EDHEC Business School

Human resource management (HRM) is increasingly directed at leveraging businesses' environmental strategies. Current research shows how integrating environmental objectives into HRM practices can positively affect an organization's green performance. However, the literature on strategic HRM posits that, for HRM systems to reap the benefits of their communication, they must send unequivocal signals, which is challenging, given the various objectives HRM needs to integrate. With its focus on the process of how employees respond and make sense of green HRM (GHRM), this study complements the output-oriented GHRM literature. We show how employees perceive GHRM signals to be ambiguous, but also how they, despite lack of managerial support, proactively mitigate the perceived ambiguities by giving meaning to their pro-green behavior and proposing actionable steps for establishing clarity. Therefore, unclear HRM signals alone do not necessarily prevent employees from committing to the organization's green strategy.

The avalanche of available unstructured text data makes it ever more challenging for innovation practitioners (and academics) to extract meaningful insights from such data. Topic modeling can support these efforts and help spur innovation. The current study reviewed 1099 innovation management articles to identify and compare the most frequently used probabilistic topic modeling approaches for innovation. In an effort to contextualize the suitability of these approaches, we develop a framework to organize existing topic modeling applications along the different innovation stages (i.e., idea generation, development, and commercialization) and innovation research in general. By zooming in on the three innovation stages, the authors showcase how topic modeling can spur innovation within each stage and highlight the future potential of the specific approaches. To further assist in capturing the various dynamics in complex unstructured text datasets, we illustratively apply a tailored topic modeling configuration to 1444 Journal of Product Innovation Management articles (1984–2023) to identify emerging, stable, and mature topics, as well as looking at their respective impact. This demonstration could serve as a starting point or blueprint for innovation practitioners and researchers seeking to combine the advantages of several topic modeling approaches. We conclude by offering a future outlook, including a forward‐looking research agenda. Taken together, our study offers guidance to and equips innovation practitioners and academics to design distinctive topic modeling procedures to best serve their intended purposes. If deployed appropriately, topic modeling helps users extract a wealth of unique, unprecedented insights from a continuously expanding source of data.

Academics are increasingly being affected by work pressure with a direct impact on their mental health and well-being. This malaise in academic work can be explained by the context of the neo-liberal, performative and managerialist business school that espouses a quantophrenic, accelerated work environment. In this article, we suggest that one remedy is to create the space for academics to slow down the academic pace and dedicate time to turn the gaze upon themselves to enact academic reflexivity via dialogue with peers. We employ a relationally reflexive autoethnographic method informed by social poetics to illustrate how we worked with our own academic reflexivity. By inviting an epistemological perspective of self, field and scholastic position analysis, not commonly researched in management learning, into an ontological understanding of reflexivity, the article makes two valuable contributions. First, it illustrates how dialogues among peers can potentiate reflexive processes. Second, it provides a structured framework that support academics in inviting reflexivity into the classroom.

One view of the socialization experienced by professionals in global Big 4 firms suggests that the intensity of socialization engenders a strong and deep‐rooted professional identity. We scrutinize this claim by drawing on interviews with partners who retired from lifelong employment in Big 4 firms in Japan. Through partners' reflections on their experiences in detaching from the firm, we examine how socialization manifests in partners' identity work. We find that partners' identity, which often appears entrenched, invariable, and heroic, can be highly fragile and vulnerable to changing circumstances. Before leaving the firm, interviewees attempt to reconcile their Big 4 “graduation” with feelings of obsolescence and a growing distance from previous accomplishments. After leaving the firm, interviewees revisit the identity built throughout their careers. Unable to move on to a selfhood detached from that identity, they refashion their identity relative to their former Big 4 partner self, backgrounding their private life and post‐firm professional affiliations. Not knowing how to “close the books,” retired partners seek comfort in the old “plot” and in the old “characters,” finding ways to “keep the books open” even after the “setting” has changed. Our results reconfirm the powerful socialization experienced by partners during their tenure with the Big 4 but run counter to scholarship that characterizes the identity of Big 4 partners as strong and fixed. Rather, we demonstrate the insecurity underlying our professional service heroes' identity work and the contingent identity work processes that partners engage in while navigating departure from the Big 4.

