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The objective of this research is to explore integration and transition activities in large industrial projects. The purpose is to (a) obtain a better understanding of the integration and transition activities between the project front-end (FE) and project initiation phases (PIPs), (b) explore what, how and when these integrations and transitions occur, and (c) explore what the integration and transition activities mean to project practitioners.

A qualitative research design methodology is followed, based on interviews using open-ended questions. An expert panel is used to provide responses to questions pertaining to the integration and transition between the project FE and PIP. The research is focused on managing large projects in the South African electrical engineering industrial projects industry. A literature review combined with empirical analysis reflects the importance of integrating and transitioning in project business.

The findings provide guidance to researchers and practitioners on integration and transition mechanisms, how and when these occur. It highlights the benefits of integration and transition activities. Important lessons for researchers and practitioners are provided together with areas for future research.

This is an interpretative analysis of expert opinion. Expert panel members are experienced at senior decision-making level, and their expertise was accessed based on experience, education and knowledge. This extensive experience is shared in this paper providing insights into their opinions, experiences, success and failures. These inputs together with the literature review provide interesting implications for both a theoretical foundation as well as practical implications for practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the twin transition in China in the organization of innovation processes in artificial intelligence (AI) and green technology (GT) development and to understand the role of foreign multinationals in Chinese innovation systems.

A qualitative research approach is used by interviewing executives from German multinationals with expertise in AI and GT development and organization of innovation processes in China. In total, 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted with companies, and the data were analysed with a thematic qualitative text analysis.

The findings show that AI applications for GT are primarily developed in cross-company projects that are led by local and regional authorities through the organization of industrial districts and clusters. German multinationals are either being integrated, remaining autonomous or being excluded from these twin transition innovation processes.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature by providing one of the first qualitative approach towards twin transition innovation processes in China and exploring the integration of multinational enterprises in cluster organizations. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is one of the first twin transition studies from this perspective in emerging economies.

While transition programs are widely used to facilitate newly graduated nurses transition to healthcare settings, knowledge about preconditions for implementing such programs in the hospital context is scarce. The purpose of this study was to explore program coordinators’ perspectives on implementing a transition program for newly graduated nurses.

An explorative qualitative study using individual interviews. Total of 11 program coordinators at five acute care hospital administrations in a south-west region in Sweden. Data was subjected to thematic analysis, using NVivo software to promote coding.

The following two themes were identified from the analysis: Create a shared responsibility for introducing newly graduated nurses, and establish legitimacy of the program. The implementation process was found to be a matter of both educational content and anchoring work in the hospital organization. To clarify the what and why of implementing a transition program, where the nurses learning processes are prioritized, was foundational prerequisites for successful implementation.

This paper illustrates that implementing transition programs in contemporary hospital care context is a valuable but complex process that involves conflicting priorities. A program that is well integrated in the organization, in which responsibilities between different levels and roles in the hospital organization, aims and expectations on the program are clarified, is important to achieve the intentions of effective transition to practice. Joint actions need to be taken by healthcare policymakers, hospitals and ward managers, and educational institutions to support the implementation of transition programs as a long-term strategy for nurses entering hospital care.

This study advocates the importance of taking an evolutionary perspective in the strategic configuration of closed-loop supply chains (CLSC) in the transition to a circular economy. Building on the supply chain management and industrial dynamics research domains, an evolutionary analytical framework was developed and applied in the empirical context of the ongoing industrial transition to e-mobility.

This study is designed as an in-depth exploratory case study to capture the multi-layer dynamic complexities and their interplay in CSLC development. The empirical investigation was based on two-year interactions between the authors and various departments in a leading European heavy vehicle manufacturer. The proposed evolutionary analytical framework was used for investigating the dynamics of four CLSC configurations through ten possible trajectories.

The findings demonstrate that the evolution of each CLSC configuration comes with multiple challenges and requirements and point out the necessity for the co-development of technologies, product design and production, and infrastructure through long-term relationships among key supply chain actors. However, this evolutionary journey is associated with multiple dilemmas caused by uncertainties in the market and technology developments. All these factors were properly captured and critically analyzed, along with their interactions, thanks to the constructs included in the proposed evolutionary analytical framework.

