This article sketches an answer to the call for a normative foundation for the paradox perspective on corporate sustainability and also enriches an understanding of firm objectives that ought to be otherwise than profit by offering a rendering of Aristotelian virtue ethics—what I call the virtuous life of pleasure—that highlights how contemplative activity or theorein cultivates, and is essential to, virtue and eudaimonia. My claim is that the virtuous life of pleasure not only characterizes how to live the most meaningful and pleasant life, rendering it good and thus worth pursuing, but it is also, as a flourishing life, the normative foundation for safeguarding the intrinsic value of nonfinancial corporate aims, as the paradox perspective prescribes. It does so by establishing a principle of enough, which seeks to preserve integral, interdependent parts as ends in themselves and as constitutive of a larger ecosystem.

This article proposes a theoretical explanation for the positive pre-announcement drift empirically documented ahead of scheduled announcements, using the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings as a main example. The framework entails a general equilibrium model of disagreement (differences of opinion), where investors interpret a costly signal differently. Investors optimally decide to stop learning when an announcement is imminent, increasing the risk premium ahead of an announcement. The model jointly rationalizes puzzling empirical evidence by generating i) an upward drift in prices just before scheduled announcements, regardless of the announcement’s content, which coexists with ii) low volatility and iii) low trading volume.

Building on recent advancements in moral disengagement theory and shared reality theory, we propose that employees do not need to directly experience frequent customer mistreatment to trigger their moral disengagement. Specifically, when employees frequently share their mistreatment experiences with coworkers, even infrequent instances of customer mistreatment can evoke heightened levels of moral disengagement. Conversely, when social sharing occurs less frequently, infrequent instances of customer mistreatment are associated with lower levels of moral disengagement, while more frequent customer mistreatment is linked to higher levels of moral disengagement, which then positively relates to service sabotage, indicating a positive indirect effect of the frequency of customer mistreatment on service sabotage through moral disengagement. Results from two independent time-lagged studies involving samples of call center employees (Sample 1 of Study 1), casino cage cashiers (Sample 2 of Study 1), and service representatives (Study 2) recruited from an online research platform, lend support to our propositions.

‡Between 2020 and 2022, China’s digital platform sector underwent a substantial regulatory shift, marking a clear departure from the previously lenient approach toward digital platform firms. While much of the existing research has focused on external factors—such as the unchecked growth of tech giants, the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of “common prosperity,” and the U.S.–China rivalry—this paper highlights internal institutional changes that facilitated this regulatory transformation. Specifically, it explores how the 2018 bureaucratic restructuring within China’s regulatory apparatus fostered “domain-specific centralization,” concentrating regulatory power within agencies overseeing key domains such as financial regulation, antitrust, and data security. It argues that such centralization reduced regulatory overlaps and gaps, allowing the state to control major digital platforms more directly. Using case studies of Ant Group’s suspended initial public offering, Alibaba’s antitrust fine, and Didi’s data security investigation, this paper shows how variations in centralization across domains shaped regulatory outcomes. The findings provide new insights into China’s evolving regulatory governance and offer broader implications for the relationship between the state and business in the digital economy.

In the contemporary business-to-business (B2B) context, marked by technological, economic, and geopolitical turbulence, creating and maintaining Customer Engagement (CE) is both challenging and necessary for buyers and suppliers. However, while prior studies have already investigated how suppliers are adapting their practices to retain and attract customers, the buyers’ perspective is largely unexplored in existing literature. Therefore, drawing on the Paradox Theory as an interpretative lens, this research investigates the tensions that characterize CE through interviews with buyers from medium to large companies across various sectors. Results highlight that buyers are not merely passive recipients but active participants in the generation and management of tensions related to CE. At a managerial level, the study proposes an operational framework to support suppliers in adapting their engagement practices. Finally, the study suggests future research directions.

Practical real-world activities consume energy and emit thermal infrared radiation (TIR). Leveraging this physical fact, we develop a direct, real-time measure of firms’ operating activity using satellite data. Tracking 28,236 factories of Chinese listed firms, we find TIR declines significantly following operational shocks and strongly forecasts subsequent sales growth, costs, investment, employment, and profits. TIR also predicts future stock returns, especially among opaque firms and those with limited investor access, yet sophisticated investors largely ignore this information. Our findings highlight TIR as a distinctive, under-exploited indicator of corporate fundamentals.

Servitization is a key strategy for enhancing competitiveness in manufacturing, yet the managerial drivers behind this transformation remain underexplored. This study investigates the impact of top executives’ service cognition on servitization using a novel index derived from text-mined disclosures of Chinese listed manufacturing firms (2007–2020). Results show that executives’ service cognition significantly promotes servitization, even after controlling for endogeneity using instrumental variables and Heckman’s two-stage model. Mechanism analysis reveals that this cognitive orientation enhances human capital accumulation and R&D investment, which in turn drive higher service levels. Furthermore, the relationship is moderated by executive power concentration and regional internet penetration. Heterogeneity tests indicate stronger effects in high-tech industries, state-owned enterprises, and large firms. These findings highlight the critical role of executive cognition in shaping strategic transformation and offer practical implications for firms and policymakers aiming to foster servitization through leadership development and supportive digital infrastructure.

