David Sarpong

• BA (Hons), PhD
• Professor of Strategy and Organization at Aston University

We examine service nepotism, the practice of bestowing gifts or benefits on customers by frontline service staff based on a perceived shared socio-collective identity. Adopting a micro-sociological approach, we explorethe practice as played out in multi-cultural transient service encounters. Given the dearth of existing research and low visibility...

The quantum jump from ballistic missiles to space docking in recent decades symbolizes China's new product innovation potential in technologically complex industries. Drawing on theories of knowledge creation and discourse, we explore how the discursive practices of imitation, adaptation, and the reconfiguration of competitors' technologies help tr...

New technologies continue to shape the way music is produced, distributed and consumed. The new turn to digital streaming services like iTunes, Spotify and Pandora, in particular, means that very recent music format technologies such as cassettes and CD's have almost lost their value. Surprisingly, one 'obsolete' music format technology, Vinyl reco...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the multi-ethnic marketplace as the site of the emergence of service nepotism: the practice where employees bestow relational benefits and/or gifts on customers on the basis that they share a perceived common socio-collective identity. The authors draw on the contemporary turn to practice in socia...

How do women negotiate and express authenticity in professional contexts where their presence and identities are largely rendered (in)visible? We draw on intersectional invisibility as our conceptual lens to explore how women early career researchers subjectively negotiate authenticity given prevailing conditions of visibility, invisibility and hyp...

In this paper, we examine how managers 'make meaning' of business tournament rituals (BTRs)-recognition-based contests in which participating firms get social endorsements and winners receive prestigious awards. In exploring two UK BTRs, we found that managerial orienting systems, made up of beliefs about the identity of their firm, competitors, an...

Purpose We explore the intersection of Catholic social teaching (CST) and entrepreneurship studies which has seemingly evaded scholars’ attention. Design/methodology/approach We integrate and expand upon prior work to explicate an integrative framework for examining CST and entrepreneurship studies. Findings We articulate the mechanisms through w...

In this paper, we explore how the practices of agricultural chain actors within the contingencies of the Covid-19 crisis, may have contributed to precarious rural livelihoods and the agrarian economy. Developing our contribution in the context of Ghana's agricultural sector, which is grappling with socioeconomic and sustainability challenges such a...

Competing for and winning business excellence awards (BEAs) is essential for firms' long-term performance. However, the role of these BEAs in inspiring good and generating sustainable business practices has often been overlooked. In this article, we draw on the legitimacy-seeking theory to explore the "socially good" transformations firms go throug...

Purpose This study responded to calls to investigate the behavioural and social antecedents that produce a highly positive response to AI bias in a constrained region, which is characterised by a high share of people with minimal buying power, growing but untapped market opportunities and a high number of related businesses operating in an unregula...

Purpose Resource mobilization has come to dominate contemporary discourse on the making and survival of social enterprises (SEs). Emphasizing the socially constructed nature of idiosyncratic firm resource environments, this study integrates bricolage and social exchange theory to explore the means at hand and the kinds of practices SEs in China emp...

Purpose The digital platform-based sharing economy has become ubiquitous all over the world. In this paper, we explore how market actors’ conflicting interpretations of digital platforms’ business models give form and shape value co-creation and capture practices in contexts marked by weak institutions and underdeveloped markets. Design/methodolog...

Drawing on the pragmatic turn in contemporary social theory, we explore how corporate elites accused of corruption in the context of weak institutions engage in their justification works. Empirically, we focus on three high-profile corruption scandals that shook Ghana between 2010 and 2020 and inspired widespread public condemnation. Publicly acces...

The intractable challenges faced by female mine workers have come to dominate the discourse and scholarship on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operations. However, the extensive focus on the informal and labour-intensive segments has engendered a failure to capture the nuances in the duality of ASM operations and how it impacts female outcom...

The intractable challenges faced by female mine workers have come to dominate the discourse and scholarship on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operations. However, the extensive focus on the informal and labour-intensive segments has engendered a failure to capture the nuances in the duality of ASM operations and how it impacts female outcom...

