Coping with accountability challenges is an essential part of how actors in hybrid organisations make sense of their responsibility to distinctive groups of stakeholders. Drawing on institutional theory and a logics perspective, we explore how the strategic apex in a Swedish municipal housing corporation constructs accountability in relation to the tensions that arise therein. Our case study highlights that the strategic apex deals with the challenges associated with multiple accountability logics via the process of evoking the principals. Given the invisibility of the legal owner, the strategic apex evokes the principal(s) through the additional processes of negotiating resource allocation, compromising and interest alignment, and creating team structures. Our findings contribute to the emergent literature on how hybrid organisations construct accountability and manage related challenges. Furthermore, our analysis of how individual actors and teams deal with the tension between individual and collective actions in the accountability domain advances current knowledge of the processes through which these actors cope with accountability challenges in hybrid organisations.

This systematic literature review synthesizes and maps existing research on auditing in family firms across multiple areas of study. The review includes 71 systematically selected academic articles published through to 2023. Our findings suggest that many audit-related issues, such as audit fees, audit quality, and auditor choice, differ significantly among family and nonfamily firms. Our review suggests that the positioning of the issues across different disciplines adds complexity and, to some extent, hinders the development of the field. This complexity, resulting from the intermixing of multiple concepts from different disciplines, pushes the majority of the reviewed articles toward theoretical singularity rather than a leap forward in terms of empirical relevance or theoretical plurality. By developing a field map that identifies gaps in current knowledge, our review not only suggests improvements to the status quo, but provides future research directions inspired by recent developments in family business and auditing.

This study investigates when the reputation enhancing signals of family firms include early adoption of non-financial disclosure. Drawing on signalling theory, we examine the effect of family ownership on the early adoption of non-financial disclosure and the moderating role of contingency signals: founder chief executive officer (CEO) leadership and employee degrowth rate. We test our hypotheses with panel regressions on a dataset of Italian listed family firms over the period 2013-2017, years before the introduction of mandatory non-financial reporting. The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between family ownership and early adoption of non-financial disclosure, negatively moderated by the presence of a founder CEO and positively moderated by employee degrowth. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice.

To advance the discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, we analyze the management literature and examples of advocacy practices inspired by the three DEI logics of moral justice, business case, and power activism. By identifying litigation, self-interest, and coercion as the mechanisms driving change within these logics, we show how the concept of diversity is approached differently in the three logics. Based on this discussion, we explain why diversity has taken precedence over equity and inclusion in both research and practice. We further show how the tensions between DEI logics inform diversity initiatives and exacerbate rather than mitigate bias and inequality. To rejuvenate scholarly and managerial debates around DEI initiatives and address managerial biases to focus on the wrong things, we discuss what could be learned from the rationales of such initiatives, including how one can be fooled into focusing on diversity at the expense of equity and inclusion.

We build on recent studies on daughter-to-father influence to explore how male founders’ fatherhood of daughters impacts female representation in their ventures. We find that, conditional on the total number of children, fathering an additional daughter versus a son is associated with a 4% (11%) increase in female director (employee) representation. This daughter-to-father effect gradually matures as daughters grow up and socialize in schools and workplaces, and it increases as daughters age, suggesting that male founders vicariously learn from their daughters about the constraints women face throughout the daughters’ life cycles. Heterogeneity analyses (regarding founder cohort, divorce status, and social class), combined with qualitative evidence, further substantiate the plausibility of vicarious learning as a potential yet understudied mechanism underlying daughter effects. In addition, daughter effects on employee recruitment are concentrated in microbusinesses (number of employees is ≤10) where the founder is close in decision authority to all employees. These findings add important nuances to our understanding of daughter effects in organizational contexts and extend theory of gender homophily in organizations.

The chairperson's leadership influences the board's decision making, and in turn, firm performance. In this study, we advance a respectful leadership lens to suggest that when the chairperson enjoys both professional and relational respect, the quality of strategic decisions and firm performance improve. Using data from 200 publicly traded firms in two countries, our research shows that a chairperson's respectful professional and relational leadership helps build trust within the board of directors and improves the quality of strategic decisions under high levels of environmental discretion, thereby enhancing long-term firm performance. This study contributes to the behavioral theory of corporate governance in general and the board literature in particular by demonstrating the power of respectful professional and relational leadership in improving decision quality and firm performance. We offer insights into strategies for integrating these forms of respect to improve corporate governance and firm functioning.

