Word from the editor

This latest edition of Management international (our journal’s regular spring issue) is comprised of nine articles, two research notes and one essay – all contributions whose originality and diversity should make them very enjoyable to read.

Authored by Dinh Thi Ngoan, the first paper - entitled “Perceived employability, job crafting and career success: the case of young professionals in Vietnam” – seeks to determine whether vocational skills might enhance young professionals’ employability by enabling new job creations and thereby facilitating career success. Findings from the 1,008 questionnaires which the study administered and subjected to structural equation modelling demonstrate that vocational skills directly affect both internal and (especially) external employability. In addition, professional success mediates, to some extent at least, the relationship between professional skills and perceived internal employability. Lastly, job crafting partially mediates the relationship between professional skills and employability. The study builds upon previous employability literature by adding a more personal perspective rooted in personal resource effects that are apprehended here in personal adaptation and success terms and which therefore lend themselves to being formulated as human resource management recommendations.

Foued Cheriet and Pasquale Lubello’s article “Acquisitions and international deployment of emerging countries multinational firms: A case study of the Brazilian firm JBS” questions the theoretical filters currently being used to apprehend the internationalisation processes that characterise multinational firms originating from the Global South. Towards this end, it undertakes a case study of the Brazilian company JBS, which is a world leader in the meat industry. Combining internal corporate data with a compilation of secondary information and analysing all JBS acquisitions both in Brazil and abroad, the authors discover an internationalisation trajectory akin to ones that have already been laid out in a number of recent models (including Born Global, Springboard and Casino). Particularities include advanced financialisation; how the acquisition of other international groups’ subsidiaries is being used to acquire further targets; geographical expansion intended to secure both supplies and distribution; and strong support from political and financial institutions in the multinational firm’s country of origin.

Jie Xiong, Lu Xu, Jie Yan, Shubho Chakraborty and Yeming Gong’s article - “Coexistence paradigm of the technological catching up process” - starts with the observation that current research in this field has yet to nurture comprehensive understanding of the processes involved. Hence the research team’s mobilisation of technological catch-up theory and its application to Chinese carmaker subcontractors. The findings intimate three possible coexistence scenarios: convergent; asymptotic; and intersectional.

Benoît Jamet, Julien Bousquet and Antoine Masse’s contribution - “National institutional context and voluntary carbon disclosure: An international study of the banking industry” - starts by noting the dearth of previous research in this area before drawing on assumptions derived from institutional theory to analyse the various ways in which a national context (including the broader legal system and national environmental policy) affects banks’ disclosure of their carbon emissions. Three international examples are used to produce findings revealing a positive relationship between the strength of a legal system (degree of enforcement); the stringency of environmental regulations; environmental performance; and the quality of banks’ carbon disclosures.

Khaled Sabouné, Nathalie Montargot and Mathilde Dougados’s case study - “Role strain in French nursing homes: causes and consequences” - seeks to explain the prevalence of this phenomenon among French care system staff members. Towards this end, it identifies both the linkages between the three different forms of role strain that tend to be broadly described in literature and the three causes thereof, to wit, a dominant economic logic within a social structure; work intensification; and communication failings. As for findings relating to the consequences of role strain centre, the parameters highlighted at this level are performance; health; and workplace behaviour.

Anaïs Kit’s article “The role of international accreditation agencies in business school practices’ institutionalization processes” studies the mechanisms by means of which soft regulations are adopted in some corners of this sector, particularly in organisations prioritising the attainment of international accreditation standards. A spotlight is cast on the discourse and control mechanisms that EFMD has used from the very outset to promote EQUIS accreditation. Mobilising an in-depth critical discourse analysis of accreditation guides (together with stakeholder interviews), the paper complements existing research by providing a detailed vision of institutional actors’ legitimacy strategies as well as a nuanced understanding of the role that accreditation bodies play in the sector’s institutionalisation processes.

Jean Biwole Fouda and Gabriel Etogo’s article - “Socio-economic balancing in business management within an African context: between conciliatory mechanisms and coupling/decoupling” - leverages several theoretical arguments to present these two constructs. The former defends the thesis that reconciling social and economic objectives requires a “subtle balancing” between membership in a social structure and detachment from non-economic obligations that may also be viewed as obstructing entrepreneurial aspiration. The latter notes that coupling is never definitively acquired since it can always be replaced by decoupling.

