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This paper aims to determine whether policy uncertainty caused by institutional decay in countries with populist rulers influences the internationalization decision of emerging market firms (EMFs).

The study used binary logit analysis on firms from Latin American countries undertaking cross-border greenfield investment projects.

The results suggest that internationalization decision is demotivated by policy uncertainty generated by populist chief executives and promoted by that of political parties.

This study uses populist rhetoric to describe policy uncertainty due to chief executives and ruling parties, which influences internationalization decision by increasing anticipated transaction costs. This inquiry identifies populism as a variable that influences EMFs to internationalize, while empirically testing the claim of theoretical scholarship that populism reconfigured the sociopolitical and institutional forces that shape the world’s business. This study further advances institutional theory by offering a fresh perspective on the influence of home instead of host-country institutions on the internationalization motivation of firms due to institutional decay caused by populist regimes.

This study aimed to investigate the role of the country's institutional quality on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of its companies.

Over a four-year period (2016–2019), the study examined the ESG performance of 412 organizations situated in 19 countries. ESG performance was the dependent variable, and the independent variables were rule of law, economic freedom, education index and international trade freedom. These factors described the institutional quality of countries in the authors’ study.

The findings reveal that institutional quality has a major impact on ESG performance. Companies engage in more ESG practices when they operate in countries with greater economic freedom and international trade freedom. The authors corroborated the core assumption of institutional theory (IT), which argues that organizational behavior is determined by the country's institutional setting.

The findings, like all research, should be interpreted with caution. The authors’ research focused solely on large energy corporations. As a result, the conclusions cannot be applied to small companies or other industries. ESG performance can also be measured using different datasets.

If managers want their companies to perform better in terms of ESG, the authors recommend that they form a CSR committee and sign the Global Compact. This study may be valuable to international policymakers because they can underline that greater economic freedom, better education and greater international trade freedom all promote higher ESG performance.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, nearly all of research explores the relationship between ESG and financial performance. As a result, this study built on past research by investigating how national aspects affect corporate ESG performance.

The objective of this study is to examine current business and management research on “Industry 4.0 base technologies” and “business models” to shed light on this vast literature and to point out future research agenda.

The authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications based on 482 documents collected from the Scopus database and a co-citation analysis to provide an overview of business model studies related to Industry 4.0 base technologies. After that a qualitative analysis of the articles was also conducted to identify research trends and trajectories.

The results reveal the existence of five research themes: smart products (cluster 1); business model innovation (cluster 2); technological platforms (cluster 3); value creation and appropriation (cluster 4); and digital business models (cluster 5). A qualitative analysis of the articles was also conducted to identify research trends and trajectories.

First, the dataset was collected through Scopus. The authors are aware that other databases, such as Web of Science, can be used to deepen the focus of quantitative bibliometric analysis. Second, the authors based this analysis on the Industry 4.0 base technologies identified by Frank et al. (2019). The authors recognize that Industry 4.0 comprises other technologies beyond IoT, cloud computing, big data and analytics.

Drawing on these analyses, the authors submit a useful baseline for developing Industry 4.0 base technologies and considering their implications for business models.

In this paper, the authors focus their attention on the relationship between technologies underlying the fourth industrial revolution, identified by Frank et al. (2019), and the business model, with a particular focus on the developments that have occurred over the last decade and the authors performed a bibliometric analysis to consider all the burgeoning literature on the topic.

Following the imperative for human-centric digital innovation brought by the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the article aims to integrate the dispersed and multi-disciplinary literature on individual risks for workers to define, explain and predict individual risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies.

The paper follows the question, “What is the current knowledge and evidence base concerning risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies, and how can this inform digital innovation management in the manufacturing sector through the lens of the Industry 5.0 paradigm?” and uses the method of systematic literature review to identify and discuss potential risks for individuals associated with digital innovation. N = 51 contributions met the inclusion criteria.

The literature review indicates dominant trends and significant gaps in understanding risks from a human-centric perspective. The paper identifies individual risks, their interplay with different technologies and their antecedents at the social, organizational and individual levels. Despite this, the paper shows how the literature concentrates in studying risks on only a limited number of categories and/or concepts. Moreover, there is a lack of consensus in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The paper concludes by illustrating an initial understanding of digital innovation via a human-centered perspective on psychological risks.

Findings yield practical implications. In investing in the adoption, generation or recombination of new digital technologies in organizations, the paper recommends managers ensure to prevent risks at the individual level. Accordingly, the study’s findings can be used as a common starting point for extending the repertoire of managerial practices and interventions and realizing human-centric innovation.

Following the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the paper offers a holistic view of risks that incorporates the central role of the worker as crucial to the success of digital innovation. This human-centric perspective serves to inform the managerial field about important factors in risk management that can result in more effective targeted interventions in risk mitigation approaches. Lastly, it can serve to reinterpret digital innovation management and propose future avenues of research on risk.

The role of procurement managers is crucial for diffusing sustainability throughout the supply chain. Whether or not they are willing to pay for sustainability is an important and not yet fully understood question. The authors examine antecedents and consequences of their willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainability.