In this paper, we address how different types of positive attitudes towards international diversity among team members can influence team outcomes. Our study explores whether openness to language diversity could contribute to the effect of openness to value diversity becoming more salient. Data was collected from 1085 team leaders of highly globalised academic research teams in the Nordic region. The results show a significant and positive effect of openness to different cultural values on team outcomes. Furthermore, in teams rated more open to language diversity, the impact of openness to value diversity on team performance is enhanced. Effects of different types of diversity attitudes have been assessed in extant literature. No prior studies, however, have focused on the interaction between the different types of diversity attitudes. This is an important omission because one type of diversity attitudes could function as a boundary condition for other types of diversity attitudes.

This article draws on theories of person–organisation fit and leadership behaviour to explore how supportive leadership is related to communication practices, collaborative working practices and performance management practices and how these three practices, in turn, relate to public servants’ job satisfaction. A model of supportive leadership's direct and indirect effects on employees’ job satisfaction is empirically tested using responses to a survey administered to the European Court of Auditors (ECA) staff. The findings show that communication and collaborative working practices mediate the relationship between supportive leadership and job satisfaction. Supportive leadership positively relates to performance management practices, but these practices have no significant association with job satisfaction. While addressing a theoretical void in the field, this study also makes an empirical contribution by unveiling how a professional European public audit institution manages its human resources and the means it uses. Points for practitioners: Elaborating on the relationship between leadership behaviour and person–organisation fit in the context of a supranational public entity helps to explain what motivates public servants. The relationship between supportive leadership and public servants’ job satisfaction is mediated by two organisational practices: communication and collaborative working practices. Transparent performance management practices do not mediate the relationship between supportive leadership and job satisfaction. Public sector organisations with professional staff can centre their human resource management around effective communication and collaborative working practices to ensure greater employee satisfaction in the workplace. 

This study draws on attribution theory to examine how and by what means the firm's top management team, board members, and owner(s) (i.e., the strategic apex) shape disclosure strategies. Drawing on interviews and archival data spanning six years, we conduct a case study of a financially distressed private family-owned media group. Unique access to these data allowed us to peer into the disclosure strategy formation process that typically takes place behind closed doors in private firms. Our findings show that financial distress preceded the formation of the disclosure strategy and the voluntary disclosure practices designed to satisfy financially powerful stakeholders, and that internal whistleblowers act as a low-cost disclosure tool to inform financially weaker stakeholders. In addition, the development of the disclosure strategy is strongly influenced by the strategic apex, which forms collaborative teams, organises stakeholders and their information needs, and meticulously manages and controls the content and timing of voluntary disclosures. Our findings also suggest that a tightly knit disclosure strategy and voluntary disclosure practices are used to influence rather than inform, to manage stakeholder interactions, and to influence public opinion.

Healthcare is often delivered by teams made up of culturally and demographically diverse members. Group diversity, for example, in terms of age, gender and/or culture, can bring a range of benefits, but also complex challenges for the functioning of healthcare teams. The literature suggests that cultural diversity is the most difficult issue for these teams to manage. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the perceived needs of healthcare professionals when working in culturally diverse teams. Data were collected through individual interviews with 23 healthcare professionals working in two hospitals in one municipality in southern Sweden. The data were analysed using an inductive content analysis approach. In the process of the analysis, two main categories of needs emerged: Favourable working conditions and guidance, and Commonalities. The findings highlight the need for the right work and team climate, as well as leadership, for culturally diverse teams to function well. In addition, the implementation and communication of rules and regulations, clarity of roles, and a shared understanding of cultural diversity, language, and the culture of care are important for these teams. By uncovering the needs expressed by healthcare professionals in relation to working in culturally diverse teams, our research provides important insights into the key enablers of the benefits of team diversity in the healthcare context.