Adm. Sci., Volume 12, Issue 2 (June 2022) – 29 articles

This study investigates 3883 articles published by researchers affiliated with Chiang Mai University in science and technology from January 2010 to December 2019 to test whether research team characteristics and collaboration patterns can determine a citation rate. Citations were retrieved from the Scopus database and compared with their (1) number of authors, (2) type of publication, (3) gender of authors, (4) SJR values, (5) country of international collaborators, (6) number of affiliated institutions, and (7) international diversity index. The findings were based on quantile regressions and indicated that the number of authors strongly influenced citations, which increases the likelihood of being cited. The citation advantage of being a foreign-first author only existed at the 0.25th quantile; however, the evidence of foreign-first author citation advantages or disadvantages for the moderate and very productive publications was not found. A significantly positive effect of SJR value on citations was found while being a female first author negatively impacted the citation rate. These findings can be used in the planning and managing process of producing scientific and technological research to improve the research quality, boost the research impact, and increase opportunities for research results to be utilized. Full article

Environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) play a significant role in contemporary governance. They act as bottom-up advocates while discussing sustainability and environmental issues. They try to engage different stakeholders and society members for common actions. Communication is cited as a very appropriate process for the cooperation and coordination of joint actions. Digital technologies provide new communication possibilities as an e-communication mode that covers various networks. E-communication is very complex and requires strict management that is usually unaware of for small ENGOs. This study aims to propose a theoretical model of e-communication for enhancing ENGOs communication effectiveness on sustainability issues. A literature analysis was used with a content approach helping to collect components and criteria for the framework. The approach of logical classification and distribution was applied to construct the framework. The framework appeals to the idea of diversification of communication for different audiences and is based on the e-communication objectives and measurement of messages as the results. The framework can be adapted to the particular sustainability problem such as air pollution, protection of trees, etc. Full article

The efforts of different local and regional administrations are increasingly seen as very important drivers of the economic vitality and well-being of territories in a world where subnational government levels continue to gain levels of authority. This study sought to investigate the efficacy of revamping local and regional development through local and regional management practices with a key focus on Greece. A mixed-methods research design was utilized; data were collected using a questionnaire from 200 entrepreneurs and investors from the local community in Kozani and through interviews with six local government leaders in Kozani city, Greece. The study shows that effective local–regional management practices normally function within the constraints provided by local contextual circumstances and traits as well as the possibilities offered by them. In this case, localized techniques may be used in areas with varying degrees of ex ante favorability, economic structures, and different resource endowments, as well as capacities that are essential for regional and local development. Any barriers that may affect the effectiveness of local–regional management practices can be eliminated through proper decision making, the proper allocation of resources, and participatory leadership at the local government level. Full article

Digitalization is prompting small and medium-sized enterprises to structural and strategic transformations, also providing new opportunities to expand and succeed in foreign markets. However, relatively few studies have investigated emergent digital technologies in international business management. Contextually, there is still a dearth of research on the multi-faceted impacts of digitalization on omnichannel strategy characterizing most of the global business environment today. This paper, therefore, aims to examine the impact of digitalization on omnichannel choices adopted by internationalized SMEs. A qualitative approach, based on a single case study methodology, is adopted. An Italian agri-food SME is chosen as this industry is considered a key and distinctive pillar of Made in Italy in the international markets. Findings reveal the potential of digital technologies’ applications in an omnichannel environment, blurring the boundaries between channels, through a synergetic integration of them. This evidence contributes to the existing literature on technology management and omnichannel strategies in the international context by rereading these phenomena through a smart ecosystem lens. In addition, this study provides practical insights on how multiple channels adopted by Made in Italy SMEs can be integrated, managed, and operated synergistically on international markets to sustain a digitalized value creation. Full article

Although entrepreneurship at the university level has constantly been evolving, little research has been done on what competencies should be developed in entrepreneurship education (EE) and how EE relates to the core of entrepreneurship—the entrepreneurial process competence. This article seeks to develop and empirically measure the entrepreneurial process competence in the context of EE. A self-assessment questionnaire based on the ‘generic’ entrepreneurship competence model, improved with the section on entrepreneurial process competence, was used to assess the impact of EE intervention in major Estonian universities. The survey took place in two stages: the same questions were repeated at the beginning and end of the course in the 2019 autumn semester. It gave the responses of 355 students and showed the varied and small positive individual-level impact of entrepreneurship courses on minor aspects of ‘generic’ competences in different universities, depending on training methodology, study volume and contact hours. At the same time, all the competencies of the entrepreneurial process grew significantly. Readiness to start own business did not change. The article recommends focusing on entrepreneurial process competencies and their acquisition for development and metrics of entrepreneurship learning progression. Full article

