Two migrant entrepreneurs enter the same market with comparable expertise, capital and contacts. One relies on their experience abroad as a source of credibility and international networks. The other is concerned that it brings disadvantages that they need to overcome. Most would assume that the confident one would find success more easily.

But this misses important aspects of the story. Founders may start under similar conditions but find their businesses develop differently. Some gain rapid traction but later struggle to adapt. Others progress more slowly yet develop stronger local relationships and more versatile capabilities. Foreignness is not in and of itself helpful or harmful – it is people’s interpretation of what foreignness means to them that shapes what they do next.

Building a business in Brazil

We interviewed several migrant entrepreneurs running international ventures in São Paulo, Brazil and asked them about how they acquire resources and make use of them. It quickly emerged that there were two distinct strategies at work. Entrepreneurs who consider their foreign identity an advantage tend to move more quickly and confidently. They lean on their home-country networks and transferred familiar business models. This created momentum, but it also encouraged founders to assume that what had worked elsewhere would work locally. Their strategies are often simpler and less adaptive.

Entrepreneurs who are more cautious about their outsider status tend to behave differently. They monitor the local environment more carefully, seek mentors, invest in market learning and often delay major commitments until they understand how business is done. Their path is slower and more resource-intensive, but it helps them to combine what they already know from their home country with what they have learned in the new market, creating more resilient ways of doing business. Their strategies were influenced by how they thought about their position in a new market, and how best to adapt to it.

What this tells us about doing business abroad

We often think of foreignness as something outside of the control of individual businesspeople. But it is also a strategic lens which directs attention: what relationships do you value, what you need to learn and how quickly you should decide.

Seeing foreign networks and experience as an asset can give confidence and produce early wins, but it may also create blind spots. Such entrepreneurs can become overly dependent on their old networks and fail to grow local relationships. By contrast, being aware that being foreign in a new market can trigger curiosity and vigilance and sow the seeds for better integrated strategies.

Of course, this does not mean that migrant entrepreneurs should be less confident or that slow growth is always preferable. But confidence should be balanced with deliberate local learning. Migrant entrepreneurs develop sustainable strategies when they preserve the distinctive resources associated with their origins while continually testing and adapting them in the host market.

From insight to action

When you are a fish out of water, you can begin with a simple “foreignness audit”. What worked in your home market? Which networks are still valuable in the new location? Who are the potential customers, and partners in the new market, and do they value and act similarly to your previous experience? Even when you feel confident, you should actively seek information that may contradict your assumption, and generally avoid committing too early. If you are more cautious, capitalise on your instincts by creating a structured learning agenda: identify potential mentors, collect market data and start smaller to collect valuable experience before accelerating.

Many business support programmes also tend to base their advice either on the assumption that being foreign presents obstacles, or is an asset to celebrate. But support organisations and accelerators might benefit from better understanding how entrepreneurs perceive their position before presenting solutions. Some may benefit from localisation challenges and encouragement to assemble a diverse advisory board. Others may value locally experienced mentors and access to market intelligence. No two migrant entrepreneurs are the same, and different strategic approaches mean they benefit from more tailored advice.

Key takeaways

• Being foreign is a matter of interpretation: How founders frame the experience shapes how they build their businesses and deploy their resources.

• Fast is not always better: Replicating familiar models may be easier and quicker but stifle the local adaptation needed for sustainable growth.

• Productive humility can lead to better strategy: Treating foreignness as something to learn from can deepen local knowledge and networks.

• Support should match the entrepreneur’s approach: Confident founders benefit from being challenged to localise; cautious founders value access to trusted networks and market evidence.

Interested?

Stoyanov, S., & Stoyanova, V. (2026). Resource orchestration and the perception of foreignness: A study of migrant entrepreneurs. Journal of Business Research, 217, 116429. Link

Authors

University students often struggle to engage critically with dense academic journal articles because of the complexity of theoretical concepts, unfamiliar terminology, and cognitive overload.

While generative AI tools are increasingly used by students, there is limited evidence on how AI can support deep learning rather than simply reduce reading effort.

The challenge was to explore whether NotebookLM could scaffold students’ reading and conceptual understanding without replacing engagement with the original text. Specifically, this project explored whether NotebookLM could help students better understand complex research articles in International Business (IB) while encouraging active engagement with academic content and critical evaluation of AI-generated outputs.

How specifically have you addressed this challenge?

Students were asked to use NotebookLM to engage with selected IB journal articles and to explore its features, including AI-generated summaries, podcasts, mind maps, flashcards, and the Q&A function. They were encouraged to compare these outputs with the original articles and reflect on how the tool influenced their understanding, reading strategies, and critical thinking.

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with students. This qualitative approach was adopted because NotebookLM grounds its responses in uploaded source material rather than open web content, reducing the likelihood of hallucinations while providing multiple representations of complex academic knowledge. The design was informed by research on active learning, cognitive load, and AI-assisted learning, which suggests that providing alternative ways of engaging with challenging material can improve comprehension while maintaining opportunities for critical evaluation. It also enabled students to experience and reflect on the opportunities and risks of AI-assisted reading rather than assuming that the technology was either inherently beneficial or harmful.,

Were your actions successful or not?

The findings indicate interesting results. Different NotebookLM features support different learning styles or preferences. It is especially good at providing audio-visual and interactive formats.

One theme that emerged from the interview data is that students personalise NotebookLM according to their preferred learning styles. Some students particularly valued the podcasts, mind maps, and flashcards for simplifying complex concepts, while others preferred the summaries and interactive Q&A function illustrating that the tool helped tailor content to divide preferences.

Another theme that emerged from the interview data was that AI reshapes – not replaces – critical thinking. Some students believed AI reduced the need for independent analysis, whereas others reported that comparing AI-generated summaries with the original articles encouraged them to evaluate evidence more critically and make informed decisions about what to include in their academic work.

Since AI shifts critical thinking from extracting information to evaluating information, this tension is a novel finding, and it suggests that AI can serve as a critical thinking enabler when scaffolded appropriately as part of the learning design.

Why did you address this challenge in this way?

This approach was chosen because students often need an accessible entry point into conceptually dense articles, while still needing to engage with the original argument and evidence. NotebookLM’s summaries, Audio Overviews, mind maps, flashcards and Q&A offered multiple routes into the same material and allowed students to select formats that suited their immediate purposes, such as initial orientation, clarification or revision.

The activity also made critical thinking visible: students had to judge the accuracy, relevance and completeness of AI-generated outputs, compare them with the source and decide which evidence to use. This design therefore treated AI as a scaffold for reading rather than a substitute for it.

The evidence base comprises qualitative student reflections and feedback describing how NotebookLM affected their understanding, confidence, reading practices and critical engagement. These accounts reveal both recurring benefits and contrasting experiences, including improved accessibility alongside concerns about over-reliance and reduced independent analysis.

What have you learned from the experience?

This project demonstrated that there is no single best way to integrate AI into learning. Students used NotebookLM differently depending on their learning preferences, with some favouring podcasts and visual tools, while others preferred summaries and Q&A. AI should therefore be presented as a flexible reading companion rather than a replacement for academic reading.

Importantly, critical thinking is not determined by the technology itself but by how learning activities are designed. Educators should encourage students to interrogate, verify and critique AI-generated outputs alongside the original sources to promote deeper learning and responsible use of AI.

Do you have examples of how you have used AI in your education, research or leadership roles within higher education? Please do submit your short case-studies to us

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Do stay tuned for our next research insights and updates on the Management Publication of the Year.

The BRU team wishes you all the best for the summer!

People in leadership and management roles make decisions based on their own assumptions about what effective leadership and management look like. These assumptions shape how they delegate, motivate, listen, control, trust, reward, challenge, include, and intervene. Most of the time, these assumptions operate silently. Managers simply feel they are “doing what works,” “being decisive,” “protecting standards,” “supporting the team,” or “holding people accountable.”

Yet behind these everyday judgements sit powerful personal theories of leadership and management. A manager who believes that good leadership means being in control will behave differently from one who believes it means creating space for others to act. A manager who believes people are mainly motivated by pressure, incentives, or fear of failure will make different choices from one who believes people are motivated by autonomy, purpose, or belonging.

These personal theories may never be named as such, written down, or discussed in a development programme, but they guide action all the same. Indeed, they may matter most when the situation is difficult. Under pressure, people rarely reach first for the leadership model they learned on a course. They reach for what feels natural.

Organisations invest in leadership and management development because they want to influence these everyday patterns of judgement and behaviour. They want people in leadership roles to delegate more effectively, listen more carefully, empower others, manage conflict better, build trust, or lead change. In other words, they want people to act differently in the moments when their existing assumptions might otherwise take over. The usual response is to introduce new models, frameworks, tools, or competencies through training courses and development programmes.

These ideas may be useful, but they are often taught as if they can stand apart from the personal theories managers already use to make sense of their work. The result is that participants may leave a programme with new language but return to work guided by the same underlying beliefs about what effective management requires.

The Theories Managers Use

Research on implicit theories helps us understand this problem. Implicit theories are the often-unspoken beliefs people use to make sense of the world around them. In leadership and management, they include assumptions about what authority should look like, what motivates people, how trust is earned, when control is necessary, and what good performance requires. These beliefs matter because they shape how people interpret new ideas before those ideas ever influence practice.

Recognising the role of implicit theories challenges a common assumption in leadership and management development: that expert knowledge can be passed on to participants and then straightforwardly applied at work. Development does not work like depositing knowledge into an empty account. People receive new ideas through the theories they already live by. A framework about empowerment, for example, will mean something different to a manager whose working theory is “good managers stay in control” than to one whose theory is “good managers create conditions for others to act.”

