Emmanuel Mogaji

Purpose: This study aims to examine how inclusive transport provision is sustained within structurally constrained service ecosystems. Focusing on commuters with disabilities in Nigeria, it explores how strengths are mobilised across multiple actors under limited formal institutional support to sustain access and dignity. Design/methodology/approach: The study draws on qualitative interviews with commuters with disabilities, informal transport providers and subject matter experts. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis and abductive logic to enable iterative engagement between empirical insights and service ecosystem and strength-based perspectives. Findings: Inclusion is sustained through community-driven resilience, a multi-actor, ecosystem-level process of resource mobilisation, enacted through cultural–moral activation and relational service adaptation. Cultural and moral expectations provide normative coordination, while trust, proximity and familiarity enable relational coordination and flexible service adaptation. These mechanisms enable ecosystem self-adjustment, although inclusion remains uneven and contingent. Research limitations/implications: The study extends strength-based approaches from individual capabilities to ecosystem-level strength mobilisation and advances service ecosystem research by explaining how self-adjustment occurs through informal coordination without resolving underlying structural constraints. It demonstrates how informal institutional arrangements can support service continuity where formal arrangements are weak. Practical implications: Inclusive mobility interventions should build on community strengths while strengthening accessible, consistent, rights-based formal provision without shifting institutional responsibility onto informal resilience. Originality/value: The study conceptualises community-driven resilience as a processual service mechanism linking structural conditions, collective resource mobilisation and inclusion through informal institutional and relational coordination in structurally constrained service ecosystems.

Purpose: This viewpoint aims to advance understanding of consumer vulnerability by examining how different configurations of structural, institutional and relational conditions shape vulnerability across service ecosystems. Country context, regulation and customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction provide complementary perspectives for examining these conditions. Design/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a conceptual, integrative approach, synthesising literature from transformative service research, service ecosystem theory and marketing to develop an analytical framework that integrates country context, regulation and C2C interaction. Findings: Consumer vulnerability varies according to the configuration and interdependence of structural conditions, institutional arrangements and relational processes. Together, these conditions may create, reinforce, negotiate or alleviate vulnerability across different service ecosystems. Research limitations/implications: The framework encourages comparative, multi-level and longitudinal research examining how structural, institutional and relational conditions combine and change across service ecosystem configurations. Practical implications: The framework encourages service providers and policymakers to adopt ecosystem-oriented strategies that consider structural, institutional and relational conditions together when addressing sources of vulnerability. Originality/value: Building on existing understandings of vulnerability as dynamic and ecosystem-based, this viewpoint provides an analytical framework for explaining how variation and interdependence among structural, institutional and relational conditions shape vulnerability across service ecosystems, supporting more comparative and context-sensitive theorising within TSR.

Purpose: This study examines how institutionalised patriarchal norms within family businesses reproduce gendered exclusion and how excluded daughters transform this exclusion into entrepreneurial agency. It explores how women cultivate resilience and entrepreneurial identity to reclaim legitimacy and reimagine legacy within Nigerian family enterprises. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on qualitative interview data from 26 female founder-CEOs, analysed using the Gioia methodology, the study develops an empirically grounded interpretive model showing how gendered exclusion can operate as both a structural constraint and a catalyst for transformation. Findings: The findings indicate a recurring three-part narrative pattern: (1) cultural legitimation of exclusion, (2) resilience as reorientation and (3) entrepreneurial reclamation of legacy. Excluded daughters respond to institutionalised exclusion through emotional reframing, educational advancement and entrepreneurial venture creation, transforming marginalisation into legitimacy, leadership and symbolic inclusion. Research limitations/implications: The study's focus on Nigeria provides deep contextual insight but limits transferability. Future research should examine how similar mechanisms of gendered exclusion and adaptive agency unfold across other patriarchal and Global South contexts. Another line of research could consider the conative processes linking entrepreneurial motivation and behaviour. Practical implications: The findings highlight the need for organisations, policymakers and family business leaders to challenge culturally legitimised gender hierarchies, adopt institutional reforms that challenge gendered authority and legitimacy structures, while also supporting women's entrepreneurial pathways as mechanisms of equality and empowerment. Originality/value: The study advances equality and diversity scholarship by theorising that while resilience may be an individual trait, it is contextually induced and structurally activated and by showing how women transform exclusion into continuity through entrepreneurship. It shows how gendered inequality within organisations may give rise to alternative forms of leadership, legitimacy and legacy.

