Coinciding with the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the UOC, the following article aims to review the main transformations that the basic areas of business have undergone over the past two and a half decades. For this, we have enjoyed the participation of five female and five male professors in the studies of economy and business, who have given us some broad strokes on some of the main changes during this period and the challenges still to come. These topics are: leadership, decision-making, internationalization, digitalization, strategy, adaptation to change, ethics, corporate social responsibility, diversity, inclusion, business modal innovation, and finance.

The lack of gender diversity at CEO level is a critical problem in many industries, as it prevents organisations from taking advantage of the whole pool of available talent. Women have progressively been incorporated in all professional domains. Although this process is taking place with unevenness, women are in positions that were traditionally occupied solely by men. In parallel, legal recognition of women’s labour rights evolved and many legal systems worldwide have advanced towards a mandatory non-discrimination approach. Nevertheless, women remain underrepresented in power and decision-making positions. A variety of theoretical approaches, from organisational theory, sociology, psychology and economics have tried to unravel the causes behind that and the possible solutions to change the tendency. We consider that to advance, we need a theoretical framework that integrates these perspectives in order to achieve: 1) an understanding of the whole personal, academic and professional life cycle; 2) identify the key determinant factors along the life cycle, and 3) study in depth the relative importance of each determinant and their interactions from women’s perspective, decision-making and context. This perspective provides new insights to approach the problem, which is complex and multicausal, in a comprehensive and practically oriented way.

Justice has always been considered a concept that is very separate from business management and has only been considered legitimate as a social objective. Economic theory has never produced anything that is specific to organizations. In particular, one of the fathers of economics, Adam Smith, wanted to show what was good for the world, which can be paralleled with the concept of eudaimonia (happiness) proposed by Aristotle. In a simplistic view of economics, the ‘invisible hand’ implies that companies must maximize profits and that doing so would already contribute to this social eudaimonia. That is their role. Rethinking this objective proposed by Smith, we can see that eudaimonia can only be achieved if, when companies are analysed, their decision-making incorporates values and virtues. This requires them to decide the goals they have to set and consider the benefits as results that will only be realised by making the right decisions or, in other words, with the inclusion of these values. In this essay, our aim is to show that generating justice must be one of the basic objectives when running a company because, if this objective is not incorporated within the decision-making process, the decisions made incorporating injustices can result in the same organizational structure. For companies, therefore, decision-making must generate justice and, as such, it cannot be directed in any way. This justice must be applied with Aristotelian logic or, in other words, on a case to case basis that judges each situation on its individual merits. This is how you can generate profits, which you will never be able to ascertain whether or not they have been maximized, but which are satisfactory, thereby achieving the ultimate goal of eudaimonia. This would align what Aristotle said with what Adam Smith proposed.