Organisations Under Pressure: Credit, Innovation, and Sustainability in the Era of Systemic Transition.

Contemporary organisations operate within an increasingly complex ecosystem. This complexity increase results from unprecedented technological acceleration, growing sustainability pressures, volatile financial markets, and continuous regulatory change. Nowadays, these challenges encompass the centre of organisational strategic activities and business research agendas. The International Conference on Organisational and Management Studies (ICOMS 2025), held on 29 and 30 May 2025 at ISCAP (Porto Accounting and Business School), reflected the diversity of these challenges, covering topics like sustainable finance and green investment, digital transformation and artificial intelligence, residential property market dynamics, organisational change and human capital adaptation, and international fiscal governance. ICOMS 2025 featured a keynote contribution of recognised scientific prestige, Professor Edward I. Altman, Emeritus Professor of Finance at NYU Stern School of Business and of ICOMS 2025. Since 1968, Altman has produced pivotal research on prediction models of corporate financial distress, grounding academic and practitioner applications in credit risk management worldwide. His presence as keynote speaker, as well as Chairman of the Scientific Commission, evidenced the venue's commitment to international excellence in academic rigour and contemporary understanding of corporate risk dynamics. Throughout multiple thematic sessions, researchers and practitioners presented evidence-based analyses of critical questions confronted by both academia and organisational practice. The scientific contributions to ICOMS 2025 reflect recognition that organisational success at the turn of the first quarter of the century depends upon the capacity to, at the same time, manage technological disruption, financial and market volatility, sustainable transition, and institutional compliance, normally in contexts where existing governance structures prove inadequate to the scale and complexity of those challenges. DOI:https://doi.org/10.54663/2182-9306.2026.SpecialIssueOMS.1-8