New Articles – Business Administration and Management

The life cycle of companies is a popular topic among researchers and managers, as it provides guidance for strategic decisions according to the current life stage of the organization. Each stage of a company’s life cycle imposes its own set of features and needs, including employees, leadership styles, structure, decision making, information processing, and approach to innovation (Miller & Friesen, 1984). The popularity of this topic brings with it a large number of approaches to determine a life cycle stage and, at the same time, different numbers of stages (from three to ten) in the presented models. A model with three phases is represented by Smith et al. (1985); four phases by Quinn and Cameron (1983), Pashley and Philippatos (1990); five phases by Miller and Friesen (1984), Lester et al. (2003); eight phases by Torbert (1974); and ten phases by Adizes (1979). Authors from the last decade are listed in the chapter Theoretical Background.

In the last 20 years, Integrated Reporting (IR) has evolved from an emerging trend into an institutionalised corporate reporting practice. Novozymes (a Danish bio-industrial firm) was the first company in 2002 to issue an integrated report, being followed by Natura, a Brazilian cosmetics firm, in 2003, and the Danish diabetes firm Novo Nordisk in 2004 (Eccles et al., 2011). Even though the early adopters appeared in the 2000s (Eccles & Krzus, 2014), the need to report on a company’s non-financial aspects appeared 25 years earlier, evolving through the ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainability reporting (SR), environmental social and governance (ESG) and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting (Gibassier et al., 2019). Around the 2010s, IR rose in various regions and legislations, being consolidated as a practice after 2013 with the International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) Framework (Dumay et al., 2016; Gibassier et al., 2019; Rinaldi et al., 2018).

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused turbulence that significantly shocks supply chain management. Regardless of the industry, we have seen the supply chain disruption due to factories shutdown, social distancing, restrictions in transportation, raw materials shipping, and border closure (Sarkis, 2020; van Hoek, 2020). Consequently, a research trend emerged to improve supply chain sustainability, resilience, and performance (e.g., Ivanov & Das, 2020; Shen & Sun, 2021), which raised the importance of close communication and collaboration among supply chain partners. For example, manufacturing firms can improve supply chain learning through supplier development activities and customer knowledge absorption (Huo et al., 2020). Supplier development refers to upstream supply chain coordination, which is the effort of focal firms to improve suppliers’ performance and capabilities to ensure long- and short-term supply needs (Krause et al., 2007).

The concept of CSR has been gradually created on the concept of corporate altruism, and its existence is supported by the conclusion of several professional studies on the positive link between social responsibility and financial performance. The broader approach to this issue also takes indirect links into account. The most common outcomes are that this relationship is more layered, and positive effects prevail. At the same time, other, no less important benefits are highlighted, especially that of strengthening the company’s reputation, reducing (transaction) costs and risks, strengthening the strategic competitive advantage and, last, but not least, creating conditions for the synergy of information and values that benefit everyone (Carroll, 2015). Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (SCSR) has been in mainstream CSR theory since the beginning of the new millennium, but the first signs of such an approach to. CSR can be found as early as the 1990s (Burke & Logsdon, 1996).

Ethical behaviors promote credibility among individuals, contributing to the well-being of a society. The increasing challenge among people to be openly responsible and be an exemplar of moral behavior repeatedly calls for policy proposals from both individuals and organizations. Tax attitude is viewed as one of the ethical issues that has long been a paramount concern in our society. Tax morale is considered so closely fastened to behavior to serve as an authority for action (Halla, 2012). Several studies on tax ethics examined the relationship between taxpayers and the government as well as personal attributes (e.g., Alm & Torgler, 2006). The studies of Richardson (2008) and Tsakumis et al. (2007) examined the influence of cultural values on tax behavior.