This shifts the purpose of development. The starting point should not be the new models or theories, but the manager’s existing way of making sense of leadership and management. Development becomes more powerful when people are helped to make their implicit theories visible, examine where they came from, explore their impact on actions and reactions, and discover what they make possible or impossible.

Once people understand the theories they are already using, new ideas can be introduced differently: not as abstract prescriptions, but as useful resources for questioning, stretching, or revising their own personal theories.

Development as Self-Awareness, Not Reinvention

This approach makes leadership and management development more practical, not less. Instead of asking people to absorb another model, it asks them to examine the moments when their own judgement takes over. What did they notice? What did they ignore? Why did one response feel obvious and another feel risky, weak, unfair, or unnecessary? These questions bring development closer to the real situations in which leadership and management are enacted.

It also changes the ambition of development. The aim is not to turn people into someone else, but to help them see themselves more clearly in action. This includes understanding how others experience their behaviour, how their decisions affect the work around them, and where their usual responses may need reconsidering.

Useful approaches might include critical incident reflection, feedback from colleagues, facilitated discussion of real decisions, and exercises that ask managers to trace why certain actions felt obvious at the time. These methods bring development closer to the moments where leadership and management actually happen: in judgement, interaction, response, and consequence.

What Can Managers and Organisations Do Today?

The key lesson is that leadership and management development should begin with the theories people already use, not the theories organisations want them to adopt. Managers should ask themselves what their decisions reveal about their assumptions concerning control, trust, motivation, authority, and responsibility.

Organisations should design development around real decisions, feedback, reflection, and dialogue, rather than relying only on imported models or competency frameworks.

The aim is not to produce a different person, but to help people recognise their default assumptions and act with more choice when those assumptions may not serve them well.

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Would you like to read further?

Billsberry, J. (2026). Teaching the person, not the topic: An implicit theory approach to management education.

Schyns, B., Kiefer, T., Kerschreiter, R., & Tymon, A. (2011). Teaching implicit leadership theories to develop leaders and leadership: How and why it can make a difference.

Author

Jon Billsberry is an adjunct professor in the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow at Eva Burrows College, which is part of the University of Divinity in Australia. His research focuses on organisational fit and misfit, neurodiversity and neuroinclusion, socially constructed approaches to leadership, implicit leadership theory, and management education.

What do we mean by this?

From our research, the issue can be understood in two connected ways. First, there are challenges relating to limited access to finance, exclusion from formal business networks, and unequal treatment within institutional systems. Second, and emerging from these experiences, is a lack of trust in formal institutions, particularly banks, regulatory bodies and business support organisations.

You may ask, what does trust mean? For us, trust is a shared positive expectation within relationships. It is the willingness to place confidence in another party, based on the belief that both the trustor and trustee will act in ways that are reliable, fair and consistent with what is expected.

It can be easy to overlook the issue of trust and to ask why it matters for minority entrepreneurship. For us, the answer is clear. Trust has real policy and economic consequences. A lack of trust in institutional arrangements discourages entrepreneurial opportunities and weakens entrepreneurial contribution. Indeed, our research suggests that, when formal support is limited or viewed with suspicion, entrepreneurs increasingly turn to alternative informal arrangements to drive economic activity.

If institutions are genuinely intended to be supportive, then they must also be inclusive and accessible in ways that sustain long-term business growth and development.

We have heard this consistently in our conversations with minority entrepreneurs across our networks. The question many ask is simple but important: how can entrepreneurs succeed when key groups remain disengaged from the very institutions designed to support them? This is not sustainable.

There is, therefore, an expectation that policies should become more inclusive and more responsive to the realities faced by minority entrepreneurs.

While we are on the subject of trust, our research visits with entrepreneurs in the West Midlands were particularly revealing. What became evident was that the barriers faced by African minority entrepreneurs are not solely economic. They are also deeply rooted in institutional relationships, perceptions of fairness and previous experiences of exclusion. This is not something we should simply accept.

The sense of historical exclusion and marginalisation runs deep. From our evidence, the distrust many of these entrepreneurs hold is shaped by past experiences and by anticipated unequal treatment. This discourages applications for funding and limits engagement with formal institutions. There is, therefore, a wider moral and policy argument here that deserves much greater attention.

But there is more to the story.

It is the wider findings that matter.

One of the most important lessons from our research is that entrepreneurs do not simply disengage. They adapt. We have seen that many African minority entrepreneurs rely on informal networks such as family, cultural groups and community organisations to access resources, advice and opportunities.

It is important to recognise the role of these networks. They provide resilience, support and practical guidance. They can help entrepreneurs navigate uncertainty and continue developing their businesses even when formal routes feel inaccessible or unresponsive.

However, there is also a challenge. While these networks are valuable, they often operate outside formal economic structures. In our view, this can limit business expansion and restrict access to wider markets, investment and institutional support.

This is why we want to challenge the assumption that increasing funding or training provision alone will improve entrepreneurial outcomes. More support may be necessary, but it is not sufficient. The evidence suggests that trust-building must become a central component of policy design. It is one thing to develop policy. It is another for people to trust the institutions behind it. Without trust, even well-intentioned policies risk low uptake and limited impact.

In our view, policy approaches should prioritise transparency, fairness and representation within institutions. Addressing perceived inequalities in lending practices and increasing diversity within decision-making bodies are essential steps forward. Building institutional credibility is also essential if minority entrepreneurs are to engage meaningfully with formal support.

Our assessment is that policymakers should also recognise the value of informal networks and consider how they can be integrated into formal support systems. Community-based organisations, for example, can act as trusted intermediaries. They can help bridge the gap between entrepreneurs and institutions. They can also help co-design policy interventions so that minority entrepreneurs are properly represented in policy planning.

This matters because trust cannot simply be announced. It has to be built through consistent action, fair treatment and meaningful engagement. Institutions that want to support minority entrepreneurs must therefore look beyond access alone. They must also consider whether their systems, relationships and decision-making processes are seen as credible and trustworthy.

When we look at the wider picture, there is also a real opportunity here. Addressing structural barriers, strengthening institutional relationships and recognising the value of trusted community networks can help create a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem. If policymakers and support organisations are serious about minority entrepreneurship, then trust must sit at the centre of the conversation.

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Interested in reading further?

Kašperová, E., Roberts, R., & Ram, M. (2022). Time to Change: A Blueprint for Advancing the UK’s Ethnic Minority Businesses. Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship, Aston University.

British Business Bank & Oliver Wyman. (2020). Alone Together: Entrepreneurship and Diversity in the UK. British Business Bank.

Authors

Olamide Falehin is associate lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). Her research focuses on the significance of trust in entrepreneurship, investigating social issues and the dynamics of African minority entrepreneurship in the West Midlands. Additionally, Olamide represents PGRs within the British Academy of Management, advocating for the needs of doctoral students to enhance support and resources.

Dr Kingsley Omeihe is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the School of Business and Creative Industries, where he serves as an Associate Lead for Research Impact. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Trust Studies. Kingsley holds an affiliated position as Chair of African Studies at the British Academy of Management.

Social media is no longer only a place where organisations compete for attention. It is increasingly becoming a commercial infrastructure where discovery, persuasion and purchase take place within the same environment. This matters for managers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers because it changes the organisational role of social media. It is no longer only a branding, communication or engagement channel. It is becoming a transaction environment that can shape customer journeys, generate sales and influence how firms compete.

TikTok is one of the clearest examples of this development. Through TikTok Shop, the platform combines shoppable videos, live selling and an in-app marketplace so that users can move from product discovery to purchase without leaving the app. YouTube Shopping also enables eligible creators to tag products in videos, Shorts and live streams, allowing viewers to shop while they watch.

The business case is therefore not simply about new platform features. It is about how organisations must adapt when content, creators, merchandising and conversion become connected. A social media post, short-form video or live stream can now entertain, build trust, demonstrate a product and support a purchase. This creates new opportunities, but it also requires organisations to rethink their capabilities, structures and decision-making.

Analysing platform commerce ecosystems

This business case is based on a platform ecosystem analysis of publicly available material from TikTok and YouTube. The analysis examined how these platforms present shopping within their wider content ecosystems, including the relationship between product discovery, creator-led influence, in-app or platform-enabled purchasing, and merchant participation. This approach is useful because it shows how major platforms are repositioning shopping as part of the user experience rather than as an external add-on.

TikTok presents TikTok Shop as an environment where users discover products through shoppable videos, live streams and an in-app marketplace before purchasing in the app. YouTube Shopping connects creator-led content with product tagging and merchant infrastructure, enabling viewers to move from watching to shopping more directly.

Strategically, these developments show that social platforms are expanding their role in the digital value chain. They are no longer only intermediaries for attention or advertising. They are becoming commercial ecosystems where product discovery, influence, customer education and purchasing activity are brought closer together. This has important implications for organisations.

For example, a small beauty brand using TikTok Shop may need to plan content around stock availability, creator partnerships, customer questions and fulfilment capacity. A retailer using YouTube Shopping may need closer alignment between video content, product information, pricing and website conversion. In both cases, social commerce requires coordination across functions rather than isolated social media activity. The challenge is no longer simply producing engaging content, but coordinating the commercial systems, people and processes that sit behind it.

What organisations are having to do differently

The shift towards marketplace-style social media is driven by convenience, ubiquity, creator influence and platform strategy. Traditional online buying often involves multiple steps: seeing a product on one platform, searching for it elsewhere and completing the purchase on another site. Social commerce reduces this friction by bringing discovery and purchase closer together. This can improve conversion, but it also raises expectations. Customers may expect faster answers, clearer product information, visible reviews and a smoother purchase journey.