Research Question/Issue Do firms that release 10‐K reports with lower readability receive a higher number of shareholder proposals on corporate governance? Research Findings/Insights Using the passage of the Plain Writing Act of 2010 as an exogenous source for an increase in 10‐K readability within a difference‐in‐differences framework, we find that firms with poor 10‐K readability prior to the Act experienced a decline in the likelihood of receiving corporate governance proposals. This effect is primarily concentrated in proposals sponsored by retail investors and is most pronounced in firms with entrenched management, those actively engaging in earnings management through discretionary accruals, and proposals related to executive compensation and disclosure. Theoretical/Academic Implications By providing evidence on the differential impact of 10‐K readability on retail versus institutional investors, we shed light on the varying information processing capabilities and engagement strategies across investor types. Our findings also illuminate the interplay between disclosure readability, managerial entrenchment, and earnings management, offering insights into the mechanisms through which poor 10‐K readability influences the initiation of shareholder proposals. Practitioner/Policy Implications Our findings underscore the effectiveness of the Plain Writing Act of 2010 in enhancing transparency and highlight the role of disclosure readability as a tool for shareholder engagement, particularly for retail investors. Further, we show that the Plain Writing Act achieved more than its original goal of promoting clear and transparent communication between the government and the public; it also achieved an unintended outcome by prompting firms to adopt clear writing norms.

Business ethics scholars have argued that the way business is conceived and theorized can drive out our ability to think ethics. This article examines that problem by drawing attention to inherent normativity in metaphors we use to imagine organizations. We use Levinas-scholarship to characterize ethics as radically other-oriented and undertake close reading of his major work to articulate problematic aspects of images for organizational metaphors. This leads us to distinguish two types of metaphors: (1) images of organization with a Totalizing normativity which reduce all otherness and in that sense are normatively self-referential; and (2) images with a normativity that distorts the image, in which the organization is not the normative reference point. The article provides examples of both types of metaphors and argues that the first type of metaphors maintains a cognitive trap, whereas the second type can trigger moral imagination, i.e. give us operative mental models that allow us to perceive a situation from the perspective of others.

The circular economy can enhance business sustainability, but its implementation requires the integration of circularity into business models. Circular business model innovation (CBMI) is complex, influenced by multiple barriers and drivers. This research conducts a qualitative case study via semistructured interviews to explore CBMI within the German construction industry and family‐owned businesses. While findings resonate with existing literature, the context of the construction industry and of family ownership introduces specific dynamics. For instance, we find that family ownership can act as both a driver and a barrier to CBMI, fostering long‐term strategic vision while simultaneously reinforcing conservative tendencies, hindering change. Additional notable results include the importance of intergenerational knowledge transfer, an emphasis on slowing resource loops due to long building lifecycles (50–100 years), and the opportunities presented through lobbying efforts to shape policy and industry standards. Accordingly, these interactions necessitate tailored strategies for successful circular transitions.

Using a relational leadership lens, this study aims to gain a deeper understanding of empathic conversations with a focus on leadership ethics. It adopts an entitative perspective in relational leadership and examines leadership conversations as a two-way influence relationship, highlighting their interdependencies and collective role in the co-construction of meaning. Data from facial expression software and perception surveys are analyzed. The results of this study reveal the influence of gendered leadership on emotions, emotional bonding moments triggered by humor, and cultural dynamics in leadership conversations. Leaders’ feeling-based questions and participants’ willingness to share their emotions, coupled with emotion synchronization, create a constructive space where both feel invited, cared for, and valued. The study shows that emotional bonds foster the expression of generosity, care, and responsibility, enhancing satisfaction for both leaders and participants. Overall, this study enriches relational leadership theory and practice by underscoring the connection between empathy and leadership ethics.

This editorial introduces the special issue “Managing Speech Rights” in the journal Philosophy of Management. The papers in this special issue use a philosophical lens to consider not just how speech rights are actually managed but how they ought to be managed. This special issue examines how managerial actions, decisions, and decision-making processes affect the exercise of speech rights and considers the conditions under which free speech should be understood as justifiably limited, morally permissible, or even actively encouraged as a matter of bestpractice. This editorial sets the discussion in a broader context by highlighting the importance and the timeliness of discussing the uses and limits of the right to free speech within organizations, introducing the papers enclosed in this special issue, and finally drawing avenues for further research.

