On Earth and as It Is in Heaven—There Is No Sex Trafficking in Heaven: A Qualitative Study Bringing Christian Church Leaders’ Anti-Trafficking Viewpoints to Trafficking Discourse

There is a lack of contributions in sex trafficking the academic literature from Christian evangelical leaders despite their prominence in global counter-trafficking activism. Given that the academic literature influences professional and pedagogical discourse, the lack of evangelical Christian representation could diminish the complexity of trafficking discourses, limit balanced views of the flaws and strengths of evangelical counter-trafficking, and limit the opportunities for academia to understand and address problematic areas in evangelical counter-trafficking through an emic understanding of evangelical paradigms. Using a phenomenological lens to engage evangelical Christian pastors (n = 17) in the midwestern United States, this study examined the meaning faith leaders attach to counter-trafficking initiatives. Four themes emerged: (1) God cares about survivors of sex trafficking, giving Christians a moral obligation to intervene; (2) God, the Christian, and the survivor all have essential roles in tackling sex trafficking as part of helping humanity; (3) congregations’ faith-inspired but imperfect efforts to help an imperfect and complex world create many complexities; and (4) managing complexity involves applying the truths that underpin the Christian worldview, namely that God is good and people are valuable. These findings underscore the need to create an inclusive knowledge-producing forum that allows for a pragmatic exchange of ideas to expand the discourse between multiple counter trafficking actors.

Agile Methodology and War Strategies

The history of humankind offers lots of remarkable ideas and innovations in strategy and tactics. There is no area where people have shown more inventiveness than defending themselves or attacking and conquering others. On the other hand, the Agile methodology emerged from software development, where it tried to provide support for the successful organization of delivery projects, that have to fight and conquer the complexity. This article evidences similarities between the Agile methodology and attacking and war strategies, making extended references to one of the most renowned military treaties: Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Making inter-disciplinary analogies, comparing and contrasting the concepts from different disciplines are at the core of this article. We'll investigate what things as initial estimations, attack by stratagem, tactical dispositions, energy, weak points, and strong points, maneuvering, variation in tactics, the army on the march, terrain, arriving on unknown ground, concrete situations on the ground, the use of spies, or what the attack by fire may mean in software development. We'll analyze how these war strategy concepts transpose to Agile concepts like adding business value, getting to the business goals, managing complexity, conducting the work the incremental and non-incremental way.

Managing Complexity in a Digital Transformation

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that today doing business without digitalization is simply impossible, thanks to new technologies, operations have appeared that ten years ago we could not even imagine, and many of the familiar ones, in turn, have been transformed beyond recognition. At the same time, with the growth of the technological complex, corporate architectures continue to rapidly become more complex. The purpose of this study is to develop tools for managing complexity as one of the components of the VUCA world. The experience and evidence of why the leaders of digital transformation need to change their thinking are presented, the author's interpretation of complexity is given and how to manage it. The practical significance of the study will allow organizations to develop a strategy for the formation of a corporate culture in the context of digitalization of business processes.

Managing complexity in maritime business: understanding the smart changes of globalization

Purpose This study aims to review and try to understand the importance of complexity management for maritime business to gain competitiveness in global business environment. The purpose of the study is to discuss and evaluate managing change and requirements of understanding the complexity management. Design/methodology/approach To find peer-reviewed journal publications, a large scientific database used by searching Web of Science and Scopus as the most relevant abstract and citation databases that provide peer-reviewed literature data for many different academic disciplines and selected papers evaluated from the maritime business context. Findings As a conceptual paper, the contribution of the study is to offer practical/required management applications with the help of six proposes for making better management decisions to confront future challenges to catch organizational competitiveness and success. With adaptation of complexity management, maritime stakeholders able to create an important core competency. Research limitations/implications The research has some limitations and further research into this area should be extended. This study is designed as a first step to provide an insight to the field and to understand the main views of the subject. Subsequently, complexity management in maritime business is a slightly deficient area of research, which offers remarkable research opportunities. First, it would be fruitful to collect qualitative data to examine the current issues and changing business environment of the maritime business. Second, it would be helpful develop quantitative models to offer practical solutions from the maritime stakeholders’ point of view according to loading/discharging/transportation requirements. Future studies should deepen the subject with the help of simulation models of operations or agent based applications of stakeholder problems or vessel/ship-owner management implementations to understand changing circumstances of new business environment for the sake of managing complexity. Practical implications As the core point of view in strategic management; “achieving and sustaining” competitive advantage in organizations always takes an important place in organizational survival. With the help mentioned proposes stakeholders of the system could understand the ways of dealing with the complexities of new business world which enhances organizational competitiveness. Social implications Maritime business could be defined as a social ecosystem which has it is own dynamics and customs. Socio-eco systems, like all complex systems, show unique non-linear dynamics in space and time which could be tough to define via classical quantitative methods. Organizations co-exist and co-evolve with their environment. It is possible that organizations effect their environment and gain some control over it while at the same time affected from environment and should steer the new trends. Originality/value The originality of the study lies in highlighting the importance of change management as a handler of complexity management for maritime business. The contribution of the paper is to indicate expected opportunities and challenges of smart changes for relevant readiness of maritime business for better management decisions, benefiting maritime business stakeholders by simultaneously enhancing effectiveness to confront future demands to achieve organizational competitiveness. With the help of proper complexity management lenses organizations could able to create their source of competitive advantage that represents capacity to align and enable required functions under tough contextual environment.