This article examines how Norway, a hydropower-rich oil and gas producer, has sought to diversify its energy production since the late 1990s. It explores how and why leading Norwegian oil companies have attempted to redeploy into offshore wind, and how this redeployment has been shaped by political developments and sectoral interests. Through a four-part historical analysis, the article pays particular attention to the motives and interests of key stakeholders within the so-called oil–industrial complex, which encompasses both industrial and political actors, including employer and labor organizations. By integrating corporate and political perspectives, the article explains Norway’s attempt to transform from an “oil nation” to a “wind power nation” despite growing awareness of poor profitability and challenging conditions for offshore wind.

By April 1942, Japan had cut off almost all US supplies of natural rubber, a key raw material for which the country had effectively no domestic sourcing. The resulting shortage aggravated downward pressure on manufacturing productivity and seriously jeopardized military capability. The risks that this would happen, widely foreseen, could have been mitigated by more or earlier stockpiling, subsidization of domestic plant-based sources of latex, or development of a synthetic rubber industry. At the time of Pearl Harbor, each route had been pursued in a limited fashion or not at all. This paper explores why, highlighting the outsized role played by businessman/politician Jesse Jones, as well as the multiple channels through which the rubber famine adversely affected the country’s wartime economy. This history starkly illuminates a policy dilemma still with us: How much “insurance” should a country carry when it depends heavily on interruptible foreign sourcing of a strategic input?

This study examines multilevel barriers to women’s participation and contribution to the process manufacturing industry in an emerging economy. We employed an exploratory multiple-case study approach, and 24 semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior corporate managers. Drawing on the behavioral reasoning theory, intellectual capital-based view, and institutional theory-based view, the findings highlighted several individual, organizational, sociocultural, infrastructure, and institutional barriers at micro, meso, and macro levels that inhibited female participation in the manufacturing sector. This study is one of the early empirical investigations to examine the obstacles hindering women’s contributions to the process manufacturing industry in an emerging country, applying three theoretical lenses – behavioral reasoning theory, intellectual capital-based view, and institutional theory-based view. Furthermore, the insights gained from the study contribute to the literature on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the operations management domain by developing a multilevel integrative model of barriers to women’s participation in the manufacturing sector.

As the number of working parents rises, employers are increasingly called upon to support employees’ work–family (WF) obligations. Grounded in conservation of resources theory, we examined how providing varying degrees of parental support (paid vs. unpaid leave and family-supportive vs. -unsupportive leadership) is mutually beneficial to employee and organizational well-being – the ultimate criterion for organizational science. Participants (N = 538) were randomly assigned to read vignettes that varied the amount of parental support provided for expectant working parents. We tested whether WF benefits fairness perceptions moderated the indirect effects of parental support on felt obligation through job-related anxiety. Findings supported our proposed moderated-mediation model, with the most positive effects when full parental support was provided to individuals with high fairness perceptions. Our research highlights the value of providing both paid leave and family-supportive leadership, while also considering employees’ fairness perceptions, to reap the most gains of employee and organizational well-being.

For some sixty years, the dominant narrative of the financial crisis of 1931 and Great Depression has been one of failure of central banks to cooperate and act as lenders of last resort. This historical narrative has become dominant and led to a marginalization of understanding the Great Depression as a result of an inherent instability of capitalism. Rather than arguing that one or the other of these narratives is true, in this article I examine how contemporary actors made retrospective sense of the European financial crisis of 1931 and how they used that history to shape lessons for uncertain futures. My approach is based on the concepts of sensemaking and narrative emplotment under radical uncertainty. The article shows that most contemporaneous actors were positive in their assessment of central banks and that they focused mostly on short-term capital flows and the interconnectedness of the financial system as well as structural issues going back to the Versailles Treaty in making sense of the crisis.

The growing body of literature on corporate purpose has underscored its potential as a strategic driver for firms. However, its practical implementation remains challenging due to the concept’s multifaceted and often abstract nature. By reviewing 118 articles, this systematic literature review develops a process framework on how corporate purpose can be translated into concrete organizational strategies across three dimensions: antecedents, management, and consequences. Specifically, we identify the foundational conditions that shape a purpose statement in firms, examine how purpose is embedded and shared within them, and assess the multilevel outcomes of an effective purpose. The review highlights actionable levers to align purpose with strategy and practice, discussing how firms can implement their ‘reason why’. In doing so, the study provides contributions to better understand corporate purpose from both a theoretical and managerial perspective, within the broader field of strategic management.

The current administration has disproportionately targeted transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people, despite accounting for less than 1% of the population (Jones, 2024). Though there has been a flurry of executive orders issued restricting the rights of this population, Executive Order 14168 (i.e., Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government) and Executive Order 14151 (Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing) are likely to be particularly impactful for workplaces. This is because Executive Order 14168 challenges the existing federal protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended through Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), by declaring sex as binary and biological and denying the existence of transgender people. In addition, EO14151 eliminates federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and practices, which limits organizational practices and policies that might otherwise create inclusive and equitable environments for transgender employees. Therefore, this policy brief aims to discuss these executive orders, the existing protections they aim to alter, and the potential implications for transgender employees, organizations, and industrial-organizational professionals.

Increasing senior leadership diversity and decentralizing decision-making have become imperatives for many organizations, supported by a growing normative literature. However, mixed empirical evidence suggests that these may hinder the decision-making processes required to deliver value to firms and their stakeholders. We argue that diversity and decentralization should instead be viewed as means of organizing towards these ends, and theorize the conditions under which they may harm performance – specifically, the nature of the knowledge problems faced by leaders. Analyzing a 19-year panel of 922 U.S. firms, we find that diversity and decentralization are associated with stronger financial and market performance in uncertain environments but become liabilities under ambiguity, where speed and strategic clarity are critical and homogeneous, centralized leadership is more effective. Stakeholder outcomes are similarly affected, particularly employee wellbeing and ethical political activity. These findings challenge normative claims, with implications for theory, proscriptions, and practice.