Despite extant literature on a failed firm owner's coping, learning, and emotional functioning, very little is known about how once bankrupted B2B entrepreneurs rebound to venture again and develop capabilities like antifragility. Drawing on antifragility as a lens, we explore how UK B2B firm owners bounce back from bankruptcy and external crises t...

In this paper, we build on the diverse discussions on the nexus between artisanal and small-scale mining and agriculture to examine emerging relationships between mining operators, smallholder cocoa farmers, and landowners in rural cocoa-growing communities. Empirically, we draw on fresh insights from in-depth interviews with loosely coupled chain...

Purpose Cyber-attacks that generate technical disruptions in organisational operations and damage the reputation of organisations have become all too common in the contemporary organisation. This paper explores the reputation repair strategies undertaken by organisations in the event of becoming victims of cyber-attacks. Design/methodology/approac...

Some African countries’ premier industries, such as textiles, garments, and agro-processing, which floundered in the face of market liberalisation and stiff competition from cheap imports, are now going through regenerative changes, with some beginning to tell a cautionary tale of a leap upwards. Focusing on the Ghana garment and textile (G&T) indu...

Businesses reeling from the impact of COVID are struggling to achieve sustainability, amidst many other challenges , including finance and capacity shortfalls. One of the pathways to achieving 3BL in businesses is to create closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) covering the entire lifecycle of products. CLSC have proven to be important for sustainable s...

The platform economy facilitates a model of sharing economy, where competition and cooperation among the competitive firms are very common. Nevertheless, there are very few studies to date which investigate how competition and cooperation influence firms’ ethical dilemmas, and how these in turn affect performance outcomes. As such, there is a lack...

How can we better understand the puzzle of low-skilled migrants who have acquired citizenship in a European Union (EU) country, often with generous social security provision, choosing to relocate to the United Kingdom (UK)? Drawing on Elias’s figurational theory as a lens, we explore how relational interdependencies foster the mobility of low-skill...

The importance of organizational digital literacy has come to dominate discourse on enterprise digital transformation. Drawing on Organizational Affordance Theory, we explored the relationship between three levels of organizational digital literacy—employee, senior executive, and organization—and enterprise digital transformation. Utilizing a big d...

This article proposes a cross-situational specialization framework for what, at its introduction, was a newer generation personal computer (PC) device (a tablet computer). With use as the basis for continuance adoption as the theoretical lens, this article explores how the tablet coexists as a substitute- and a complement-in-use with incumbent PC(s...

We integrate insights from open innovation and collaborative strategic foresight (CSF) to theorize collaborative innovation practice. Adopting a case-based approach, we draw qualitative insights from two Chinese pharmaceutical firms—one private and one state-owned, both engaged in new product development (NPD) projects. Focusing on how firms levera...

The papers in this special section focus on cyberattacks, strategic cyber-foresight, and security applications. Reports of cyber-attacks against individuals, organizations, and businesses are on the rise. Attackers usually have a deliberate and malicious intent and may involve the criminals taking advantage of flaws in software code, using tricks t...

Leveraging intersectionality as a lens, we explore the life-history accounts of former military migrants (MMs) on their transition out of the military service into civilian work. Data for the inquiry comes from in depth interviews with MMs from West African Commonwealth countries who joined the UK military between 1998 and 2010. Focusing on the int...

Dominant narratives on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) often portray mining regions as ‘informal’ zones that suffer massively from environmental degradation problems. Such insistence on the poor environmental performance of ASM zones has dovetailed with a lack of scholarly attention to some of the ‘golden’ environmental management practices...

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) has often been touted as an employment-creation avenue for millions of operators worldwide, including women. This employment-generation narrative has, however, been occasioned by the immense scholarly focus on the informal and labour-intensive segments of ASM operations. Exploring the livelihood and occupation...

Drawing on technical change and technology transfer theories, we explore the Schumpeterian character of China in the information and communications technology (ICT) value chain in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using data collected from various online sources, including the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and World Integrated Trade Solutions...