Organisations are therefore having to build new capabilities. First, they need stronger integration between marketing and sales. Social content must be designed not only for reach, but also for product discovery and purchase intention. Second, they need creator management skills. Creator partnerships cannot be treated only as promotional activity; they become part of the commercial journey and must be aligned with brand values, product accuracy and consumer trust. Third, firms need social merchandising capability. Products must be presented in ways that work within short-form video, live selling and platform-native formats. Fourth, organisations need better platform analytics. They must understand not only likes and views, but also click-throughs, conversion, basket behaviour and customer feedback.

This also creates organisational challenges. Teams may be unclear whether social commerce belongs to marketing, e-commerce, sales or operations. Smaller firms may gain access to new audiences but struggle with fulfilment if demand increases quickly after viral content. Larger organisations may have more resources but face slower internal decision-making. Policy-makers also need to consider how commercial content is disclosed, how consumers understand sponsored recommendations and how digital literacy keeps pace with increasingly seamless shopping environments.

What managers should do next

Managers should stop treating social media simply as a communications channel. It is increasingly becoming a marketplace environment. This means that strategy must connect content, creators, merchandising, data and conversion. Organisations should review whether their current social media activity is designed only for visibility and engagement, or whether it supports the full journey from discovery to purchase.

The key lesson is that social commerce is not only a marketing trend. It is an organisational capability. Firms need clearer ownership, stronger cross-functional working and better alignment between platform activity and operational delivery. Entrepreneurs can use these ecosystems to reach customers more directly, but they must also prepare for the practical demands of trust, fulfilment and customer service. The organisations that benefit most will be those that respond early to platform commerce, rather than treating it as an add-on to existing digital strategy.

Key take-aways

Social commerce is changing what organisations need from social media. Managers should connect social content with sales, operations and customer experience rather than managing these areas separately. Creator partnerships should be treated as part of the commercial journey, not simply as brand promotion. Firms also need to build capability in social merchandising, platform analytics and customer trust. For policy-makers, the growth of platform-based commerce raises important questions about transparency, disclosure and digital literacy. The central message is clear: as social platforms become marketplace ecosystems, organisations must adapt their structures and capabilities accordingly.

Interested in reading more?

Google Merchant Center (n.d.) About the YouTube Shopping affiliate programme.

TikTok (n.d.) TikTok Shop: The future of shopping fueled by discovery e-commerce.

Keywords: Strategy, Platforms, Social Commerce

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Author

Dr Farlon J. Rahaman is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Business at Westminster Business School, University of Westminster. Her work draws on her disciplinary specialism in digital business and centres on teaching and learning, pedagogy, student engagement, authentic assessment, and the practical use of generative AI in education. She is particularly interested in designing learning experiences that better prepare students for contemporary organisational and professional contexts.

It seems timely to ask questions about how we respond to universities facing significant financial pressures, deficits, job cuts, closure of programmes and mergers, alongside UK PLC’s well-documented and protracted struggles with both productivity and growth. An understandable response is to feel indifferent, downbeat or even pessimistic about the future. Yet perhaps counter-intuitively, it is a time for optimism, an optimism that is tempered by realism, but crucially not dampened by it. Now more than ever, businesses and business schools should come together in response to these challenges.

The article draws upon the research in my book, The Engaged Business School, which was shortlisted for the inaugural Management Publication of the Year 2024, and points towards a broader ambition of engagement with business.

Here are four possible ways forward.

Make what we already do visible

Two interesting but uncomfortable conversations with business leaders should prompt us to challenge our thinking: the first is a provocation, the second a troubling reality check.

A senior leader asked me a rhetorical question: ‘what is a business school’s greatest strength? And what is a business’s greatest need?’ The view of this leader was the same for both questions: Latest thinking. The leader then provocatively argued that there isn’t enough of it in our courses. Interestingly, the executive then noted that managers are too busy ‘doing’ to find out what the latest thinking might be, never mind applying that to their business.

The second story is perhaps of even more concern. After listening to a presentation about what a business school can do for their organisation a Non-Executive Director (NED) said you’re a ‘well-kept secret’. Whilst meant as a compliment, it betrays a significant concern that businesses are often unaware of how a business school can help them. Without doubt, business schools are more engaged than they might appear, yet not as engaged as they could or should be - more like a well-kept secret.

The first story questions the relevance of what is taught in business schools. The second that many businesses simply do not know the potential that exists. The two conversations highlight the importance of relevance and visibility, or more provocatively, the risk of being irrelevant and invisible to business.

These lessons resonate with the intentions of The Management Publication of the Year award, seeking to highlight research and ideas that are relevant and can impact for the better, and crucially making them more visible.

Cultivate a bigger ambition

All too frequently, in the face of constraints, universities and businesses understandably resort to what seems like the easier route of cuts and efficiencies, without first giving sufficient time and focus to identifying opportunities for growth despite those constraints. Yet the urgency and scale of these challenges suggest the need for a collective response and for a focus on the contribution we can make. It calls for more collaboration between business schools and similarly between businesses and business schools to fuel productive growth, a green economy, and business as a force for good, in tandem with outcomes that are better for people and the planet. This is a bigger ambition: it calls for optimism but also recognises that there is so much potential in our universities and organisations that is not realised.

Foster a new collaborative approach to education with business

Universities are struggling to resolve the tensions between stagnant student funds and maintaining high standards for students and equipping them with the skills for future work. Is it possible to re-dress this tension by harnessing the business and organisation capability in a region to support the learning and development of undergraduate students? Developing the next generation of graduates in our society should be the responsibility of all of us. There is, of course, a long tradition of placements and of apprenticeships and in some of the professional schools in a university, there are very close relationships with the sectors they serve, fostering a dual responsibility for the development of students. Can the relationships a business school has with businesses significantly help to develop undergraduate students? To do this, implies the blurring of workplaces and learning places into a more comprehensive and integrated learning process.

Challenge a front-loaded educational system

Bringing working and learning closer together extends the boundaries of a business school. Similarly, the idea of students joining a learning community rather than simply a programme expands the relationships with students, alumni and business. So much of our education system is front-loaded at the beginning of careers, and so little to refresh, renew and equip those already in the workplace to respond to the challenges we are facing. Yet according to the UK Government, 80 per cent of the 2030 workforce is already in the workplace. That would suggest that, to address UK growth and productivity, we need to significantly change how we work with businesses now and develop those already in the workplace. Is it time to consider how business schools can more purposefully extend their relationships with students and businesses for the long term?

Management Publication of the Year is a great opportunity to make relevant and impactful research visible. For me, it opened opportunities to share my work more widely. The book is about to come out as a paperback, largely due to the shortlisting, which will broaden its reach. The shortlisting has also been the spark towards extending the research with conversations with my publisher about writing a second book exploring the central role of the engaged educator in making engagement work.

Emerald offers BRU subscribers 30% off the paperback with code EME30

We continue our series on the winners and finalists of the Management Publication of the Year 2024 with Prof Sreevas Sahasranamam, whose personal blog contributions won the Sustainable Futures category.

At the halfway stage, we were on track to meet only 15% of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) by 2030, a figure that has since slowed amid ongoing wars. We are woefully off track on these targets because the SDGs suffer from an inherent Structure-Data-Governance (S-D-G) problem. This article illuminates these problems and discusses emerging mechanisms that could help tackle them.

Structure problem

The problems of structure are twofold: (a) problems of market access or participation; and (b) problems of coordination and communication.

A recent World Bank report finds that while nearly 70% of the global population had internet access, 90% of it was in high-income countries, with only 25% in low-income countries. This 65-percentage-point gap in internet access has direct implications for businesses tackling the SDGs in low-income countries, as they have limited access to information, resources, and opportunities. The problems of market access worsen when we explore their intersectionalities, such as gender. For example, research evidence from the UK suggests that the intersection of gender and deprivation further reduced entrepreneurial opportunities in communities, highlighting a double disadvantage in market participation.

In Guatemala, entrepreneurs and civil society organizations were working in collaboration to implement an improved clean cookstove initiative. The benefits of clean, efficient cookstoves are obvious in terms of health and fuel efficiency, but adoption was poor. When delving into the details, they found that the improved cookstoves sacrificed key social concerns. For instance, traditional cookstoves were a source of heat and light, making them a social gathering point for the family. Clean cookstoves ignored this social reality. This highlights the problem of a lack of local embeddedness and communication with the practical and social realities of a place, hampering efforts to solve the SDGs.

Digital Commons could help solve the Structure problem

In countries like India, Digital Public Commons called India Stack, is helping overcome market access problems by offering marginalized and informal actors digital identity, digital payments, and digital market visibility for their products and services. Similarly, Digital Commons initiatives like Good Market in Sri Lanka are creating a global marketplace for entrepreneurs from remote locations and marginalized communities. Such efforts also empower communities to locally solve SDG challenges, which ensures better embeddedness and ownership of the solutions.

Data problem

The problems of data are twofold: (a) problems of awareness; and (b) problems of valuation.

Evidence suggests that there is wide variation across countries when it comes to awareness and cognizance of the SDGs. For example, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2023/24 report suggests that in countries like Italy and Norway, around 50% of the entrepreneurs are aware of the SDGs, while in countries like Morocco and Ecuador, it is less than 5%. Even in policy circles, in-depth awareness and deep engagement with the SDGs are just becoming mainstream, particularly with the social and environmental targets. A textual analysis of leaders’ declarations across the 18 years of G20 summits showcases this, wherein we see that in initial G20 declarations, the commitments were almost entirely focused on economic SDG targets, while it is only in the last couple of years that social and environmental targets have gained more prominence. The 2023 New Delhi declaration made the most commitments towards it, at nearly 75%.

