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Crisis management, global challenges, and sustainable development from an Asian perspective

• Published: 30 May 2020
• Volume 19 , pages 271–276, ( 2020 )

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• Yipeng Liu 1 , 2 &
• Fabian Jintae Froese 3  

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Research on crisis management has accumulated a vast body of knowledge that has assisted us with comprehending complex business and management phenomena. Yet, the existing studies have not paid sufficient attention to global challenges and sustainable development. We join the current conversation being conducted from the global challenges perspective of crisis management by suggesting that investigating global challenges and sustainable development can advance our collective understanding of crisis management in important ways. This article has three general objectives. First, we show that crisis management has been a long-standing issue in business and management research and provide an overview of the puzzles that informed and motivated this focussed issue. Second, we highlight the key insights and contributions made by the papers included in this focussed issue by reviewing their theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches, and findings. Finally, we invite scholars to join the debate in order to move this important crisis management research agenda forward by tackling global challenges with the goal of achieving sustainable development.

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Crisis management from a multi-level and multidisciplinary perspective

The 2020 COVID-19 global health crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the list could go on. Nothing seems to be certain but death and crises. Accordingly, crisis management has been a long-standing issue in business management and organisational studies (Bundy et al. 2017 ). Over the past three decades, the three crises mentioned above have had major impacts on economic development and business evolution in Asia. The 1997 Asian financial crisis affected a wide region in East Asia and Southeast Asia and subsequently triggered fears of a worldwide economic meltdown. The 2008 financial crisis originating in Wall Street had a substantial and detrimental impact on the global economy, including Asian countries. In 2020, the unfolding of the COVID-19 global health crisis has been significantly reshaping business and management practices in Asian countries and beyond. Thus, understanding, managing, and intervening crisis is a critical challenge for all stakeholders involved. In order to capture the nuances of crisis management and organisational response, it can be useful to view crisis management from a multi-level and multidisciplinary perspective, including the individual, organisational, and institutional levels.

At the individual level, personal traits and emotional reactions can determine the extent of a crisis’ effects. CEO empathy may help employees in making sense and finding meaning when faced by a crisis (König et al. 2020 ). The individual strategies adopted in coping with crises can be significantly influenced by cultural characteristics (Liu 2020 ), for instance, the influence of Confucianism prevailing in many Asian countries (Froese 2013 ; Xing et al. 2020 ). At the organisational level, organisational resources and capabilities can substantially determine whether organisations can survive dealing with a major crisis. Organisational learning and capability building are essential for organisations to learn, reflect upon, and accumulate lessons and experiences useful to handle the next crisis (Rerup 2009 ). In light of economic growth, rapid development, and previous crisis experience in Asian countries, organisational capabilities and crisis-handling abilities have been tediously honed and have remarkably improved over time. Asian countries have dealt with the COVID-19 global health crisis dramatically better than many of their Western counterparts, largely due to the experience accumulated during the 2003 SARS outbreak (Liu et al. 2020 ). At the institutional level, the varieties of Asian capitalism (Witt and Redding 2013 ) and institutional development can help the institutional infrastructure to be more resilient in absorbing any unprecedented but forthcoming crisis. Increasingly, cultivating appropriate crisis-coping strategies and building resilience is essential for individuals, organisations, and society to thrive in an age of uncertainties (Liu et al. 2019 ). Specifically, the juxtaposition of resilience research with crisis management (Williams et al. 2017 ) may offer revealing insights suited to solidify and improve business and management practices in Asian countries and beyond.

Global challenges and sustainable development

In today’s uncertain world, global challenges are becoming ever more complex and sophisticated, and necessitate a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach. We believe that management research can and should make useful contributions to understanding and tackling global grand challenges (George et al. 2016 ) by addressing important questions (Tihanyi 2020 ). The United Nations envisaged 17 Sustainable Development Goals aimed at facilitating the achievement of sustainable development for mankind. For example, addressing sustainability challenges requires a collaborative approach in leveraging the power of entrepreneurship (Sarasvathy and Ramesh 2019 ). In the domain of international business, scholars urgently call for research to tackle ‘big questions’ and address ‘grand challenges’ in global business (Buckley et al. 2017 ). In a similar vein, we urge scholars in Asian contexts to step up and address the pressing global challenges faced by individuals, organisations, and society with good potential and value propositions suited to contribute novel insights in regard to both business practice and theoretical development.

A wide range of global challenges and associated research topics can be addressed in Asian contexts. Entrepreneurship and innovation activities are proactive and dynamic in Asia. The fast changing entrepreneurship landscape found in China and India continues to shape contemporary business and management practices and the future of both Asia and the world (Khanna 2008 ; Wu and Si 2018 ). Not only commercial entrepreneurship, but also hybrid entrepreneurship—including social, environmental, and institutional entrepreneurship—are taking place in Asian contexts in shaping the organisations and societies in which we live. Researching important challenges in Asian contexts may help to reveal novel business and management practices: for example, the reasons that, against expectations, caused Western internet digital giants to fail in the Chinese markets (Li 2019 ), and the implications for innovation management for foreign companies operating in Asian contexts (Froese et al. 2019 ). As for the promotion and development of a greener economy, Asian countries, such as China, tend to deliver substance, rather than symbolic gestures, in reporting and implementing CSR initiatives (Marquis and Qian 2014 ). Furthermore, achieving sustainable development requires collaboration and partnerships that cross disciplinary boundaries. The importance of and interest elicited by Asian contexts notwithstanding, we believe that synergy can be generated and should be captured when scholars actively draw connections between Western and Eastern perspectives in management research (Filatotchev et al. 2020 ; Xing and Liu 2015 ) and theory development (Rhee 2010 ) for crisis management in particular, and for management and organisation theories in general.

A brief introduction to the papers in this focussed issue

In this section, we will introduce the six papers in this focussed issue, which zoom in on different aspects of crisis management. We discuss the papers’ theoretical underpinnings, methodological approaches, findings, and overall contributions to the study of crisis management, global challenges, and sustainable development. While the first four papers deal with the COVID-19 crisis, the remaining two centre on corporate crises in different contexts.

In the first paper, Liu et al. ( 2020 ) examine the business and economic implications of COVID-19 from an Asian perspective, focussing on the cases of China, South Korea, and Singapore. The authors take a novel approach by drawing from the theoretical underpinnings of entrepreneurship, agility, and resilience, which enables them to link the global health crisis to business and government responses. The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that it shows the impact COVID-19 is having on economies and businesses, the support provided by governments to businesses and societies, and the implications for global supply chain disruptions.

Following this seminal paper, three others delve deeper into the various business implications of COVID-19, covering human resource management, corporate governance, and supply chain management in different Asian contexts. Haak-Saheem ( 2020 ) discusses the consequences for talent management of the COVID-19 crisis by drawing from the case of Dubai, as the country’s workforce is heavily reliant on expatriates. Yoshikawa and Chua ( 2020 ) explore the growing momentum of shareholder activism in Japan and articulate its relationship with the COVID-19 global health crisis, as well as the direction it could take post-COVID-19. Gao and Ren ( 2020 ) discuss the challenges to and opportunities for global value chains and the extent to which the current dependency on Asian countries may be reshaped in light of COVID-19 from the Australian and New Zealand perspectives.

In the fifth paper, Yang and Rhee ( 2020 ) show how public reactions to corporate bad deeds can influence CSR disclosure speed. By using a sample of 1023 boycott events targeting 93 firms in Korea between 2006 and 2016, the study contributes to the CSR literature by identifying the positive correlation between boycotts and CSR disclosure speed. Furthermore, the study shows that such correlation is moderated by business environment, suggesting that CSR disclosure is a risk-reduction mechanism against boycotts. Thus, the study highlights important contingencies and boundary conditions in examining CSR disclosure speed specifically, and the role played by sustainable development in crisis management in general.

In the sixth article, Lee and Zhong ( 2020 ) examine the way firms respond when their alliance partners misbehave. This study contributes to the broader crisis management literature by identifying the nuanced correlations that exist between responses to alliance partners’ misbehaviours and firm performance as a function of the type of response strategy adopted. The paper’s empirical setting includes Chinese equity-based alliances from 2001 to 2013, with a total sample of 457 instances of misbehaviour. The results show that identity accommodation is associated with higher firm performance, while event defence is associated with lower firm performance. An important contribution made by the paper is in showing that the event-based view of alliance dynamics sheds new light on the ways in which firms manage uncertainty from partners and their effectiveness.

Collectively, these six papers effectively illustrate the wide scope of the topics of crisis management, global challenges, and sustainable development by including the COVID-19 global health crisis, talent management, shareholder activism, global value chain (in)dependence, CSR disclosure, and responses to alliance partners’ misbehaviours. In conclusion, understanding the multifaceted aspects of crisis management through the global challenge and sustainable development perspectives can help us better understand and predict the antecedents, outcomes, and contingencies related to crisis management at multiple levels. We invite other scholars to join the debate to move forward this important and interesting research agenda.

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Liu, Y., Froese, F.J. Crisis management, global challenges, and sustainable development from an Asian perspective. Asian Bus Manage 19 , 271–276 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41291-020-00124-0

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Published : 30 May 2020

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Managing through a crisis: Managerial implications for business-to-business firms

Carsten lund pedersen.

a Department of Marketing, Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg C, Denmark

Thomas Ritter

b Department of Strategy and Innovation, Copenhagen Business School, Kilevej 14, 2000 Frederiksberg C, Denmark

C. Anthony Di Benedetto

c Fox School of Business, Alter Hall 523, 1801 Liacouras Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6083, USA

1. Introduction

The world is in crisis, locked in the throes of an unprecedented economic lockdown as the coronavirus, in the specific form of COVID-19, takes its toll on societies around the world. At the time of this writing, countries have shut down vital parts of their administrations, education sectors, and economic activities. Whole industries, including hospitality and air transport, have essentially stopped functioning; the closing of national borders limits free movement to a minimum anyway. The related humanitarian crisis came as a shock to many people, and new restrictions together with enormous challenges represent a discontinuity, breaking from the past reality. Furthermore, this crisis features immense volatility, making it nearly impossible for people to imagine all the potential, invisible dangers and visible changes. Simply put, we are living in truly disruptive times.

But the notion of disruption is not new; it has long appeared in business discussions. Executives have tried to understand, be prepared for, and even initiate disruption ( Markides, 2006 ). Not every disruptive idea follows the trajectory predicted by Clayton Christensen (1997) , but substantial energy has gone into preparing for business model disruptions along the lines that he outlined ( Markides, 2006 ). For example, executives have tried to anticipate disruptions due to digital advances (e.g., Ritter & Pedersen, 2020 ), platform business models (e.g., Cusumano & Gower, 2002 ), or new market orientations (e.g., Kumar, Scheer, & Kotler, 2000 ). Yet these types of preemptive measures were made obsolete by the truly unexpected and far-reaching disruptions created by the highly contagious virus, which has already prompted a greater downturn than might have been caused by any alternative business models, innovative technologies, new forms of working, or the like.

At the same time, another important difference pertains to predicted durations. Digitalization, the Internet, and connectivity through the Internet-of-Things have prompted shifts that remain relevant. Although the immediate crisis created by COVID-19 may have mainly a temporary effect, followed by a partial return to “normal” times, its broader impact may be persistent and significant, leading to the “new normal” of a post-corona world. In this shift, health care service preparedness must be rethought, supply chain risk needs to be redefined, online meetings likely will become the norm, and virtual teaching may represent a critical channel for education. In this sense, the virus crisis represents a temporary discontinuity, after which some aspects will return to their prior status, even as others might be changed forever.