Organisational resilience is a strategic resource within the contingencies of organising in Small and Micro businesses (SMEs). In this regard, the notion of resilient human capital in propelling a resilient organisation has come to dominate the contemporary discourse on the performance of SMEs. Drawing on human capital theory as a meta-theoretical...

Research and development (R&D) is frequently touted and labelled as the fundamental engine for creating sustainable innovations and achieving climate transitions. Yet, recent R&D efforts have struggled to live up to the widespread life-altering results they delivered in the 1960s when the term R&D was coined. In our attempt to address this concern,...

Formalisation of the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector has come to dominate the discourse on mineral exhaustion, livelihoods, and the persistence of vulnerabilities in ASM settings. Often touted as a panacea to curbing the excesses of informal mining operations, the calls for the formalisation of ASM operations continue unabated. In thi...

Drawing on a cultural perspective from the Global South, Notsie narrative, a West African literary folklore, we explore the high churn rate in the UK financial services industry. Viewing the storied accounts of former financial complaint handlers through a Notsie narrative lens, we examine why they frequently quit their well-paid jobs. Our study el...

Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) is often implicated as a source of pollution to water systems. In this paper, we explore the water management systems of a formalised small-scale mining operator in Ghana to explicate how its operational activities and organising routines contribute to sustainable water management in practice. Emphasizing how...

The protracted disruption of Covid-19 pandemic on global supply chains has renewed calls for a new model of manufacturing that removes the need for centralised high-volume production and large inventory stocking. Drawing ideas from the Triple Helix model of university-industry-government innovation, this paper analyses the prospects for a 3D manufa...

Co-opetition is gaining increasing attention as a potentially useful form of inter-organisational collaboration model to improve firms’ sustainable performance. However, limited previous studies have provided a clear substantive theory or offered empirical evidence for the process of sustainability-driven co-opetition. This paper explores how compe...

Business excellence awards (BEAs) have become all too commonplace. Entering and winning one has now become part of contemporary organising. However, scholarly work examining these awards remains scattered, with the dominant narrative focusing on what could even be described as the intense obsession with award ceremonies. In this paper, we articulat...

Drawing on collective myopia as a lens, we explore the infamous Airbus bribery scandal to show how the executives of the global aircraft manufacturer, through their actions and behaviors institutionalized the payment of bribes to secure contracts. Data for the inquiry consist of publicly available court-approved documents, company website and inter...

Regulatory review of new product innovation (NPI) has come to dominate contemporary discourse on innovation management. However, there continue to be a lack of clarity on how normative and scientific logics of evaluation combine to influence the regulatory review process. To bring some much-needed clarity, we draw on the diverse literature streams...

Micro-practices in the commodity value chains (CVCs) have experienced dramatic evolution through digital technology (DT). This article reviews the literature to identify four critical periods in this evolutionary cycle, from 1980 to 2020, to explicate the dimensions through which DT has foregrounded the burgeoning patterns of change in practice. Fo...

Purpose Careers have come to dominate contemporary discourse on gendered entrepreneurship. This paper aims to explore entrepreneurial careers as recounted by commercially successful female entrepreneurs to examine how they strategize to construct desirable careers in contexts characterized by underdeveloped markets and weak institutions. Design/me...

Drawing on the psychological concept of scarcity mindset as a lens, we explore UK-based ethnic entrepreneurs' accounts of their behaviors and choices to theorize ethnic business venture failure. Our findings suggest the constraints of 'having too little' entrepreneurial resources can induce three organizing tensions in organizing, community embedde...

The Impact of Covid 19 on HE, WBL and Talent Development in the Creative Industries

DiY science, as a field of research and practice, has grown rapidly over the past few decades. However, a significant portion of the DiY corpus focuses on technical issues in engineering and health disciplines, which limits our knowledge about the administration of DiY innovation and other related topics. To further advance the field, this special...

