This embedded scholar-practitioner case study examines how a mid-sized U.S. non-destructive testing company serving the aerospace and nuclear sectors modernizes its operations while reducing institutional knowledge risk, introducing AI-enabled documentation and workflow systems, and restructuring technician roles and compensation. Drawing on dynamic capabilities, knowledge-based, socio-technical and organizational fit perspectives, and on workforce, process, performance and observational data, it documents how modernization unfolds in a low-error-tolerance, compliance-driven environment, with early observations pointing to improved workflow clarity, operational consistency and reduced knowledge dependency.

This DBA research evaluates the success factors governing the adoption of digitalization and artificial intelligence as catalysts for unlevered free cash flow growth and scalability in private equity-backed SMEs in Spain, examining determinants of successful adoption, moderating levers and the key technology-related value drivers. Synthesising Diffusion of Innovation, the Technology-Organization-Environment framework, EDI adoption models for SMEs and UTAUT/UTAUT2, it adopts a mixed-methods design with semi-structured interviews followed by a questionnaire of around 50 senior practitioners analysed through Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Necessary Condition Analysis. The findings are intended to guide PE fund managers, operating partners and SME executives in turning technology adoption into sustainable value creation.

This research examines organizational preparedness for extreme events in the financial sector as a multidimensional construct encompassing risk measurement, risk management, risk avoidance, and organizational mindfulness. Drawing on four established theoretical perspectives: Extreme Value Theory, Organizational Resilience Theory, Normal Accident Theory, and High Reliability Theory, this study examines how these modalities shape perceptions of the organizations’ preparedness for potential extreme events. Survey data from 315 professionals in risk-related roles in the Spanish financial sector were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results show that quantitative risk measurement and resilience tools for preparation, response, and recovery are positively associated with perceived preparedness for extreme events. Perceiving the financial system as complex and tightly coupled is negatively related to preparedness, although the relationship is only marginally significant. Organizational mindfulness was found to have a strong indirect effect on perceived preparedness by strengthening risk measurement and management, while mitigating perceptions of systemic vulnerabilities. This research highlights that preparedness for extreme events in the financial sector is shaped by analytical risk measurement, risk management practices, and an overall risk culture of attentiveness, with implications for strengthening organizational approaches to high-impact occurrences of both financial and non-financial nature.

This working paper proposes a design-based research agenda to examine the role of project-based learning in student outcomes when teaching node-based visual scripting in Unreal Engine 5 to creative technology and game design students. Using a newly developed project-based textbook and redesigned curriculum as design artifacts, the study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining quiz scores with anonymised student surveys and classroom observation across two phases (N=50). Initial beta results show higher average quiz scores than in prior semesters and richer creative implementations, suggesting potential for flipped and hybrid learning models.

This study explores the evolution and direction of scientific discourse on retirement savings for working women, framed by life-cycle theory and the permanent income hypothesis. Using a systematic literature review of Scopus and OpenAlex records filtered through the PRISMA protocol to 51 articles spanning 1973–2026, it identifies three periods: the integration of women into the labour market, persistent structural challenges, and a recent focus on financial education and capacity building. Preliminary conclusions suggest that greater labour force participation has not automatically translated into economic security in old age, and call for gender-sensitive public policy, contextualised financial education and more flexible pension systems.

This study examines whether directors with executive sales experience positively influence firm valuation (EV/Sales) in industrial firms compared with directors with marketing experience, introducing the concept of sales governance as a distinct dimension of board expertise. Grounded in Upper Echelons, Resource Dependence and Agency theories, it uses a quantitative longitudinal panel design on industrial and construction firms listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange, measuring Board Sales Expertise against EV/Sales with ROA as a supplementary indicator. It anticipates a positive and significant relationship between board sales experience and valuation that exceeds the effect of marketing experience.

This study reframes grit as a socially embedded capability rather than an individual trait, asking to what extent support density and identity strain within social identity groups predict grit, and whether childhood trauma exposure moderates these relationships among adults with siblings. Integrating Social Identity Theory, research on adverse childhood experiences and organisational behaviour literature on grit and resilience, it proposes a quantitative cross-sectional survey analysed with multiple regression, moderation analysis and possibly structural equation modelling. The work aims to help organisations build conditions in which grit can emerge, by increasing support density and reducing identity strain in roles and systems.

This research paper, submitted to the 16th Annual Engaged Management Scholarship (EMS) Conference, presents rigorous empirical evidence on the structural relationship between Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) and corporate performance across European listed companies. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset spanning 2020–2022, the study investigates two fundamental questions: first, whether SRI directly influences the environmental performance of investee corporations; and second, to what extent SRI moderates the relationship between a firm's environmental trajectory and its subsequent financial performance. The findings are both significant and counterintuitive. While SRI succeeds in driving short-term compliance gains, particularly in emissions management and resource efficiency, it demonstrably fails to incentivize long-term environmental innovation, particularly within carbon-intensive sectors. More strikingly, SRI intensity amplifies the market penalty faced by polluting firms that improve their environmental scores, revealing a structural paradox at the heart of responsible finance. These empirical contradictions form the evidentiary foundation for the study's central practical contribution: the Net-Zero Innovation Fund (NZI Fund), a hybrid investment vehicle designed to break the cycle of short-termism that afflicts current SRI frameworks. By co-investing in both listed transition leaders and unlisted green-tech start-ups, the NZI Fund proposes a systemic solution to the innovation deficit identified in the data.

Building on a model presented at EMS 2025, this study develops a three-stage agent-based model (Idea, Prototype, Scaling) of public deep-tech funding to examine when public support crowds in private co-investment and which innovation stage should receive marginal budget increases. Grounded in market failure, systems of innovation, mission-oriented and signalling perspectives, and calibrated to EIC, EIB and OECD data, the model reproduces persistent Prototype-stage congestion. Results show that stronger signalling increases bankable exits and lowers public cost per outcome, and that Scaling-focused budget increases outperform proportional allocation while upstream-only increases reduce throughput, yielding governance heuristics for public innovation funders.

Safety-critical aviation requires crews to navigate mismatches between standing procedures and unfolding conditions under severe time pressure. Yet accident analysis and adaptation research still under-explain how coordination is maintained, how it is substantially strained yet recovered, or how it is lost as episodes unfold. Building on Dialectical Navigation, this paper conducts a graded empirical stress test by comparing three commercial aviation navigation episodes that differ in coherence trajectory. Using official accident and incident investigation reports, each episode is analysed through three coordination mechanisms: guided elasticity, collective calibration, and mutual recovery. The comparison across maintained, strained-but-recovered, and lost episodes shows that outcome variation depends less on the mere presence of procedures, CRM routines, or technical cues than on when mismatch becomes operationally explicit, whether procedural flexing remains bounded, and whether recovery begins while a viable trajectory still remains. The analysis refines Dialectical Navigation by showing that dynamic coherence is best understood as a trajectory rather than a threshold state, identifying collective calibration as the pivotal hinge between bounded adaptation and a recoverable outcome, and clarifying boundary conditions, including cue ambiguity, authority gradients, monitoring-role overload, and shrinking recoverability windows. The paper concludes with implications for procedure design, communication architecture, monitoring and assertion, and feed-forward learning in safety-critical operations and practice.