Furthermore, the crisis could have negative consequences for firms, if not managed appropriately ( Coombs, 2007 ), while also offering an opportunity, as long as decision makers perceive it accurately ( Brockner & James, 2008 ). For example, environmental crises often have fueled human development, throughout history, revealing how they can create opportunities if exploited and managed wisely ( Bernstein, 1996 ). Some firms that perform well during the crisis may gain new customers, but other firms appear destined to fail. How firms respond and react during the crisis arguably will determine, at least partially, whether they thrive.

With some notable exceptions (e.g., Andersson & Mattson, 2010 ; Hermes & Mainela, 2014 ; Naidoo, 2010 ), business-to-business marketing has not, remarkably, focused much on crisis management. Yet business-to-business firms have encountered a multitude of recent crises, from the dot.com bubble to the financial crisis to 9/11 to SARS to Brexit. Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, to the extent that we lack any established knowledge to comprehend its consequences fully. Similar to most sectors in society, business-to-business marketers lack relevant guidance for meeting the enormous challenges they face. Both marketing in general and Industrial Marketing Management in particular have a long-standing tradition of conducting research with and for practitioners, and accordingly, we believe the business-to-business academic marketing community is uniquely well qualified to address these issues and concerns, using theory-based reasoning to help support executives' efforts to manage their firms through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Against this backdrop, we prepare this special issue on managing crises by establishing its strong focus on the managerial implications for business-to-business firms, as derived from business-to-business marketing research. We have two primary aims with this special issue: First, we seek to offer business-to-business marketing practitioners theory-based insights and practical implications. The business-to-business marketing community can and should bridge the rigor–relevance divide, by providing research-based, practical implications that rest on a strong foundation of theory. In accordance with this aim, the articles in this issue can be purposefully shorter than typical Industrial Marketing Management articles, written mainly to argue for practical implications rather than make novel theoretical contributions. Second, we emphasize the continuing need for crisis management research from a business-to-business marketing perspective. Such a research tradition should prove highly relevant for practitioners facing crises, now and in the future.

In the next section, we thus define a crisis and explicate its different phases. Following a discussion of crisis management in general, we summarize some crisis management contributions in Industrial Marketing Management . We also zoom in on some selected theories and their implications for business-to-business marketers during the COVID-19 era, which in turn suggest areas for further research. Thus, this editorial offers a terminology for discussing crisis and crisis management, describes the current state-of-the-art of business-to-business crisis management literature, and offers a research agenda.

2. Crisis and crisis management

2.1. definition of crisis.

The word crisis has its etymological origins in the Greek word krisis , which denotes choice, decision, or judgment ( Paraskevas, 2006 ). It often refers to a turning point or decisive moment, implying that the historical meaning of the word might presume some individualism, rather than determinism in terms of (re)acting in volatile situations—at least connoting choice at some decisive moment. However, uses of the term also vary by disciplines and contexts (see Table 1 ). For example, Holsti (1978, p. 41) refers to crisis as “a much overused term which has become burdened with a wide range of meanings, some of them quite imprecise,” and Smith (2005, p. 319) acknowledges that “the definition of crisis has generated considerable debate within the academic literature and there is no real collective acceptance about the precise meaning of the term.”

Definitions of a crisis.

Crisis management literature in particular comprises at least two main strands, separated by their views of crisis as either an event or a process (e.g., Jaques, 2009 ). A crisis could be a singular, large event, but it may be more useful to conceive of sequences of sub-events over time, as in a process perspective, such that this approach synthesizes elements from both strands of research. Accordingly, we define a crisis as a sequence of events that can have substantial negative consequences if not managed appropriately. In this definition, an event is a delimited element, with a beginning and end, such that it happens or takes place. Internal or self-inflicted events can also be distinguished from external or other-inflicted and natural events (e.g., Faulkner, 2001 ), depending on whether the event has been triggered by, for example, the organization itself (e.g., misconduct, poor work safety standards, environmental damage, bribery, tax evasion) or external factors (e.g., a supplier has inappropriate safety measures, hurricane ruins production facilities). The phrase substantial negative consequences indicates the extent or importance of the damage caused by the event; for organizations, a crisis typically implies substantial losses, interruptions to their usual operations, or even bankruptcy. We include the notion of being managed appropriately to acknowledge that organizations can act during a crisis. Even if they cannot influence its course or prevent a crisis completely, they can react in more or less optimal ways to its occurrence. In this way, the substantial negative consequences might be due to the crisis, but they also could result from inappropriate management by the firm.

Alternative terms such as risk and disaster similarly appear in prior literature, also with varying definitions. From our perspective, risk refers to the probabilistic likelihood that a crisis may happen and its (often economic) impact. Therefore, we conceive of risk as preceding the crisis. Disaster generally pertains to nature-induced crises, such as storms, floods, fires, earthquakes, or major accidents. In this view, a disaster is a subcategory of crisis.

2.2. Phases of a crisis

A crisis can arise as different types (e.g., natural disaster, self-inflicted) and take different forms (e.g., immediate, sustained). Extant crisis literature features debates about how many stages constitute a crisis lifecycle (e.g., Faulkner, 2001 ; Fink, 1986 ; Roberts, 1994 ). Following Coombs (2007) , a narrow view of crisis in its simplest form has three phases: pre-crisis, crisis , and post-crisis . However, issue management literature also suggests the need to consider the period immediately before the crisis, when it is building, to identify and proactively react to early symptoms (e.g., Ansoff, 1975 ), as well as immediately after the crisis, when extraordinary activities are required to handle its effects before a new “normal” stage might be achieved, which ensures that the firm learns and prepares ( Madsen, 2009 ). We therefore suggest a model with five distinct phases for our crisis analysis: pre-crisis normality , emergence , occurrence , aftermath , and post-crisis normality ( Table 2 ). Each phase differs in its content, duration, and managerial opportunities.

Phases of crisis.

According to Jaques (2007) , a key weakness of crisis lifecycle models is that they presume the crisis is linear, with events that take place in sequential fashion. The coronavirus pandemic appears likely to run counter to such models, considering the expert predictions that it might flare up again in intensity, after a first wave and ebb. Therefore, linear lifecycle models must be viewed as purposefully simplified, to establish a conceptual approach, rather than as natural laws. Alternatively, the process could be described in circular terms, similar to disaster management cycles, with an emphasis on reducing the impact of rather than preventing disasters, such that the management of a disaster entails continua of interrelated, interdependent activities ( Jaques, 2007 ).

2.3. Framing crisis: actor, content, and pace

Framing crisis entails specifying who (actor) experiences what kind of crisis (content) at what speed (pace). An actor might be an individual, group, organization, or network of organizations ( Wilke & Ritter, 2006 ). These actors tend to exhibit significant differences in their perceptions and the impacts they experience. For example, the coronavirus crisis has affected countries (framed as groups of individuals and of organizations) at different times: starting in China, then hitting Italy before Denmark. The different countries accordingly have entered different crisis phases; at the moment China seemingly reached the end of crisis occurrence or beginning of crisis aftermath, Italy was in the midst of its crisis occurrence, and some Eastern European countries were in crisis emergence. There may also be within-country differences; in the United States, the coronavirus spread early in the state of Washington, then was noted in New York, before it spread to other major cities. In parallel, different business units within a company can experience the impact of a crisis differently, perhaps due to their geographical locations or work content. For example, in a single hospital, the emergency units are extremely busy, but elective surgery and dentistry units even may have closed.

To understand the content factor, it is helpful to consider sub-crises; for the coronavirus for example, we might distinguish five different sub-crises:

• 1 Contagion: Because of the highly contagious character of the virus, many people may be infected. This sub-crisis may entail several solutions, such as (a) developing a vaccine, so that spreading is irrelevant; (b) eliminating the virus, so there is no virus to spread; (c) allowing the virus to spread and let humans develop immunity through infection (e.g., 60% of the population is infected), which may result in “flock immunity”; and (d) social distancing. The first two options are not immediately available; the third option would evoke a different sub-crisis with devastating implications. Therefore, governments mainly are implementing social distancing at large scales to limit spreading.
• 2 COVID-19: Severe respiratory problems threaten people's lives and require intensive health care. Thus, this sub-crisis is concentrated among the approximately 5–10% of infected people. Its solution requires finding a treatment that can mitigate the most severe health problems, to help patients survive and retain their health. The current solution admits patients with severe symptoms to intensive care, which leads to the next sub-crisis.
• 3 Healthcare: The capacity of health care systems may be insufficient. Patients with severe respiratory problems need intensive care, including respiratory support, but the equipment to provide it is limited. This limitation drives many political decisions. Without any alternative solutions to the contagion or COVID-19 sub-crises, many countries are stuck with social distancing measures, which leads to another sub-crisis.
• 4 Business models: Social distancing has led to closures of multiple industries: travel (e.g., airlines, airports, cruise lines, holiday destinations, train and bus operators), hospitality (hotels, restaurants, bars, theme parks, concert and event operators), sports (professional leagues, sports clubs, Olympic Games, betting firms, fitness clubs), brick-and-mortar retail (retail outlets, shopping centers, consumer goods producers), and service providers (hair salons, barbers, theaters, concert halls, pet groomers). Even if they remain in operation, many businesses have had to change their business models significantly, such as letting employees work from home (nearly all firms) and adopting online solutions (e.g., schools and universities, counseling and therapists, public administration). For firms that are experiencing growth due to social distancing measures, other elements of the business model sub-crisis become relevant, such as capacity limitations for online retailers or the network capacity of Internet providers.
• 5 Economic: The massive lockdown of businesses and countries threatens a recession, including high levels of unemployment, long-term spending decreases in consumer investment markets, more bankruptcies, and so forth.

The distinctions among different sub-crises are important, in that each one might have entered a different phase, and they also are perceived differently by the various actors. For example, people with mild symptoms might be primarily affected by the contagion sub-crisis. At an industry level, the short- and long-term impacts of the business model sub-crisis vary by sector, such that many universities managed to complete the spring 2020 semester by moving to an all-online format, but the curtailment of campus visits by graduating high school students seems likely to affect their future enrollments. Different countries also might suffer distinct impacts of a potential recession.

Finally, the pace of a crisis captures elapsed time in different phases. Ritchie (2004) and Parsons (1996) distinguish immediate crises (little or no warning, so the crisis emergence phase is very short), emerging crises (slower to develop, with a long emergence phase), and sustained crises (which may last for months or years, over a very long crisis existence phase). Each phase can vary from shorter or longer, as illustrated in Fig. 1 (steeper gradients indicate higher pace).

Crisis Framing Chart.

The current coronavirus crisis (or rather, the five related sub-crises) should be viewed through all of these lenses: It originated with little or no warning ( immediate crisis, short emergence ) in China ( actor ). It followed a gradual pattern with regard to contagion and healthcare, across the world ( emerging crisis, longer emergence ), and it seems likely to result in a subsequent economic crisis (possibly sustained crisis ), as well as possibly recurring in waves of continued contagion ( cyclical crisis , phases start over again).

3. Crisis management

3.1. five phases of crisis management.

As noted by Jaques (2009) , crisis management emerged after World War II, gaining prominence in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as legitimacy as a formal management discipline after the 1982 Tylenol poisoning scandal and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Tylenol sales rebounded to pre-crisis levels due to the swift and effective handling of this product harm crisis by the manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson; to this day, it offers an excellent, teachable example of effective crisis management ( Latson, 2014 ). Some authors delimit crisis management to efforts after a crisis happens (e.g., Bundy, Pfarrer, Short, & Coombs, 2017 ), whereas others regard the pre-crisis phases as important ( Jaques, 2009 ) or else highlight post-crisis learning as essential ( Madsen, 2009 ). We define crisis management as the intentional handling of a crisis in all five phases (see Table 3 ).

Example studies in crisis management.

