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In Europe fresh-cut fruit and vegetables, is one of the major growing segments in agro-food sector. Current literature reports a limited number of studies about consumers’ preferences towards these products. In particular, it lacks of studies focussed on fresh-cut salads and based on market data. In this paper, a study on consumer preferences towards the main attributes of Italian fresh-cut salads is proposed. More specifically the investigation is focussed on attributes assessable by consumers before purchase such as assortment, tenderness, product preparation and vegetable variety together with brand, size and type of packaging, presence of organic certification, promotion and product price. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how much Italian consumers pay for those attributes with the aim to understand how much profitable could be different strategies in the sector.

The analysis is based on IRI-Infoscan scanner data, consisting of 881 fresh-cut products. The impact of each attributes on pricing is measured by means of a hedonic price model.

Main results show that, in Italy, fresh-cut salad price is greatly affected by tenderness, product preparation, assortment, brand, presence of organic certification, packaging attributes and vegetable variety.

Findings offer to producers the possibility to set up products by composing the mix of attributes that gives back the highest price. In addition, they provide some insights to define manufacturer’s strategies.

This paper represents a novelty in economic literature because it can be considered an example of consumer preferences analysis towards the different attributes of fresh-cut vegetables based on real market data.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a micro-level, human-activity-centred interpretative framework for the way operations strategy is formed, linked and aligned with corporate-level strategies, and to apply it to gain insights on these processes.

Relying on the theoretical foundations of social practice theory and actor-network theory, as well as on the analysis of the organisational realities of the operations strategy formation process embedded in pluralistic organisational contexts, a conceptual framework for analysing the production and alignment of operations strategy is developed. The framework is then used to guide field research for the analysis of an operations-led strategic initiative in a medium-sized agro-food company.

Operations strategy formation can be interpreted as an ongoing practical, distributed social activity of network (re)formation. Specific initiatives, or events, act as catalysts for the association of operations strategy formation practices with corporate-level ones, facilitating thus the current and future alignment of strategic content. Artefacts play an active role in the linking process.

The research presented in this paper is pioneering as it is the first explicit consideration of operations strategy formation (process) as practical social activity (practices are the focus of analysis, not individuals’ choices), in which non-human agency (informational artefacts, etc.) is explicitly taken into account. For this purpose, a novel analytic framework was developed, which, however, need to be further tested to determine the exact conditions under which it is valid.

The framework improves the understanding of the organisational dynamics of operations strategy formation, its linking with, and institutionalisation in, other organisational processes and strategic discourses. Thus, it can assist in the analysis of operations-led strategic initiatives.

Application of the results obtained can provide better workplaces.

For the first time: operations strategy formation is considered as a social activity by focusing on the strategists and managers’ practices; the role of documents, decision-support tools and other artefacts is surfaced; and the importance of introducing operations strategy formation practices carrying strategy content into corporate and business-level strategy processes and their role in the alignment of the two strategies is emphasised.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the following three questions: what influence has the centrally planned economy and Soviet-style manufacturing had on the evolution and implementation of quality management practices in Bulgaria’s manufacturing sector since the end of the communism; have Bulgaria and its businesses been able to embrace modern quality management philosophies such as TQM, which at times preach the exact opposite philosophies of the Soviet-style manufacturing; and if so, how advanced is the quality mindset of Bulgarian manufacturing businesses today – 24 years after the end of communism?

The paper relies mainly on qualitative research methods. The authors have opted for exploratory approach. Besides an array of articles from scholarly journals, books, and conference proceedings, the authors have relied on five in-depth, semi-structured interviews and one case study in the form of plant visit and observations. The authors have used a framed analytical approach for interpreting the empirical data.

The paper argues that the slow and painful transition from a centrally planned to market economy has impeded the evolution and implementation of QM practices in Bulgaria. More precisely, haphazard reforms in education, lack of highly qualified individuals due to the brain drain in the early 1990s, and the workers’ strong resistance to change have been among the main obstacles in the case of the quality movement.

The work presented in this paper is just the beginning of a series of studies on the quality management initiatives in Bulgaria. To go deeper into the topic, the authors realize that further research in a number of different directions is required. The first direction is related to the degree of relevance of Management Sovieticus in the twenty-first century, which somehow has been completely neglected as a research topic in the last decade. The second direction lies in the aspect of the attributes of Bulgarian managers and their perception toward the importance of the role of quality today.

Countries with similar, political, economic, and social backgrounds – former Eastern Bloc members – can profit a great deal from the authors’ work. More than 20 years since the end of communism, both researchers and entrepreneurs, especially those from the West, have been neglecting the legacy of the centrally planned economy, which has been a major reason for the great number of business failures in the region. The authors’ work seeks to awaken those who still believe that two decades are sufficient to eradicate fully the unfortunate legacy of the command economy.

Little, not to say incremental, research on the quality initiatives in Eastern Europe (*except for Russia) has been conducted so far. As to Bulgaria, the investigation reveals no significant studies on quality management, especially ones published in English. Hence, the authors’ work is the first international study on the evolution and implementation of QM practices in Bulgaria.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of concern and practice of sustainability development and also policy failure in the fast food supply chain.

