NEOMA Business School

Information systems are critical for companies since they offer quick and easy access to complex and significant data in a structured manner to make informed and effective business decisions. Hence, the objective of this study is to conceptualize and implement an innovative information system in the case study organization. The study identified the requirements for Organizing Vision Theory (OVT) and developed architecture based on Organizational Information Processing Theory (OIPT). This architecture is designed and developed using the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to support a self-organizing vision and enhanced information processing. The study’s contribution lies in developing and executing an integrative architecture of IIoT-driven information systems from the lenses of OVT and OIPT. Further, this study contributes by mapping OVT elements (such as transparency, continuity, and coherence) and OIPT elements (information processing needs and capabilities) to drive value and knowledge through a robust architecture of IIoT-driven information systems. The study also highlights the contribution of IIoT-based information systems to a new knowledge system, facilitating better decision-making by professionals.

By improving the connectivity between China and Europe, Chinese investments aim to redefine China’s position within global transport networks and logistics flows. This article explores the evolution of port activity in the Mediterranean following the implementation of investment strategies through an analysis of container flows and the impact generated by China on the Mediterranean ports. It compares port centrality to assess what influences the Belt and Road Initiative has had on containers flows from its inception until 2019 (pre Covid-19 pandemic). The main results underline that during its inception phase, the BRI had no discernable impacts on port polarization. Further, trade imbalances decreased and even slightly grew in favor of Mediterranean countries. The presence of Chinese investors, COSCO and China Merchants Group, in port operations impacted regional dynamics, mainly in the port of Piraeus in Greece, which became a hub. Connectivity between the main Mediterranean ports and China grew considerably after the BRI, especially with Egypt, Spain, and Morocco, where Chinese port investments have been considerable. The ports receiving the most Chinese investments see the most significant changes in their ranking in the regional port system.

Yet another hysteric! Can’t bear it anymore? Neither can we! In this text, we reclaim this highly derogatory term, “hysteric,” so often used against us, as women academic writers, to rewrite the gendered architecture of academic membership in organization studies. Performing hysterical writing interweaves affects, poems and reflections with feminist theoretical and methodological inspirations to challenge the masculine norms that marginalize affective, sentient, feminine and/or other, nonconforming, different bodies from academic texts. Specifically, drawing on Irigarayan mimesis as an activist feminist practice, we develop hysteria’s transformative, response-able potentials for writing, researching, relating and eventually knowing differently in organization studies. Our account contributes to burgeoning debates on writing differently particularly by situating the ethico-political potentials of écriture feminine for knowledge creation and resistance against epistemic oppression and violence.

The competitive landscape of multiple e-commerce platforms and the vast amount of product reviews associated with these platforms have supported both consumers' online shopping decision making and also served as a reference for product attribute performance improvement. This paper proposes a sentiment-driven fuzzy cloud multi-criteria model for online product ranking and performance to provide purchase recommendations. In this novel model, Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory Network-Conditional Random Fields (BiLSTM-CRF), sentiment analysis, and K-means clustering are first integrated to mine product attributes and compute sentiment values based on reviews from various platforms. Next, considering the confidence of the sentiment value, the cloud model is combined with q-rung orthopair fuzzy sets to define the new concept of the q-rung orthopair fuzzy cloud (q-ROFC) and the interaction operational laws between q-ROFCs are given. The sentiment values of each product attribute from different platforms are cross-combined and transformed into a type of q-ROFC, while multiple interactive information matrices are established. To investigate the correlation among homogeneous attributes, the q-ROFC interaction weighted partitioned Maclaurin Symmetric mean operator is proposed. Finally, we provide real-world examples of online mobile phone ranking and attribute performance evaluation. The results show that our proposed method offers significant advantages in dealing with customer purchase decisions for online products and problems with performance direction identification. Managerial implications are discussed.