Purpose-This study examines how employees interpret and emotionally respond to abrupt and poorly communicated leadership exits in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While leadership succession research has focused largely on planned transitions and firm-level outcomes, less is known about how sudden departures shape employee sensemaking and why reactions vary in intensity. We investigate how relational proximity to the departed leader and perceived procedural legitimacy condition employees' interpretive responses, and under what circumstances abrupt exits escalate from routine organisational change to identitylevel disruption. Design/methodology/approach-The study employs a qualitative, interpretivist design, based on 24 semistructured interviews with employees across eight Australian SMEs. Data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterned configurations of meaning-making. The analysis yielded a typology of four interpretive responses, structured by relational proximity and perceived threat intensity. Findings-The findings identify four patterned responses to abrupt leadership exits: Business as Usual, Job Insecurity, Disaster and Existential Threat. These responses reflect distinct combinations of emotional intensity, relational proximity and legitimacy perceptions. Rather than unfolding as sequential stages, responses represent qualitatively different interpretive positions. High relational proximity and low perceived procedural legitimacy were associated with escalated interpretations, including organisational crisis framing and identity-level disruption. Originality/value-This study advances change management research by conceptualising abrupt leadership exits as relationally structured interpretive events. It introduces a typology that specifies boundary conditions under which emotional reactions escalate into organisational crisis or identity rupture. By integrating sensemaking, procedural legitimacy and identity perspectives, the study contributes a relationally contingent model of employee responses to sudden leadership change.

Purpose: As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in financial services, concerns are growing about less visible forms of exclusion embedded within algorithmic decision-making. Existing research has largely examined algorithmic bias as isolated decision-level outcomes, with limited attention to how disadvantage accumulates and persists over time. This paper develops the concepts of algorithmic vulnerability and compound algorithmic vulnerability to explain how exclusion emerges within AI-mediated financial service ecosystems. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on Transformative Service Research, Service Ecosystem Theory and literature on AI and consumer vulnerability, this conceptual study develops a multi-level framework comprising algorithmic structuration, experiential vulnerability and ecosystemic mediation. The framework identifies four generative mechanisms: algorithmic redlining, behavioural misclassification, dark nudging and exploitation and identity and privacy risks. Findings: Introduces compound algorithmic vulnerability as an ecosystem-level condition in which multiple vulnerabilities interact, accumulate, and reinforce one another through recursive feedback processes. The framework demonstrates that exclusion in AI-mediated financial services is not simply the result of isolated bias but emerges from interconnected socio-technical mechanisms operating across systems, consumers, and governance structures. Practical implications: Highlights the need for fairness auditing, inclusive design, explainability and coordinated governance to mitigate algorithmic exclusion and promote financial inclusion. Originality/value: Advances theory by introducing compound algorithmic vulnerability as a novel lens for understanding how digital disadvantage accumulates within AI-mediated financial services, shifting attention from isolated algorithmic bias to recursive and systemic patterns of exclusion.

This research explored the psychological and behavioral resistance of consumers toward AI‐enabled personalization in the contexts of e‐commerce and quick commerce (Q‐commerce). Though advanced AI technologies offer benefits such as efficiency and convenience, consumers report concerns about emotional manipulation, information overload, and diminished consumer autonomy. Using the Technology Threat Avoidance Theory (TTAT) and the Stimulus–Organism–Behavior–Consequence (SOBC) model, we have explained how AI‐related stimuli may evoke consumer resistance. We used a mixed‐methods approach. In Study 1, we conducted in‐depth interviews with 18 Indian consumers to identify the dominant factors of resistance, and in Study 2, we surveyed 487 consumers. We validated and tested the proposed framework using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM). Findings show that emotional manipulation and information overload increase consumers' threat perception of AI and psychological reactance. These, in turn, lead to resistance intentions, platform avoidance, and brand distrust. However, brands' CSR initiatives and human oversight throughout the process can weaken the relationship between resistance behaviors and brand distrust. In short, our findings suggest that consumer resistance to AI is a patterned response to emotional and ethical concerns‐ not a direct rejection of AI. This study provides helpful insights for managers, designers, and policymakers to develop more transparent and responsible AI systems in the context of e‐commerce and Q‐commerce.