This article investigates sample selection bias in early-stage investment. We use comprehensive administrative data on the universe of new firm starts in Norway, allowing us to compare venture-backed firms with ex ante similar firms that do not receive venture funding. The valuation premium for venture backing is sizeable at firm birth and doubles over the first 5 years, implying a substantial upward bias in venture capital (VC) returns relative to comparable firms. In contrast, the premium for firms receiving multiple rounds of outside equity emerges only after the first year and remains significantly smaller than the VC premium throughout the firm life cycle.

I analyze the effects of bank competition on gender and racial gaps in entrepreneurship. By leveraging interstate bank deregulation from 1994 to 2021, I find that stronger bank competition increases the quantity and quality of banking services offered to minority borrowers. Developing a novel measure of discrimination using narrative information in the complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I demonstrate that bank competition reduces discrimination, alleviating the financial constraints of female and minority entrepreneurs. Stronger bank competition also reduces gender and racial gaps in firm performance and business equity accumulation, promoting wealth equality and fostering equitable economic growth.

The Journal of Management and Organization (JMO) is celebrating its 30th birthday, which is a significant event given how the journal has shaped and influenced global management research and practice. As part of the commemorative activities this perspective article aims to highlight how the journal has contributed to the development of several sub-management themes. Each theme is analysed in terms of articles published in the journal in terms of establishing existing knowledge then explaining future research ideas. This helps to solidify the journal’s reputation and standing in the field in order to foster more management research that contributes to both theory and practice. Novel social and business approaches to future organizational and manager’s needs are addressed. This will inspire more meaningful management engagement in order to further support the evolution of management research.

Indigenous values are increasingly recognised in helping organisations contribute to wellbeing within and beyond the workplace. Adopting the theoretical lens of Māori economies of wellbeing, this case study examines how The Southern Initiative (TSI), a unit within Auckland Council, incorporates Māori values to co-create place-based solutions and foster whānau (family) wellbeing. Through kōrero (conversations) with three people, a wānanga (collaborative discussion) with TSI members, and analysis of organisational literature, we identified how TSI’s organising approach synthesises social innovation and bureaucracy. We found that indigeneity-embedded intrapreneurship, distributed leadership, and whānau-centred design support TSI’s innovations. Mana (prestige) emerged as a primary organising principle, sustaining TSI’s approach to achieving systemic change. By bridging Indigenous paradigms and conventional managerial practice, this case study demonstrates how Māori values can transform public sector management, elevate social justice, and encourage community resilience. These findings highlight culturally grounded frameworks for delivering social impact and shaping equitable outcomes.

Online platforms have adopted business models enabling the proliferation of hate speech. In some extreme cases, platforms are being investigated for employing algorithms that amplify criminal hate speech such as incitement to genocide. Legislators have developed binding legal frameworks clarifying the human rights due diligence and liability regimes of these platforms to identify and prevent hate speech. Some of the key legal instruments at the European Union level include the Digital Services Act, the proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the Artificial Intelligence Act. However, these legal frameworks fail to clarify the remedial responsibilities of online platforms to redress people harmed by criminal hate speech caused or contributed to by the platforms. This article addresses this legal vacuum by proposing a comprehensive remedial responsibilities framework for online platforms which caused or contributed to criminal hate speech based on the general corporate human rights responsibilities framework.

This study examines the impact of recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on firm-level employment using an imputation-based difference-in-differences (DiD) approach across U.S. states. RMLs significantly reduce employment, particularly among firms with high-skilled labor, strong union presence, permissive corporate cultures, and in states with greater dispensary density. Alternative explanations—including economic crises, COVID-19, fiscal changes, labor regulations, and related policies such as smoking bans and right-to-work (RTW) laws—are systematically ruled out through a series of placebo and robustness tests. RMLs also reduce investment, sales growth, and innovation, suggesting that legalization introduces labor-related frictions with broad implications for firm performance and long-term dynamism.

Bringing one’s authentic self to work is important to employees’ psychological well-being and performance. Although literature has examined how organizational factors influence authentic self-expression, it has largely overlooked the role of leaders. Drawing from leadership research, this study investigates the impact of perceived leader concern on authentic self-expression and its downstream effects on job attitudes. Findings provide empirical support for our predictions. Specifically, perceived leader concern is positively associated with authentic self-expression, which in turn relates positively to perceived self-concept-job fit. Regarding downstream outcomes, self-concept-job fit is positively related to organizational commitment and negatively to turnover intentions. Serial mediation analyses show that leader concern indirectly affects commitment and turnover intentions through authentic self-expression and self-concept-job fit. These findings highlight that leaders who show genuine concern foster open communication and authentic self-expression, enhancing alignment between identity and work, thereby strengthening commitment and reducing turnover. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

We administer a theory-driven, lab-in-the-field experiment to study the disposition effect among financial professionals. Our novel design identifies, at the individual participant level, key behavioral drivers of the disposition effect: reference-dependent risk attitudes (“tastes”), second-order uncertainty attitudes (including “ambiguity”), and subjective likelihood assessments (“beliefs”). Among the 237 professionals in our sample, 34% exhibited the disposition effect, which seems to be primarily driven by non-Bayesian beliefs. Our experimental results suggest that, when faced with new information about their asset’s performance, financial professionals failed to update their beliefs sufficiently leading them to sell the asset that gained (lost) value more (less) readily.