The second data problem is about how we quantify social value. For example, we don’t have quantifiable answers to questions like how much value is in saving a spotted owl? OR how much value is in offering companionship to the elderly? While impact measurement approaches are improving, many aspects of social and environmental targets remain hard to quantify, which complicates entrepreneurs' efforts to engage with them through measurable goals and to communicate them to investors and other stakeholders.

Global data efforts and universities could help solve the Data problem

Global verification mechanisms for SDG efforts could provide a globally validated definition and governance framework for SDG-based entrepreneurship. For instance, scaling up efforts like the People and Planet First verification from the Social Enterprise World Forum could help in this regard. Global data efforts, similar to the World Economic Forum's State of the Social Enterprise report, would help clarify the sector's state, gaps, and development needs.

Universities could solve the SDG awareness problem through a multi-step process. First, explicit inclusion of SDG components in the taught curriculum to build SDG Skills. Second, complement that with real-life project challenges of solving an SDG challenge, such as rural electrification in Rwanda or water management in Malawi, to build SDG Mindsets. Third, create a university commercialization pathway independent from technology spin-outs for Social Impact Spin-Outs. An early-stage effort towards this end happening in Scotland has created spin-outs in areas of climate litigation and sustainable futures.

Governance problem

The problems of governance are twofold: (a) problems of weak institutions; and (b) problems of power difference.

In countries with weak institutions, for example, when many people lack secure property rights, this hampers access to resources and markets for people who want to solve the SDG challenges. For example, in weak institutional environments, only larger microfinance organizations garner support from funders, as funders aim to mitigate risks given weak property rights. So, in such settings, smaller-scale efforts to solve the SDGs are going to be disadvantaged by a lack of funding support. Research also points out that founders are reluctant to make personal financial investments toward a social venture when the rule of law in a country is weak.

Entrepreneurs working on SDGs are also challenged by the inherent power differences and inequality within the community they operate in. For example, in Colombia, entrepreneurs working with waste pickers had to confront the power of elites, including large corporations, local authorities, and the media. These elites had restricted market access for the waste pickers by barring access to waste and silencing the voices of those who tried to speak out.

Collective action could help solve the Governance problem

The support structures of policy and funding oftentimes involve hierarchical top-down governance where decisions and solutions are offered to people, rather than being a bottom-up process where solutions are co-created with people. Many national-level startup programs have followed a top-down approach, and evidence points to muted outcomes. Emerging research evidence, however, points to bottom-up collective action with a thrust on dialogue and multistakeholder participation to be particularly effective in navigating the governance problems of SDGs. For example, Open Healthcare Network began as a collective action effort by volunteers in response to COVID-19, and it has lived beyond its pandemic use case, developing and deploying its tools for intensive medical care in remote areas of India.

To accelerate our progress towards meeting the SDG targets by 2030, we must work on solving the Structure-Data-Governance problems. Digital commons, global data efforts by multilateral organizations, universities enhancing SDG awareness, and collective action by local communities hold key promise in this regard.

DPDoR is a joint initiative of BAM and the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS), comprising four two-day sessions spread over nine months, facilitated by an experienced research leader, with excellent speakers from across the sector. Participants are typically recently appointed or aspiring research leaders.

In 2014, I was both delighted and slightly nervous to be appointed as Associate Dean for Research (ADR) at Hull University Business School. On the face of it, I had no reason to worry. I had spent several years as director of a university-based research institute and then as director of a small consultancy. Surely the ADR role would be straightforward for someone with my experience?

It didn’t take long for me to realise that I had a lot to learn about leading in an academic environment, and I had no idea where to turn for support. My fellow ADRs at Hull were supportive, and I made a point of participating in the university’s leadership development programmes. This helped, but I still felt ill-equipped to address the specific challenges I faced in my new role, especially with my background being mainly in commercial or quasi-commercial research rather than in ‘pure’ academia.

I began to wonder whether I had made the right decision. I had limited experience of REF, journal rankings, research strategy, doctoral programmes, ethics and a whole host of other areas for which I was suddenly responsible. My previous roles involved managing projects, budgets and people, but I realised that the structures and cultures of universities differ significantly from those of the smaller, less formal groups that I had previously been involved with.

It didn’t take long for Imposter Syndrome to kick in. Many of the colleagues I was leading had stronger publication records than I had, and I was tasked with making often difficult decisions about REF submission, doctoral scholarships, conference funding, research time allocation, sabbaticals and so on. Perhaps I had stumbled into the wrong job? Maybe I should cut my losses and revert to my lecturing role or move back to the commercial sector?

Then everything changed, although I didn’t realise it at the time. My dean, to my eternal gratitude, agreed that I could sign up for DPDoR and made funds and time available for me to participate. I went into the programme with a positive attitude, determined to learn more about the areas that were a bit of a mystery to me. The programme’s focus on research leadership issues specific to business schools attracted me, as did the stellar line-up of speakers with varying backgrounds and experience. I learned a huge amount from these speakers, all of whom were open and honest about the challenges they had faced and how they had tackled them, without condescension or elitism.

My most important takeaway from DPDoR was that I was not alone. The challenges I faced, and the Imposter Syndrome that I felt, were not unique to me. My fellow participants were incredibly open in sharing their concerns, listening to others’ problems without judgement and suggesting possible solutions.

I took away these lessons and tried to implement solutions to the problems that I had shared with the group. Not all the solutions worked, of course, but I tried to learn from these ‘failures.’ I kept in touch with other group members; we shared challenges and solutions, and occasionally ran informal mutual therapy sessions!

None of this made me a perfect leader (such a thing doesn’t exist, I now realise), but I decided to continue in my role and try to rid myself of the feelings of inferiority that had bugged me in my early months. If I wasn’t sure about something, I would ask someone instead of feeling that I ought to know the answer. I also realised that some of the skills and experience I had accumulated were challenging for many colleagues, and I was able to support them in areas such as proposal writing, presentation skills and people management.

I remained in research leadership following my DPDoR experience, moving on to roles at two other universities. I am now semi-retired, but I’m still implementing some of the lessons in my emeritus role and through my involvement with organisations such as the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ISBE). I still don’t get everything right, of course, but I am continuing to learn and – hopefully – to make a difference.

Over 40 years, BAM training and development initiatives - in addition to high-profile and incredibly valuable events such as the annual conference - have supported me and countless other business and management scholars. Thank you to BAM and CABS, to my fellow DPDoR participants and to the many colleagues who have helped me develop into a more confident, responsible and, hopefully, effective research leader.

We begin our series of the winners and finalists of the Management Publication of the Year 2024 with the overall winner and category winner for Social Enterprise & Innovation, Professor Elisabeth Kelan, for her book Men Stepping Forward, published by Bristol University Press in 2023.

The Leadership Challenge

Many leaders recognise the importance of gender equality for their organisation. However, managers, particularly men in leadership roles, often report uncertainty about where to begin, what is expected of them, and how to contribute without ‘getting it wrong’.

The consequence is that many men limit their support for gender equality to symbolic gestures, such as endorsing flexible working policies, without actually changing their practices. However, gender inequality is regularly created in routine interactions such as meetings, hiring decisions or performance evaluations. It is precisely in these everyday moments that men can make meaningful and concrete contributions to gender equality.

Research Insights

In my book ‘Men Stepping Forward’, I draw on in-depth qualitative research to show the specific ways in which men can support gender equality through their leadership. I describe these practices as visioning, enabling, and modelling.

First, visioning involves men in leadership positions articulating their personal case for gender equality. Leaders often recur to the business case or the social justice case when they justify their support for gender equality. However, what is most effective is to explain why gender equality matters to them personally. This often involves sharing stories about their own experiences or epiphany moments that shaped their perspective on gender equality.

Second, enabling means removing barriers for women to succeed. Leaders are often tempted to focus on leading high-profile initiatives. However, they do not need to spearhead formal programmes to act as effective change agents. My research shows that men who support gender equality amplify the voices of others, create space for participation, and respond constructively when challenged. They make an effort to understand perspectives they do not share and learn from them. Importantly, they validate others’ experiences rather than minimising or explaining them away, and they frame gender equality as a systemic rather than an individual issue.

Third, modelling means demonstrating inclusive behaviour in everyday interactions or in other words, ‘walking the talk’. Men acting as change agents actively disrupt exclusionary behaviour. What does this look like in practice? When they notice biased hiring patterns or see that a woman’s contribution is overlooked, they explicitly raise this. They also advocate for women when they are not in the room, for example, by sponsoring them or suggesting them for stretch opportunities.

Implications for Leadership Practice

The research suggests that for gender equality to shift in organisations, it must move from being a policy issue to becoming central to how leadership is practised. Leadership is a key site for change towards gender equality. Small-scale actions by managers and leaders can act as a powerful conduit for gender equality. Leaders do not need to take on an additional priority but by changing how they lead, they foster inclusion.

But what about the fear of getting it wrong? Becoming a change agent for gender equality is a learning journey. Men will get it wrong at times. In fact, many of the men I observed in their daily interactions did not always get it right. What distinguished them, however, was their willingness to reflect on their actions and adjust their behaviour. Getting it wrong is therefore not a failure, but part of the process of developing more inclusive leadership practices.

Over time, these small, everyday adjustments accumulate. Actions such as amplifying a woman’s voice, questioning a decision, or acknowledging bias may seem minor in isolation. Yet together they contribute to shifting organisational norms. Inclusive leadership is therefore less about adding new responsibilities and more about rethinking how leadership is enacted in practice.