The main objective of this study is to analyze the effects of work engagement, identification with an organization and perceived organizational support on job satisfaction and how these issues vary with gender. Data were collected in a public higher education institution with a questionnaire applied to professors and support staff. The data collected from the 171 employees allowed the development of a structural equation model. The results suggest that work engagement constructs have a greater effect on job satisfaction for female employees, whereas the impact of perceived organizational support on job satisfaction is stronger for male workers. The analysis also revealed that identification with the organization does not influence job satisfaction differently in terms of gender. The findings of this study contribute to the body of empirical knowledge on how the influence of factors on job satisfaction, such as engagement at work, perceived organizational support and identification with the organization, varies by gender. Full article

Volunteering work has played a major role in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Studying volunteering behavior is interesting because it holds many important lessons for businesses to attract and engage their primary stakeholders (employees and customers) and counter the challenges posed by the pandemic. As women make up a large percentage of volunteers, understanding the relationship between motivation and women intending to take up volunteering work during crises is necessary—particularly in collectivist Islamic societies. The present study examined the motivations of young women in Bahrain to volunteer for RT-PCR testing and vaccination drives sponsored by the government during the pandemic. The study also examined the effect of the volunteering experience on the lives of these women. The study was conducted using a mixed qualitative method that included focus groups and in-depth interviews. The research participants were millennial women who had undertaken volunteering during the pandemic. A few in-depth interviews were conducted with male volunteers to examine whether such motivations were influenced by gender. The findings of the research revealed normative, in addition to personal, motivators behind the act of volunteering, with a greater dominance of normative motivations such as the call of the homeland and philanthropy. The influence of the collectivist culture in shaping the normative motivations behind volunteering among these women was visible, and there was also an influence of religion and religious values. Full article

Background: The purpose of this article is to examine how different views on power and politics manifest in organizational change, and how they can be integrated into a single model. Methods: Our research was based on an extensive literature review about power and politics and their relationship with organizational change. We used the systems model of organizational change developed by Maes and Van Hootegem to map the different views on power and politics in organizational change. This systems model integrated different change discourses and allowed us to post the various aspects of power and politics in organizational change. Results: Using the systems model as a reference to look at power and politics from different angles led to a better understanding of the role they play in organizational change so that actors can enter the political arena of change better prepared and play the game of change at a tactically higher level. Conclusions: The analysis contributes to the study of power and politics in three respects. First, using the metamodel of organizational change to map the different views on power and politics offers a more detailed and varied understanding of the use of power and politics in organizational change. Second, looking at power and politics from different discourses can accommodate greater complexity and nuance. Third, it shows that change projects rarely run smoothly but are constantly traversed by all kinds of obstacles and barriers that require specific political astuteness. Members of an organization, who have been introduced to political skills, will be better able to navigate the pitfalls of organizational change and its rhetoric and thus be better agents of change or better able to resist unreasonable change. Full article

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the way organizations face decision-making issues. One of these crucial elements is the implementation of organizational changes. There has been a wide-spread adoption of AI techniques in the private sector, whereas in the public sector their use has been recently extended. One of the greatest challenges that European governments have to face is the implementation of a wide variety of European Union (EU) funding programs which have evolved in the context of the EU long-term budget. In the current study, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are intertwined with forecasting the outcomes of a co-financed EU program by means of its impact on the non-financial measures of the government body that materialized it. The predictive accuracy of the present model advanced in this research study takes into account all the complexities of the business environment, within which the provided dataset is produced. The outcomes of the study showed that the measures taken to enhance customer satisfaction allows for further improvement. The utilization of the proposed model could facilitate the decision-making process and initiate changes to the administrational issues of the available funding programs. Full article

The area of women’s empowerment has attracted increasing attention among a wide range of interest groups, from authors to researchers to feminist scholars and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This paper aims to identify the diverse understandings of women’s empowerment in the literature and to discuss empirical evidence from NGO projects in the field. A systematic literature review is employed that includes an analysis of relevant high-quality articles and research papers published in the Scopus database, as well as those produced by United Nations (UN) bodies and well-published authors. The findings highlighted four common understandings of women’s empowerment including granting women a voice, challenging existing power structures, the radical transformation of lives and livelihoods, and gender mainstreaming. The findings of these empirical studies on the role of NGOs in this field revealed understandings limited to granting women a voice and gender mainstreaming, thus reflecting the fact that limited knowledge of women’s empowerment hampers the ability of NGOs to serve women’s advancement and sustainable development. Furthermore, and given that these approaches and understandings still fall short of achieving social inclusion for women, it is recommended that these NGOs discharge their efforts toward initiating systemic change to actually sustain female empowerment in the communities in which they are active. Full article