The proposed evolutionary framework is applicable for examination of SC transformation in the context of market and technology development, and is particularly relevant for transitioning from linear SC to CLSC. The framework offers a single actor perspective, as it does not directly tackle dynamics and effects of actions taken by SC actors.

The developed framework can support SC managers in identifying, framing, and comparing alternative strategies for CLSC configuration in the transition process.

This study proposes the framework for understanding and guiding the evolutionary process of CLSC development. Its uniqueness lies in the integration of concepts from innovation and evolutionary theories coming from industrial dynamics and SCM literature streams.

Just transition is a fundamental concept for supply chain management but neither discipline pays attention to the other and little is known about how supply chains can be orchestrated as socioecological systems to manage these transitions. Building from a wide range of just transition examples, this paper explores just transition to understand how to move beyond instrumental supply chain practices to supply chains functioning in harmony with the planet and its people.

Building from a systematic review of 72 papers, the paper identifies just transition examples while interpreting them through the theoretical lens of supply chain management, providing valuable insights to help research and practice understand how to achieve low-carbon economies through supply chain management in environmentally and socially just ways.

The paper defines, elaborates, and extends the just transition construct by developing a transition taxonomy with two key dimensions. The purpose dimension (profit or shared outcomes) and the governance dimension (government-/industry-led versus civil society-involved), generating four transition archetypes. Most transitions projects are framed around the Euro- and US-centric, capitalist standards of development, leading to coloniality as well as economic and cultural depletion of communities. Framing just transition in accordance with context-specific plural values, the paper provides an alternative perspective to the extractive transition concept. This can guide supply chain management to decarbonise economies and societies by considering the rights of nature, communities and individuals.

Introducing just transition into the supply chain management domain, this paper unifies the various conceptualisations of just transition into a holistic understanding, providing a new foundation for supply chain management research.

The shift toward a circular economy (CE) represents a collaborative endeavor necessitating the presence of efficient frameworks, conducive contexts and a common comprehension. This research serves as a pivotal stride towards this goal, presenting an exclusive prospect for the investigation and fusion of these frameworks, with particular emphasis on the Quintuple Helix Model (5HM), into a unified theoretical framework that underscores the core principles of the CE. This study is centered on three pivotal questions aimed at decoding the CE transition in specific regional settings.

Adopting an abductive approach firmly anchored in a two-stage qualitative process, this study specifically merges the foundational principles from institutional theory, entrepreneurship literature and CE frameworks to provide insights into the dynamics of circular ecosystems, with a specific focus on the Huelva region in Spain.

The findings demonstrate significant potential in the CE, ranging from the integration of product and service systems to innovations in eco-industrial practices. Yet, a notable deficiency exists: the absence of institutional entrepreneurs, highlighting the essential role that universities can play. As recognized centers of innovation, universities are suggested to be key contributors to the transformation toward a CE, aligning with their societal and economic responsibilities.

This study highlights the importance of managing relationships with entities like SMEs and policymakers or academia for effective CE adoption. Policymakers can refine strategies based on the research’s insights, while the impact of university-driven circular ecosystems on sustainable societies is another crucial area for research.

The sustainability models cited in CE literature may not be comprehensive enough to prevent problem shifting, and it can be argued that they lack a sound theoretical and conceptual basis. Furthermore, the connections between sustainability objectives and the three levels of the CE operating system remain vague. Additionally, there is insufficient information on how regions foster the involvement of the environment in fivefold helix cooperation and how this impacts the CE.

This paper aims to examine how CEO talk of sustainability in CEO letters evolves in a period of increased expectations from society for companies to increase their transition towards becoming more sustainable and to better account for progress and performance within the sustainability areas.

By adopting an interpretive textual approach, the paper provides a careful analysis of how CEO talk of sustainability in CEO letters of large listed Swedish companies developed during 2008–2017.

