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Continuous improvement in an integrated approach is a philosophy developed over decades based on a set of management practices. It comprises enhancement methodologies that escalate success as well as diminishes letdowns. The state-of-the-art literature finds a variety of practices for the execution of continuous improvement (CI) system. However, it is rare to find an empirical study with an inclusive system that considers various practices in one frame for improving competitiveness. With this outlook, therefore, this study aims originally to identify drivers, motivations and barriers for the application of integrated CI system, and then conduct an empirical investigation within the context of Ethiopian manufacturing industries.

Justification of the problem, extensive review of literature, identification of practices, developing research framework, investigational analysis of the empirical study using reliability and descriptive statistical analysis and identifying leading drivers (unique practices and common factors), motivations and barriers are the research approaches used in this study. Furthermore, the primary data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire and were analyzed using a statistical package for social science (SPSS) 23 and the findings were triangulated to relate to the existing state-of-the-art literature.

The findings indicate 17 common factors associated with human, strategic, operational, technology, structure, resource and information factors; 21 unique practices of just-in-time (JIT), lean-six sigma (LSS), supply chain management (SCM), total productive maintenance (TPM), and total quality management (TQM) methodologies; 20 barriers connected with internal and external issues and 17 motivations linked to operational, innovation and business results are identified. In general, the empirical analysis discovers the practices are noteworthy and commonly supported by a least of 52% of the respondents. As a result, the first five prominent common factors, barriers, unique practices and motivations are also supported by a minimum of 72%, 73.9%, 65.8% and 75% of the respondents, respectively.

Even though this is the first-ever study in the Ethiopian manufacturing sector with the focus on integrated CI practices of JIT, TQM, TPM, SCM and LSS initiatives, some limitations have existed and the major limitations of the study are, targeted merely small number manufacturing companies despite the fact that there are hundreds of companies implementing CI system in Ethiopia, and the data collected were only based on the perception of the respondents, and other information’s like annual reports was not employed to support the findings.

The findings of this study underlined that the implementation of drivers in relation to common factors and unique practices supported by exterminating barriers in manufacturing industries of Ethiopia enables to enhance competitiveness through attaining operational, innovation and business results though it requires a practical case application to prove this perception-based analysis.

Though there are a number of studies published on integrated continuous improvement, currently it is found that there is no literature focused on the identification and empirical investigation of drivers (common factors and unique practices), motivations and barriers for application of integrated CI system with the focus of JIT, TQM, TPM, SCM and LSS initiatives. Therefore, this is the first-ever study, and the empirical analysis of the study discovered that identified practices are providing valuable insights for manufacturing industries which will be on board on this voyage including institutions, practitioners and other sectors.

Examine how social studies preservice teachers conceptualize and enact critical historical inquiry.

Critical qualitative case study.

Differing conceptual understandings and had trouble infusing their practice with the critical theory learned in the university.

Examine how a core practice is bolstering the practice-theory connection in teacher education.

This paper examines the moderating role of firm size (FS) and industry type in the relationship between high-performance work practices (HPWPs) and entrepreneurial firm performance.

A descriptive research design involving a five-year dataset from firms in the retail and services industries of Nigeria was used in the analyses.

The use of HPWPs is widespread among entrepreneurial firms, with ability- and motivation-enhancing practices being dominant. Country context influences the types of HPWPs implemented by entrepreneurial firms. FS and industry type do not have significant moderating effects on the relationship between HPWPs and the performance of entrepreneurial firms. The positive effect of HPWPs on performance is consistent with findings made in prior studies.

FS plays a neutral role in the relationship between HPWPs and entrepreneurial firm performance. Within the broader retail and services industries, this relationship is weaker in capital-intensive firms compared to less capital-intensive ones. The restricted focus on only retail and service industries may limit the universal applicability of the findings.

Findings indicate that the efficacy of HPWPs is neither influenced by FS nor industry type. Entrepreneurial firms with higher capital intensity benefit relatively more from the use of HPWPs.

Unlike other research efforts focusing on a single moderating influence, this study combines two important contextual factors, FS and industry type, to provide a better understanding of HPWPs. The study spotlights the effects of country context in the implementation of HPWPs in a way that prior studies have not done.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between high-commitment human resource management (HCHRM) practices and emigration intentions in a developing country context. It further examines the mediating roles of perceived organizational support (POS) and job satisfaction in this relationship.

Using the survey method, data were collected online from 407 employees. Structural equation modeling (SEM) in Amos v. 23 was conducted to scrutinize the structural relationships among the variables.

The study revealed that HCHRM practices do not directly impact emigration intentions. However, they do significantly influence POS, which, in turn, has a positive effect on job satisfaction. Consequently, HCHRM practices indirectly affect emigration intentions through the serial mediation of POS and job satisfaction.

