The fifth issue of Journal of Management & Organization (JMO) is pleased to present a collection of nine contributions which span a rich and diverse range of topics, methodologies and findings. An enduring rule for JMO has been that making a theoretical contribution is nonnegotiable (see Galvin, Reference Galvin2014: 713; https://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1833367214000698) and the role of ‘making a contribution’ is front and centre with these papers. Associate Editors, the anonymous reviewers and me as Editor-In-Chief, ask of a paper, ‘how is this paper either an extension to existing theoretical knowledge or helping us to think about existing phenomena in a new way?’ The role of theory building as well as providing novelty and, even more demanding still, practical applicability of findings is a hard call to ask of any paper – but it is a feature of the selection we offer here. As detailed below, the common thread of each of these nine submissions is that they not only offer new insight but also provide the basis for ‘real-world’ application.

This begins with our showcase paper, an invited one from Brigid Carroll, Coral Ingley and Kerr Inkson, who take us into the world of Boards of Directors to explore the role of what they term ‘Boardthink’. This fascinating notion is set in the ‘context of institutionalized regulation and academic framing determined by agency theory’ and though the application of discourse analysis to the transcripts of 60 semi-structured interviews, the authors identify discourses of conformance, of deliberation, of enterprise and of bounded innovation. These discourses are drawn together to reveal issues of real concern, from the dominance of conformance to the nonresolution of paradoxes, and the likely effects in inhibiting board strategy-making and contribution to innovation. These are important findings and the final recommendations made in the paper are powerful and insightful – and also a great example of the ability of academia to contribute to contemporary debates in both theory and in practice.

The theme of the nexus between theory and practice is narrower in our second paper. Here, Miquel Bastons, Marta Mas and Carlos Rey unpack the notion of employee motivation and its link to the stakeholders of the business. By developing a novel agent-stakeholder model of interaction, the authors are able to integrate extrinsic, intrinsic and pro-stakeholder motivation into an overarching notion of prosocial motivation. This interesting idea sees employees being motivated by a sense of contribution to benefitting the company’s stakeholders – findings which may certainly have interesting implications for management!

Our third paper continues with the notion of the agent but returns us to a top management perspective, with an investigation of the differences between agent or stewardship behaviour amongst CEOs. Here, authors John Martin and Frank Butler, authors highlight the crucial difference between these two, positing that Agency ‘theory suggests CEOs take advantage of their powerful positions to maximize their personal economic utility, whereas stewardship theory suggests CEOs are motivated through intrinsic awards and will balance their interests with those of other stakeholders’. The paper suggests that the resultant differences in CEO behaviours may lead to differing impacts on important firm-level outcomes – and presents findings that clearly have wider implications than just the business and immediate stakeholders of the business. I look forward to seeing how this paper is cited and used in future years.

Although the theme of governance was an underlying one in the Martin and Butler paper, it is the explicit focus of our fourth contribution. In this paper, Jennifer Martínez-Ferrero and Isabel García-Sánchez investigate the impact ‘of corporate governance mechanisms on companies’ decision to assure their sustainability reports and their choice of assurance provider in countries with a greater stakeholder orientation’. Drawing on an international sample of over 600 companies operating between 2007–2014, the authors present a compelling case based on logit models of analysis to offer evidence that will be refreshing to those cynics hardened by corporate scandals. The results presented reveal positive links between a firm’s sustainability assurance and choice of the accounting profession with board independence and the activity of the sustainability committee. It is a heartening story from academia which is, in turn, supported by a similar view but different focus from our fifth paper for this fifth issue on JMO for 2017.

In this paper, authors Jin Kim and Byung-Keun Kim specifically focus on the important but neglected area of ‘the influence of risks on alliance governance modes in high-tech industries’ Drawing on a large data set (over 3,000 alliance records generated over 5 years in high-tech industries), the authors provide a forceful argument for adopting a risk perspectives as an effective rationale for choosing an alliance governance mode in a high-tech industry. Given the growth and churn in this sector, we can hope that the practical implications of this paper are as likely to be as of much interest to policy makers and practitioners as they are to academics.

Our next two papers provide an employee viewpoint as to the consequences of not doing things right! The first, our sixth paper for this issue is by Dirk De Clercq and Imanol Belausteguigoitia. Embedding their study in job demands–resources model, they investigate just how the employees’ perceptions of organizational politics could act to reduce that ever-important but completely discretionary, organizational citizenship behaviour. They suggest that there may be moderating contextual resources and personal resources that may operate to buffer negative perceptions of organizational politics and organizational citizenship behaviour. The resources they examine are transformational leadership, knowledge sharing (as the contextual resources), and resilience (as the personal resource). The results suggest a fascinating three-way interaction may exist and the authors offer hope that ‘that organizations marked by strongly politicized internal environments can counter the resulting stress by developing adequate contextual and personal resources within their ranks’.

While our seventh paper provided a moderated model, our seventh moves to a mediated. In this submission, Fabrice Travaglianti, Audrey Babic, Roland Pepermans and Isabelle Hansez dive deeply into the notion of person–organization fit as an important antecedent of behavioural outcomes to focus on the role of needs–supplies fit in this relationship. By drawing on Cognitive and Affective Personality System theory, the authors test the mediating role of organizational identification to better understand how needs–supplies fit is related to task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours. The results they offer suggest that needs–supplies fit may be a multidimensional concept which does mediate the role of organizational identification in the relationship between needs–supplies fit and performance measures.

Our eighth contribution to this fifth issue for 2017 is the 2016 winner of the ANZAM Case Study competition. This sees the original 1,500 word submission from Kathryn Pavlovich, Heather Connolly, Jenny Gibb and Eva Collins worked up into a teaching-ready format for academics to use in their teaching (it’s already in use in my third year Small Business unit!). Complete with full colour illustrations, hyperlinks and questions, this examination of New Zealand-based Yealands Wine Group Holdings Limited provides multiple opportunities for use.

Our ninth and last contribution to this issue rounds out our aim of providing thought provoking pieces which offer both theoretical and practical insights. With a focus on the notion of forgiveness within work relationships, Bryant Thompson and Travis Simkins provide a very different perspective and theoretical contribution to the larger issues of governance, politics and strategy which have been the theme of this issue. Their empirical examination of two key pathways to forgiveness: one driven by self-orientation and the other driven by other-orientation rounds out and consolidates the findings from all the studies presented here – that whether the focus is on the organization, manager or employees, it is the day-to-day interpersonal relationships of work that ultimately shape our experience of work – and the success of otherwise of the organization.

This editorial began with the need for academic research to provide at least one of the calls for either theory building, new insight and novelty or, even more demanding still, practical applicability of findings. I believe that the nine contributions in this issue each speak to and provide all three. My hope is that we will see replications and extensions of the findings from these papers being used to inform future research, policy and practice (and perhaps even further high quality submissions to this journal?).