The talk of sustainability is successively becoming more elaborated, proactive and multidimensional. CEOs frame their talk by adopting different perspectives: the distinct environmental, the performance and meso, the product-market-oriented and the sustainability embeddedness and value creation. The shift towards an embeddedness and value-creation perspective in the later letters implies that the alleged capitalistic and short-sighted focus on shareholder value maximisation might be changing towards a greater focus on sustainability embeddedness as an important goal for succeeding with the transition towards a sustainable business.

The findings are relevant for policymakers and government bodies when developing policies and regulations aimed at improving the positive impact of companies on global sustainable development. Findings are also useful for management teams when structuring their sustainability talk as a response to external pressure.

The findings provide relevant input on how social norms, values and expectations are shaping the corporate discourse on sustainability.

The findings of this study contribute to an increased understanding of the rhetorical response in influential CEO letters to the surrounding sustainability context, including new national and international policies as well as sociopolitical events and discourses related to sustainability. This offers a unique frame of reference for further interpretational work on how CEOs frame, engage in and shape the sustainability discourse.

Small businesses are facing evolving environments, with a resulting need to shift their traditional approaches toward new business models (BMs). Many face difficulties within this transition process due to their specific resource constraints. Based on this, incremental changes to the BM – business model transition (BMT) – are proposed as comprising a suitable framework for entrepreneurial small businesses.

This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) to cover a broad range of relevant literature within a final sample of 89 articles. The SLR method was chosen to integrate research in a systematic, transparent and reproducible way. For qualitative analysis and framework derivation, the study draws on a thematic ontological analysis.

The broad search criteria, focusing on BM, incremental BM changes and small businesses, pave the way for a comprehensive overview of multiple research streams of BM concepts (e.g. digital and sustainable BM). The main contribution of this work is the resulting holistic BMT framework, comprising the main parts BM innovation, external antecedents (transition of environment, entrepreneurial ecosystem), internal antecedents (dynamic capabilities, entrepreneurial orientation, resilience, strategy) and output (firm performance).

The framework provides guidance for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial managers to implement and complete BMT in small businesses. Furthermore, the presented paper sets a future research agenda focusing on small businesses structured according to the derived framework.

This study provides the first SLR of existing BM concepts with a small-business specific perspective on BMI and a focus on various incremental BM changes.

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how corporate volunteering (CV), as one form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), creates sustainable happiness in business organizations.

Theoretical knowledge of CSR and CV as well as the literature on happiness management was examined to form a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. The empirical section includes a qualitative multiple case study including two company cases of CV in Finland. The data were collected through qualitative interviews. Empirical analysis was made using thematical coding based on existing theory but also by allowing themes to emerge inductively from the data as well.

The study found that CV enables the emergence of sustainable happiness by allowing individual employee volunteers to transition from individual and rational mindsets to collective and emotional mindsets. A third transition was also identified, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life that the authors describe as “from actual to potential”.

The study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management by identifying the third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a state of being to becoming and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. The study also contributes to existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. This study concludes that companies' strategic activities that engage with society can create sustainable happiness for employees who participate. In order to achieve this, volunteering employees should have the chance to reflect on their experience and constant support from managers.

This paper aims to explore how the time and temporal aspects are managed in a financial accounting outsourcing (FAO) transition process in an international interorganizational context. As a research outcome, the authors identify management interventions of both the service provider (SP) and the outsourcing company (OC) at both the corporate and operational levels.

The framework by Huy (2001a, 2001b) was used to analyze the qualitative data, which draw on observations, participation in 32 official meetings during the outsourcing process, informal discussions with key actors from the SP and the OC, and archival data of a single case company.

The authors illustrate how the time and temporal aspects of planned accelerated change are managed through management interventions during the FAO transition process. All four ideal intervention types (commanding, engineering, teaching and socializing) were used sequentially but also jointly to complement one another. The pacing was mostly rapid, owing to strong commanding interventions initiating almost every stage. When analyzing the FAO transition process, the authors identified four stages: contact, contract, convergence and control. Moreover, the authors focused on the role of the operational-level managers and accounting specialists of both organizations. The findings indicate that management interventions vary with the management level.

This study contributes to the interorganizational control literature by considering the time and temporal aspects in planned organizational change and the role of operational-level managers in managing large-scale changes.