While this study provides valuable insights into the intricate dynamics of HCHRM practices, organizational support, job satisfaction and emigration intentions, it has certain limitations, such as its specific focus on Kosovo and its reliance on cross-sectional data. Future research could explore these relationships in diverse settings and use longitudinal designs for a more profound understanding.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first empirical investigation into the connection between HCHRM practices and emigration intentions within a developing country context. It underscores the significance of considering not only specific HRM practices but also broader contextual factors and mediating mechanisms, shedding light on how HCHRM practices influence employee intentions to emigrate. The findings provide a unique perspective for organizations and policymakers dealing with emigration challenges in developing countries.

This study explores how excellence models can leverage digital transformation on the path to sustainable development in organisations.

A survey was used to study the different facets of digital capabilities and their impact on sustainable development success of organisations holding an external recognition from the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). Partial Least Squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) combined with Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) were used to analyse data.

Internalising excellence practices is decisive in mediating effective digital capabilities to achieve sustainable development. To achieve high levels of sustainable development success, organisations must achieve high levels of excellence practices internalisation, which are much more important than the excellence model external recognition.

This study addresses essential issues with theoretical and practical value but is limited to a sample of organisations with EFQM recognition in two countries. Future studies should address different organisations and cultural environments.

The findings are relevant for organisations facing digital transformation and sustainable development challenges. They are essential for managers leveraging digital capabilities to capitalise on practices and processes and achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Organisations can benefit from a multidimensional approach to digital capabilities when struggling against external challenges.

This study closes a research gap regarding the impact of digital capabilities on sustainable development success. It is the first empirical study to combine sufficiency and necessity conditions analyses to explore the mediating role of excellence practices internalisation and one of the first to address digital capabilities from a multidimensional perspective.

Social practices of work humor among engineering workers are a lesser studied phenomenon. We examine the social practices of an engineering work team through acts of a peculiar form of humorous expression we identify as installation humor. In these cases of installation humor, an anonymous member of the team created a temporary, inappropriate, yet neutral installation of a physical object to amuse the other members of the team. We provide three mini-cases of installation humor; these installations appeared as the team subtly resisted a managerial initiative. We contribute knowledge to the practices of engineers at work and to the practices of resistive humorous expression.

Qualitative, full-participant ethnographic research with multiple data collection methods and utilizing abductive analysis. During the data collection, one of the researchers was a full member of the engineering team.

We identified anonymous, artefact-based enactments of resistive humorous expression, which we named installation humor. We identify and describe installation humor, which occurred at the intersectionality of work and self-expression and served as momentary artefacts symbolic of engineering worker resistance in a high-tech environment.

Managerial awareness of the unfolding forms of worker-led, fleeting signals of resistance, such as acts of installation humor, would provide another dimension of perception for identifying salient signals surrounding the phenomenon of resistance to managerial-led change initiatives. Further research is needed on engineering humor in the R&D workplace to better understand the complexity and dynamics of phenomena such as worker resistance through humorous acts. We suggest future studies on forms of humor in the engineering workplace, including incidences of installation humor as they exist in other professional work environments and organizations, to understand common and shared practices across professional boundaries.

We advance and extend the understanding of humor as a social practice in the context of professional engineers in their R&D workplace and we identify humorous acts serving as a response to negative emotions (Huber, 2022) toward the organization related to a newly instated form of managerial control. This paper contributes to the studies of social practices of humor and emotions (Fine and De Soucey, 2005) in the engineering workplace (Buch and Andersen, 2013; Buch, 2016; Mazzurco et al., 2021) as unsupervised activity at work (Gabriel, 1995), with the social practice of humor adopting a non-verbal form that we identified as installation humor. We named this specific form of humor that we observed as installation humor and defined its specificity and differences from more traditional methods of humor (t. ex. Fine and De Soucey, 2005; Martin and Ford, 2018), shop floor humor (t. ex. Roy 1959), workplace humor (t. ex. Rosenberg et al., 2021) and engineering student humor (Holmila et al., 2007; Bender, 2011; Berge, 2017).The results of this study also suggest that ethnography for studying humor as a social practice is useful in identifying micro-level occurrences of unfolding engineering humor, including humor as a form of resistance.

The study of humor in high-tech engineering settings enhances the literature of engineering work (t. ex. Mazzurco et al., 2021) and emerging humorous phenomena (Jarzabkowski and Lê, 2017). This case study highlights and extends the understanding of the non-technical competencies of engineers and the role of peer-to-peer humor in the engineering workplace as a form of resistance during managerial initiatives within an organization.

