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The paper describes the conceptual and mathematical background of a tool for modelling and optimising transportation networks. The tool has been created to model resources and cargo flows in port terminal networks. The concept behind the tool is characterised by three features. Firstly the nodes are non-stationary and can be adapted to accommodate changed requirements in the transportation system. Secondly a high degree of complexity is built into the operational modes of the nodes. Thirdly, the concept incorporates an information network interacting closely with nodes and links. All networks can be optimised employing powerful algorithms and tools from system theory, neural networks and combinatorial graph theory.

As demographic changes impact the workplace, governments, organizations, and workers are looking for ways to sustain optimal working lives at higher ages. Workplace flexibility has been introduced as a potential way workers can have more satisfying working lives until their retirement ages. This chapter presents a critical review of the literature on workplace flexibility across the lifespan. It discusses how flexibility has been conceptualized across different disciplines, and postulates a definition that captures the joint roles of employer and employee in negotiating workplace flexibility that contributes to both employee and organization benefits. Moreover, it reviews how flexibility has been theorized and investigated in relation to older workers. The chapter ends with a future research agenda for advancing understanding of how workplace flexibility may enhance working experiences of older workers, and in particular focuses on the critical investigation of uses of flexibility in relation to older workers.

There is a substantial literature evaluating the impact of aid at the macroeconomic level using cross-country regressions. However, despite econometric advances in recent years, there remain many flaws in this approach. Similar problems beset cross-country analysis of the impact of aid on poverty indicators. More reliable estimates of the poverty impact of aid come from project-level analyses from which can be built up a picture of aid impact at the country level. This paper presents the findings from three such studies carried out by the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank.

Although the relation between individual and collective memory has been long established, analysis of individual memories is hardly existent within the social sciences outside of psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Working to overcome this gap, the author argues that children’s lives are heavily influenced by the structures of collective memory they are born into, available to children through the complex system of inter- and intragenerational relationships from very early on.

Drawing on the concepts of generation (Karl Mannheim), generagency (Madelaine Leonard), and collective memory (Maurice Halbwachs), the author establishes that the practise of intergeneratonal exchange of memories within the family provides a way to influence and overcome the limiting of children’s agency by social stratification determined by age.

The authors examine how firms can achieve organizational ambidexterity, that is, how they can successfully engage in concurrent exploitation of existing competencies and exploration of new competencies in their search for new products. Existing research has identified three enablers to manage these fundamentally different activities: temporal separation, structural separation, and the creation of context. Studying the strategic orientation, organization design, and performance of a unique sample of mid-sized German manufacturing firms, the authors find that the controlled interplay of decentralized decision making and formalized processes and goals is another effective means to manage the challenges of pursuing an innovation strategy balancing both exploitative and exploratory activities. The findings of this study suggest that this balanced control constitutes a fourth enabler of ambidexterity.

This viewpoint adds context and variety to the “decolonizing international business” debate by engaging in a discussion of the decolonial thinking approach and proposing a broader framework for analysing the link between international business (IB) activities on the one hand and colonisation and decolonisation on the other. The purpose of this paper is to inspire a more intensive engagement of IB scholarship with issues related to colonisation and decolonisation.

This paper involves taking a reflexive review on recent calls to decolonise IB, contextualising and extending the decolonisation debate in the academic field of IB.

This paper argues that the current discussion of decolonisation should be extended beyond the decolonial thinking approach and its focus on knowledge and the cultural dimension towards a broader framework that covers both colonisation and decolonisation as well as the respective economic, political, social and cultural dimensions. It introduces the varieties of colonisation and decolonisation approach, which considers the complexities of the phenomenon and covers the economic, social, political and cultural dimensions.

Through its focus on foreign market expansion, international trade, global value chains and formal and informal institutions in the business environment, the academic field of IB provides several starting points for research on the link between IB activities and colonisation and decolonisation. The decolonisation debate can be used to inspire future research in IB, for example, with respect to the role of multinational corporations in colonisation and neo-colonisation processes and the implications of the emerging multipolar world order for IB.

IB scholars will be better informed when engaging in discussions on decolonisation and the decolonise IB project. This paper suggests considering both colonisation and decolonisation processes as well as the respective economic, political, social and cultural dimensions in research and teaching. The varieties of colonisation and decolonisation approach provides a comprehensive and flexible alternative framework to analyse issues related to colonisation and decolonisation.

A balanced view of the implications of colonisation and decolonisation with respect to economic, political, social and cultural dimensions may suitably be incorporated in the field of IB and contribute to tackling grand societal challenges. This applies likewise to past, current and future processes of colonisation and decolonisation.

This paper contextualises and adds a new perspective and variety to the current debate on decolonising IB. This is valuable for engaging in discussions on decolonisation and future conceptual and empirical research on the topic.

This chapter focuses on the Chinese cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) amid the rising trend of multinational companies from emerging economies. Based on a systematic review of published papers in top international business/strategy/organization journals on Chinese overseas M&A, we offer a tentative multilevel framework to consolidate the past achievement, consider contemporary debates, so as to direct future research efforts. We suggest that Chinese overseas M&A research should emphasize on a process perspective ranging from pre-acquisition to post-acquisition. In addition, qualitative research and methodological pluralism should be embraced to achieve this goal due to the nature of this emerging field of Chinese cross-border M&A. By allocating the extant literature into the multilevel framework, we articulate the demand and identify several potential topics for scholarly inquiry in the future in order to gain a nuanced understanding of this important phenomenon of Chinese cross-border M&A for both China and the rest of the world.

Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split between mind and nature and between subject/observer and observed object that characterizes scientific epistemology. Abstract mind reflects an abstracted objectified world of nature as a means to be exploited. Biological life is rendered as abstract life by capitalist exploitation and by the reification and technologization of organisms by contemporary technoscience. What Alberto Toscano has called “the culture of abstraction” imposes market rationality onto nature and the living world, disrupting biotic communities and transforming organisms into what Finn Bowring calls “functional bio-machines.”

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically justify the link between the endowment of intellectual capital (IC) and product novelty, and to find empirical evidence for such a link for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Russian business environment.

The study implements an intellectual capital-based view and the concept of novelty proposed by Schumpeter to highlight the crucial role of knowledge for transition to a higher level of competition. Drawing on a literature review, the authors determine three specific components of IC: foreign human capital, information and communication technology (ICT) capital developed at an international level and cooperation with foreign partners in order to pinpoint a premier position on the next level of the market. For empirical testing of the proposed model, a data set comprising more than 1,400 Russian manufacturing SMEs was used. Estimations were performed with the help of a principal component analysis and ordinal logistic regression.

The findings reveal that higher (IC) endowment promotes the level of product novelty. For Russian manufacturing SMEs, the most important is R&D capital. At the same time, ICT capital developed at an international level and cooperation with foreign partners contribute significantly to the probability of transition to a new market level.

The study employs cross-sectional data that restrict the analysis of innovation dynamics.

The study appears to have policy implications for the development of governmental programmes for Russian SMEs such as the creation of IC awareness, training for IC management, special programmes for R&D support and ICT capital accumulation.

This paper proposes a new approach for investigating the “knowledge-innovation” link, shifting the focus from a general analysis of product innovation to a level of novelty for product innovation. This is the first empirical study of the relationship between IC components and the level of product novelty for SMEs in the context of the Russian business environment.