Benefits of leisure in overcoming gender violence experiences: a case study

This article is based on a case study carried out at Casa Malva, a shelter for female victims of gender violence in Gijón, Asturias (Spain). The study explores the potential therapeutic value of leisure in the process of personal recovery for women living in sheltered accommodation, and the positive impact leisure may have in overcoming a traumatic life event. The study comprised 16 semi-structured interviews with female victims of gender violence and three discussion groups with shelter staff. The article examines the concept of leisure and the potential benefits of leisure activities as part of the Personal Recovery Project (PRP) run by Casa Malva. PRP is an innovative recovery initiative aimed at helping women to overcome situations of gender violence by focusing on areas of experience, such as family, employment and leisure.     

Subsidiary-specific advantages for inter-regional expansion: The role of intermediate units

This paper explores the distinctive deployment of resources and capabilities by subsidiaries in order to develop an intermediate role within the MNC. Based on the regional management perspective, we focus on a specific intermediate role—the springboard subsidiary—that helps overcome the liability of inter-regional foreignness. Our results, which are based on a dataset covering 188 subsidiaries, show that the probability of taking on this role is contingent upon experiential knowledge about the target region, as well as a rich knowledge base derived from a wide range of activities and a broad geographical scope. Our findings also show that possession of slack resources does not necessarily mean that a subsidiary will take on this role, as such slack must be combined with experiential knowledge. This paper serves as a first step in helping MNCs plan resource allocation to handle inter-regional expansion.     

The BoP business paradigm: what it promotes and what it conceals

The Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) is a popular paradigm within management circles concerning those in poverty. In this paper, we develop a critical analysis of BoP discourse and practice, drawing particularly on the works of Laclau and Mouffe, and enriched by post-development thinking as expressed in the works of Esteva and Escobar, among others. We argue that the BoP paradigm functions to reinforce market capitalist hegemony and – vitally – to conceal economic alternatives. Using the concepts of ‘discourse’, ‘hegemony’ and ‘performativity’, we analyse the politics of language and representation in the BoP discourse. Finally, we point to modes of scholarship that contribute to the nurturing and performance of diverse, non-capitalist economic worlds.     

Effects of Collaborative Communication on NPD Collaboration Results: Two Routes of Influence

Although NPD collaboration with external partners has become the next generation in NPD practice, the discussion concerning how to organize collaboration so as to obtain better results is far from over. Since communication is the most important element in successful interfirm exchange, this study focuses on the impact of collaborative communication and its facets—frequency, formality, reciprocal feedback, and rationality—on NPD collaboration results. In order to explain how collaborative communication can best be managed to enhance NPD collaboration results, this research combines the relational and resource‐based views, proposing the existence of two routes of influence: the direct resource‐based route and the indirect relational route mediated by trust. Using a sample of 207 NPD collaboration projects of innovative firms, empirical findings indicate that reciprocal feedback–rationality and frequency play an important role in product quality and adherence to budget and schedule, respectively, even without trust. Moreover, the trust between partners substantially reinforces the positive influence of reciprocal feedback–rationality on NPD collaboration results and makes the effect of formality significant. Therefore, the two alternative routes are confirmed as important paths to new product success, which provides relevant managerial implications.     

The “Six Ws” of sustainable development risks

Risk management in an organization represents a decisive function in seizing opportunities and managing the risks that can affect a business's reputation, prosperity, growth, value creation, stakeholder engagement, long-term survival, and a firm's contribution to sustainable development. For this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review of 148 indexed studies and uses the “Six Ws” (what, who, why, where, when, and how) approach to understand the linkages between sustainability and risk management. This study's findings reveal that the management of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns plays a mitigation's function on business risks.     

Sustainable entrepreneurship and the Sustainable Development Goals: Community-led initiatives,the social solidarity economy and commons ecologies

The social solidarity economy is an approach to the production and consumption of goods, services and knowledge that promises to address contemporary economic, social and environmental crises more effectively than business as usual. The paper employs the concept of commons ecologies to examine the practices, relationships and interactions among actors and organisations in the social solidarity economy, as well as between them and the mainstream economy, which shape the field and its degree of autonomy in relation to capitalism, through a process defined as boundary commoning. Such process shapes both local and regional commons ecologies, as well as the participation of local and regional actors in wider networks at national, international and global levels. The paper takes a case study-based approach to identify practices, relationships and interactions of commons ecologies in relation to selected community-led initiatives in the UK, Portugal, Brazil and Senegal. Each case study illuminates different qualities of local/regional commons ecologies and their forms of engagement with wider networks. Further, the paper shows that these cases demonstrate how the social solidarity economy may facilitate delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals in a distinctive way. In each case, SSE acts as a vehicle for expressing participants' values and principles consistent with those underlying the SDGs. Local implementation of SDGs is thus an in-built feature of these commons ecologies. The participation of community-led initiatives in international and global networks offers opportunities to learn from local level experiences and successes, potentially strengthening SDG implementation more generally.     

Dark times for cosmopolitanism? An ethical framework to address private agri-food governance and planetary stewardship

The scholarly tradition of cosmopolitanism (illustrated by the old saying, “I am a citizen of the world”) offers important insights into the examination of agri-food multinational corporations (MNCs) as powerful global actors. Acknowledging that agriculture is the business sector with the highest planetary environmental impact, in this paper, we advance existing discussions around cosmopolitanism and the normative implications of considering agri-food MNCs as political actors. Relying on an integrative literature review, we propose a tripartite ethical framework that gives a new momentum to the ideals and tenets of cosmopolitanism. This novel lens offers an integrated, seamless ethical approach and revolves around three dimensions: culture, morality, and governance. The first dimension examines key agri-food cultural and social-ecological issues, the second acknowledges interdependence and causality as central to understanding MNCs’ ethical responsibilities, and the third outlines several governance parameters around legitimacy, planetary reach and efficiency. Hence, our integrative framework resituates the planetary geographical imagination of cosmopolitanism within the biophysical parameters outlined by the planetary boundaries concept, advancing key issues on private agri-food environmental governance and planetary stewardship.     

Intermediate units in multinational corporations: A resource dependency view on coordinative versus entrepreneurial roles

Due to the dispersion of headquarters’ activities across organizational and geographical boundaries, intermediate units (IUs) are emerging as a key actor of international business. IUs are intermediate structural layers between headquarters (HQ) and local subsidiaries with specific HQ responsibilities. Our study relies on original data of 67 IUs and, taking on a Resource Dependence approach, explores empirically the two HQ roles attributed to IUs: coordinative versus entrepreneurial. According to our results, the main differences between both roles relate to external network embeddedness, internal network position and autonomy. We argue that these differences arise from the dominant sources of power in each role. These findings have signi?cant relevance for theory development and managerial practice as we provide a starting point for understanding the dispersion of complex HQ systems as well as how those systems are discharged and add value.