Purpose: This study investigates how managerial practices in the sharing economy (SE) ecosystem can create conditions leading to the erosion of trust and the emergence of meaningless work. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with SME owners, mediators, providers, customers, and government officials in Egypt, we identify three critical dimensions: the roots of discontent, counterproductive working conditions, and the lack of transparency in regulatory and policy enforcement. These mechanisms foster work alienation, psychological contract breaches, and job roles devoid of purpose, leading to workforce disengagement, and socio-economic stagnation. By exploring the intersection of managerial ineffectiveness and trust dynamics, this paper expands the debate on how platform-based labour can reproduce meaningless work. We highlight theoretical and practical implications for policy and organisational reform. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative, multi-stakeholder case study design. 40 semi-structured interviews were conducted with mediators, providers, customers, and government officials engaged in Egypt’s platform economy. Data were coded and analysed using NVivo, generating first-order categories, second-order themes, and three aggregate dimensions of trust erosion. Triangulation across stakeholder groups strengthened the validity of insights, while iterative memo writing and reflexive analysis enhanced the depth and credibility of interpretation. Findings: Trust erosion in Egypt’s platform economy unfolds across three dimensions: roots of discontent, counterproductive working conditions, and opacity in regulatory enforcement. Together, these factors foster alienation, disengagement, and perceptions of meaningless work. Workers face precarious, low-value roles, customers experience safety and accountability concerns, and mediators bypass local inefficiencies by relocating abroad. Ultimately, fragile institutions and exploitative practices entrench distrust and hinder inclusive economic development. Research limitations/implications: This study focuses on Egypt, limiting generalisability to other contexts. Findings are derived from qualitative interviews without quantitative validation, though this aligns with the study’s exploratory aim. Future research should compare trust erosion across traditional versus platform-based markets and extend the analysis to multiple developing economies. Mixed-method and longitudinal studies are recommended to capture variations in trust over time and validate emergent theoretical patterns. Practical implications: Managers in the platform economy must prioritise transparency, accountability, and worker protections to rebuild trust and ensure meaningful work. This includes adopting secure verification systems, fair compensation structures, and robust dispute-resolution mechanisms. Policymakers should streamline digital governance, enforce labour rights, and incentivise SMEs to operate formally. Addressing regulatory gaps can stabilise the ecosystem, attract investment, and strengthen entrepreneurial resilience. Social implications: The findings reveal how fragile governance and exploitative practices perpetuate inequality, alienation, and distrust. Rebuilding trust requires coordinated reform across government, business, and civil society to safeguard vulnerable workers and consumers. Ensuring meaningful work strengthens social cohesion, enhances labour dignity, and fosters inclusive growth in digital economies. Without reforms, platform economies risk entrenching precarity and socio-economic stagnation. Originality/value: This study is among the first to link trust erosion with the rise of meaningless work in platform-based SMEs within a fragile economy. By integrating perspectives from multiple stakeholders, it advances theoretical understanding of managerial dysfunction, institutional voids, and digital labour precarity. The findings enrich debates on the dark side of the platform economy and offer actionable pathways for reform to restore dignity and trust in work.

Purpose: This study examines how employees interpret and emotionally respond to abrupt and poorly communicated leadership exits in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While leadership succession research has focused largely on planned transitions and firm-level outcomes, less is known about how sudden departures shape employee sensemaking and why reactions vary in intensity. We investigate how relational proximity to the departed leader and perceived procedural legitimacy condition employees’ interpretive responses, and under what circumstances abrupt exits escalate from routine organisational change to identity-level disruption. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs a qualitative, interpretivist design, based on 24 semi-structured interviews with employees across eight Australian SMEs. Data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify patterned configurations of meaning-making. The analysis yielded a typology of four interpretive responses, structured by relational proximity and perceived threat intensity. Findings: The findings identify four patterned responses to abrupt leadership exits: Business as Usual, Job Insecurity, Disaster and Existential Threat. These responses reflect distinct combinations of emotional intensity, relational proximity and legitimacy perceptions. Rather than unfolding as sequential stages, responses represent qualitatively different interpretive positions. High relational proximity and low perceived procedural legitimacy were associated with escalated interpretations, including organisational crisis framing and identity-level disruption. Originality/value: This study advances change management research by conceptualising abrupt leadership exits as relationally structured interpretive events. It introduces a typology that specifies boundary conditions under which emotional reactions escalate into organisational crisis or identity rupture. By integrating sensemaking, procedural legitimacy and identity perspectives, the study contributes a relationally contingent model of employee responses to sudden leadership change.

Despite years of reform, equitable transport access for commuters with disabilities (CWDs) remains limited across diverse urban contexts. This study introduces the Integrated CWD Accessibility Enhancement Framework, mapping transport systems along two analytically defined axes: policy and government support and socio‐technical inclusivity. The framework identifies four configurations of accessibility: systemic exclusion, community‐driven adaptation, policy‐driven inclusion and inclusive and assistive systems. Unlike infrastructure‐centric or technology‐dominant models, the framework conceptualizes accessibility as an institutional and socio‐technical alignment problem rather than a purely design deficiency. Grounded in a structured synthesis of disability and transport scholarship, dignity is operationalized as the capacity of CWDs to travel autonomously, predictably, safely and without humiliation, thereby shifting the discourse from normative advocacy to measurable institutional performance. A scenario‐based stakeholder matrix demonstrates how commuters, families, service providers, policymakers and transport‐technology actors differentially reinforce or mitigate exclusion across system types. Positioned as a diagnostic tool applicable at the city or transit‐system level, the framework avoids binary classification and instead enables graduated assessment of accessibility maturity. The study, therefore, advances an explanatory configuration‐based model linking governance strength and socio‐technical responsiveness to dignity outcomes in commuting.