3.1.1. Pre-crisis

In the pre-crisis phase, organizations can seek to prevent (if possible), predict , or prepare for it. The differences among these three options are not trivial. In some cases, organizations have sufficient agency to prevent a crisis proactively; Bundy et al. (2017) even propose that a pre-crisis, prevention phase includes organizational preparedness (changes to the culture, design, or structure can prevent system breakdowns) and stakeholder relationships (good relationships with stakeholders may reduce crisis likelihood). These options are available prior to the crisis; in the coronavirus setting, they would have involved prevention through improved health standards or immediate containment of the first patients, and preparation in the form of increased precautionary measures and health care capacity.

The prediction phase also can be informed by Knight's (1921) definition of risk as events for which the outcome can be assessed using probabilistic outcomes, but uncertainty as hard to quantify, such that its assessment cannot rely on any probabilistic foundation. For example, we know that pandemics arise with some regularity (risk), but the current version is exerting many unknown impacts on businesses, for which we have no historical basis (uncertainty). Nor does statistical regularity necessarily imply predictability; Makridakis, Hogarth, and Gaba (2010) use the analogy of earthquakes to establish this distinction. We can predict that in the next 35 years, the Earth will experience about 44 earthquakes with intensities of around 7.5 on the Richter scale, but seismologists cannot say when or where they will hit, beyond noting earthquake-prone zones. In such cases, it may be a better approach to prepare for different contingencies, like firefighters who cannot predict when or where a fire will be but can train for different contingencies and stay ready.

3.1.2. Crisis emergence

In the emergence phase, a crisis has not yet started, but its signs become clearer. Depending on the pace, actors still have a chance to prepare and potentially postpone the occurrence of the crisis. With respect to the healthcare sub-crisis, some countries increased their health care capacity as much as possible, just before the crisis started there, after having noted the developments in other countries where COVID-19 had struck earlier. Other actors took other measures to postpone the crisis, such as lockdowns; once COVID-19 began to spread, health officials recommended such measures to “flatten the curve” and minimize its expansion, noting that otherwise, the health care system would be inundated and ultimately result in higher mortality rates.

3.1.3. Crisis occurrence

Once the crisis hits, the organization must initiate crisis responses, which usually are tactical in nature, involving communication (see Coombs, 2007 ), actions, and behaviors (consider actions by British Petroleum after its Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 or Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010; Andersen & Andersen, 2014 ). Depending on the type of crisis, the organization might take different forms of action. Even if the crisis is unpredictable and evolving, decision makers must follow logical patterns, which can be especially difficult with insufficient or conflicting data. Furthermore, decision-making speed is often of paramount importance, suggesting that many decisions must be made on an ad hoc basis during the crisis. This point is not to suggest that decisions are not thought through though. Simple cost–benefit analyses, effect models, stakeholder analyses, and trade-off models are often involved. Yet decision making also cannot fall victim to “analysis paralysis,” and accordingly, the need for strong leadership tends to be pronounced in this phase of a crisis. Bundy et al. (2017) emphasize the importance of crisis leadership (characteristics of leaders and how they frame the crisis) and stakeholder perceptions (how organizations influence how stakeholders perceive and react to crises).

3.1.4. Crisis aftermath

Once the crisis is over, there is a time immediately afterward, focused mainly on rebuilding destroyed property (e.g., after natural disasters), giving overworked response units some time off (e.g., fire brigades, health care professionals), and catching up on postponed or disrupted work flows (e.g., replenishment of warehouses). In this phase, extraordinary activities precede the new normality. The main managerial activities include recovery and remedy.

3.1.5. Post-crisis

After the crisis, the organization tries to revert to “business as usual” ( Coombs, 2007 ). In a simple categorization of outcomes after a crisis, the organization may be worse off (unable to revert to its original position), might revert to its original position, or it could be better off (come out of the crisis strengthened in some way). The outcome likely depends on different systems, such organizations, networks, or countries. Systems that worsen after a crisis are vulnerable , those that bounce back are resilient , and systems that grow stronger due to adversity are antifragile ( Manyena, 2006 ; Taleb, 2012 ). These systemic outcomes also relate to how well-prepared organizations were in the pre-crisis phase and their actions during the three central crisis phases ( Pedersen & Ritter, 2020 ). Finally, the post-crisis phase offers opportunities to learn and prepare for future crises, resulting in a circular process of crisis management in which the post-crisis becomes the pre-crisis. Bundy et al. (2017) accentuate the importance of organizational learning from a crisis to identify new competitive opportunities, as well as social evaluations of how stakeholders perceive the organization's responses to the crisis.

3.2. Crisis management research in industrial marketing management

Industrial Marketing Management has featured articles on crisis from its very beginning—the first article on “the environmental crisis” was published in Volume 1, Issue 2 ( May, 1972 ). A search produced a list of 260 papers that include the word “crisis.” After clearing the list of articles that do not address crisis management and instead refer to unrelated forms of crisis (e.g., Laari-Salmela, Mainela, & Puhakka, 2019 , which pertains to “identity crisis”), we are left with eight articles that offer theoretical contributions and managerial implications regarding how organizations can deal with a crisis ( Table 4 ). This lack of research on crisis management is surprising, particularly in light of the opportunities to study it following events such as 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, or the opening of the Berlin Wall. Overall, business-to-business marketing research has paid little attention to crisis management and accordingly has offered few insights for marketing practice. This situation needs to change; we need a better understanding of how business marketing, business relationships and networks, marketing orientation, and so forth can contribute to managing ongoing crises and post-crisis realities.

Articles on Crisis Published in Industrial Marketing Management.

Overall, the treatment of crisis and crisis management in Industrial Marketing Management has been eclectic, fragmented, and partial. There is no established stream of literature in the journal though—despite the importance and regular occurrence of crises and the potential impact of the marketing field on crisis management by leveraging market intelligence (to predict and prepare) and relationship management (of particular interest for crisis occurrence), for example.

4. Managerial implications and research issues

Considering the lack of meaningful contributions in marketing literature, we might speculate that each crisis is unique and unpredictable, such that findings from one cannot transfer to another. But we do not subscribe to this view; existing theories, based on studies of previous crises, can help organizations navigate through and after any crisis. We thus outline some theoretical insights and managerial implications pertaining to the current coronavirus crisis. As noted, the aim of this special issue is to develop more detailed, qualified managerial implications from theories, to inform practitioners. The field of business-to-business marketing contains theories relevant to the current crisis, especially if applied to adapt some established constructs or models. In addition, we need established constructs to cross-pollinate these insights with evidence from crisis management fields.

4.1. Crisis phases model

We propose that managers should divide each crisis into relevant sub-crises, analyze and include all five phases in their decision making (in particular, by thinking of the aftermath and post-crisis phases in their early decision making, e.g. Pedersen & Ritter, 2020 ), ensure their future preparedness, and learn how to prepare for and predict potential future crises.

4.2. Business-to-business theories and resilience

The long tradition of studying value propositions in industrial marketing ( Eggert, Ulaga, Frow, & Payne, 2018 ) offers pertinent opportunities for combined considerations of resilience. Such a cohesive view might address whether a firm's value propositions can remain resilient during a crisis. In some industries, the value propositions have been virtually unaffected; in others, existing value propositions have mostly disappeared. Similarly, resilience notions could inform business network models to consider, for example, how business networks might increase or decrease resilience to a crisis. Networks can impose rigidity but also enhance responsiveness to external shocks for example ( Håkansson & Ford, 2002 ).

Can value propositions and business networks help organizations be resilient during a crisis?

4.3. Relationship management

A key focus of business-to-business marketing is on salespeople and the management of boundary-spanning personnel ( Walter, 1999 ). Industrial marketing has a plethora of insights to provide. Moreover, the role of salespeople is likely to change substantially during a crisis; personal meetings once seemed critical to maintaining business relationships, but digital sales channels take priority during the COVID-19 crisis. How does such a shift affect business relationships and the quality of sales encounters? Organizations also need to provide new training to ensure their representatives' online sales skills. Although we lack detailed insights into the specifics, established literature and anecdotal examples may provide some tentative guidelines for these efforts.

How do relationships and relationship management change during a crisis, and what impacts do they have on relationship outcomes during and after the crisis?

4.4. Salespeople's autonomy

The empowerment of salespeople is critical to customer relationships, and job autonomy enhances both employee and customer satisfaction ( Anderson & Huang, 2006 ). Employee autonomy also increases agility and creativity, to help the firm be responsive and innovative in uncertain and dynamic environments ( Pedersen, 2019 ). The pandemic has created a completely uncertain environment, so employees may need to take unconventional measures to manage their business relationships. It is not unreasonable to anticipate that decentralizing decision power to salespeople (salesperson autonomy) will provide a more appropriate management model for sales channels in this era. Early evidence has shown that the Haier Group reached full-scale operations soon after the start of the pandemic, when most manufacturers were just starting to open again, partly due to its very decentralized set-up. 1 For Haier, autonomy created resilience.

How does salespeople autonomy relate to crisis resilience?

4.5. Omnichannel, digitalization, and business model resilience

Other key topics in recent business-to-business marketing have involved omnichannel efforts and digitalization ( Ritter & Pedersen, 2020 ). Omnichannel capabilities and the digitalization of business models arguably increase resilience in business models; if an organization's business model and communication channels already had gone digital and been integrated prior to the crisis, it is reasonable to hypothesize that this organization has shown greater resilience than its competitors without such expanded capabilities. The coronavirus crisis provides verisimilitude for these popular topics in industrial marketing, as well as a natural experiment for investigating these topics further.

How do business models (e.g., digitalization, omnichannel) change during a crisis, and what are the long-term effects of such changes?

4.6. Disruption

The theory of disruption ( Christensen, 1997 ) cites three fundamental conditions: First, a new offering must initially perform worse than existing market offerings from incumbents, in terms of performance. Second, incumbents improve their market offerings, to meet the most demanding customers' needs along a sustaining trajectory, and thus overshoot the needs of mainstream and low-end customers. Third, the disruptive offering develops over time to meet the needs of mainstream customers better than an “over-engineered” incumbent offering and takes over major market share, if not the whole market.

Although the coronavirus pandemic is not disruptive in the sense of Christensen's (1997) theory, it can help accentuate disruptive processes in established business markets. In particular, it certainly has put pressure on several established, “high-end” solutions. For example, personal business meetings with customers have been replaced by video conferences (typically seen as low-end, low quality interaction modes). Even if the high-end option is not being disrupted per se by the low-end option, the unavailability of high-end meetings provides a foothold for the online meetings to disrupt customer relationships, as exemplified by the rapid growth in the use of Zoom and other online meeting platforms. After the crisis, we anticipate that video conferences may retain a significant market share, even if they seem unlikely to fully replace personal meetings. As such, the situation is not a “true” disruption in the Christensen (1997) sense, but it certainly is a troubling outcome for certain industries (e.g., travel, hospitality), during and after the crisis.

To which extent does a crisis infuse disruption into a market?

5. This special issue

The current coronavirus crisis is unique, in terms of the number of fatalities, its global reach, and its economic impact. However, crises in general are not special; they are a regular part of business. As Kash and Darling (1998, p. 179) note, “it is no longer a case of ‘if’ an organization will face a crisis; it is rather a question of ‘when’, ‘what type’ and ‘how prepared’ the organization is to deal with it.” Likewise, “anytime you (i.e. managers) are not in crisis, you are instead in pre-crisis” ( Fink, 1986 , p. 7). It is therefore of paramount importance that the business-to-business marketing community develops a better understanding of crisis management in industrial firms and business-to-business markets. We have outlined some promising research avenues, which is not meant to imply that the list is exhaustive or covers all of the many interesting aspects of crisis management for business-to-business marketing. It merely highlights that there are ample research opportunities—and that Industrial Marketing Management hopefully will be a platform for sharing and debating such contributions.