Key Takeaways

Men in management and leadership roles play a central role in advancing gender equality. The key insight is that this does not require doing more, but doing everyday leadership differently. Leaders should reflect on how they articulate their vision for gender equality, ideally grounding it in a personal commitment. They should consider how they can remove barriers for women, for example by amplifying women’s voices and validating their experiences. They can also support gender equality by role modelling inclusive behaviour, such as calling out unfair practices. Over time, these micro-practices accumulate, showing how small-scale changes can lead to broader organisational transformation.

In Neal Stephenson’s 2015 novel Seveneves, he coined the term Amistics for the study of how societies decide which technologies to adopt and which to reject. The scholarly publishing sector has spent the past two years discovering what happens when those choices are made by default rather than design.

And some of these lessons transfer to any organisation that produces knowledge or relies on evidence to make decisions.

1. What’s your AI-free zone?

Amistics focuses as much on deliberate rejection as on adoption. The academic community never collectively decided that AI training on open-access research was acceptable. It was a decision by default, because Creative Commons licenses allowed it and because machine-reading clauses provided exceptions in many copyright frameworks (Decker, 2025).

Organisations that defer the question of which processes should remain human-led might find it answered for them – by a vendor or a competitor, most likely. Only by making these decisions explicitly can you ensure that you retain a grasp of the trade-offs.

2. Who is harvesting your website for data?

The open-access infrastructure in scholarly publishing was designed primarily for human readers and is maintained through government grants (via universities, for example) and charitable payments. Bot traffic from AI crawlers now constitutes a substantial and rapidly growing share of their usage, overwhelming systems designed for a different kind of engagement (O’Connell, 2026).

Organisations sharing information (reports, data, documentation, research) without asking who is ingesting it and for what purpose should assume this will include AI systems being trained on their content.

3. Maintain your in-house knowledge

One of the more commercially interesting responses to AI training in publishing is the move toward “subscribe-to-context” models, where access to content is metered and renewable rather than one-time.

Organisations that treat their knowledge production as a one-way publication rather than a maintained asset are giving up significant leverage.

4. Can you correct the mistakes your AI makes?

When research findings are absorbed into AI model weights, the original source loses its relationship to the extracted knowledge. Corrections and retractions – the integrity mechanisms for scholarly records – no longer reach the output.

Any organisation deploying AI-assisted work faces the same structural problem: if an AI-generated analysis turns out to be wrong, is there a live mechanism to find and fix it, or has the error already propagated? Plan for mistakes; don’t try to fix them later.

5. Verification is the new frontier

AI has made content production substantially cheaper and faster – sometimes that's better, but not always.

In academic peer review, the result is a growing backlog: the bottleneck has moved from writing papers to evaluating them. Organisations will experience similar shifts in their knowledge workflows. The constraint has moved from creating outputs to having the human capacity to quality-check them.

Planning for this means investing in an evaluation infrastructure and creating your bespoke “verification stack” (Catalini et al., 2026).

6. AI brings change, fast – reacting can be more costly than planning

The Directory of Open Access Journals spent significant staff time and budget in 2025 blocking AI scrapers to preserve human access to its content (O’Connell, 2026). Every hour on that was an hour not spent on its actual mission.

If your AI governance is reactive and your organization only responds to problems after they materialise, that can cost considerably more in time and capacity than proactive governance.

7. Ask yourself if you are just subsidising extraction?

Open access was designed to distribute the benefits of publicly funded research. In practice, a significant share of the value created by OA content is now being captured by a small number of AI companies that pay nothing for access and return nothing to the ecosystem.

In response, Creative Commons is currently developing Signals, which is intended to reflect the different dimensions of reciprocity that may support the internet as a common good. The underlying problem is that openness, in a world of large-scale AI training, means something very different from what it meant in 2010 or 2000, when open access models were first conceived.

The academic publishing sector did not plan to become a case study in passive technology adoption. It has nonetheless become one. The question for other knowledge-producing organisations is whether to learn from it now or later.

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Catalini, C., Hui, X., & Wu, J. (2026). Some Simple Economics of AGI (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 6298838). Social Science Research Network.

Decker, S. (2025, April 15). Guest Post—The Open Access – AI Conundrum: Does Free to Read Mean Free to Train? - The Scholarly Kitchen. Scholarly Kitchen.

O’Connell, B. (2026). Open Access vs. Open excess: DOAJ and AI scraper bots – DOAJ Blog. Directory of Open Access Journals Blog.

• Sustainable Futures

• SME Growth

• Social Enterprise and Innovation

• Technological Disruption

• Inclusive Work

Today, we look at the publications from the winners of the 2024 Awards to give inspiration for making a submission.

All of our BRUs are free, so please share with your colleagues!

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Social Innovation and Enterprise and Overall Winner

Elizabeth Kelan, Men Stepping Forward

Winner of the Social Enterprise and Innovation category and overall Management Book of the Year, awarded by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), the British Academy of Management (BAM) and the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS)

How do men interested in gender equality become ‘change makers’ and lead their organisation towards inclusion?

Directly addressing men, this innovative book reveals how they can be centrally involved in creating gender-inclusive cultures in their organisations. Using cutting-edge research, it suggests practical actions for men as leaders and managers to implement in order to make real changes.

Ideal for the time-poor professional, it is essential reading for all men who want to make a difference but don’t know where to start.

What our judges thought:

‘The book carries a positive outlook, and views men as enablers and agents of change. The stories and struggles are compelling, and describing the male middle managers’ struggles with some issues around explicit gender equality initiatives/training programmes for women is refreshingly honest.’

Sustainable Futures Category Winner

Sreevas Sahasranamam, Blog Series

The blog series is a collection of Sreevas’s public-facing work, where he explores key ideas at the intersection of entrepreneurship, social innovation, and disruptive technologies. Through blogs, guest talks, and video content, Sreevas aims to translate complex research into accessible insights and engage in conversations about building a more sustainable future.

What our judges thought:

‘The blogs effectively bridge the gap between theory and practice, offering actionable insights on how entrepreneurship and business innovation can be harnessed to tackle gender inequality, foster innovation and reduce poverty. I particularly like that some blogs’ focus on how to tackle challenges in low- and middle-income countries as well as the aspect of gender focusing on female entrepreneurship, thereby influencing the development and understanding of practice in these areas.’

SME Growth Category Winner

Ian Gray and Jon Bessant, The Scaling Value Playbook

The Scaling Value Playbook provides an overview of the challenges in moving innovation to scale, offering practical guidance on managing this process. It explores creating new ventures and discusses the road to realizing value at scale. It also provides a framework for developing and implementing a strategy for scaling up and scaling out of innovation, together with tools and templates to enable the reader to create a fit-for-purpose scaling strategy.

In an easily accessible and visually appealing way, De Gruyter playbooks offer practical concepts for improving business performance. They are an extremely valuable resource for a wide range of business professionals.

What our judges thought:

‘This practitioner-focused book addresses an under researched area of innovation management, ‘scaling the innovation’. The book is written in an accessible format, a pleasure to read quickly and sets concepts and methods with definitions and plenty of international examples. Its contributions are significant as scaling part of the innovation process requires a systems approach that goes beyond ideation, it is messy, and difficult to implement. I congratulate the authors for launching this interesting book that will be a good addition to business school libraries and beyond.’

How to Apply

Enter your publication to gain recognition, amplify your influence, and ensure your publication reaches the managers, leaders and policymakers who can put it into practice. Make your ideas count - apply today: https://www.managers.org.uk/community/awards/management-publication-of-the-year/

The nomination site closes on Thursday, 18th June 2026 at 12:00 BST.

Authors:

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One of my earliest and most formative experiences was presenting at the BAM Doctoral Symposium in 2015. Standing in front of peers and established scholars was both daunting and exciting. What stayed with me, however, was not the anxiety of presenting, but the warmth of the community. There was a genuine openness and curiosity in the room. Senior academics, whose names I had only previously encountered in journal articles, were approachable, generous with their time, and genuinely interested in supporting emerging researchers. This early experience left a lasting impression: BAM was a place where contributions were valued, regardless of career stage.

Through my involvement in several Special Interest Groups (SIGs), including Gender in Management, Human Resource Management (HRM), Identity, and Research Methodology, I gradually developed greater confidence in my own academic identity. These communities enabled me to move beyond the boundaries of my doctoral project and engage with broader debates around work, inequality, identity, and organisational life. The Gender in Management and HRM SIGs helped sharpen my thinking around diversity and career progression, encouraging me to situate my research within wider structural and societal conversations.

The Research Methodology SIG became especially influential in shaping my thinking. Initially introduced through my doctoral supervisor, I found a community that encouraged methodological openness, reflexivity, and critical engagement. Discussions around qualitative rigour and the role of researcher positionality in organisational research particularly stayed with me: conversations that challenged my assumptions and strengthened my confidence as a qualitative researcher.

Over time, my relationship with BAM evolved from participant to contributor. I served as Secretary for the Research Methodology SIG across two terms over a six-year period, which gave me valuable insight into the collaborative work involved in sustaining and developing academic communities. Organising Professional Development Workshops (PDWs) further deepened my appreciation for the collegial and interdisciplinary nature of BAM, particularly the way these spaces bring together scholars at different career stages to exchange ideas in an open and constructive environment.

