, dynamic interplay between empirical and normative theorizing. Using the requirements of practical usefulness and theoretical robustness, I consequently argue that adopting the “pure” strategy of either contextualism or foundationalism is problematic. Instead, I defend the position of conceptual pluralism by claiming that it can partially reconcile contextualist and foundationalist commitments and thereby enable a flexible, multilevel corporate sustainability framework. I conclude by highlighting the key implications of this approach to concept formation for business ethics.

Life insurance companies, including those founded by African Americans, historically sought to invest their policyholders’ premiums in reliable securities, including mortgages. With fewer safe investment outlets after the Great Depression, government-backed mortgages resulting from New Deal housing market reforms attracted insurers seeking security, into the early 1950s. However, with the post-World War II economy on an upswing and growth-related inflation looking likely, the potential downsides of federally insured mortgages grew clearer. The Eisenhower administration (1953–1961) especially leaned on institutional investors to underwrite low-interest home loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration. However, Black-owned life insurance firms faced competitive disadvantages due to their small size, information asymmetries, and a postwar housing market characterized by pervasive racial discrimination, mounting civil rights gains notwithstanding. This situation put African American life insurers in a difficult position as they continued to function as a credit reserve for the Black middle class, while simultaneously trying to work with federal agencies and remain profitable despite their limited influence in the broader financial economy.

This article reframes late medieval and early modern merchant governance through the lens of distrust, conceived as a structured and productive force for sustaining order amid uncertainty. Drawing on insights from economic sociology and organizational studies, and grounded in archival documents from across Europe, it introduces the art of distrust as a framework for understanding how merchants navigated both foreseeable risks and deeper, more pervasive forms of the unknown. Distrust operated as a discipline embedded in recursive documentation, distributed surveillance, rhetorical restraint, and tactical conflict management. These practices were not merely technical responses to risk but part of a broader normative tradition honed over centuries of mercantile life and codified in manuals guiding merchants in observing others and managing their own conduct. The protocols of vigilance articulated in this literature treated opacity as a terrain to be strategically navigated in the name of the common good. Their echoes in courtly and political writings invite reflection on how mercantile practices of surveillance and self-discipline contributed to shaping impersonal rule as a defining logic of modern institutional life.

Peer review is part of the bedrock of science. In recent years the focus of peer review has shifted toward developmental reviewing, an approach intended to focus on the author’s growth and development. Yet, does the focus on developing the author have unintended consequences for the development of science? In this paper, we critique the developmental approach to peer review and contrast it with the constructive approach, which focuses on improvement of the research. We suggest the developmental approach, although with laudable aims, has also produced unintended consequences that negatively impact authors’ experiences as well as the quality and meaningfulness of the science published. We identify problems and discuss potential solutions that can strengthen peer review and contribute to science for a smarter workplace.