For here and now, this special issue comprises 19 contributions of what executives should consider based on business-to-business marketing theories. While we were astonished by the small number of crisis management studies already published in Industrial Marketing Management , we were evenly overwhelmed by the many submissions offered by authors from around the world. In total, we received 73 submissions on a call-for-papers that only offered about six weeks for preparing a contribution.

In order to offer a timely special issue, we created a high-speed reviewing process with two reviewers and co-editor approval with an average turn-around time of only six days. Only papers with requests for minor revisions were invited to the next round to keep our set deadline targets. This meant that a number of papers with potentially great contributions had to be referred to resubmitting a developed paper at a later point in time—thus, there are great papers under development and there is a promising pipeline for developing a crisis management stream in the business-to-business marketing literature.

We are proud to present 19 contributions in this special issue—from many different corners of the business-to-business marketing literature—and with four clear overarching managerial imperatives for executives in business-to-business firms ( Fig. 2 ):

• 1 Understand fast: a crisis forces executives to think fast, to analyze quickly, and to keep an overview. Panic is not a good approach in a crisis. While high levels of uncertainty prevent exact planning, comprehending the situation is of paramount importance: what kind of risks are we facing (McNulty et al.; Oehmen, Locatelli, Willumsen, & Wied), how is our organizational preparedness (Hughes, Morgan, Hodgkinson, Kouropalatis, & Lindgreen), what can we learn from former crisis exposures (Kottika, Ozsomer, Rydén, Theodorakis, Kaminakis, Kottikas, & Stathakopoulos), and what is the impact of the crisis on our business model (Ritter & Pedersen).
• 2 Think allocentric: a crisis should not lead to egocentric thinking, as this will not only destroy opportunities during the crisis but also in the aftermath and post-crisis era. Businesses can only thrive in a society, if they take an active part in developing it (Sheth), big challenges can be best solved together and openly (Chesbrough), competitors can be collaborators (Crick & Crick), and differences in relationships need to be understood and utilized (Cortez & Johnston; Obel & Gau; Zafari, Biggemann, & Garry).
• 3 Change proactively: a crisis can barely be handled by continuing current operations, or pausing activities and waiting for the past to return. Change is often needed. Changes can relate to shaping markets (Nenonen & Storbacka), designing innovative solutions (Cankurtaran & Beverland), or using middle managers as change agents (Heyden, Wilden, & Wise). Change must be seen as an interconnected process encompassing various elements (Hartmann & Lussier).
• 4 Sell intelligently: Instead of cutting prices and adjusting budgets downwards, sales enablement can drive positive results, or at least minimize negative impacts of the crisis. Sales focus can be moved to specific customers (Habel, Jarotschkin, Schmitz, Eggert, & Plötner), to new offerings (e.g., services; Rapaccini, Saccani, Kowalkowski, Paiola, & Adrodegari), or to new ways of selling (e.g., value selling; Keränen, Salonen, & Terho). This may also involve adapting the sales force (Sharma, Rangarajan, & Paesbrugghe).

Four managerial imperatives for crisis management.

We are very thankful to all authors who have contributed in such fast and dedicated fashion. We do hope that this special issue is of inspiration to fight the impact of the coronavirus on businesses and markets. And we know that there are more insights on their way. The coronavirus crisis presents enormous challenges to research and practice of business-to-business marketing – but also offers huge opportunities that we can and should explore and exploit together.

1 https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-autonomy-creates-resilience-in-the-face-of-crisis/ .

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100s of Free Management Dissertation Topics and Titles

Published by Grace Graffin at January 6th, 2023 , Revised On April 16, 2024

Introduction

The subject of management involves an in-depth understanding of the various aspects of business management, such as employee management, risk management, organisational behaviour, and many more.

When choosing a topic for your management dissertation, make sure to consider diverse topics that explore both the theoretical and practical aspects of management.

We understand that getting a dissertation topic approved can be extremely challenging as academic supervisors require students to research a unique case.

This is where our team of writers comes into play. Our writers can up with exciting and manageable management dissertation topics to help get the juices flowing in your head so you can write your dissertation on a unique and engaging topic.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting  a brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the topic,  research question ,  aim and objectives ,  literature review  along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted.  Let us know  if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  dissertation examples  to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

Review the full list of  dissertation topics for here.

How to Select the Best Management Dissertation Topic?

A dissertation topic must be selected based on research interests, availability of data, time limitations, and the research’s scope and significance. The following management dissertation topics are carefully shortlisted while considering all these parameters. Please review these topics and let us know if you have any queries.

Also Read: Operations Management Dissertation Topics

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• Business Psychology Dissertation Topics
• Business Law Dissertation Topics
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• HRM Dissertation Topics
• Operations Management Dissertation Topics

2024 Management Research Topics

Topic 1: an evaluation of organizational change management- why do people tend to oppose change.

Research Aim: The research will aim to assess the structure of organizational change management and to find the reasons why people resist or oppose the changes in an organization. There are many reasons through which change in organization’s management becomes important but some employees’ does not accept that changes. There are many reasons why people resist changes on organization. In certain circumstances, resistance to change might be beneficial. Resistance to change is, in fact, a crucial feedback mechanism that must not be neglected.

Topic 2: Investigating the effectiveness of customer relationship management in airlines

Research Aim: The research will aim to study the efficiency of CRM in airlines. Customer relationship management has evolved into a critical technique used by every corporation to better its operations and obtain a competitive advantage over competitors. Customer relationship management has evolved into a key priority for airline firms and an integral part of airline businesses’ corporate strategy to distinguish themselves from rivals in the eyes of the consumer. The goal of facility organisations, such as airlines, is to provide services that attract and maintain satisfied, loyal customers who promote the airline.

Topic 3: How does leadership affect employees’ productivity? A case of IT firms

Research Aim: This research will focus on leadership positions in IT organisations with the goal of increasing staff productivity and performance. Leadership is essential for increasing employee retention, career drive, and efficiency. Most companies’ progress is accelerated by effective leadership. As a result, it is critical to organisational success. Employee performance, on the other hand, is a critical pillar of every firm, and companies must examine the variables that contribute to great performance. Leadership is based on confidence, which is based on skill, sincerity, ethics, transparency, reactivity, empathy, and kindness.

Topic 4: The effect of organisation advancement tools on business performance

Research Aim: The research will aim to find the effect of organization advancement on business performance. Organizational tools are objects that assist you in organising your workspace, resources, and tasks in order to make your workday more effective. Physical instruments, planners, and software platforms are examples of what they can be. Organization advancement tools are a great source to improve your business performance as they help you in managing your daily tasks and workforce.

Topic 5: The importance of leadership and social skills in new entrepreneurs: An investigative study

Research Aim: The research will aim to investigate the importance of leadership and social skills in new entrepreneurs. Developing talent, introducing innovative goods and services, delivering efficiency, and gaining market share all benefit from improved leadership qualities. If you wish to stay small, you might be able to get away with not growing your leaders. Otherwise, it will restrict your progress. Social skills enable entrepreneurs to interact with customers more effectively, resulting in more agreements and more profitability.

Covid-19 Management Research Topics

Crisis management during covd-19.

Research Aim: This study will identify crisis management aspects during COVD-19, including its challenges and solutions.

Business management during COVID-19

Research Aim: This study will review business executives’ challenges in various scale industries and how they are recovering from the loss. How far did they succeed?

Hospital and medicine management during COVID-19

Research Aim: This study will highlight the role of hospital management during COVID-19, the challenges they came across, and the ways to overcome those challenges.

Educational management during COVID-19

Research Aim: This study will address the issues faced by students and educational institutes. How are they trying to overcome the challenges of imparting education during the coronavirus pandemics?

Maternal health care management during COVID-19

Research Aim: The lockdown situation has been an issue of concern for the patients, including pregnant women. This study will address the role of Maternal health care management during COVID-19.

Management Dissertation Topics for 2023

Topic 1: analyzing the traditions and trends in public administration and management in post-wwii europe.

Research Aim: The purpose of the research will be to analyze the characteristics of cultural and national communities that have influenced public administration and management in the 1970s and 1980s in Europe. The study will be carried out using a systematic literature review.

Topic 2: The Impact of Gender-inclusive Gatekeeping and Predecessors Influence on the Success of Female CEOs

Research Aim: The purpose of the research will explore how local organisational agents and contexts can help women leaders overcome barriers and achieve success at higher levels in corporate firms. The study will focus on CEO succession events and predecessor CEOS factors and their influence on women post-succession. The research design will be developed qualitatively.

Topic 3: Analysing the Impact of Daily Psychological Power on Organisational Leaders

Research Aim: The research will use quantitative techniques to analyze power-holders relational and interdependent work contexts. The study will examine the effect of daily psychological power using the factors of abusive behaviour and perceived incivility.

Topic 4: Examining the Impact of Cultural Diversity on Interaction Process and Performance

Research Aim: Using quantitative techniques, the research will analyse the interaction process and performance factors in two groups of employees in the services industry – homogenous and culturally diverse. The effectiveness in operation and arrangements will be examined.

Topic 5: Analyzing the Impact of ‘Voice’ and ‘Silence’ on Destructive Leadership

Research Aim: The research will examine the limited and biased view of silence in management literature. The study will also analyse the impact of silence in an organisation in terms of a functional value using quantitative research techniques. Furthermore, how silence in organisations can be used as a strategic response will be discussed.

Topic 6: Examining the Relationship between Productivity, Management Practices, and Employee Ability in the UK Setting

Research Aim: Using quantitative techniques, the study will analyse a relationship between productivity, management practices, and employee ability using data from management practices surveys and employees’ longitudinal earnings records.

Topic 7: Analysing the Factors that Impact International Differences in Gender Pay Gap

Research Aim: The research will use quantitative techniques to analyse microdata from various countries between 1980 and 2010. The study will use the factors of wage structures, net supply, wage compression, collective bargaining coverage, and unionised wage setting to identify the lower gender pay gap internationally.

Topic 8: The Impact of Psychosocial Hazards on Workplace Risk Management

Research Aim: The study will investigate workplace risk management practices in industry sectors with a high risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and mental health disorders (MHDs) and the extent to which they may rise from psychosocial hazards. The research will be conducted using qualitative research techniques.

Strategic Management and Organisational Behavior Dissertation Topics

Strategic management and organisational behaviour can be described as the actions a firm takes to achieve its business objectives primarily derived from competitive markets’ dynamic behaviour. Following are some interesting dissertation topics under this field of study;

Topic 1: The Impact of Organisational Goals on Organisation Behavior

Research Aim: The primary focus of this research will be to combine factors from the theory of action, phases and self-determination theory to develop a motivational model that will explain the relationship between organisational goals setting process that lead to organisational behaviour. The research will be conducted using mixed methods of research techniques.

Topic 2: Integrating the Principles of Strategic Human Capital and Strategic Human Resource Management to Improve Organisational Performance

Topic 3: comparing the impact of family and non-family firm goals on strategy, family and organisational behavior.

Research Aim: This research will analyse the differences between family and non-family business goals and their impact on how businesses develop strategies. Also, the research will assess how these developed strategies would affect family and organisational behaviour. This research will use quantitative research techniques.

Topic 4: Analyzing the Effect of Strategy, Innovation, Networks and Complexity on Organisational Adaptability – The Mediating Effect of Leadership

Research Aim: The current study will use empirical analysis to examine the effects of strategy, innovation, networks, and complexity of organisational adaptability using leadership as a mediation factor.

Topic 5: Examining the Effect of Appointment of a Racial Minority Female CEO on White Male Top Manager Intrapsychic and Behavioral Responses

Research Aim: This research will examine white male managers’ behavioural responses to a female racial minority CEO’s appointment. The behaviour that the research will analyse is the amount of help that the white male top manager provides to their fellow executives. The research will be conducted using quantitative techniques.