Research Question/Issue This study examines whether the shareholder preferences for female directors alter around the introduction of mandated gender quotas in France. In addition, we analyze whether shareholders revalue female qualifications different from male ones around quota introductions. Research Findings/Insights We observe greater shareholder support for female nominees subsequent to the quota introduction. However, the disparities in voting outcomes between female and male nominees can be entirely explained by controlling for director characteristics. This suggests that female directors, with valuable characteristics such as independence, are to a greater extent nominated post‐quota. An important discovery from our analysis is that shareholders revise their assessment of female qualifications post‐quota, thereby establishing female qualifications as equally valuable as those of their male counterparts. Theoretical/Academic Implications Contrary to the arguments of gender quota opponents, our findings indicate that the supply of qualified female candidates meets the quota induced incremental demand. The results suggest that the prior underrepresentation of female directors stems from director labor market frictions. Overall, our study has significant implications for the ongoing debate concerning mandated gender quotas in shaping corporate governance practices. Practitioner/Policy Implications Our analysis has policy implications, as neither shareholder votes for female directors nor the stock market reactions around the quota introduction show evidence of mandated gender quotas having adverse effects. Instead, we observe positive externalities by altering shareholders' perceptions of the qualifications of female directors. This suggests that mandated gender quotas can serve as a pivotal catalyst for change, even in countries with notably low female pre‐quota board representation.

In this chapter, we discuss the use of big data analytics to enhance project management. We present a literature review, summarize the current practices and point out the potential application areas. The use of big data analytics has recently attracted the attention of researchers and practitioners, but we still lack knowledge on the implementation of big data tools in projects.

Voice endorsement—managers’ approval of employees’ voiced suggestions—has largely been regarded as positive, yet little research examines how managers’ emotional expressions during endorsement affect employees. Drawing on the Emotions as Social Information (EASI) model, we propose that not all instances of voice endorsements are necessarily positive events for employees. Specifically, we propose that managers’ anger while endorsing voice, negatively impact employees’ perceptions of psychological safety and their future voice behavior. Across two experimental studies, we find that participants who faced an angry manager endorsing their voice reported both lower psychological safety and future voice behavior than those whose voice was endorsed by a happy or neutral looking manager. Study 2 further found that employees experiencing voice endorsement with anger felt as psychologically unsafe as those whose voice was outright rejected, suggesting that anger-laden endorsements are just as detrimental as voice rejections. Our findings contribute to the literature by challenging the notion that all voice endorsements are inherently positive, emphasizing the role of managers’ emotions on managerial reactions to voice.

The use of virtual and online tools has become commonplace in organizations to remain competitive in a global and dynamic environment. To understand the impact of these tools on team performance, we examine virtuality through a dynamic lens and test a model that links two team characteristics—virtuality and team density—to team performance across performance episodes. Using data from 36 temporary graduate student teams in a classroom setting, random coefficient growth modeling shows that team density attenuates the negative relationship between virtuality and team performance more strongly over time. Our findings highlight the importance of using a dynamic approach to understand how virtuality and team density affect team performance over time. We discuss the theoretical implications of conceptualizing virtuality from a time-sensitive perspective.

How to engage consumers with circular economy principles in the luxury industry? To answer this question, this paper focuses on the engagement journey of consumers embracing circular luxury. Drawing from a life story interview approach with consumers of second‐hand luxury fashion, we identify three engagement journeys: (1) the price‐sensitive journey, (2) the uniqueness journey, and (3) the sustainability journey—each characterized by specific motives (ranging from self‐interest in the form of searching for lower prices to more altruistic motives concerning keeping products in use) and manifestations of engagement (ranging from nonbehavioral to behavioral engagement with circular luxury) in response to firm‐controlled and non‐firm‐controlled touchpoints. The findings carry important implications for both companies and society as they show how a more ethical consumption behavior can be encouraged in the luxury industry.

Parasocial interaction (PSI) and parasocial relationship (PSR) are important and widespread phenomena in both offline and online marketing. While extensive, prior work on PSI and PSR is riddled with inconsistencies and needs an updated perspective. First, research needs to establish whether and why PSI and PSR represent different concepts with unique characteristics. Furthermore, the conceptualization of PSI and PSR remains predominantly rooted in offline contexts, despite the shift in media consumption toward online platforms. By systematically reviewing 233 peer‐reviewed journal articles published between 1956 and 2023, this study provides a nuanced perspective on the evolution of PSI and PSR in offline and online environments. Theoretically, it contributes to the literature by proposing seven key criteria to differentiate PSI from PSR in offline and online contexts, as well as offering new conceptualizations of PSI and PSR in the online environment. Using the Theories–Characteristics–Contexts–Methods (TCCM) framework, this work presents a comprehensive overview of the current state of research and discusses future research directions.