This paper investigates the influence of cybernetic and dynamic controls on strategic and operational flexibility and, consequently, on monetary and non-monetary performance indicators. Even though business and operation strategies have been the object of many studies, management accounting studies on how management control systems could contribute to flexibility are scarce. We conducted a survey with 89 professionals who work in Brazilian companies and employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the relationships included in the theoretical model. Our findings indicate that the relationship between monetary cybernetic control and strategic flexibility is not statistically significant. The results support the positive association between non-monetary and dynamic controls on strategic flexibility. Finally, the findings also support the mediating role of operational flexibility in the relationship between strategic flexibility and performance. This paper’s main contribution to the management control literature is its explanation of the impact of management control systems on strategic flexibility, operational flexibility, and organizational performance. For practitioners, the results highlight the importance of role management control and business strategy to leverage performance. Keywords: cybernetic controls; dynamic controls; flexibility; performance

The notion of organizational routine has been at the core of behavioral and evolutionary theories in economics, management and organization studies, but has also been a source of debate and controversy. The discussion has concerned the very definition of what organizational routines are (and are not), their nature, consequences, and units of observation and analysis. In this short introductory article, we try to establish some useful common grounds which, notwithstanding the diversity of definitions and approaches, could promote future useful lines of research. We see the contributions to this special section as moving forward the research on routines in that direction.

As different crowdsourcing routines (metaphorically labeled as “fishing” and “hunting” in this study) are available to address highly technical problems, solution-seeking organizations need to mindfully design, select, and deploy crowdsourcing routines that account for the behavior and motivation of experts. Drawing on a survey involving 260 experts in science, technology, engineering, and math fields, we found that elite experts (individuals with seniority, aged over 40, and a proven track record in the field with numerous publications and patents) are generally less inclined to search for crowdsourcing open calls and prefer to be contacted by solution seekers. In contrast, non-elite experts (early career experts, aged under 40, and with fewer patents and publications) actively search to find open calls. Regarding their motivational underpinnings, our findings suggest that elite experts are motivated more by non-financial incentives than non-elite experts. Furthermore, as the frequency with which they are contacted increases, non-elite experts tend to prefer more non-financial over financial incentives. These results indicate that the fishing crowdsourcing routine generally elicits solutions from unproven, non-elite experts who demand more financial rewards. However, the hunting routine taps a pool of elite experts with proven capabilities who are less financially oriented and thus may provide better, yet less expensive solutions.

There is growing interest in the nature and possible extent of de-globalization. This paper explores the impact that protectionist measures have on multinational enterprise (MNE) reshoring back to the UK. Besides taking into account the global trends indicating a return to protectionism, the existing literature highlights various firm-level and structural country-level determinants of reshoring decisions. We test a conceptual model with parent-subsidiary firm-level data for the period 2009 to 2017. We conclude that firms that are more sensitive to wage costs in their overseas subsidiaries were more likely to reshore. We did not find that more capital-intensive firms had a higher propensity to reshore. We find that our results are mostly driven from UK MNEs with subsidiaries in EU. This result has clear implications for a potential Brexit effect. Theoretically, we base our findings in transactional cost economics to help explain why different types of firms behave in the way they do, and why different types of firms may respond in quite different ways to the same mix of institutions.

The purpose of this research is to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for food safety and security during pandemic outbreaks, focusing on the case of COVID-19 to ensure resilience of the food supply chain. The study emphasises on the complexity theory of fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), to establish a result-driven definition of Industry 5.0 (I5.0) during and post pandemics. The results of this study revealed that a combination of conditions derived from pandemic policy related reforms and I5.0 enablers will assist manufacturers and suppliers in establishing food safety and security during and post the COVID-19 era in a developing economy. Food safety and security being the goal, based on a survey of 140 food companies, this study provides insights to manufacturers and policymakers to enable selective implementation of I5.0 enabling technologies and pandemic policies.