Topic 6: Analysis of the Effectiveness of an Affect-Based Model to Portray Recipients Responses to Organisational Change Events

Research Aim: The study will use the Affect-Based Model developed by Oreg et al. (2016) to analyse if it is useful in documenting and portraying the recipient responses to organisational change events. The research will use factors of valence and activation to assess the effectiveness of the model. The study will be conducted using quantitative techniques.

Topic 7: Evaluating the Relationship between the personality of a CEO and Employee Motivation

Research Aim: This research will investigate the relationship between a CEO’s personality and employee motivation. The core of this study will be to assess whether a CEO’s character possesses the power to influence employee motivation or not. Case studies from various companies will be used in this study.

Topic 8: Assessing the Role of Managers in Bringing and Implementing Technological Change in an Organisation

Research Aim: This research will focus on how managers implement technological change in their organisations. Change management is challenging as not all employees are open to accepting change. This research will focus on various ways through which managers successfully implement technological change in their companies.

Topic 9: An Analysis of Organisational Change Management: Why Employees Resist Change?

Research Aim: This research will focus on why employees resist change in organisations, i.e., why employees dislike change. Different causes and factors will be discussed in this study, and the research will conclude why employees do not wholeheartedly accept the change.

Knowledge Management Dissertation Topics

The importance of knowledge management for organisations can’t be understated because this aspect of management enhances the workforce’s capabilities and overall productivity. It leads to a competitive advantage and provides the basis for differentiating an organisation from its competitors. Some interesting dissertation topics under this field are;

Topic 1: Examining the Impact of Enterprise Social Networking Systems (ESNS) on Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning

Research Aim: The research will investigate the effect of ESNS on knowledge management processes and organisational learning. The research will use knowledge creation and sharing to play the mediating role in analysing the proposed relationship. The proposed study will use empirical research methods.

Topic 2: A Review of Knowledge Management Research

Research Aim: The research paper will use a systematic literature review technique for the proposed study. The research will review the last twenty years of knowledge management literature to assess the presence of bias in explaining knowledge integration over research by exploring knowledge differentiation processes.

Topic 3: The Impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on Innovation and Knowledge Management Capacity

Research Aim: The purpose of this research will be to investigate the plausible relationship between knowledge management systems, open innovation, knowledge management capacity, and innovation capacity in firms. The research will be conducted using empirical techniques to draw reliable conclusions.

Topic 4: The Impact of Strategic Knowledge Management on MNC and their Subsidiaries Performance

Research Aim: The research will develop a model to test the possibility of a relationship between strategic knowledge management (SKM) processes and organisation performance compared between multinational companies and their subsidiaries. The research will also analyse the impact of relational context on knowledge creation and transfer.

Topic 5: Analyzing the Relationship between Knowledge Management Practices and Knowledge Worker Performance - The Mediating Role of Organisational Commitment

Research Aim: The study will analyse the role of knowledge management practices to address the issues of insufficient organisational commitment and knowledge workers’ performance in the UK’s public sectors. The proposed study will use quantitative research techniques to fulfil its aim and objectives.

Topic 6: The Relationship between Knowledge Management Processes and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Private Business Schools in the UK

Research Aim: The proposed research will explore the impact of knowledge management processes on sustainable completive advantages by using knowledge-based view (KBV) and resource-based view (RBV) as mediators in the relationship. The research will be conducted using quantitative techniques of data collection (i.e. questionnaire) and analysis (i.e. structural equation modelling).

Topic 7: The Impact of Strategic Knowledge Management on Manufacturing Firm’s Performance

Research Aim: The purpose of the study will be to empirically investigate the relationship between the availability and use of IT solutions for strategic knowledge management and a manufacturing firm’s performance, which will be measured in unit production. The research will use the resource-based view and the knowledge-based theory to develop a conceptual framework to analyze this relationship’s effect.

Topic 8: Evaluating how Knowledge Management Impacts Company Performance: A Case Study of Sainsbury

Research Aim: This research will discuss the basic concepts of knowledge management. The study will also discuss the impact knowledge management has on a company’s performance, i.e. how it helps companies achieve their goals. The main focus of this research work will be on Sainsbury’s knowledge management framework.

Topic 9: Knowledge Management as a Core Competency? Evaluating the Application and Benefits of Knowledge Management

Research Aim: This research will uncover how companies utilise knowledge management as their core competency and how it benefits their business operations. This study’s main focus will be on applying the various concepts of knowledge management and their implication for businesses.

Topic 10: Exploring the Managerial Concerns and Issues in Knowledge Management and Their Impact on Organisations

Research Aim: This research will explore the managerial concerns and issues related to knowledge management. The study will also focus on assessing the impact of these issues on businesses and how they can influence day-to-day operations. This will be an evidence-based study where evidence from different companies and various situations will be evaluated.

Leadership and Management Information System Dissertation Topics

Leadership drives the organisational agenda and is regarded as one of the most influential factors in streamlining organisations’ processes. Good leadership results in better performance of any organisation because it gives direction to the business activities under the market conditions and requirements.

Similarly, management information systems are pivotal to any organisation’s success and successfully implementing them can benefit the organisation in many ways. Following are some dissertation topics under the subject of leadership and management information systems;

Topic 1: The Role of Information Systems (IS) in Enterprise Architecture and its Impact on Business Performance

Research Aim: This study will examine the relationship between IS Enterprise Architecture and business performance using technical alignment and IS capabilities mediators. This research will be conducted using quantitative techniques to fulfil its aim.

Topic 2: Exploring The Relationship between Ethical Leadership and Employee Knowledge Sharing

Research Aim: This research will use social learning theories and self-determination to investigate the relationship between ethical learning and employee knowledge sharing. The study will be conducted using empirical research techniques.

Topic 3: Analysing the Impact of Relationship Leadership and Social Alignment on Information Security Systems Effectiveness in Private Organisations

Research Aim: This research will use social capital theory as its theoretical foundation to explore the impact of relational leadership on social alignment between business and IT executives. The relational model will study the factors of integrated knowledge, information security system effectiveness, and organisational performance. This research will use empirical techniques.

Topic 4: Examining the Relationship between Operating Room (OR) Leadership and Operating Staff Performance

Research Aim: This research will analyse the relationship between Operating Room leadership and operating staff performance. This will be done using emotional intelligence and collaboration variables to assess staff performance, using recovery numbers. The relationship will also be examined through the mediating role of leadership principles. The data will be collected and assessed using quantitative research techniques.

Topic 5: The Role of Transformational Leadership as a Mediating Variable in the DeLone and McLean Information Success Model.

Research Aim: The research will use the DeLone and McLean Information Success Model to analyse if productivity software implemented in an organisation can improve its performance. However, the research will also evaluate the model and propose modifications to include transformational leadership as a mediating factor in the information success model. The research will be quantitative in nature.

Topic 6: Assessing the Role of Leadership in an Organisation to Help Adopt Advanced Technological Systems

Research Aim: This research will assess the role of leadership in an organisation to help companies realise the importance of innovative, technologically advanced systems. Many companies today are still naive to the ever more important role of technology. Thus this research will aim to help companies adopt innovative technological systems through leadership. The research will be evidence-based in nature.

Topic 7: Evaluating How Changing Business Leadership Impacts Technological Organisational Performance

Research Aim: Changing leadership in organisations can prove a disaster if not handled properly. The transition process is extremely challenging, and companies should have the capability to handle this phase. This research will explore how their decision to change leadership impacts technological and organisational performance and how to optimise the process. This research will be quantitative in nature.

Topic 8: Can Information Systems in Organisations Be Considered a Competitive Advantage?

Research Aim: Information systems, if implemented successfully, benefit organisations immensely. The impact that an information system has and its results help companies stay ahead of their competitors. This research will assess how companies can turn their information systems into a competitive advantage, and most importantly, whether they or not information systems should be considered a competitive advantage.

Topic 9: Understanding the Leadership Challenges of Implementing and Managing an Advanced Information System in an Organisation

Research Aim: This research will help explain the challenges that managers and the entire leadership of an organisation face when implementing an advanced information system. Bringing a change in a company is challenging, and throw in a technology to implement, the process becomes even more challenging. This study will explore in detail all related challenges through quantitative research.

Topic 10: Do all Business Processes in an Organisation need Information System Management?

Research Aim: It is often argued that not all business processes require information systems. However, when talking about today’s world and the technological advancements taking place, it is recommended that business processes in organisations adopt the technology. This research will be a comparative analysis of whether companies are successful and profitable with information systems or without them.

Also Read: Business Dissertation Topics

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Organisational Culture and International Business Dissertation Topics

Organisational culture shapes the work ethics and helps in defining the professional image of organisations. Organisational culture plays a huge role in international business.

Organisations that adopt the country’s culture they are operating in are known to run their operations more successfully. The following topics are related to organisational culture and international business and help students choose an appropriate topic according to their interests.

Topic 1: The Impact of Organisational Culture of Collaborative Networks Influence on IT Governance Performance in Large Enterprises

Research Aim: This research will explore the influence of collaborative networks’ organisational culture on IT governance performance. The study will use a case study to analyse multinationals as they have a wide working network. The purpose of the research will be to determine whether or not organisational culture helps businesses effectively use IT in business operations. The research will be conducted using mixed methods research.

Topic 2: Analysing the Relationship between Supervisor’s Job insecurity and Subordinates’ Work Engagement

Research Aim: The purpose of this research is two-fold. The research will analyse the relationship between the supervisor’s job insecurity and subordinates’ work engagement using a mediator and a moderator. The research will first examine the mediating role of subordinate’s pro-social voice between supervisor job insecurity and subordinates’ work engagement. Next, the research will examine the moderating role of organisational culture between the supervisor’s job insecurity and sub-ordinates pro-social voice. The research will be conducted through quantitative techniques.

Topic 3: Analysing the Impact of Individual Perception of Organisational Culture on the Learning Transfer Environment

Research Aim: The research will be conducted empirically to assess the relationship between culture (as perceived by employees) and the work environment based learning factors (i.e. learning transfer environment [LTE]) in the organisation). LTE is measured using feedback and coaching factors that received resistance or openness to chance, personal outcomes, and supervisor and peer support.

Topic 4: The Role of Organisational Culture on the Development of Psychological Distress in the Workplace

Research Aim: The purpose of the study will be to analyse how organisational culture may cause the symptoms of psychological distress in the workforce. The study will use corporate culture and work organisation conditions as base factors to relate them to employees’ psychological distress. The research will be conducted using quantitative research techniques.

Topic 5: Analysing the Role of Leadership and Organisational Culture

Research Aim: The research will examine the relationship between organisational culture, leadership and employee outcomes. The paper will focus on the mediator of leadership processes and their impact on the relationship between culture and employee outcomes. The study will be conducted using quantitative research techniques.

Topic 6: The Role and Relationships among Strategic Orientations, Cultural Intelligence, International Diversification and Performance of Organisations

Research Aim: The research will aim to understand the drivers of the international expansion of globalised firms. The research will explore the relationship between strategic orientations and cultural intelligence as drivers and international diversification and firm performance. Strategic orientations used in the study include international market orientation (IMO) and entrepreneurial orientation (IEO). The study will be conducted using quantitative research techniques.

Topic 7: Dynamics of Corruption Culture Distance to Core Values

Research Aim: The research will examine how corporate bribery is impacted by cultural distance between multinational enterprises (MNEs) in their home and host countries. The research will also analyse the organisational distance to core value between MNE’s entry into the host country and its headquarters. The research will use empirical data collection and analysis techniques.

Topic 8: Examining Organisational Export Performance by International Business Competencies

Research Aim: The study aims to explore the relationship between international business competencies and export performance. The research will also analyse export performance by singular analysis or combined analysis of the competencies. The research will be conducted using empirical data.

Topic 9: Does Organisational Culture Influence the Leadership Type that a Company Should Adopt?

