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The global financial crisis proved profoundly shocking for economic and political life. In the United Kingdom, media reporting of sudden insolvency in the banking sector, its teetering on the edge of collapse and subsequent injection of taxpayer funds by a desperate government thrust sector leaders and negative aspects of their leadership into the public glare. This is particularly significant in light of pre-crisis reporting narratives that ignored negative attributes in favour of financial successes and dealmaking. Many sector leaders had been previously unknown, but where certain individuals had featured in prior media reports, they were often lauded for dynamism, risk-taking and ‘great man’ attributes. However, with the outbreak of a crisis and search for blame and responsibility, previously celebrated or ambiguous values and activities were surfaced for public judgement and found wanting or even dangerous to society. Whilst political and economic aspects of the crisis have since generated a great deal of research, only limited scholarship has focused on narrative understandings and myths generated around positive and negative leadership behaviours. Whilst heroes and villains have served as metaphors for human behaviour since early societies started telling stories, the abrupt nature of this crisis triggered metaphorical narratives to the fore. This chapter will consider the dual phenomena of press coverage generated around negative leadership stories and how patterns of villainy, illegitimacy, demonisation and ruined reputations contributed to shared myths of the crisis.

The Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA) was approved for delivery in the UK in 2015 (IfATE, 2023). The CMDA offers future managers the opportunity to gain a recognised degree as well as the practical skills to thrive in today's competitive job market. A number of studies have been written on the development phase of the CMDA in various institutions, but to date no systematic review exists to provide an overview of commonalities and insights gained across these studies. This review aims to fill this gap.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was used to identify studies written on the CMDA since its introduction. In total, 12 papers met the authors' selection criteria, and thematic coding was used to analyse and present the findings.

Findings were grouped into five themes: (1) curriculum design; (2) programme delivery and support for apprentices; (3) portfolio of evidence and End Point Assessment (EPA); (4) working with employers and (5) recruitment and onboarding.

This review is the first synthesis to date of literature written on the CMDA. The authors' analysis has allowed them to formulate recommendations for future practice that will be of use to providers in the next phase of the CMDA's development.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

This paper aims to test the effects of financial reforms on the structural stability of the parameter estimates in the determinants of capital structure.

A panel of 100 non‐financial companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is constructed, and a panel least squares estimation technique is used to test for lagged, current and leading structural breaks in the firm specific determinants of leverage.

The results show that structural reforms have a significant role in influencing the empirical relationship between leverage and its determinants. Specifically, the lifting of international sanctions and stock market liberalisation have a significant impact on the stability of the profitability, growth and tax rate variables for the book and market values of the debt to equity ratio. Furthermore, when the total and short term debt ratios are considered, only stock market liberalisation appears to have a significant influence on the stability of the profitability parameter.

This paper adds to the existing body of literature on capital structure by documenting the extent of structural breaks in the parameter estimates of the relationship between leverage and firm specific determinants of capital structure for listed non‐financial firms in South Africa.

Data collected from 319 senior executives and 2477 of their subordinates from a global diversified organization were used to explore the impact of differences in individual personality orientation on the processes by which these individuals enable their workgroups. Personality orientation was defined in terms of self‐ratings on four distinct groupings derived from a k‐means cluster analysis of self‐ratings on the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator and the Kirton Adaptation Inventory. Perceptions of enablement and ratings of executive behavior were based on questionnaires completed by subordinates. Although no differences were found with respect to the overall degree of enablement experienced by subordinates, personality orientation did affect the specific behaviors employed by executives to enable others and the degree of managerial self‐awareness exhibited (operationalized as congruence in self vs. subordinates' ratings). Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between an organization’s human resource management (HRM) image and its customer-based brand equity. Research into HRM in relation to branding has mostly dealt with how to attract and maintain employees through employer branding. The present study attempts to link HRM directly to marketing and branding aimed at customers as an altruistic dimension of the brand image and as something that applies to customers’ sociological needs.

The study is based on a survey of Swedish customers in two different retail categories: groceries and home decoration.

The results show that HRM image is distinct from a more traditional service image and that there is a significant relationship between favourable customer perceptions of an organization’s HRM and customers’ willingness to buy and pay a premium for products provided by the retail chain. This finding leads to the conclusion that HRM is not only relevant for employer branding, internal branding and operations management but also plays a significant role in building customer-based brand equity. The results show that further integration of HRM and brand management is needed, both in theory and practice.

This study takes a holistic approach to marketing and is one of the first attempts to incorporate HRM and employer branding into the customer-based brand equity framework. Implications for future research, retailing and other businesses are discussed in the conclusion.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

This study, conducted in a large public sector undertaking in India that had undergone a major change recently, examines the influence of personality factors on employees ability of coping with organizational change in the Indian context. The role of personality factors—self‐esteem, optimism, perceived control, and change self‐efficacy—on influencing employees for coping with organizational change has been examined. Further, the role of demographic variables on the employee's ability of coping with organizational change has also been studied. Results that these personality factors—perceived control, optimism and change self‐efficacy—indicate a significant relationship with coping with organizational change. Contrary to expectations, self‐esteem has not been significantly associated with coping with organizational change. Demographic variables—seniority and education—indicate a significant relationship with the outcome variable.