The new turn to Mass Innovation and Mass Entrepreneurship (MIME) initiatives in China mark a concrete step to reconfiguring and appropriating the western maker movement rhetoric to fit China’s context. In this paper, we explore the nascent China’s maker movement under the guidance of the state’s MIME initiative to identify the key issues, actions,...

DiY science, as a field of research and practice, has grown rapidly over the past few decades. However, a significant portion of the DiY corpus focuses on technical issues in engineering and health disciplines, which limits our knowledge about the administration of DiY innovation and other related topics. To further advance the field, this special...

In this paper, we explore the logics, persistence, and evolving perspectives on Chinese labour regime in Africa. We find that Chinese firms’ labour practices engender abuse via casualisation of labour, low remuneration, and a general lack of adherence to occupational safety. Contrarian studies however demonstrate variations among Chinese firms’ lab...

Open sources and digital platforms offer significant opportunities for knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship (KIE) firms to participate on the platforms of existing firms while enabling the existing firms to develop dynamic capabilities (DC). However, the processes through which KIE and existing firms co-create and co-capture value from each other i...

This research explores focal actors and their dyads, addressing their sustainable collaboration in triads and its relevance in the agri-triads that share information along the supply chains. We employ a multiple-case approach and presents two triads through 42 interviews, observation and documentaries. An abductive approach, Transaction Cost Econom...

Societal demands for innovations to address market opportunities while simultaneously generating positive human capability impacts has radically transformed how innovation is organised. This new turn has focused attention of scholars, policy makers, and practitioners to exploring the potential of Joint University-Industry Laboratories (JUIL) to gen...

Co-creation has been lauded for the exceptional benefits it offers engaged actors, with a particular emphasis on its ability to empower previously passive, and sometimes disadvantaged, customers. Drawing on De Certeau’s notion of the tactics of the weak, we problematize this view, unpacking some of the often unarticulated, opportunistic motives and...

The need for universities to increasingly commercialise academic knowledge in addition to the two traditional core missions of research and teaching, has increased the relevance of industry-university collaboration (IUCs). Although research on IUCs has produced a significant body of knowledge explaining different factors that can enable or inhibit...

Purpose – Drawing on the resource-advantage theory, we examine the effect of import managers’ cultural intelligence (CQ) on their foreign counterpart’s psychic distance and relational performance. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data collected from 228 Nigerian automobile import managers were analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)...

Free Zones, also known as commercial free zones, are small fenced-in, duty-free areas, offering warehousing, storage, and distributions facilities for trade transhipment, and re-export operations located in most ports of entry around the world. Recently, Free Zones have attracted academic debates in international business circles because they are p...

There is a considerable literature suggesting that business incubator is an important facilitator for innovation which provide office space, equipment and mentoring services. Should the emerging economies encourage the development of business incubators in order to promote the development of domestic innovation performance? This paper investigates...

Strategy, structure and rivalry across an industry has an impact upon innovation outcomes at the industry level. However, when patterns of rivalry are altered through the presence of strategic networks (sets of firms that cooperate closely on the basis of their web of strategic alliances) it is not clear what impact this has upon product market (pr...

In this paper we employ a qualitative meta-analysis framework to examine how the strategic investment partnership between China and African countries has come to be labelled and identified in the discourse on Sino-African relationships. The emerging narrative is that Chinese investment in Africa is fraught with issues such as labour abuses, risky l...

Do-it-yourself (DiY) science and ‘citizen laboratories’ are flourishing as they continue to attract unprecedented numbers of volunteers, communities, groups and venture capitalists. However, the evidence behind why DiY science is proliferating remains scattered and the dominant narratives around DiY practices consist of multiple understandings, bel...

The changing dynamics and unpredictable forces of geo-politics and geo-economics have implications for leadership, politics, businesses and especially those in the financial and equity markets. However, these dynamics remain elusive to most business leaders who fail to adopt creative solutions in turning such challenges into lucrative and sustainab...

The mirroring hypothesis highlights the correspondence of design characteristics across different architectural levels and in this paper, we consider how mirroring may impact the distribution of national and international innovation activities of firms. We identify incremental and modular innovations (as product architecture reinforcing innovations...