This paper conducts a systematic literature review and relates to how talent management (TM) and recruitment strategies are applied in the financial sector, and specifically in the banking sector. The goals of this paper are to provide a comprehensive analysis of TM research in the financial sector, identify and debate major research topics, and suggest future research possibilities. The study examines publications that were published between 2000 and 2021, which were obtained from the databases Web of Science and Scopus. According to the findings, academics are becoming more interested in TM in the banking sector, which appears to be linked to the severe scarcity of skilled people who possess required talents. The findings are relevant to both academia and the banking sector, as the paper provides data relating to what has already been researched in academia, while also highlighting the need for more research into how TM is understood, valued and implemented. Consequently, this paper paves the way for academics to conduct empirical research on TM and recruitment tactics in the banking sector and the financial sector as a whole. This paper is structured according to the PRISMA requirements for systematic literature reviews. Full article

This paper investigated how change outcomes of development cooperation projects can be institutionalized within the beneficiary organization. While a lot of attention has been paid to sustainability in scientific research on issues, projects, and policies related to environmental, industrial, and agricultural production and sustainability management, there are limited studies on the sustainability of organizational-level change outcomes of aid-based project interventions. Using the lens of organizational change institutionalization models, we examined how internal stakeholders’ change-related beliefs, organizational characteristics, and project characteristics relate to the institutionalization process of project outcomes. Data were collected using a questionnaire returned by 130 respondents from a university in the Global South implementing institutional development cooperation projects. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the data, we found that organizational characteristics and change-related beliefs both had direct positive effects on the institutionalization process, while project characteristics had negative effects. Additionally, this study reveals that stakeholder change-related beliefs mediated the relationship between organizational and project characteristics and the institutionalization process. The findings support the continual engagement of organizational internal stakeholders in institutionalization efforts throughout the project life cycle, rather than waiting for the project to end. In contrast to the mechanistic, linear result chain approaches that dominate development project discourses, there is a need for more iterative approaches that allow the development of necessary attitudes and behaviors among the beneficiary organization’s internal stakeholders to sustain the project-induced changes. Full article

Attempts to transform the gendered structures and cultures of higher education institutions have had limited success. This article focuses on one Irish university (pseudonym University A) where gender inequality was a major concern culminating in high-profile litigation. Using a feminist institutional approach, it asks: (1) What changes and interventions were introduced in the context of a favorable national policy environment and local grassroots support? and (2) how were these interventions perceived by staff? The methodology draws, firstly on the authors’ personal knowledge of the local context; secondly, on an analysis of University A’s key gender equality-related actions and documents; and thirdly, on a thematic analysis of qualitative data from 129 respondents in an online survey. Positive changes are identified, as is institutional resistance, reflected in low ambitions and focus on individualistic solutions. In the qualitative data, resistance involving denial; assertions that the problem is solved; the importance of meritocracy, and a focus on “fixing the women” (and the men) were identified. Acceptance of gender equality as an organisational issue was reflected in criticism of the interventions as tokenistic window dressing; not impacting on the culture and “not going far enough”. The implications for effectively addressing gender inequality are discussed. Full article