The study extends and contributes new knowledge to research on emotions and humor by engineers at work, including the identification of a peculiar form of humor used by the engineers. This study also contributes to nascent research on the social practices of engineers at work. The research material was gathered as a full-member ethnography, increasing methodological knowledge of researching a site from within.

This study investigates the association between corporate sustainability disclosures and firm performance and value.

This study collected data from 694 manufacturing companies operating in 34 countries between 2007 and 2019, yielding 6,181 firm-year observations. This study employs a dual-model framework to analyze the influence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and Tobin's Q ratio. Two sets of control variables, firm- and country-specific, were incorporated to account for potential confounding factors. To validate the robustness of the findings, we utilized a battery of econometric techniques, including traditional ordinary least squares (OLS), firm-fixed effects, quantile regression, and instrumental variables-generalized method of moments (IV-GMM), applied to both the pooled and firm-fixed effects models.

The findings are contradictory: there is a negative relationship between sustainability disclosure and operating performance and return on equity, but a positive relationship between sustainability disclosure and firm value. The negative correlation is consistent with agency theory and the positive correlation is consistent with the legitimacy and shareholder theories. These results are robust to performance measures and estimation methods.

Short-term profit shouldn't deter sustainability. It boosts legitimacy, reputation, efficiency, and long-term market value. Investors must look beyond profitability ratios, embracing ESG metrics. Firms should see sustainability as strategic investment, not cost. Patience pays off: long-term gains await. Regulation can guide balanced growth, prioritizing both shareholders and societal well-being.

This study is the first to adopt a firm’s fixed-effect quantile regression, which provides deep insights into the role of sustainability disclosure in meeting stakeholders’ expectations.

The study aimed to examine the transformation of a non-profit microfinance institution (MFI) into a hybrid social enterprise, and the role of formal and informal controls in reconciling the discordance between the two conflicting (social and commercial) objectives that emerged due to the transformation.

A case study of a non-governmental MFI located in Southeast Asian country was conducted. This case study drew on the institutional logics perspective as an analytical tool to understand the complexity of change and the mobilisation of management control practices to align two conflicting goals at the core of the MFI’s organisational strategies. This study adopted the interpretive approach and relied on multiple data sources, including semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence.

The application of commercial principles in the operations of the MFI occurred in several phases. First, the MFI changed from a non-profit business model to a hybrid social enterprise, which pursued a double bottom-line strategy. The informal control practices inherent in the organisation’s culture created a high level of social awareness embedded within a social logic. In contrast, the formal control practices were directly linked to the new commercial logic. The synergy between the two logics was optimised by reinforcing formal and informal control practices.

This study offers insights into the role of control systems in reconciling the discordance between competing social and financial objectives within a non-governmental MFI that enjoys substantial financial and nonfinancial support from the government.

Using the lens of the natural resource-based view (NRBV) theory, this study investigates the effect of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices such as green manufacturing (GM), eco-design (ED), green purchasing (GP) and investment recovery (IR) on the carbon-neutral supply chain (CNSC) performance of firms through the mediating influence of logistics eco-centricity (LE).

A conceptual framework that hypothesizes the relationship between GSCM practices, LE and the CNSC performance of firms is developed. Key GSCM practices are then identified using experts’ opinions. Furthermore, we collected responses from logistics companies to validate the conceptual framework using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method.

Through this study, we found that GSCM practices significantly improve a firm's CNSC performance, and the relationships between GSCM practices and CNSC performance are positively mediated by LE.

The implications of the study suggest that logistics managers can benefit from the findings of this study to comprehend the impact of various GSCM techniques on LE and CNSC from the viewpoint of the NRBV paradigm.

This research provides valuable perspectives for managers and supply chain (SC) practitioners in their quest for sustainable and environmentally responsible SC operations through an extensive and novel analysis of the connection between GSCM practices, LE and CNSC performance.

Professional development (PD) is an essential component of continuing learning for in-service teachers. This paper discusses a school-based example of using the best practice of coaching in early childhood education supported by a professional development school partnership. We explain how a teacher identified need led to a collaborative, multistep approach to meeting that need in connection to State mandates.

In this research, we used a case study methodological approach with a team of preschool teachers at one school. The model combines use of PD sessions, classroom coaching, classroom observation and reflection.

Teachers’ feedback indicates that using the strategy positively impacted most of the participants’ ability to support communication, community-building and inclusive practices in their classrooms. The data that emerged in the following year evidenced increased use of visual supports in classrooms, use in connection with literacy goals and interest in creating new uses in the school.

This article contributes an action-oriented school-based example of bridging research to practice to support teachers’ needs through PD and coaching in a PDS. The design and practical implications may interest preschool educators, instructional coaches, administrators, professional development schools and others involved with monitoring teacher development initiatives.