A growing number of retailers and brands use uncertain price promotions to increase their sales. This research introduces the “looking a gift horse in the mouth” effect by probing these promotions as a potential liability. Findings from a field study and five experiments reveal that consumers who receive an inferior prize in an uncertain price promotion have a lower brand appraisal and repeated purchase behavior than those (i) who receive the same prize for sure, (ii) who receive the higher‐value prize in the uncertain promotion, and (iii) who are not even offered any price promotion. We propose, and examine, mixed emotions as a possible reason for this dilution in brand appraisal. The findings offer important insights and managerial implications for practitioners by proposing a revisit of the design of uncertain price promotions to regulate the mood and perception of risky low‐win consumers.

The literature on financial behavior of family businesses is still scarce and inconclusive, with a predominant focus on Western contexts. In this article, we address these gaps by extending the analysis to the investment behavior of family businesses in the Arab world. We examine the extent to which their investment behavior aligns with that of non-family counterparts along with their underlying drivers. We conduct a quantitative analysis of panel data of two samples of large listed family and non-family businesses covering the period from 2013 to 2019. Our findings reveal distinct characteristics of the investment behavior of family businesses, underscoring the need for context-specific interpretation. Even as they grow and go public, these businesses retain distinctive traits rooted in their family-business nexus. They tend to adopt a more cautious, risk-averse approach to investment compared to large non-family businesses. This conservative approach reflects their preference for preserving family control, often achieved by relying on internal financing rather than external funding. Moreover, our findings suggest a general alignment with pecking order theory in both large family and non-family businesses. Building on our contributions, we propose future research directions towards more exhaustive knowledge on financial behavior of family businesses in the Arab world.

The increase in whistleblowing to a regulator or media has sparked organizational efforts to keep whistleblowing internal to minimize the risk of exposure across various sectors and geographical contexts. However, it is less clear how organizations can make their internal whistleblowing system trustworthy for their internal stakeholders. Research on trust in organizations rarely considers how trustworthiness is signaled in complex organizational situations. In internal whistleblowing channels and procedures, we demonstrate that signaling trustworthiness involves multiple attributions of trustworthiness (ability, benevolence, integrity, transparency, identification) as well as multiple internal stakeholders (workers, middle managers, and top management). This makes whistleblowing an ideal case-in-point for investigating interactions between trustworthiness attributions across stakeholders and how these change across time. This article examines a specific critical issue: how operators of whistleblowing channels attempt to signal trustworthiness through a sequence of interactions with multiple trustors. Our research comprises interviews with 30 operators of internal whistleblowing channels and consultants from four organizations from different sectors (engineering, banking, health care and public administration). Our findings allow us to theorize temporality in signaling trustworthiness of new organizational practices. We suggest that a fundamental ambiguity and contradiction underlies the trustworthiness of internal whistleblowing channels. Within the limited organizational mandate of those who operate whistleblowing channels, this ambiguity is experienced as synchronic and diachronic tensions, requiring specific approaches on the part of actors involved.

Manuel Mallen co-founded Courbet in 2018, an eco-sustainable luxury jewellery firm, with the objective of being the first Maison on Place Vendôme (Paris) to market laboratory-grown diamonds. This case discusses the challenges faced by this French entrepreneur as he confronts traditional luxury brands that sell diamonds from open-pit mining and claim responsible practices. The seven largest diamond producers, representing 75% of world production and grouped in the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), financed a public report (the Trucost report), showcasing their compliance with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), threatening Courbet's assertions about eco-luxury. By comparing the components of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) and value (proposition, creation, and capture), how can Courbet leverage a new business model against traditional jewellery brands? The case also questions whether Courbet's alignment with the 17 United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can foster market evolution towards sustainability and social change.

Despite artificial intelligence's (AI) increased efficiency and accuracy in many contexts, algorithm aversion, that is, people's biased preference for human recommendations over those of algorithms, is a well‐documented phenomenon. In this research, we show a reversal of the algorithm aversion phenomenon, referred to as algorithm appreciation, in the prevalent context of marketplace discrimination. Specifically, the current research documents people's increased propensity to rely on AI‐based recommendations over those proposed by human counterparts in the aftermath of marketplace discrimination. Such an increased preference happens because it serves as a coping strategy for consumers who have faced discrimination in the marketplace from other human actors. The results of a series of three lab studies and one field study provide consistent support for the proposed effect and document the underlying psychological mechanism driving this effect through perceived embarrassment. Using a moderated‐mediation model, we identify a boundary condition of the effect by demonstrating that the focal effect, that is, algorithm appreciation, remains valid under public consumption but diminishes under private consumption. Employing the natural setting of the field, we replicate our findings with actual consumers making real choices. Our findings have important implications (e.g., integrating AI‐driven recommendation systems into firms' platforms in sectors susceptible to marketplace discrimination and developing ethical guidelines for AI systems) for managers and companies.