Recently, the importance of care farming has been emphasized worldwide for the purpose of public health and healing, and, in particular, discussions on innovative transformation and expansion of the care farm ecosystem have continued in terms of convergence of agriculture and welfare. This study aims to present influencing factors based on a hierarchical concept framework for revitalizing care farm ecosystem based on public service innovation. To this end, the AHP methodology was used. Through previous studies, 16 variables were derived within four categories: recognition, structure, leadership, process, and recognition of variables that affect the activation of the care farm ecosystem and conceptualized them through Delphi techniques. In addition, a survey was conducted on 28 stakeholders in care farming to derive the importance of each variable. As a result of the analysis, ‘reliability’ was derived as the most important factor, followed by factors such as human competence, vision, civic participation, and innovation awareness. Hence, it was confirmed that trust and communication between stakeholders are important to lead the innovative public service ecosystem of care farm, and above all, human competence is an important influencing factor. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the consumption habits of tourists to benefit sustainable destinations that are not overcrowded, such as rural tourism destinations. However, the periods of compulsory lockdown have had devastating effects on tourism businesses operating in rural areas and have even jeopardised their economic viability. The aim of this article is to quantify in relative terms the effects that the period of compulsory lockdown in a markedly tourist country, such as Spain, between March and May 2020 has had on rural accommodation in one of the most rural provinces of Spain (Cáceres). Based on a random sample of 225 rural accommodation establishments and the consideration of various factors, statistical techniques of comparison of means and proportions were used to detect differences in the intensity of the effects of the compulsory lockdown on the economic-financial management, bookings, facilities, and input of rural accommodation establishments in the province. The results obtained show that the economic, labour, and management effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural tourism businesses in the province of Cáceres have been very substantial. In particular, the businesses with the highest level of tourist services on supply, i.e., those that, in addition to accommodation, also offer other tourist activities, have been the most affected. In view of this situation, urgent emergency measures have been put in place at a provincial level to alleviate the economic loss and the destruction of jobs caused by this pandemic. Full article

This paper aims to map and analyze the scientific production of social innovation, resulting in a contribution to the literature review and guidelines for future research. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to explore the trends on the topic. The primary objectives are (1) to identify how the literature defines the concept of social innovation and to track its evolution; (2) to measure productivity and identify key authors and scientific journals with the highest impact in the field and the association networks between their respective institutions and countries of origin; (3) to analyze and map citations, co-citations, and research topics to pinpoint the topics and dimensions related to social innovation in order to propose future research. Our paper clarifies the concept of social innovation, reports the progresses achieved within this research field, and measures the productivity on this specific topic. Full article

This paper aims to analyse how universities are currently improving CSR teaching, pointing out some new challenges and trends emerging from a context in which CSR issues have become increasingly important. The research provides a longitudinal study of the literature for a period of 20 years. After screening the retrieved documents, we based our analysis on 31 main scientific documents. Our findings highlight how universities are improving CSR teaching by utilising the development of new curricula and new teaching methods, such as case methods, service learning, problem-based learning, and action and experiential learning. The paper is novel because it explores how the request for human resources with CSR skills forced universities to widen their teaching programs. Our findings suggest valuable and useful insights for the academic and professional community. Full article

Abusive leadership is particularly prevalent in nursing and it can have multiple adverse effects on performance at work. However, little research has examined whether and under what conditions abusive leadership may be detrimental to nurses’ extra-role performance. This cross-sectional study explores whether abusive leadership intensifies the effects of emotional job resources on autonomous motivation, a psychological mechanism that could be responsible for extra-role performance. Data were collected from dyads of registered French-Canadian nurses and their immediate supervisors (n = 99 dyads). The models were tested with path analysis using Mplus. Our results show that extra-role performance is positively associated with nurses’ job emotional resources and autonomous motivation, but negatively associated with abusive leadership. Nurses’ cynicism is also negatively associated with autonomous motivation. Importantly, the indirect relation between emotional resources and extra-role performance through autonomous motivation is moderated by abusive leadership, providing support for a moderated mediation effect. These results add to those supporting a similar moderated mediation mechanism to explain employee attitudes and demonstrate the relevance of self-determination theory in a work context. These findings reinforce the need to focus on the quality of leadership practices as well as interventions aimed at promoting the performance of nurses at work. Full article

A fundamental challenge in democracy is how to control civil service organizations. This challenge has been primarily addressed by creating horizontal accountability arrangements, in which independent agencies act as auditors and evaluators of civil service organizations. However, horizontal accountability only partially resolves this control challenge. In this paper, we adopt a design science approach and draw on insights from game theory to develop a set of design principles for controlling civil service organizations. Based on these design principles, a system for controlling civil service staff was created and implemented in a medium-sized Dutch municipality. The results obtained in this municipality are rather promising regarding the enhanced efficiency and transparency of the civil service organization, while the high level of job satisfaction among civil servants is sustained. These findings suggest that the benefits of increased transparency in how civil servants are monitored appear to outweigh the fact that they may have less discretion in their work. Full article