More recently, my involvement has continued to grow through the Gender in Management SIG, where I have contributed to PDWs and wider SIG activities, and subsequently taken on the role of Conference Track Chair. This year, I was also honoured to be nominated to the BAM Peer Review College. Alongside these roles, I have contributed as a conference reviewer across multiple SIGs, as well as reviewing for the British Journal of Management. Engaging in the review process has offered a valuable window into the breadth of scholarship across the BAM community and the emerging debates shaping the future of management research.

Reflecting on the past decade, it is clear that BAM has played a significant role in my development: not only as a researcher, but in shaping my academic identity and sense of belonging within the discipline. The field of management itself has evolved considerably during this time, with increasing attention to issues of diversity, identity, and inclusion, as well as to methodological innovation. BAM has not only reflected these shifts but has actively created space for them to be discussed, challenged, and developed.

Of course, the academic landscape is not without its challenges. Increasing pressures around publication, funding, and impact can make it difficult, particularly for early-career researchers, to find their voice. Yet, throughout these shifts, BAM has remained a supportive and adaptive space. Its networks, conferences, and SIGs continue to provide opportunities for connection, collaboration, and critical reflection.

As BAM celebrates its 40th anniversary, I find myself reflecting not only on what the Academy has contributed to my journey, but also on what it represents more broadly: a community that values scholarship, inclusivity, and mutual support. Looking ahead, I am keen to see how BAM continues to evolve, and I remain committed to contributing to its future by supporting the next generation of scholars and the continued development of an inclusive and collaborative academic community.

Candidates prepare intensely for a hig- pressure performance. Employers make rapid judgements based on limited information. Some people arrive better trained for the “games” of recruitment itself, armed with polished CVs, strong networks, confidence, and experience navigating professional environments.

Others may be equally capable, but less experienced at performing competence under observation.

And that is part of the challenge.

Recruitment has always involved uncertainty because human beings are complex. Jobs evolve. Organisations change. A candidate who thrives in one environment may struggle in another. There is no perfect formula for identifying talent.

But while recruitment may never be entirely fair or foolproof, organisations can improve the odds significantly by thinking more carefully about how they attract, assess, and select people.

Recruitment is strategic, not administrative

Many organisations still treat recruitment as an operational task to complete quickly. A vacancy appears. A job advert is posted. Interviews are arranged. Decisions are made under pressure.

In reality, few business decisions have longer lasting consequences.

Poor hiring decisions create hidden organisational costs long after the interview process ends. Teams slow down. Managers compensate. High performers become frustrated. Recruitment begins again.

Poor hiring decisions rarely fail once. They compound.

Strong recruitment decisions compound too. Trusted employees stabilise teams, develop others, and create long term organisational capability.

Good recruitment is not a sprint. It is a marathon.

Improving the odds

Recruitment research has spent decades examining an uncomfortable question: how do organisations make better hiring decisions under conditions of uncertainty?

Two ideas sit at the centre of this research: reliability and validity.

Reliability asks whether a recruitment process produces consistent outcomes. If two managers interview the same candidate, do they reach similar conclusions?

Validity asks something even more important: does the process actually predict future performance?

These ideas may sound technical, but they matter enormously. Organisations often place huge confidence in interviews, instincts, and first impressions despite evidence that unstructured recruitment processes can be inconsistent, subjective, and heavily influenced by bias.

The goal is not to remove uncertainty completely. The goal is to improve the odds.

The problem with “gut feel”

Most hiring managers are not intentionally biased. But none of us are free from bias.

We naturally gravitate towards people who feel familiar. We are influenced by confidence, communication style, educational background, shared interests, appearance, and similarity to ourselves.

The problem is that many organisations mistake instinct for objectivity.

Unstructured interviews often reward confidence, fluency, and similarity rather than competence itself. Candidates who perform well socially under pressure can appear highly capable, even when that performance tells us relatively little about how they will operate six months into the role.

Some candidates arrive highly trained for the arena itself. They know how to present examples, build rapport quickly, and perform “confidence” under scrutiny. That does not necessarily make them the strongest long-term hire.

Instincts are not useless. Experienced leaders often notice subtle cues that matter. But instincts are often summaries of past experience shaped by previous teams, markets, and organisational environments.

Useful, yes. Objective, no.

Attraction shapes the arena

Recruitment begins long before the interview.

The way organisations design roles and advertise opportunities shapes who even enters the process in the first place.

Many organisations unintentionally narrow their talent pools by creating highly specific role requirements that describe an imagined “perfect candidate” rather than the people who actually succeed in the role.

If your job advert described your current top performers, would they apply?

Equally, being too vague creates another problem: overwhelming application numbers with little alignment with the role itself.

There is no perfect balance. But thoughtful recruitment means recognising these trade-offs rather than assuming that more requirements automatically lead to better hires.

Good recruitment requires reflection, not assumption.

Five ways to improve your recruitment odds

1. Treat recruitment data seriously

Track where successful employees came from, which recruitment channels produce long-term hires, and where turnover patterns emerge.

The organisations most likely to improve recruitment outcomes are often the ones willing to investigate their own assumptions.

2. Keep interviews structured and consistent

The further the interviews drift from agreed-upon questions and evidence-based criteria, the harder it becomes to compare candidates fairly.

Structured interviews improve reliability by reducing inconsistency between assessors and improving the likelihood that interviews measure capabilities relevant to the role itself.

Most importantly, structure helps organisations distinguish between candidates who interview well and candidates who are likely to perform well.

3. Build panels that challenge thinking, not reinforce it

One interviewer increases the risk that individual bias will dominate decisions.

Too many interviewers create confusion and complexity.

A useful question to ask is this: Who on this panel will challenge my instincts rather than confirm them?

4. Use methods that genuinely predict performance

Research consistently shows that structured interviews and ability testing are among the strongest predictors of future job performance.

Additional recruitment stages may reassure stakeholders, but more complexity does not automatically improve decision quality.

More recruitment stages can create the illusion of rigour without improving the quality of decisions themselves.

5. Use intuition carefully, not blindly

Human judgment still matters. Recruitment is not an algorithmic exercise.

But intuition should be discussed and challenged rather than treated as an unquestionable truth.

The best recruitment decisions often emerge when evidence and experience inform each other rather than compete for dominance.

Improving the odds matters

Recruitment will never become entirely objective, scientific, or risk-free. People are too complicated for that.

But organisations that approach recruitment thoughtfully are not trying to eliminate uncertainty completely. They are trying to improve the odds.

Because if organisations fail to examine how they recruit, assess and define “talent”, they may simply keep selecting the same kinds of people they have always selected while convincing themselves they are making objective decisions.

And in competitive labour markets, improving the odds thoughtfully may be one of the most important strategic advantages an organisation can create.

May the recruitment odds forever be in your favour.

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Bohnet, I. (2016) How to Take the Bias Out of Interviews, Havard Business Review

Mcdaniel, M., Whetzel, D., Schmidt, F. & Maurer, S. (1994) The Validity of Employment Interviews: A Comprehensive Review and Meta-Analysis, Journal of Applied Psychology.

Author:

Dr Paul Jones is Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience at Aston Business School. His research and writing draw on philosophical perspectives to explore leadership, wellbeing, and professional identity, focusing on how organisational systems shape power, development, and recognition. He is interested in leadership as an ethical and relational practice rather than a performance to be measured.

Generative AI presented a direct challenge to the integrity of my final-year brand management assessments. Students could produce plausible, structured brand audits using AI tools without engaging in the research, analysis or critical thinking the assessment was designed to develop. Reactive institutional responses such as updated plagiarism policies and detection software, address the symptom rather than the cause, and do little to preserve the pedagogical value of the assessment itself. The real challenge was not simply preventing misuse, but redesigning assessment so that genuine learning remained the most effective route to a good grade. The question: how do you make AI misuse counterproductive rather than merely prohibited?

How specifically have you addressed this challenge?

I redesigned the brand audit assessment for a final year brand management module, around a two-stage structure that embedded Gen AI tool Claude directly into the learning process. In the first stage, students used both Claude Pro and free generative AI tools to produce comparative brand audits, actively interrogating what AI could and could not do. In the second stage, they produced original analysis drawing exclusively on paywalled academic databases and real-time industry sources (Mintel, Statista, peer-reviewed journals) that generative AI cannot access. Submitting AI output uncritically became self-defeating; the assessment required students to demonstrate precisely where AI fell short. Seminars were redesigned in parallel, incorporating live prompting exercises using Claude as an explicit, assessed competency. Students refined their prompting techniques iteratively across the module, developing a critical and purposeful relationship with AI as a professional research tool rather than a content generator.

Why did you address this challenge in this way?

The decision was driven primarily by professional responsibility. My students are final-year undergraduates entering a marketing industry where AI fluency is already an employer expectation. Designing assessments that simply excluded AI would leave them underprepared for the roles they were about to take on.

The approach was also shaped by a recognition that assessment design, rather than policy enforcement, was the more durable solution. If the assessment itself required students to go beyond what AI could produce, the integrity of the learning experience could be preserved without relying on detection tools of questionable reliability.

The evidence base is practitioner-led. Post-module survey data from 22 voluntary respondents (cohort of 150) indicated that 86% agreed the assessment taught them to use AI as a research tool rather than a content generator, and 91% felt more prepared to use AI responsibly in a professional context.

Were your approaches effective/successful or not?

Outcomes were broadly positive but require honest qualification. Survey data indicated encouraging results across all four quantitative measures, with no students reporting reduced confidence and fewer academic integrity violations were recorded across the full cohort. However, the mark scheme allocated too much weight to the generative AI component, which inadvertently disadvantaged some students whose foundational brand audit skills were underdeveloped as a result. This was an unintended consequence of the design. The mark scheme will be rebalanced in the next iteration to ensure AI remains a research tool within the assessment, not an assessed endpoint.