The authors develop a multi-level framework to examine the WTP for sustainability in a B2B context. The authors test this multi-level framework with 372 procurement managers from multiple sectors and countries using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The authors find that individual values of procurement managers and institutional pressures directly, while ethical organizational culture indirectly influence WTP for sustainability. Functional and cognitive competencies of procurement managers improve the sustainability of procurement, but not WTP for sustainability. Importantly, WTP for sustainability directly influences the performance of the procurement function which in turn is positively associated with increased organizational performance.

The study, examining the interplay between individual, organizational and contextual factors, provides empirical evidence on the pivotal role of procurement managers in diffusing sustainability throughout the supply chain. The findings of the study, on the one hand, contribute to the literature on operations management and sustainability, and on the other hand, guide policy and managerial actions.

The paper aims to explore how companies communicate their heritage by drawing on heritage marketing and corporate communications literature and mapping the corporate heritage communication strategies of iconic Italian brands.

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach, analysing the communication of corporate heritage by nine iconic Italian brands (Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, Barovier & Toso, Pasta Farina, Ducati, Amaro Montenegro, Fiat, Bonomelli, Olivetti and Illy).

In communicating corporate heritage, companies adopt different strategies that vary along two main dimensions – the subject of the story and the tone of voice of the content. The strategies are: (1) heritage for authenticity; (2) heritage for market leadership; and (3) heritage for continuity.

From a theoretical point of view, the study highlights that heritage marketing strategies vary according to underlying strategic themes and narrative approaches. From a managerial point of view, it offers a preliminary guide for the development of corporate heritage communications, also providing indications for their implementation.

This study is amongst the firsts to investigate the strategic antecedents that can shape corporate heritage communication strategies. It represents an integration of the existing literature, which is limited to the descriptive presentation of heritage marketing principles and tools.

This study aims to examine decision factors for global sourcing, differentiated into transcontinental and continental sourcing to obtain insight into locational aspects of sourcing decisions and global trends. This study analyzed various country perceptions to reveal their influence on sourcing decisions. The country of origin (COO) theory explains why certain country perceptions and images influence purchasing experts in their selection of suppliers.

This study used a two-study approach. In Study 1, the authors conducted discrete choice card experiments with 71 purchasing experts located in Europe and the USA to examine the importance of essential decision factors for global sourcing. Given the clear evidence that location is a factor in sourcing decisions, in Study 2 the authors investigated purchasers’ perceptions and images of countries, adding country ranking experiments on various perceived characteristics such as quality, price and technology.

Study 1 provides evidence that the purchasers’ personal relationship with the supplier plays a decisive role in the supplier selection process. While product quality and location impact sourcing decisions, the attraction of the buying company and cultural barriers are less significant. Interestingly, however, these factors seem as important as price to respondents. This implies that a strong relationship with suppliers and good quality products are essential aspects of a reliable and robust supply chain in the post-COVID-19 era. Examining the locational aspect in detail, Study 2 linked the choice card experiments with country ranking experiments. In this study, the authors found that purchasing experts consider that transcontinental countries such as Japan and China offer significant advantages in terms of price and technology. China has enhanced its quality, which is recognizable in the country ranking experiments. Therefore, decisions on global sourcing are not just based on such high-impact factors as price and availability; country perceptions are also influential. Additionally, the significance of the locational aspect could be linked to certain country images of transcontinental suppliers, as the COO theory describes.

The new approach divides global sourcing into transcontinental and European sourcing to evaluate special decision factors and link these factors to the locational aspect of sourcing decisions. To deepen the clear evidence for the locational aspect and investigate the possible influence of country perceptions, the authors applied the COO theory. This approach enabled authors to show the strong influence of country perception on purchasing departments, which is represented by the locational effect. Hence, the success of transcontinental countries relies not only on factors such as their availability but also on the purchasers’ positive perceptions of these countries in terms of technology and price.

Though the circular economy (CE) is a current buzzword, this still lacks a precise definition. In the absence of a clear notion of what that term includes, actions taken by the government and companies may not be well informed. In particular, those actions need to consider what people mean when people talk about the CE, either to refocus people's decisions or to undertake a more effective communications strategy.

Since people voice people's opinions mainly through social media nowadays, special attention has to be paid to discussions on those media. In this paper, the authors focus on Twitter as a popular social platform to deliver one's thoughts quickly and fast. The authors' research aim is to get the perceptions of people about the CE. After collecting more than 100,000 tweets over 16 weeks, the authors analyse those tweets to understand the public discussion about the CE. The authors conduct a frequency analysis of the most recurring words, including the words' association with other words in the same context and categorise them into a set of topics.

The authors show that the discussion focuses on the usage of resources and materials that heavily endanger sustainability, i.e. carbon and plastic and the harmful habit of wasting. On the other hand, the two most common good practices associated with the CE and sustainability emerge as recycling and reuse (the latter being mentioned far less). Also, the business side of the CE appears to be relevant.

The outcome of this analysis can drive suitable communication strategies by which companies and governments interested in the development of the CE can understand what is actually discussed on social media and call for the attention.

This paper addresses the lack of a standard definition the authors highlighted in the Introduction. The results confirm that people understand CE by looking both at CE's constituent activities and CE's expected consequences, namely the reduction of waste, the transition to a green economy free of plastic and other pollutants and the improvement of the world climate.