A questionnaire using Likert scoring recorded variations in current practice and attitudes toward sustainable business. A two-stage cluster analysis was conducted to analyze the multi-attribute ordinal data obtained from the questionnaire.

Significant differences were found among clusters of fast food businesses in terms of their sustainability concern and practice, which is of interest to policy makers, consumers and supply chain partners. Medium-sized fast food dealers emerge with high environmental and social concern, but poor practice; larger retailers and fast food chains appear to have both fair social and environmental awareness and practice; and there is a cluster of small takeaway-specific outlets that have particularly low levels of knowledge of sustainability or sustainable practices. Policy failure is prevalent amongst these businesses and without regulation this represents a possible threat to the sector.

Reliance on stated rather than revealed preferences of the study may limit the implications of this analysis but it is a major step forward in understanding what has in the past been a very difficult sector to investigate due to data paucity.

Fast food is a sector with a lack of transparency which has attracted little academic attention to date, due to the difficulties of empirical analysis rather than lack of interest in a key food consumption sector. The message for the sector is to monitor its act, across all business types or face regulatory and policy intervention.

The research conducts a three-dimensional sustainability analysis of fast food supply chains to investigate the differences and trade-offs between different sustainability dimensions.

Research on sustainability has progressed from a singular focus on one aspect to a simultaneous focus on more than one aspect of the triple bottom line. However, there is a dearth of research that explains why sustainability-related decisions in business often do not bear the expected results. Research that provides managers with a tool to achieve environmental sustainability of logistics without compromising the economic sustainability is scarce. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to bridge the above gaps and to explore the factors that affect investment in technology to balance environmental and economic sustainability of logistics. A model based on system dynamics approach explains the simultaneous interplay of these factors. Simulating the model helps the managers of logistics function decide the size of investment in technology, to achieve environmental efficiency without negatively influencing the economic performance.

A model based on system dynamics approach explains the simultaneous interplay of these factors. Simulating the model helps the managers of logistics function decide the size of investment in technology, to achieve ecological efficiency without compromising with the economic performance.

Collaboration with regulatory authorities and with players within the same industry and across industries is a must so that eco-logistics does not become an economic burden for businesses. The decision to invest in technology for eco-logistics is further accentuated if the technology promises some added economic benefits.

From a theoretical perspective, the research has added to the less extensive literature on system dynamics modelling, which is a mixed methodology, combining both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research is also one of the few attempts that have attempted to simultaneously study more than one aspects of sustainability in business, quantitatively through simulation. Simulation was demonstrated through a single case study, Future works can aim to apply the causal loop diagram to firms in varied sectors.

The managers can use the causal loop diagram to assess the environmental performance of logistics and decide on appropriate level of investment to balance ecological and economic performance of logistics.

The causal loop diagram has been developed through primary data collection via semi-structured interviews. The results were validated by presenting them to respondents to ensure they represent their view points. The results are, therefore, practical and original. This research does not build upon an existing data set or aims to test the applicability of any existing model. The model for this research has been developed from the grass-roots level.

The purpose of this paper is 1) to investigate the effects on the crucial Industry 4.0 technological innovations that interact between the real and virtual worlds and that are applied in the sustainable supply chain process; 2) to contribute to the identification of the opportunities, the challenges and the gaps that will support the new research study developments and 3) to analyze the impact of the Industry 4.0 technologies as facilitators of the sustainable supply chain performance in the midst of the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

This research is performed through a bibliographic review in the electronic databases of the Emerald Insight, the Scopus and the Web of Science, considering the main scientific publications on the subject.

The bibliographic search results in 526 articles, followed by two sequential filters for deleting the duplicate articles (resulting in 487 articles) and for selecting the most relevant articles (resulting in 150 articles).

This article identifies the opportunities and the challenges focused on the emerging Industry 4.0 theme. The opportunities can contribute to the sustainable performance of the supply chains and their territories. The Industry 4.0 can also generate challenges like the social inequalities related to the position of the man in the labor market by replacing the human workforce with the machines. Therefore, the man-machine relationship in the Industry 4.0 era is analyzed as a gap in the literature. Therefore, as a way to fill this gap, the authors of this article suggest the exploration of the research focused on the Society 5.0. Also known as “super-smart society,” this recent theme appeared in Japan in April 2016. According to Fukuda (2020), in addition to the focus on the technological development, the Society 5.0 also aims at the quality of life and the social challenge resolutions.

This article contributes to the analysis of the Industry 4.0 technologies as facilitators in the sustainable supply chain performance. It addresses the impacts of the Industry 4.0 technologies applied to the supply chains in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it analyzes the research gaps and limitations found in the literature. The result of this study can add value and stimulate new research studies related to the application of the Industry 4.0 technologies as facilitators in the supply chain sustainable performance. It can encourage the studies related to the COVID-19 impacts on the sustainable supply chains, and it can promote the research development on the relationship among the man, the machine and the labor in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.