Women’s involvement in tourism has exerted an immense impact on the nation’s economy. The low involvement of women in some countries has sparked the interest of scholars in investigating the factors that influence their involvement. The main purpose of this study was to examine the influence of self-efficacy (SE), perceptions of women’s work (PWW), empowering leadership (EL), and psychological empowerment (PE) on tourism involvement. Consequently, the study determined the impact of tourism involvement in sustainable tourism development (STD). The population of the study was women entrepreneurs from the Saudi Arabia tourism industry. A total of 201 women participated in the study from the selected sample of 300, obtained through convenient sampling. For the data analysis, SPSS and PLS-SEM were employed. The results revealed that PWW, SE, EL, and PE significantly and positively influenced women entrepreneurs’ involvement in tourism (WEIT). Further, WEIT significantly and positively impacted STD. This research is a pioneering work in which a research model was developed to incorporate PWW, SE, EL, PE, tourism involvement, and STD in light of social exchange theory and social identity theory. The findings provide implications for policymakers and academia and contribute to the existing body of knowledge on women’s entrepreneurship, empowerment, tourism, and business management. Full article

Technological advances such as smartphones, mobile applications, and online platforms have enabled a new form of economy, known as a gig economy, at a large scale, in which there is a free-market system allowing organizations (job providers) to hire independent contractors (job seeker). Unlike traditional employer and employee relationships, the gig economy creates opportunities for independent workers to seek short-term contract jobs and temporary positions. This article presents a systematic review of the literature associated with a bibliometric analysis of the global perspective of the gig economy. The study aims to present the analysis of published articles that explore the gig economy. Initially, 2297 documents were retrieved by gig economy as a keyword from Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science between 2014 and 2022. After applying certain criteria, only 686 publications were selected for bibliometrics analysis. The selected articles were used to measure bibliometric indicators and evaluate the research work on the gig economy. Bibliometrics an R package for bibliometric and co-citation analysis was used to achieve the results. VOSviewer was also used to analyze the co-occurrence of the keywords. The results highlight the publication trends, top contributing authors and their countries, most cited articles, keywords, and most contributing journals to the research field. Full article

Many jobs today are predominantly knowledge work. This makes organizations dependent on value created by knowledge workers (KWs). Many of the initiatives to improve and manage knowledge worker productivity (KWP) give unpredictable results depending on factors that are often hidden and unknown. It is important to find a holistic approach to improve and manage KWP that gives consistent results across many different organizations. This paper takes us a step closer towards that objective by mapping insights gained from a systematic literature review to activities in a purposeful activity model of the individual KW at work and, based on the findings, proposing a draft of a holistic KWP framework. The main components of the framework are the state of the individual KW, work done and outcome. The systematic literature review searched for papers with topics that touched on approaches, frameworks, tools, or models which aim to tackle the productivity, performance, effectiveness, efficiency, or management of KWs. Relevant concepts were extracted from each paper and categorized into groups. Twelve groups were formed of which six consisted of concepts relevant to individual KWs and their work: organizational commitment and engagement, communication and relationships, personal characteristics and development, personal knowledge management, well-being and job satisfaction and task approach. Full article

The time pressure on new product development under unpredictable conditions requires the renewal of the project management approach that suggests the prominent role of project managerial competencies in achieving project success. Project management education must be adjusted to understand students’ opinions in the field. The study uses a survey among Hungarian engineering, business, and IT higher education students. The analysis aims to explore opinions about the main barriers to successful product development projects, and the expected ways of regulating the project by ANOVA and principal component analysis. The responses of 126 students confirm the appreciation of management competencies. Gaps in team composition, inadequate communication, common changes in the plans, and the lack of experience in similar development tasks are considered to be the main contributors to product development project failures. Collaboration and competition with external partners were found to be less essential factors. Students believe that regulation of the work is necessary, but the project team should be trusted to establish it. Beyond developing the curricula, the experience of this study can promote the successful execution of collaborative projects between companies and higher education institutions. It can establish expected student competencies to quickly become effective project team members. Full article

Rural-to-urban migration disturbs essential factors of rural development, including labor forces, land ownership, and food production. To avoid late responses to emigration, scholars have begun investigating earlier stages of rural emigration. However, prior studies have focused on a single spatial entity only while also leaning toward trends in developed countries. Therefore, this study fills gaps by focusing on the differences in migration intention between villages in less developed settings. In observing the differences, this research takes peri-urban and remote villages as cases located at different distances from their nearest urban destination. This study treats migration intention as the dependent variable while using single-indicator place attachment and multi-indicator information sources as the independent variables. This work applies the Mann–Whitney U, ANOVA, and Brown–Forsythe tests on three hypotheses. This research also uses SEM-PLS to investigate the correlation model of the observed variables for each case. The results show that information sources negatively affect migration intentions in peri-urban settings. Remote rural areas also show similar results for the information sources variable; however, place attachment in remote settings significantly contributes to migration intention. These results show that place attachment and information sources contribute differently, depending on the distance to the urban area. We argue that access to public services and infrastructure contributes to the results. The findings suggest that an increased availability of information sources impedes the formation of migration intentions. Thus, this study suggests the necessity of improving rural infrastructure and public services to improve information literacy. It helps the government control rural emigration while fulfilling its obligation for rural development. It also offers better rural livelihoods during the development progress, providing economic incentives for villagers to stay in villages. Full article