Research Aim: This research will argue whether companies should hire leaders concerning their culture or not. Organisational culture and leadership are interconnected. Thus companies that do not operate according to their culture struggle to grow exponentially. This research will aim to focus on the possible relationship between leadership and organisational culture. The research will be evidence-based.

Topic 10: Organisational Culture and International Business Competition: Are they Interrelated?

Research Aim: Organisational culture plays a huge role in making a company competitive internationally. When a business’s culture is motivating to all employees and identifies the right culture for its employees, there is every likelihood of rapid growth for both the company and the employees. The research will explore how the two concepts are interrelated.

Important Notes:

As a management student looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment with existing management theories – i.e., to add value and interest to your research topic.

The management field is vast and interrelated to many other academic disciplines like operations management , business , business administration , MBA , human resource management and more. That is why creating a management dissertation topic that is particular, sound, and actually solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field is imperative.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic based on your entire research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your topic wrong; your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in writing your dissertation , as you may end up in the cycle of rejection at the initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

Keeping our advice in mind while developing a research topic will allow you to pick one of the best management dissertation topics that fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper and adds to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalizing your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and be practically implemented. Please look at some of our sample management dissertation topics to get an idea for your own dissertation.

How to Structure your Management Dissertation

A well-structured dissertation can help students to achieve a high overall academic grade.

• A Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Declaration
• Abstract: A summary of the research completed
• Table of Contents
• Introduction : This chapter includes the project rationale, research background, key research aims and objectives, and the research problems. An outline of the structure of a dissertation can also be added to this chapter.
• Literature Review : This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analysing published and unpublished literature on the chosen research topic to address research questions . The purpose is to highlight and discuss the selected research area’s relative weaknesses and strengths while identifying research gaps. Break down the topic and key terms that can positively impact your dissertation and your tutor.
• Methodology : The data collection and analysis methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter, which usually includes research design , research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and data analysis strategy .
• Findings and Analysis : Findings of the research are analysed in detail under the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include graphs, charts, and tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
• Discussion and Conclusion : The researcher presents his interpretation of results in this chapter and states whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section is establishing the link between the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regards to implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
• References : Make sure to complete this by your University’s requirements
• Bibliography
• Appendices : Any additional information, diagrams, and graphs used to complete the dissertation but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How to find dissertation topics about management.

To find management dissertation topics:

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• Explore industry trends and innovations.
• Analyze organizational behavior or strategies.
• Examine cross-cultural management issues.
• Investigate sustainability and ethics.
• Consult academic journals and experts.

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118 Crisis Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best crisis management topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 interesting topics to write about crisis management, 📝 good research topics about crisis management, 👍 simple & easy crisis management essay titles, ❓ crisis management questions.

• Crisis Management: Nissan Company and the 2011 Earthquake Expand on the points made in the case to identify the potential costs and benefits of these actions. The sharing of information was quite beneficial to Nissan in its response to the disaster.
• AirAsia: Crisis Management Case Study The crash was the first to be recorded in the eighteen years of operation of AirAsia. It was described as the third worst plane crash in the year 2014.
• Effective Communication as a Crisis Management Strategy The company was in a dilemma of which strategy to adopt to ensure that the crisis was properly dealt with without affecting the reputation and the sale of its product, which was earning the company […]
• Critical Analysis of Crisis Management Theory and Frameworks If the event of September 11, 2001 is recalled then one would realize that the events of September 11, 2001 were an overwhelming reminder of the need to be prepared for crises.
• The Role of Social Media in Aviation Crisis Management Therefore, this paper considers the general role that social media might play in a crisis or emergency in the airline industry and describes methods that could be used to deal with the potential adverse outcomes […]
• Tesco Plc’s Crisis & Communication Management The company, Tesco Plc, must prioritise its activities, decision, and other factors to resolve the effects of the current economic depression on the company with the resolve to avoid such pitfalls.
• Public Relations and Crisis Management Link The significance of developing a CMP lies in the fact that it aids in the process of collecting the necessary information to deal with the crisis.
• Tourism Industry: Emergency and Crisis Management The technological and scientific breakthrough that has been witnessed over the past several decades has created the foil for the rapid development of the tourism industry. What are the primary causes of emergencies and crises […]
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IvyPanda. (2023, November 9). 118 Crisis Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crisis-management-essay-topics/

"118 Crisis Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 9 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crisis-management-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . 2023. "118 Crisis Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." November 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crisis-management-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "118 Crisis Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." November 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crisis-management-essay-topics/.

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IvyPanda . "118 Crisis Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." November 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crisis-management-essay-topics/.

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Research: How Family Motivates People to Do Their Best Work

• Lauren C. Howe
• Jochen I. Menges

Work and family are often seen as competing for an employee’s time and energy — but that’s the wrong way to think about it.

Family is one of the most important things in most people’s lives, across cultures and geographies. Yet, the idea that family can be motivational at work has been overlooked. Instead, in the past, family has been mostly seen as competing with work for an employee’s finite resources, like their time and energy. A large body of research on work-family conflict drew on this notion and illustrated how work and family domains create conflicting demands and interfere with one another. And yet, there’s another growing body of research that finds that family can play a role in motivation at work, boosting employees’ performance and inspiring them to do their best. This article focuses on that body of research, and discusses how organizations that embrace family at work stand to benefit from attracting and retaining employees who are highly motivated and engaged.

Tennis star Serena Williams recently unveiled her next endeavor after leaving the courts behind: her new brand, Wyn Beauty. Like the decision to retire from tennis to focus on family, Williams’ choice to focus on beauty is a family affair. As Williams put it: “Motherhood has allowed me to look at beauty through the eyes of my daughter, Olympia. We’re always experimenting with makeup together, and I think about how these moments will be part of both of our beauty journeys… I also hope my daughters see how many different passions I have — from tennis to beauty — and learn that they can lead dynamic careers and lives across their many interests.”

• Lauren C. Howe is an Associate Professor in Management at the University of Zurich. As a member of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work , she focuses on how human aspects, such as mindsets, socioemotional skills, and social relationships play a role in the changing world of work.
• Jochen I. Menges is a Professor of Leadership and Human Resource Management at the University of Zurich, the Director of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work, and a co-founder of the Global HR Valley®, a growing people innovation ecosystem. He studies how people can feel and do their best at work, today and tomorrow. Jochen is also a faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School.

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Arthur Brooks.

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How leaders find happiness — and teach it

Symposium examines science, outlines opportunities to tackle mental health crisis

Lori Shridhare

Harvard Correspondent

Arthur Brooks likes to give students in his popular Harvard Business School class on happiness a quiz: Why are you alive? For what would you be willing to die?

“I tell students that the way to pass the following quiz is to have answers; the way to fail the following quiz is to not have answers. I’m not going to tell you what the right answers are. They’re your answers,” said Brooks, professor of management practice at HBS, as he opened a recent symposium on happiness and leadership.

Brooks’ query on core values reflects widely accepted happiness research, which finds that meaning and purpose are hallmarks of a happy life, one filled with a sense of well-being. The principle dates back to Aristotle’s reference to eudaimonia, or having a “good spirit,” and was one of the theories discussed at the event hosted by Brooks’ Leadership and Happiness Laboratory .

The June 20-21 symposium drew 200 in-person attendees, with another 1,000 online, and included administrators, business leaders, military personnel, elected officials, and students. The purpose was as direct as the mission of the lab, which “believes that all great leaders should be happiness teachers.”

Brooks, who is also the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, said many of the speakers had inspired and mentored him in his own work, notably psychologist Martin Seligman , a pioneer in the field of positive psychology.

Another influential figure was Tal Ben-Shahar ’96, Ph.D. ’04, a co-founder of the Happiness Studies Academy, who taught two of the largest classes in Harvard’s history, Positive Psychology and The Psychology of Leadership. Ben-Shahar discussed the genesis of developing a curriculum on happiness and his work designing the first master’s degree in happiness science for Centenary University in 2022.

The popularity of such university courses, which have been made freely available through platforms such as HarvardX and Coursera, has skyrocketed in recent years, as symposium speaker Laurie Santos ’97, A.M. ’01, Ph.D. ’03, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale, discovered. Her course on happiness, launched in 2018, became the university’s most popular course in more than 300 years, with almost one in four students at Yale enrolled. The goal of her classes is to reduce unhappiness and increase happiness, which was inspired during her time as Stillman Head of College.

In this role, Santos learned firsthand about mental health issues plaguing college students, including academic stress, depression, anxiety, and suicidality. Yale students reported that they “put on a happy persona to hold things in until they crack and break” and that “it takes a real crisis for us to actually admit something is wrong,” Santos said.

Debunking the myth that happiness science is about enforced positivity is one of the goals of her course. “I think students expect all positive psychology to be akin to what they these days call ‘toxic positivity’ — the idea of ‘happy all the time, stay positive, think happy thoughts.’ I think this is what a lot of Yale students fall prey to unnecessarily.”

Other speakers included Lisa Miller , whose work and research as a Columbia psychology and education professor focuses on the value of a spiritual life. She detailed findings on the role of spirituality as protective against a number of deleterious conditions: 80 percent protective against substance dependence and abuse, 60 percent against major depressive disorder, and 50 percent to 80 percent against suicidality.

Financially, those who make $75,000-$96,000 in the U.S. are happiest, but “once you get beyond having your basic needs met, you can make millions, and you’re not much happier.” Robert Waldinger, Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor Robert Waldinger , who directs the 86-year-old Harvard Study of Adult Development , shared study findings that having basic needs met — food, shelter, healthcare — is critical for happiness.

Financially, those who make $75,000-$96,000 in the U.S. are happiest, but “once you get beyond having your basic needs met, you can make millions, and you’re not much happier,” he noted.

Waldinger, who is also a Zen priest, addressed the epidemic of loneliness, which impacts one in three or four people in the U.S. and other developed countries, with a trend upward in developing countries as well, according to a Meta-Gallup survey.

Integrating lessons learned from Eastern spiritual traditions and Western scholarship in leadership, Hitendra Wadhwa , professor of practice at Columbia Business School, spoke about the importance of accessing one’s core self.

Wadhwa, guided by the teachings of Yogananda , the Indian mystic and spiritual teacher, emphasized that the wisdom of good leadership can be found from within.

“Your inner core is that space within you from where your best self arises, where your highest potential resides,” he said. “When you’re at your core, you’re beyond ego, beyond attachment, insecurities — and you get your life’s most beautiful work done.”

The symposium’s final presentation turned toward criticism of the discourse on happiness, highlighting research that investigates the limits of happiness measurements and definitions as outlined in positive psychology.

Owen Flanagan , the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Duke University, outlined other ways for measuring happiness, including objective well-being, pointing to many important leaders who lived lives of service and meaning that were not necessarily focused on happiness.

“Happiness can’t be everything,” he said. “It’s not the summum bonum ,” or singular good.

Flanagan pointed to luminaries and change leaders such as Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. He noted: “The first thing that would come to our minds is not that they were happy; it’s that they were good people. They lived really important, purposeful, and meaningful lives.”

And when it comes to public policy, Flanagan said the focus “is on human rights and sustainable development, so that everyone can live the kind of life Aristotle thought was possible for us: a life in which we can discover our talents — and then you can worry about other things, such as people’s psychological states.”

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Trial of cell-based therapy for high-risk lymphoma leads to FDA breakthrough designation

In an early Stanford Medicine study, CAR-T cell therapy helps some with intractable lymphoma, but those who relapse have few options. Modifying the therapy’s molecular target improved response.

July 9, 2024 - By Krista Conger

T cell attacking a cancer cell. Meletios Verras/Shutterstock.com 

CAR-T cell therapy, which targets a specific protein on the surface of cancer cells, causes tumors to shrink or disappear in about half of patients with large B-cell lymphoma who haven’t experienced improvement with chemotherapy treatments.