Designing a modular product architecture and corresponding organization design may enable firms to internationalize more effectively and efficiently. Open and closed, integrated, and modular product architectures may be associated with increasing product market and firm internationalization. We postulate that the more open and modular the product a...

The relationship between innovation, product design, and industry co‐evolution remains under‐theorized. This article discusses gaps in knowledge and introduces the contributing papers in this special issue.

Knowledge creation modes (especially socialization and internalization) enhance architectural innovation (AI) capability of U.K. manufacturing firms. AI is the reconfiguration of product or process components and creating completely new interfaces between them. Knowledge creation modes enhance firms' AI to create new products while utilizing their...

The changing dynamics and unpredictable forces of geo-politics and geo-economics have implications for leadership, politics, businesses especially those in the financial and equity markets. However, these dynamics remain elusive to most business leaders who fail to adopt creative solutions in turning such challenges into lucrative and sustainable b...

Managerial resilience is a strategic resource within the contingencies of organizing in Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs). In this regard, the notion of resilient human capital has come to dominate the contemporary discourse on the performance of SMEs. Drawing on human capital theory as a meta-theoretical lens, we examine the cumulative impact of...

Effective coordination of relief efforts of organizations in the Humanitarian Supply Chain (HSC) is a challenge facing various organizations and stakeholders. Despite the importance of information sharing along the HSC, limited previous studies attempted to develop feasible information systems capable of facilitating the effective resource planning...

The mirroring hypothesis highlights the correspondence of design characteristics across different architectural levels and in this paper, we consider how mirroring may impact the distribution of national and international innovation activities of firms. We identify incremental and modular innovations (as product architecture reinforcing innovations...

Drawing on the discursive practice turn in social theory, we examine the career journeys of skilled West African migrants based in Britain. While many, especially those from developing countries, may end up in elementary occupations, accounts of their progression into professional occupations remain elusive. Here, we unpack specific transient momen...

Our S p e c i a l I s s u e C all for Papers on The rise of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Laboratories: Implication for Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) Policy

Universities have come to represent strategic sites for the production of knowledge and innovations driving major economic and societal transformations. In this paper, we examine the role universities play in national innovation systems. Developing our contribution within the context of the UK university system, we present a conceptual organizing f...

Call for papers for a special issue on: Organizations design products: how different architectural pairings emerge and sustain over time

IEEE Transactions on ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Drawing on a framework that integrates discursive practices and relationalism, we explore the relevance of relational ties for the cross-state mobility of naturalised third-country nationals (NTCNs) within the European Union (EU); examining how relational ties facilitate their mobility to the United Kingdom. Our data derive from in-depth interviews...

Strategic foresight encompasses thinking and organizing differently within the contingencies of the present in ways that is mindful of the unpredictable future. Building on the Ricoeurian notion of distentio- ‘the stretching of consciousness through simultaneous attention to memory and expectation’, we develop the concept of distentive capability a...

Purpose The authors aim to examine the potential opportunities and challenges multinationals operating in Africa are likely to encounter when they seek to pioneer disruptive innovations at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in African emerging markets. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the extant literature on the BoP, disruptive innovation and th...

Convicted for paying bribes to secure contracts abroad, Mabey and Johnson (M&J), a UK construction firm, made both legal and international business history. Drawing on hubris as a lens, we examine M&J’s bribery scandal in Ghana and Jamaica. Through a qualitative study of court documents, witness statements, newspaper articles, and internal company...

This special issue examines corporate foresight and innovation management in contemporary organising. Contributing to a growing body of research on the other-centeredness and interconnectedness of foresight and innovation, the papers in the issue examine the practice of corporate foresight, how it may lead to the identification of opportunities for...

This article examines how a scientific research institute can shape commercial development and medical practice in a developing country through the appropriation of the dialectical tensions and contradictions between traditional knowledge and practice, formal science, and commerce. Highlighting the dynamics of a complex inter-institutional cooperat...