Jorien Louise Pruijssers’s article - entitled “Institutional complexity in professional service firms and dysfunctional behaviours: Evidence from a multi-country study”- starts by noting the coexistence of multiple (and sometimes conflicting) institutional logics in different global organisational domains. Whereas observers have traditionally highlighted the problematic nature of this situation, recent institutional research recognises the existence of several advantages that are often ignored due to a poor understanding of the behavioural implications resulting from this kind of complexity. The paper hypothesizes that organisational designs which are conducive to institutional complexity will have a dysfunctional effect on individual behaviour. It then goes on to suggest that the organisations involved are likely to then legitimise deviant behavior by offering a number of structural assurances. Pruijssers tests these hypotheses in the accounting industry in three countries, being ones where dysfunctional behaviour has the potential to play out on a global level. The findings reveal that people who perceive such complexity are likelier to perceive behavioural dysfunction – a discovery that opens up new perspectives regarding the nature of unintended behavioral consequences.

Sara Nyobe’s article - “Antecedents to the disclosure of a stigmatized national identity in cross-national work settings” - addresses the dearth of (international) management studies focusing on the interactions between individuals characterised by their stigmatised national identity and foreign customers. What then ensues is a kind of background uncertainty that may cause such individuals to reveal their identities to their international counterparts or, conversely, to conceal them. Drawing on Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Stigma Theory, this study of two Tunisian call centres serving Western markets discovers that identity choices are more a function of individuals’ skills and experience than of the way people relate to one another. As such, the findings complement existing definitions of SIT while offering recommendations as to how stigma might be addressed in an international management context.

In addition to the aforementioned contributions (all of which adopt a more traditional research format), this latest Management international issue is also enriched by two original reading notes penned by Franck Barès and by Gabrielle Alie. Encouraging reflection about the way our journal’s editorial line has evolved over time, the two papers adopt complementary analytical perspectives, focusing on themes, on one hand, and on research communities, on the other. The first paper - entitled “The evolution of Management international: A thematic modelling of articles published between 2009 and 2023” - analyses 829 abstracts and articles published in Management International over the 2009-2023 period, this research highlights the difficulties of interpreting unstructured textual data and suggests in response a tool capable of providing automated analysis. It also uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) theme modelling to uncover hidden structures and achieve a more granular understanding of the thematic framework within which the journal has operated. The spotlight here is on data pre-processing, validation and visualisation, all crucial aspects of the types of analyses that become feasible when this method is used. The paper ends by suggesting a thematic modelling best practice that should make it possible to identify major and minor trends in order that future editorial strategies may be better informed and potentially more cutting-edge in nature.

The second research note - entitled “The evolution of Management international: Detection and analysis of communities of articles published between 2009-2023” - draws from the same dataset of 829 abstracts and papers published by the journal over the period in question to formulate a community detection framework capable of decoding unstructured textual data, notwithstanding the complexities thereof. Using data science analysis tools, the research note discovers a number of hidden thematic groups, thereby spawning new perspectives on the various ways that journal authors have collaborated and evolved over this period. Several significant phases are identified, including data pre-processing and visualisation. Both research notes offer actionable insights and lay out a strategic roadmap enabling further editorial development.

The issue ends with Thierry Chavel’s superb (and undoubtedly provocative) essay entitled “La rencontre humaine est-elle soluble dans l’intelligence artificielle?” (“Can human interaction be blended into artificial intelligence?”) Presented last 15 March at Lille’s First ICF Synergie congress, the paper aims to raise general awareness of today’s Fourth Industrial Revolution, a phenomenon that should not only be construed as a technological leap forward but also (and above all) as a societal choice spawning an entirely new perspective regarding both the exercise of leadership and the three humanist foundations thereof, namely fragility; otherness; and responsibility. More concretely, Chavel asks readers to consider the human support role that AI is apt to assume in the future – as well as the likelihood of people opting to go on a “digital diet”.

Happy reading!