But if this CAR-T treatment fails, or the cancer returns yet again — as happens in approximately half of people — the prognosis is dire. The median survival time after relapse is about six months.

Now, a phase 1 clinical trial at Stanford Medicine has found that a new CAR-T cell therapy that targets a different protein on the surface of the cancer cells significantly improved these patients’ outcomes: Over half of 38 people enrolled in the trial — 37 of whom had already relapsed from the original CAR-T therapy — experienced a complete response of their cancers. More than half of all treated patients lived at least two years after treatment.

“On average, the patients enrolled in this trial had received four previous lines of therapy,” said assistant professor of medicine and the trial’s principal investigator Matthew Frank , MD, PhD. “These patients are out of likely curative options, and they are scared. Half of them will die within five to six months. But in this trial, we saw a very high rate of durable complete responses, meaning their cancers became undetectable.”

‘Breakthrough therapy’

The original CAR-T therapy, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2017, involves removing immune cells from the patient and inserting a gene to help the cells attack a protein called CD19 on the surface of the lymphoma cells. The new version of the therapy instead targets a molecule called CD22.

In September 2022, the FDA designated CD22-targeting CAR-T therapy for large B-cell lymphoma a Breakthrough Therapy, a move that is meant to speed the development and review of particularly promising drugs that may provide a substantial improvement over existing therapies for serious conditions. 

The study was devised and conducted entirely at Stanford Medicine.

“This trial was an example of what it means to take an idea from preclinical studies in animals all the way into the patient at an academic medical center,” said David Miklos , MD, PhD, professor of medicine and chief of bone marrow transplantation and cellular therapy. “Remarkably, the FDA — after reviewing our preliminary data — contacted us to urge us to apply for breakthrough therapy designation, rather than waiting for us to approach them. This will help us significantly as we move into larger clinical trials.”

A larger, phase 2 trial led by Frank is now ongoing at multiple sites around the country.

Miklos is the senior author of the study , which was published July 9 in The Lancet . Frank; assistant professor of medicine John Baird, MD; and postdoctoral scholar Anne Kramer , MD, PhD, are the lead authors of the research.

CAR-T cell therapy was first approved by the FDA as a treatment for relapsed or treatment-resistant diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and for children and young adults under 25 with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Matthew Frank

Six CAR-T cell therapies are now approved for several types of lymphoma, multiple myeloma and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Four of these therapies target CD19, which is found on the surface of healthy and cancerous B cells; two target another protein on the cells’ surface called B cell maturation agent.

CD22 is another protein found on the surface of mature B cells, and researchers have been eying it for some time as a possible second target for CAR-T cell therapy. That’s because, although CAR-T cell therapy targeting CD19 is typically successful, many patients relapse quickly as the cancer cells figure out how to reduce the amounts of CD19 on their surfaces or their engineered immune cells become exhausted from a prolonged attack.

Several trials have experimented with engineering CAR-T cells that recognize both CD19 and CD22 — exploring whether a double volley of attack might eliminate cancer cells before they learn how to evade the treatment.

These efforts have met with mixed success. While more people with acute lymphoblastic leukemia responded to the double-targeted CAR-T therapy, the results for people with lymphoma were more tempered. In a trial conducted at Stanford Medicine, the therapy had some efficacy but was no more effective than targeting CD19 alone. Frank, Miklos and their colleagues wondered what would happen if only CD22 were targeted.

A new target

The researchers collected immune cells called T cells from 38 patients with large B-cell lymphoma whose cancers had started growing after previous therapies including chemotherapy. All but one of the patients had also progressed after CAR-T therapy targeting CD19; the cancer cells of the one remaining patient did not express CD19 on their surfaces.

The T cells were grown and genetically engineered to target CD22 in Stanford Medicine’s Laboratory for Cell and Gene Medicine in partnership with the Center for Cancer Cell Therapy. They were then infused back into the patients from whom they were derived.

Of the 38 patients, 68% saw their cancers shrink, and 53% achieved a complete response, meaning their cancers were no longer detectable.

David Miklos

“This is not just a high response rate, but many of these remissions have been quite durable over a median of 30 months of follow-up,” Frank said. “If this holds true in larger trials, it will surpass other therapeutic option we have for these patients.” Additionally, most patients experienced minimal, manageable side effects.

The results of the trial are the first in a series of hurdles CD22-targeted CAR-T cell therapy will have to clear for it to be approved by the FDA for routine clinical use for those with intractable large B-cell lymphoma. According to Miklos, it also highlights the advantages of intertwining medicine and research.

“We conducted the preclinical studies at Stanford Medicine, translated the findings in our cell manufacturing and cancer cell therapy centers, and cared for the patients here,” Miklos said. “This pipeline allows us to leverage our research and clinical findings in an iterative way. If something is not working, we can refocus and retool our approach to pivot quickly to new approaches to help our patients.”

“It is rare for an academic medical center to attain a breakthrough designation,” Frank noted. “It’s humbling. Larger trials need to be completed, and FDA approval is not guaranteed, but this is a huge achievement for all the members of the team and a hopeful sign for patients and their caregivers.”

Researchers from Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou, Taoyuan, Taiwan and Cancer Center Amsterdam, who are currently working at Stanford, contributed to the work.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (grants 2P01CA049605-29A1, 5P30CA124435 and K08CA248968), the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the European Hematology Association, the Lymph&Co Foundation, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Miklos has consulted for Kite Pharma-Gilead, Juno Therapeutics-Celgene, Novartis, Janssen and Pharmacyclics. Research support from Kite Pharma-Gilead, Allogene, CARGOTherapeutics, Pharmacyclics, Miltenyi Biotec and Adaptive Biotechnologies.

Frank has consulted for Kite Pharma-Gilead, Adaptative Biotechnologies and CARGO Therapeutics; he has also received research support from Kite-Pharma-Gilead, AllogeneTherapeutics, Cargo Therapeutics and Adaptative Biotechnologies.

Study co-author Crystal Mackall, MD, the Earnest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor and professor of pediatrics and of medicine, is a founder of CARGO Therapeutics and holds equity in and consults for the company. CARGO holds the license for the CD22-directed CAR-T cell therapy.

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

Hope amid crisis

Psychiatry’s new frontiers

Due to widespread outages in Texas caused by Hurricane Beryl, some of our call routing systems are currently down. Please use the alternate numbers below for the following services:

University Health Services Appointment Scheduling: Book online through the MyUHS/CMHC portal . If you must phone, call 512-471-4955 and press 0 to be connected to the operator, Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

24/7 Nurse Advice Line:

Call 512-475-8351, Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. For evenings and weekends, call St. David's After Hours at 512-770-4585.

Counseling and Mental Health Center Appointment Scheduling: Call 512-475-6901.

24/7 CMHC Crisis Line: This line is unaffected and can be reached at 512-471-2255.

Counseling and Mental Health Center

Providing mental health support through assessment and referral, group and individual counseling, psychiatry, and well-being services to the students of UT Austin.

Student Services Building, 5th floor 100 West Dean Keeton Street

8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Monday - Friday

Main Line: 512-471-3515

24/7 Crisis Line: 512-471-2255

We're Here For You

We are located in the Student Services Building on the 5th floor at 100 West Dean Keeton Street.

8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday

512-471-3515

24/7 Crisis Line

If you need immediate help call 512-471-2255 (CALL) to speak with a crisis counselor anytime.

24/7 Online Support

TimelyCare is a virtual mental health and well-being platform for currently enrolled UT Austin students. It provides 24/7, on-demand non-crisis emotional support as well as health coaching and counseling.

Clinical Services

Our comprehensive services cater to a variety of needs, ensuring students feel supported and empowered.

Well-Being Resources

Empowering holistic well-being through accessible resources and innovative tools.

Supporting Others

Mental health resources for faculty, staff and parents.

How May We Help you?

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A crisis in clinical research

Affiliations.

• 1 Division of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA [email protected].
• 2 Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
• PMID: 38991727
• DOI: 10.1136/jitc-2023-008520

The clinical research pipeline is critical to ensuring continued development of novel treatments that can offer patients with cancer safe and effective options. Unfortunately, progress has slowed since the COVID-19 pandemic due to uncovered, systemic inefficiencies across critical processes. Towards initiating discussion on how to reinvigorate clinical research, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) hosted a virtual summit that characterized issues and formed potential solutions. This commentary serves to highlight the crisis facing clinical research as well as stimulate field-wide discussion on how to better serve patients into the future.

Keywords: clinical trials as topic; clinical trials, phase II as topic; clinical trials, phase III as topic; immunotherapy.

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

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Competing interests: DSH—Grant Funding to Institution: AbbVie, Adaptimmune, Adlai-Nortye, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Biomea, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Daiichi-Sankyo, Deciphera, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Endeavor, Erasca, F. Hoffmann-LaRoche, Fate Therapeutics, Genentech, Genmab, Immunogenesis, Infinity, Kyowa Kirin, Merck, Mirati, Navier, NCI-CTEP, Novartis, Numab, Pfizer, Pyramid Bio, Revolution Medicine, SeaGen, STCube, Takeda, TCR2, Turning Point Therapeutics, VM Oncology; Consulting Fees: Abbvie, Acuta, Adaptimmune, Alkermes, Alpha Insights, Amgen, Affini-T, Astellas, Aumbiosciences, Axiom, Baxter, Bayer, Boxer Capital, BridgeBio, CARSgen, CLCC, COG, COR2ed, Cowen, Ecor1, EDDC, Erasca, Exelixis, Fate Therapeutics, F.Hoffmann-La Roche, Genentech, Gennao Bio, Gilead, GLG, Group H, Guidepoint, HCW Precision Oncology, Immunogenesis, Incyte Inc, Inhibrix Inc, InduPro, Janssen, Jounce Therapeutics Inc, Liberium, MedaCorp, Medscape, Novartis, Numab, Oncologia Brasil, ORI Capital, Pfizer, Pharma Intelligence, POET Congress, Prime Oncology, Projects in Knowledge, Quanta, RAIN, Ridgeline, SeaGen, Stanford, STCube, Takeda, Tavistock, Trieza Therapeutics, Turning Point Therapeutics, WebMD, YingLing Pharma, Ziopharm; Ownership Interest Molecular Match, OncoResponse, Telperian; PL—Consulting Fees: AbbVie, GenMab, Genentech, CytomX, Takeda, SOTIO, Cybrexa, Agenus, IQVIA, TRIGR, Pfizer, ImmunoMet, Black Diamond, Glaxo-Smith Kline, QED Therapeutics, AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Shattuck, Astellas, Salarius, Silverback, MacroGenics, Kyowa Kirin Pharmaceutical Development, Kineta, Inc., Zentalis Pharmaceuticals, Molecular Templates, ABL Bio, SK Life Science, STCube Pharmaceuticals, Bayer, I-Mab, Seagen, imCheck, Relay Therapeutics, Stemline, Compass BADX, Mekanist, Mersana Therapeutics, BAKX Therapeutics, Scenic Biotech, Qualigen, Roivant Sciences, NeuroTrials, Actuate Therapeutics MS—Consulting fees: Biond, Adaptimmune, Bristol-Myers, Biontech, Simcha, Verastem, Pfizer, Innate pharma, PIO Therapeutics, Kadmon—Sanofi, Pierre-Fabre, Incyte, Alligator, Ocellaris-Lilly, Numab, Immunocore, Adagene, Kanaph, iTEOS, Genocea, Sapience, Targovax, Molecular Partners, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Gilead, Tessa, Stcube, Oncosec, Regeneron, AstraZeneca, Boston Pharmaceuticals, Dragonfly, Xilio, Normunity, Evaxion, Pliant, Sumitomo, Teva; Stock Ownership: Adaptive Biotechnologies, Amphivena, Intensity, Actym, Evolveimmune, Nextcure, Oncohost, Asher, Normunity, Johnson and Johnson, Glaxo-Smith Kline.