The pitch is an important part of the entrepreneur–investor relationship. To come to an agreement, entrepreneurs and investors need to trust each other. However, how does trust arise between them, and how does trust evolve during the few minutes of a pitch? With the aim to develop propositions, we build on previous studies in entrepreneurship and venture funding. Therefore, we rely on the main concepts of trust useful to analyze the interpersonal relationship during a pitch: behavioral trust and transformative trust. We discuss the place of formal documents diffused prior to the pitch and the importance of the oral presentation. We conclude by suggesting testable proposition on the evolution of trust during the pitch. Full article

This research paper presents and discusses the main results generated and obtained with the proprietary computer platform CIDIUS^®, developed by the authors of this work, which aims to support the decision-making process of Portuguese mayors. Thus, keeping in mind the theoretical models and based on the data collected through the questionnaire given to the population, we tried to understand the influence that the dimensions Notoriety, Image, and Reputation (NIR), Citizen and Voter Expectations (CVE), Contestation and Complaint of the Municipal Executive (CCME), Perceived Value (PV), and Organizational Performance and Perceived Quality (OPPQ) has a positive effect on Municipe Satisfaction (MS). The parishes of the municipality of Valongo were selected and analyzed, namely the parishes of Alfena, Campo e Sobrado, Valongo, and Ermesinde, and a total of 998 valid questionnaires were collected. It was concluded that all studied dimensions except the Organizational Performance and Perceived Quality (OPPQ) dimension had a positive and statistically significant impact on Municipe Satisfaction (MS). The results of this research suggest the need for the use of these opinion-gathering techniques to encourage active citizen involvement in the daily life of their municipality, as well as the need for valid information that gives executives the ability to take political action that is appropriate to the interests and expectations of citizens. Full article

Gender equity is a topic of significant interest for universities, who are called upon to plan strategies and measures to increase gender equality in line with international policies. With a qualitative methodology based on manual content analysis, the paper aims to understand whether and how this report could positively assess a university’s actions for reaching SDG 5. This study’s results show that the CRUI guidelines can be used by universities to disclose gender policies that may be of interest to stakeholders, and can also be synthesized in THE ranking, increasing university visibility. The present study could be helpful for universities, regulatory bodies, policy makers, and agency rankings to help them identify the most relevant gender items on which to focus their attention. Full article

In this exploratory study, we challenge real decision makers to make choices in strategic games involving ambiguity, and to rationalize those choices. Such games are unique because they are not optimizable; however, the challenge such decisions represent—making choices over irreversible resource commitments in a competitive context and without complete information—is only growing in frequency in our modern business context. As such, our goal is to improve our understanding of real strategic decision making facing irreducible uncertainty, and then to identify ways to improve the outcomes. The challenge is that there are no theoretical solutions for these problems. (While such work has offered solutions, those have always involved watered-down problems—in terms of a lack of true uncertainty or a lack of true optimization). Thus, we approach the challenge from an experimental methodology as one alternative path toward improving outcomes. We do so by considering the influence of decision and decision-maker characteristics on the behaviors displayed while confronting these problems, with an eye on identifying vulnerabilities. We find that such characteristics correlate with expected behaviors, and that there exists potential room for improvements in the observed strategizing. The results of our study on the behaviors witnessed across three variants of our prototypical game—that represent increasing levels of complexity in the underlying ambiguity—have implications for theory and for practice, where one such conceptual implication involves the discovery of an entirely new form of the decision dilemma. Full article

Recent research on management control and performance measurement and management (PMM) points towards a concern to provide suitable systems in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). However, few attempts have been made to understand these organizations and how their peculiarities influence this process. This research empirically discusses NPOs’ features through the lens of performance measurement and how these features influence performance measurement system’ design, the first step for an iterative PMM. A case study with two NPOs in the United States of America and Brazil provides valuable insights into the design factors. Results indicate that various factors related to purpose, stakeholders, and management influence the design of the performance-measurement system. Their unique organizational characteristics impact the usability and viability of the application of performance-measurement systems. Full article