What have you learned from the experience?

The most valuable insight is that AI integration must protect the cognitive journey, not just the final output. Students can produce sophisticated work without genuinely understanding it, and if assessment design allows that, the learning is lost, regardless of the grade awarded. The goal is not to exclude AI but to ensure its use requires genuine thinking. Critically, mark scheme weighting matters: allocating too many marks to AI-facing components can inadvertently undermine the core disciplinary skills the module exists to develop. Start with one assessment, be transparent with students about your rationale, and build in structured reflection to evaluate what is and is not working.

Do you have examples of how you have used AI in your education, research or leadership roles within higher education? Please do submit your short case-studies to us

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The physical closeness, the sustained emotional attentiveness, the willingness to show up day after day in a role that is underpaid, physically demanding and largely invisible in public debate.

One in five care workers in England comes from a Black, Asian or minoritised ethnic (BME) background. The sector, already carrying 130,000 vacancies, had the Social Care Worker visa route closed in 2025. The overseas recruitment pipeline many providers depended on was effectively switched off.

Supply of workers is a problem, but so too is retention. The Skills for Care SC WRES 2024 report shows that BME staff are 48% less likely to be appointed from shortlists, 37% more likely to enter a formal disciplinary process and 21% more likely to leave their role within 12 months. These are not marginal differences. They are structural signals.

The sector is increasingly dependent on a workforce it is failing to retain. That is not just a workforce planning problem. It is a governance problem, one of trust: who holds it, how it is built and how it is lost. Our research highlights how trust underpins organisational relationships and shapes experiences of fairness, commitment and belonging.

For small and independent providers, those that make up most of the UK care home sector, this matters. Trust is not distributed through formal systems but built through everyday practice. Unlike large NHS trusts, these providers do not have Workforce Race Equality Standards teams, EDI leads, or independent escalation routes. In a 30-bed care home, the line manager is the institution. How they handle grievances, allocate shifts, or respond to employee crises are not minor operational details. They are the organisation’s trust infrastructure.

The dominant response has largely centred on training, unconscious bias modules and e-learning packages, delivered for compliance rather than change.

The evidence does not support training as a standalone solution. Only interventions built around active, in person engagement with the lived experience of racially minoritised staff are associated with improvements in knowledge, skills, and behaviours. There is limited evidence that implicit bias training, on its own, leads to sustained changes in practice. The sector continues to invest in approaches that are the least likely to deliver meaningful impact.

Additionally, there is a dimension that organisational debate often sidesteps. Discriminatory conduct from residents. Research in long term care settings consistently shows that BME front line workers encounter discriminatory behaviour from the people they care for, though it is rarely named as such. It is reframed as dementia, age, or confusion, but the impact is the same.

That is not a personal coping failure.

Workers are expected to cope, even though the organisation has provided no procedure, protocol, or formal acknowledgement that this situation exists. The absence of a written procedure is not neutral. It is a decision. It tells the worker: this is yours to carry alone. And they do, until they leave.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s Health and wellbeing at work report notes that only 29% of organisations train line managers to support mental health. Where training is provided, confidence improves, but in its absence many managers lack the skills to recognise distress or handle sensitive conversations. This reflects wider questions about institutional trust. Where formal structures are weak or absent, trust becomes embedded in everyday interactions. Line managers do not simply supervise work, they become the point at which trust is built, sustained, or undermined.

Reframing the Problem

The workforce crisis in adult social care is not simply a numbers problem that a new visa route will resolve. It is a trust and governance issue centred on line management that must be addressed.

First, raising concerns must be structurally redesigned. Psychological safety for BME staff cannot depend on the goodwill of the line manager, particularly when the line manager may be the source of concern. Routes for raising issues must bypass the immediate management relationship. And structured check-ins should normalise speaking up before a crisis emerges, not only in response to one.

Second, written protocols for discriminatory conduct from residents are not optional. They are a basic governance requirement. Without formal acknowledgement and response pathways, workers absorb harm silently. The protocol does not need to assign blame. It needs to ensure that workers are not left to manage these situations alone.

Third, training investment must be rebalanced. The sector needs to move away from compliance-driven e-learning modules and towards active, in-person learning that engages meaningfully with the lived experience of BME staff. That is where the evidence shows impact.

Daily decisions on grievances, shift allocation and staff check-ins form part of the organisation’s trust infrastructure. Care managers should treat them as such.

For small and independent care providers, it is essential that routes for raising concerns exist outside the direct line-management relationship and that clear protocols are in place to manage the discriminatory behaviour of residents.

The sector depends on BME workers to function, and any credible strategy must address retention as well as recruitment. For policymakers, a more coordinated approach is needed. Changes to visa routes, in isolation, do not constitute a workforce strategy.

The residents in these homes are not separate from these governance questions. They sit at the end of the same chain. The system is already indicating where the pressure points lie. The issue is no longer whether the signals are there, but whether we are prepared to act on them, and in doing so, restore and sustain trust where it matters most.

Interested to Learn More?

Skills for Care (2024) Social Care Workforce Race Equality Standard: Annual Report. Leeds: Skills for Care.

Omeihe, K. (2023). Trust is important if you want to succeed at work – here’s how to build it. The Conversation.

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Authors

Olufunke Olawale is a management specialist and doctoral researcher focused on how organisational design and people systems shape business performance. Her work centres on organisational development, SME strategy, and capability building, with particular interest in how structure, leadership, and performance systems support sustainable growth. She is committed to helping organisations and businesses build resilient, people-centred systems that improve execution, accountability, and long-term effectiveness.

Kingsley Omeihe is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the School of Business and Creative Industries, where he serves as an Associate Lead for Research Impact. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Trust Studies. Kingsley holds an affiliated position as Chair of African Studies at the British Academy of Management. He is the author of Sage's Qualitative Research Methods for Business Students.

In the first of our Anniversary Essays celebrating 40 years of BAM, Prof Edgar Alfonso Sansores-Gerrero reflects on the benefits of being an active BAM member from the perspective of a Mexican academic.

In recent years, I have taken part in the Management Knowledge & Education group (BAM MKE: “How to” Series). This group has become a place where I rethink teaching by talking with colleagues from different backgrounds. These virtual sessions have shaped me, not just because of the topics we discuss, but also because the conversations make me reflect on my own teaching. These reflections were further shaped through ongoing exchanges in BAM MKE sessions and broader BAM activities.

I remember a session with Emma Thirkell and Victoria Willis in which they discussed moving from just delivering content to creating learning experiences. This idea had a big impact on me and changed how I teach. I started encouraging students to take part through problem-solving, discussion, and decision-making, seeing them as people who build their own knowledge.

Another session deepened this new way of seeing teaching. We discussed the educator’s role now that generative artificial intelligence is part of the classroom. We asked simple but challenging questions: what does it mean to teach when students can get answers right away? What value does the educator add? This conversation made me rethink my own role. I realized that my job is not just to share information, but to help students develop a critical perspective. I want to help them question, interpret, and think about what they learn, including content created by AI.

Based on these experiences, I decided to bring these ideas into my classroom last term. As a professor in the Integrated Graduate Program in Organizational Studies (Master’s and PhD) at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico, I redesigned the Organizational Theory II course. My goal was to make it a place for real experiences, not just lectures. From the start, I invited students to debate, ask questions, and connect the concepts to their own professional paths.

What started as a change in course design soon changed how the class worked. The biggest difference was not in the content, but in how students interacted with it. Instead of treating topics like bureaucracy or decision-making as fixed theories, we discussed them using real cases, organizational challenges, and personal stories. This made our sessions more open and focused on dialogue, where ideas were questioned and built together. As we built this new classroom dynamic, bringing in artificial intelligence as a topic made the learning even deeper. I remember one session where students started by debating how algorithms affect decisions in organizations. As we talked, the discussion moved from technical details to bigger questions about autonomy, ethics, and responsibility. I realized then that students were not just learning the concepts, but also thinking critically, making the knowledge their own, and connecting it to real life.

One of the most important lessons I learned is that putting students at the center changes knowledge from something you just pass on to something they build themselves. Our activities helped students not only understand the theory, but also reflect, ask questions, and apply what they learned in real situations. Instead of just memorizing ideas, they used them to make sense of the complex organizations they work in. This is where my experience with BAM MKE really matters. The impact of these groups goes beyond my own growth and reaches my students’ learning. The ideas, methods, and debates from these communities become valuable when they shape classroom experiences that change how students think, question, and learn. Being part of the BAM MKE community strengthened my belief that teaching requires constant reflection and a true willingness to adapt. Now, more than ever, I create experiences that help students understand, question, and take action in a complex organizational world.

Finally, I want to thank the students of Organizational Theory II: Karla, Sergio, Pamela, Hiram, Luis, Jorge, Brenda, Didre, Lorenzo, Luz, Damara, and Nina. Their curiosity, reflections, and willingness to engage in dialogue made this experience possible and turned it into a truly shared journey of learning. I am also deeply grateful to the BAM MKE community, whose openness, conversations, and shared reflections have quietly but profoundly shaped my approach to teaching.

What makes Influencers tick?

For years, influencer marketing has been built on authenticity and genuine experiences – liking, sharing, communicating with the audience, and developing trust and credibility. Yet virtual influencers are challenging this logic. Their promotions are grounded in deceptive consumption, lacking lived experiences, emotions, or genuine use of the products or services they promote. The inherent synthetic property of virtual influencers makes their influence non-credible and inauthentic, eroding consumer trust. This shows that the rules governing interaction between the audience and influencers have shifted, with authenticity and influencers’ personal experiences no longer the drivers of the game.