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In some countries, immigration accounted for all population growth between 2000 and 2020

The global population ballooned by about 1.7 billion people between 2000 and 2020. But growth was uneven around the world and, in some places, immigration played a key role.

In 14 countries and territories, in fact, immigration accounted for more than 100% of population growth during this period, meaning that populations there would have declined if not for the arrival of new immigrants.

In 17 other countries, populations did decline between 2000 and 2020. But the decreases were smaller than they otherwise would have been due to growth in these countries’ immigrant populations.

This Pew Research Center analysis examines the places globally where immigration accounted for all population growth between 2000 and 2020, or where immigration helped avoid larger population losses.

The analysis is based on changes in overall country populations and their foreign-born (immigrant) populations. Overall population change is calculated based on 2000 and 2020 population estimates in the 2022 update to the United Nations’ World Population Prospects . Total fertility rates and median ages as of 2020 also come from this publication.

Changes in immigrant populations come from the UN’s 2022 migrant stock estimates for 2000 and 2020. We subtract immigrant population change from overall population change to show how overall populations would have changed without changes in immigrant populations. Migrant stocks, as opposed to migrant flows, measure the total foreign-born population in a country, rather than only recent arrivals. The differences between migrants from 2000 to 2020 are therefore due not only to new immigration, but also due to deaths and departures of earlier immigrants.

The places where populations grew only through immigration between 2000 and 2020 – and those where population losses were mitigated by immigration – are geographically scattered. What they tend to have in common is low fertility rates and aging populations. The only way a country’s population can increase, aside from having more births than deaths, is through immigration.

Population decline can be a challenge for countries experiencing it. When deaths and emigration outnumber births and immigration, countries are left with aging populations and dwindling numbers of working-age people to fill out the labor force and support older adults.

Where immigration staved off population losses

The places where immigration accounted for all population growth between 2000 and 2020 range from large countries in Europe to small island nations in the South Pacific.

Germany’s population grew by 1.7 million people between 2000 and 2020. But it would have shrunk by more than 5 million people without the arrival of new immigrants. During these years, many new immigrants arrived in Germany from Poland, Syria, Kazakhstan and Romania. Women in Germany have 1.5 children on average – far below the fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman needed for each generation to replace itself – and half of people in Germany are older than 45.

Italy’s population grew by 2.7 million people between 2000 and 2020. However, if not for immigration from places like Romania, Ukraine and Albania, Italy’s population would have declined by 1.6 million people. Italy’s fertility rate is only 1.3 children per woman and its median age is 46.

In the Czech Republic , the overall population grew by 300,000 in 20 years, but immigrants again accounted for all growth. Without new immigrants – many of whom came from other European countries – the Czech population would have shrunk by more than 20,000. As of 2020, women in the Czech Republic had an average of 1.7 children, while the country’s median age was 42.

Portugal’s population grew modestly between 2000 and 2020 – by fewer than 40,000 people – but it would have shrunk by more than 310,000 people without new immigrant arrivals. Many migrants to Portugal were born in Angola, Brazil or France. Portugal’s fertility rate is 1.4 and its median age is 45.

Apart from Europe, immigration also played an important role in avoiding population losses elsewhere in the world.

The population of the United Arab Emirates grew by 6.1 million people between 2000 and 2020 but would have declined by 210,000 without new immigrants. Many of the UAE’s new arrivals were from South Asian countries or Egypt. The average woman in the UAE has 1.5 children, while the country’s median age is 32.

Several smaller countries and territories were also spared population decline only through the arrival of new immigrants. Aruba, the Cook Islands, Curacao, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Sint Maarten and Tokelau were all in this category.

Where immigration mitigated population losses

In 17 other countries and territories, populations declined between 2000 and 2020 but would have dropped even more – in some cases much more – without growth in their immigrant populations.

In Japan , fertility rates have plummeted to an average of only 1.3 children per woman and the median age is now 48. More people are dying each year than are being born, and Japan’s population declined by over 1.1 million people between 2000 and 2020. However, Japan’s population would have fallen by twice as much (2.2 million people) during this period if not for the arrival of new immigrants. During these years, the foreign-born population of Japan grew from 1.7 million to 2.8 million. Many immigrants to Japan have come from China, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Romania’s population shrank by about 2.5 million between 2000 and2020 but would have declined by more than 3 million if not for new immigrants, many of whom are from Moldova. Romania has a fertility rate of 1.7 and a median age of 42.

Greece’s population declined by about 500,000 people between 2000 and 2020. But it would have decreased by 700,000 if not for an increase in the country’s foreign-born population. Similarly, Hungary’s population shrank by 440,000 – but would have fallen by 730,000 without new immigrants. Both countries have low fertility rates and older populations.

In other countries where populations declined, immigrant populations did not increase between 2000 and 2020. This can happen when deaths and departures among earlier immigrants outnumber new immigrant arrivals.

Causes and consequences of population decline

Around the world, women are having fewer children. Women have increasingly put off or forgone childbearing as their average years of education increase, rates of workforce participation climb, and reliable family planning methods become more accessible.

Globally, the total fertility rate – the number of children born to an average woman – declined from 2.7 to 2.3 between 2000 and 2020, a sizable drop in only two decades. It takes an average of about 2.1 children per woman for each generation to replace itself. Naturally, populations age as birth rates dwindle. During these years, the world’s median age increased from 25 to 30.

While fertility is declining all over the world, the impact on population change is uneven. Women still have an average of more than six children in a few African countries, while the average woman in South Korea and Singapore now has less than one child. Median ages, meanwhile, range from 14 in Niger to older than 50 in Monaco and the Vatican.

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Stephanie Kramer is a senior researcher focusing on religion at Pew Research Center .

Fast facts on how Greeks see migrants as Greece-Turkey border crisis deepens

Immigration concerns fall in western europe, but most see need for newcomers to integrate into society, a majority of europeans favor taking in refugees, but most disapprove of eu’s handling of the issue, how americans, mexicans see each other differs for those closer to border, mexican views of the u.s. turn sharply negative, most popular.

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Study: Weaker ocean circulation could enhance CO2 buildup in the atmosphere

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As climate change advances, the ocean’s overturning circulation is predicted to weaken substantially. With such a slowdown, scientists estimate the ocean will pull down less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, a slower circulation should also dredge up less carbon from the deep ocean that would otherwise be released back into the atmosphere. On balance, the ocean should maintain its role in reducing carbon emissions from the atmosphere, if at a slower pace.

However, a new study by an MIT researcher finds that scientists may have to rethink the relationship between the ocean’s circulation and its long-term capacity to store carbon. As the ocean gets weaker, it could release more carbon from the deep ocean into the atmosphere instead.

The reason has to do with a previously uncharacterized feedback between the ocean’s available iron, upwelling carbon and nutrients, surface microorganisms, and a little-known class of molecules known generally as “ligands.” When the ocean circulates more slowly, all these players interact in a self-perpetuating cycle that ultimately increases the amount of carbon that the ocean outgases back to the atmosphere.

“By isolating the impact of this feedback, we see a fundamentally different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric carbon levels, with implications for the climate,” says study author Jonathan Lauderdale, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “What we thought is going on in the ocean is completely overturned.”

Lauderdale says the findings show that “we can’t count on the ocean to store carbon in the deep ocean in response to future changes in circulation. We must be proactive in cutting emissions now, rather than relying on these natural processes to buy us time to mitigate climate change.”

His study appears today in the journal Nature Communications .

In 2020, Lauderdale led a  study that explored ocean nutrients, marine organisms, and iron, and how their interactions influence the growth of phytoplankton around the world. Phytoplankton are microscopic, plant-like organisms that live on the ocean surface and consume a diet of carbon and nutrients that upwell from the deep ocean and iron that drifts in from desert dust.

The more phytoplankton that can grow, the more carbon dioxide they can absorb from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, and this plays a large role in the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon.

For the 2020 study, the team developed a simple “box” model, representing conditions in different parts of the ocean as general boxes, each with a different balance of nutrients, iron, and ligands — organic molecules that are thought to be byproducts of phytoplankton. The team modeled a general flow between the boxes to represent the ocean’s larger circulation — the way seawater sinks, then is buoyed back up to the surface in different parts of the world.

This modeling revealed that, even if scientists were to “seed” the oceans with extra iron, that iron wouldn’t have much of an effect on global phytoplankton growth. The reason was due to a limit set by ligands. It turns out that, if left on its own, iron is insoluble in the ocean and therefore unavailable to phytoplankton. Iron only becomes soluble at “useful” levels when linked with ligands, which keep iron in a form that plankton can consume. Lauderdale found that adding iron to one ocean region to consume additional nutrients robs other regions of nutrients that phytoplankton there need to grow. This lowers the production of ligands and the supply of iron back to the original ocean region, limiting the amount of extra carbon that would be taken up from the atmosphere.

Unexpected switch

Once the team published their study, Lauderdale worked the box model into a form that he could make publicly accessible, including ocean and atmosphere carbon exchange and extending the boxes to represent more diverse environments, such as conditions similar to the Pacific, the North Atlantic, and the Southern Ocean. In the process, he tested other interactions within the model, including the effect of varying ocean circulation.

He ran the model with different circulation strengths, expecting to see less atmospheric carbon dioxide with weaker ocean overturning — a relationship that previous studies have supported, dating back to the 1980s. But what he found instead was a clear and opposite trend: The weaker the ocean’s circulation, the more CO 2 built up in the atmosphere.

“I thought there was some mistake,” Lauderdale recalls. “Why were atmospheric carbon levels trending the wrong way?”

When he checked the model, he found that the parameter describing ocean ligands had been left “on” as a variable. In other words, the model was calculating ligand concentrations as changing from one ocean region to another.

On a hunch, Lauderdale turned this parameter “off,” which set ligand concentrations as constant in every modeled ocean environment, an assumption that many ocean models typically make. That one change reversed the trend, back to the assumed relationship: A weaker circulation led to reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide. But which trend was closer to the truth?

Lauderdale looked to the scant available data on ocean ligands to see whether their concentrations were more constant or variable in the actual ocean. He found confirmation in GEOTRACES, an international study that coordinates measurements of trace elements and isotopes across the world’s oceans, that scientists can use to compare concentrations from region to region. Indeed, the molecules’ concentrations varied. If ligand concentrations do change from one region to another, then his surprise new result was likely representative of the real ocean: A weaker circulation leads to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“It’s this one weird trick that changed everything,” Lauderdale says. “The ligand switch has revealed this completely different relationship between ocean circulation and atmospheric CO 2 that we thought we understood pretty well.”

To see what might explain the overturned trend, Lauderdale analyzed biological activity and carbon, nutrient, iron, and ligand concentrations from the ocean model under different circulation strengths, comparing scenarios where ligands were variable or constant across the various boxes.

This revealed a new feedback: The weaker the ocean’s circulation, the less carbon and nutrients the ocean pulls up from the deep. Any phytoplankton at the surface would then have fewer resources to grow and would produce fewer byproducts (including ligands) as a result. With fewer ligands available, less iron at the surface would be usable, further reducing the phytoplankton population. There would then be fewer phytoplankton available to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and consume upwelled carbon from the deep ocean.

“My work shows that we need to look more carefully at how ocean biology can affect the climate,” Lauderdale points out. “Some climate models predict a 30 percent slowdown in the ocean circulation due to melting ice sheets, particularly around Antarctica. This huge slowdown in overturning circulation could actually be a big problem: In addition to a host of other climate issues, not only would the ocean take up less anthropogenic CO 2 from the atmosphere, but that could be amplified by a net outgassing of deep ocean carbon, leading to an unanticipated increase in atmospheric CO 2 and unexpected further climate warming.” 

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