Corporate entrepreneurial leadership (CEL) plays a critical role in promoting innovative behavior that disrupts existing practices in organizations, to say the least, encouraging new policy initiatives that could affect the business and social performance of the organizations under their sustainable development goals (SDGs). CEL can help achieve SDGs by redesigning different contextual factors to help promote various policy initiatives. In this vein, this study identifies the factors which could improve the business and social performance of the organizations helping to achieve SDGs through an amalgam of theoretical lenses, particularly the dynamic capability view. Based on extant literature, we developed, validated, and applied a theoretical model using the partial least square structural equation modeling technique on data collected from 327 respondents from different organizations. The study found that CEL capability significantly and positively impacts the various organizational entities and resources, which in turn affects the business and social performance of the organizations. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are also discussed.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems have transformed business functions and contributed significantly to improving the efficiency of business operations. Unlike other technologies, AI models keep dynamically improving based on past data. Most scholars have considered AI to be a strategic resource or technology in the organizational context. Most research on AI based on empirical evidence has been focussed on either its technological or resource-based aspects. Along with improved work efficiency, a looming sense of uncertainty is causing a dip in trust and transparency in business operations. Responsible Artificial Intelligence (RAI) offers a solution suited to address this concern. RAI is a governance framework that documents how a specific organization addresses the challenges centred on AI from both the ethical and legal points of view. Few studies have attempted to explain how RAI could be used to swiftly improve trust and transparency. We set out to use fit viability theory and a selective organizational information privacy and security violations model (SOIPSVM) to answer two critical research questions. RQ 1: How does RAI help firms help improve supply chain coordination and supply chain performance? RQ 2: How does organizational culture moderate the relationships of RAI with fairness, accountability, sustainability, and transparency? To this end, we tested our hypotheses by means of empirical data collected from the Indian service sector using the Warp PLS 7.0 software. Our results help extend the theoretical base of fit viability theory to the context of RAI in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector’s supply chain operations. The study also help MSMEs to understand the importance and application of RAI in improving their supply chain processes, which can help them reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Balanced scorecard (BSC) is widely studied and practiced. As research on the BSC has matured since its introduction in 1992, it is timely to assess its progress and outline future directions. This study synthesizes extant research and presents avenues to advance the BSC. To accomplish these objectives, we undertake a review employing a bibliometric and systematic methodology on a corpus of 1294 BSC-related studies. The review reveals that the more than 30-year history of BSC research has followed a bell-curve trajectory, with publications appearing in high-quality, multidisciplinary journals and contributions from numerous author groups worldwide. Moreover, the review highlights the evolution of major themes and topics on the BSC, encompassing customer orientation, financial management, integrated reporting, strategic performance management, sustainable development, and systems thinking. Sustainability BSC has also gained prominence due to sustainability firmly establishing itself as a global agenda and grand challenge. Taken collectively, this review serves as a one-stop resource for gaining a state-of-the-art understanding of the trends, developments, and future directions of the BSC.

Touch mediates relations between self‐other, writers, and readers; it is material and affective. This paper is the outcome of writing touch as a collaborative activity between eight women writers across different times and locals. In sharing experiences of touch during and beyond the pandemic, we engage with collaborative writing articulated here as colligere, involving the assembling of writing in a holding space. The meanings and feelings of touch arise from our distinct writer positionalities as we think, work, and write in and about life, research, organizations, and organizing. We suggest that writing that reflects on/through touch presents epistemic vulnerability and openness to unknowing in the nexus of intercorporeal relationships. Writing touch contributes to writing and doing academia differently, particularly by offering sensorial encounters that reframe the ethico‐political conditions of academic knowledge creation.

Our study aims conceptualizes solo tourism by gaining insights from semi-supervised machine learning approach and scrutinizing 27,208 solo tourist tweets. Based on implicit self- theory we capture solo consumers’ self-development and self-discovery. We provide an all- inclusive slow tourism conceptualization and show that the solo tourism framework is a three- stage journey of self-discovery. This study not only provides tourism scholars and providers with an evidence-based solo tourism conceptualization, but also with a marketing, psychological, and operation tool to manage this segment.

In a dynamic and a quickly changing world, digital innovation and transformation can help enhancing organizational efficiency and have competitive advantage. In addition, the digital innovation and transformation can facilitate developing a growth oriented culture of workforce. Therefore, this study aims at developing the digital innovation and transformation capabilities at large organisation. The study uses a four-layered process for driving the digital innovation and transformation in the case organisation. The study positions the digital innovation and transformation mechanism through the lens of the dynamic capability view and institutional theories. The findings indicate the emergence of digital champions as change agents, a digital council as a monitoring channel, a digital core team as technological enablers and reverse mentoring as an innovative cultural dimension of change facilitating dynamic capabilities of the organisation. In terms of institutional pressures, coercive and mimetic pressures emerged as major contributors to the advancement of the digital skill set and digital mindset of the experienced workforce especially, supported by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Study further delineates the insights for practice, theory and policy. To this end, the study showcases the future scope of work at the case company, since it is an ongoing project on digital innovation and transformation to make organisation and related infrastructure resilient, digital and innovative.