Take the example of Lil Miquela – one of the hundreds of virtual influencers on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Lil Miquela is a female singer, performer, and fashion model who has worked with various brands, including Prada, Calvin Klein, and Samsung, and has appeared in commercials alongside human celebrities such as Bella Hadid. She does everything a human influencer does, reaching an audience of several million, even though none of her experiences is real.

Despite the novelty wearing off, the phenomenon of virtual influencers is not fading. Instead, the market for virtual influencers is growing, and new tools (such as generative artificial intelligence platforms) are becoming available, democratising the creation of virtual influencers. This makes it even more pressing to understand the audience’s psychology when engaging with them.

Consistency, not Authenticity

Our research shows that rather than focusing on authenticity, people respond to how virtual influencers behave. A virtual influencer that replies to comments, is responsive to followers’ inquiries, regularly publishes stories or streams live events, feels interactive and engaging. This creates a sense of social presence, even though the audience understands that the virtual influencer is not real. For example, followers were once caught up in a fake celebrity feud – literally and figuratively – between Lil Miquela and Bermuda after the latter allegedly hacked the former’s account. A wave of comments from both sides left followers worried, prompting them to actively engage by commenting, asking questions, and sharing concerns on Instagram.

However, virtual influencers’ interactivity can engage the audience only in the short term. Over time, followers seek a deeper connection and reassurance that virtual influencers are credible sources of information. That is why appearance and narratives that signal professionalism, relatedness, and adherence to social norms become critical.

• Professionalism is reflected in the consistency of narratives and the influencer’s identity. For example, if an influencer promotes a luxury fashion brand, everything – from narratives and appearance to advertising visuals – should align with recognised industry conventions. At the same time, the narrative should undergo fact-checking to establish the virtual influencer as a trustworthy opinion leader within the relevant industry, thereby maintaining credibility and competence.

• Relatedness refers to the ability to appear close, approachable, and genuinely caring towards followers. Sharing personal reflections, opinions on social issues, and everyday experiences, relationships, and struggles can create an intimate connection and help construct a virtual influencer’s personality that audiences can easily identify with.

• Finally, adherence to social norms positions virtual influencers as actors behaving appropriately within a given cultural context. Virtual influencers should demonstrate balanced judgement, avoid derogatory or exclusionary messages and align with widely accepted values around diversity, inclusion, equity and responsibility.

These insights suggest that marketers can leverage virtual influencers for both short-term campaigns and sustained brand engagement.

The Future of Virtual Influencers

Short-term initiatives may include promoting product launches, time-limited sales, special offers, or event announcements, where interactivity plays a central role. For instance, a virtual influencer announcing the release of an exclusive product or a limited-time discount can actively engage with audiences through live chat, reposts, retweets, shares and comments, as well as through direct messaging and private replies. Posing questions that encourage interaction, such as “What do you think of this look?”, can generate excitement, foster audience participation, and create a sense of urgency.

Long-term objectives include brand building, fostering customer loyalty, and encouraging brand advocacy. For such goals, brands need to think carefully about fit and maintain a clear and consistent identity. A virtual influencer aimed at Gen Z, for instance, might use humour, memes, and informal language, while one targeting professionals would require a very different tone.

Long-term relationships require greater input, as they do not arise from isolated campaigns but from symbolic connections and psychological resonance built over continuous narratives. Therefore, designing a brand-owned mascot that anthropomorphises the brand, rather than relying on collaborations with independent virtual influencers, helps maintain consistent messaging, aesthetics, and narrative. These elements can be built up and reinforced over time to create a strong identity and personality that reflects professional qualities and aligns with social norms. This is the most effective way to ensure alignment between the virtual influencer and its intended marketing purpose.

Interested? Davlembayeva, D., Chari, S. and Papagiannidis, S., 2025. Virtual influencers in consumer behaviour: A social influence theory perspective. British Journal of Management, 36(1), pp.202-222. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12839

The authors:

Small and medium-sized service firms depend heavily on recurring revenue, yet many still struggle to retain their customers.

This is often framed as a retention problem.

It isn’t. The issue often lies in how service delivery is coordinated across the organisation.

Most leaders understand the importance of retention. They track churn, invest in CRM systems, and push teams to improve customer relationships. Yet retention remains inconsistent, improving in pockets, then slipping again as the business grows.

This creates a familiar pattern: strong growth at the front, instability in the middle, and missed expansion at the end.

The problem is not a lack of effort or awareness, but a lack of coordination. Retention is often treated as an outcome to measure, rather than a capability to design.

Why Retention Is Still Misunderstood

In practice, a consistent pattern emerges.

Much of the mainstream conversation around retention focuses on lagging customer behaviour, including churn rates, satisfaction scores and loyalty metrics. These are useful, but they primarily describe outcomes rather than explain how those outcomes are produced.

Retention outcomes may be visible, but the organisational mechanisms behind them are often not.

Most SMEs are structured around growth by acquisition. They prioritise new opportunities, respond quickly to demand, and adapt constantly. This makes them effective at acquiring customers.

Retention depends on something different: repeatable routines. These include how customers are onboarded, how progress is communicated, how relationships are maintained, and how issues are resolved.

These routines are rarely designed deliberately. For example, onboarding may depend heavily on which team member takes the lead. One customer receives a structured, well-communicated introduction, while another experiences a more ad hoc process with gaps in communication. Over time, these small variations compound, shaping very different customer experiences without the organisation fully realising it.

This creates a structural imbalance: businesses are organised to win customers but not consistently organised to keep them.

The Growth Loop That Leaves Money on the Table

This imbalance is not accidental. It follows a pattern, a tension between exploration and exploitation.

Most businesses begin with exploration, pursuing new customers, testing offers, riding market demand, and responding to opportunities. This is necessary and often highly effective in the early stages.

Over time, leaders recognise the need to stabilise performance, to retain customers, increase lifetime value, and build more predictable revenue.

They attempt to introduce more structured retention practices.

But these efforts are often fragmented.

Processes are introduced without clear ownership. Tools are implemented without consistent usage. Customer experience varies depending on who is involved.

When these attempts at consistency fail to deliver results, organisations often revert to what has worked before: pushing harder on acquisition.

The result is a reinforcing loop:

• Exploration drives growth

• Fragmented exploitation fails to stabilise it

• More effort is redirected back into exploration

This leaves significant value unrealised.

Customers do not fully convert into long-term relationships. Customer lifetime value (CLTV) remains lower than it could be. Expansion and referrals happen inconsistently.

From a commercial perspective, this shows up clearly. Not just in revenue growth, but in net revenue retention (NRR), the ability to retain and expand value from existing customers over time.

Low or unstable NRR signals a deeper issue: the business is growing but not compounding.

This creates vulnerability.

Firms become more sensitive to external shocks: changes in demand, pricing pressure, or shifts in marketing channels such as social media algorithms.

At the same time, they miss the opportunity to build something more durable:

• Customer goodwill

• Brand equity

• Repeatable value delivery

• Stronger barriers to entry

These are the qualities that underpin more resilient businesses and, importantly, attract stronger valuations and exit multiples.

Retention as an Organisational Capability

Viewing retention through the lens of organisational capability shifts the focus.

Instead of asking only, “Why do customers churn?”, it becomes possible to ask:

• How do retention routines emerge, stabilise, or break down as firms grow?

• Who “owns” retention work, and how is it coordinated across teams?

• How do SMEs move from growth-driven activity to repeatable, stable delivery?

• Where do breakdowns occur across onboarding, engagement, satisfaction, expansion, and recovery?

This perspective aligns closely with the principles of retention-led growth, where sustainable performance is driven not just by acquisition, but by the organisation’s ability to consistently deliver and reinforce value over time.

Service-based businesses face an additional complexity: value is co-created through ongoing interaction. Retention therefore depends not only on service quality, but on the routines that shape expectations, communication, trust, advocacy, and recovery.

As highlighted in practitioner research and management literature, digital tools such as CRM systems only support retention when they are embedded within coherent organisational processes. Without that foundation, they tend to record activity rather than enable it.

Early observations across SMEs suggest that retention routines often emerge unevenly, with coordination varying significantly between teams. This helps explain why retention performance can fluctuate even when overall effort remains high.

Managerial Reflection: A Light Diagnostic

Instead of focusing only on metrics, leaders may find it more useful to step back and examine how retention actually happens in practice[3] :

1. Do you have clear, repeatable routines for onboarding, engagement, and recovery?

2. Who is responsible for retention, and how is coordination structured?

3. Are digital tools enabling retention work, or merely recording it?

These questions offer a starting point for identifying where routines may be emerging, missing, or misaligned.

Looking Ahead

SMEs rarely fail to retain customers because they do not understand the importance of retention.

More often, they struggle because retention is not actively designed as a coordinated organisational capability.

The issue is not whether customers want to stay, but whether the organisation consistently makes it easy for them to do so.

Shifting focus from customer behaviour to service delivery coordination reframes the challenge entirely. It moves attention away from symptoms and toward the underlying system that produces them.

For many SMEs, retention will not improve simply because leaders track it more closely. It improves when the organisation designs the routines, ownership and coordination that make customers want to stay.

Interested to Learn More?

Reichheld, F. & Sasser, W. (1990). Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services. Harvard Business Review.

Gallo, A. (2014). The Value of Keeping the Right Customers. Harvard Business Review.

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Author

Yemi Oluseun is a Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) candidate at Grenoble Ecole de Management, researching customer retention as an organisational capability in SME service firms. Her work focuses on bridging academic insights with practitioner realities to understand better how firms sustain recurring revenue and long-term resilience.