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The purpose of this study is to analyse the role of relational power/dependent asymmetries and symmetries in shaping socially responsible supply chain management, whilst also examining how these issues are moderated by geographical distance between buyer and supplier.

The study draws on data from 339 buyer‐supplier relationships, and the authors use a set of regression models to test their hypotheses.

Joint dependency positively influences socially responsible supply chain management, whilst supplier power constrains it. Both joint dependency and buyer power become increasingly important determinants of socially responsible supply chain management as geographic distance increases.

Further work is needed to examine the conditions under which organisations will exercise their power advantage or their joint dependence position to improve socially responsible processes in the supply chain, as there may be situations where the buyer chooses not to exercise their power positions.

The authors' results indicate that jointly dependent relationships create the best conditions for socially responsible supply chain management, but they also find that supplier power advantage can constrain such initiatives.

This is the first paper to systematically analyse the implementation of socially responsible supply chain management, within a model that considers power a/symmetric positions of the buyer‐supplier relationship, and the role of geographical distance as a moderating influence on these power positions.

This paper aims to explore the effect of business strategy on socially responsible supply chain management (SR‐SCM).

This study draws on data from 178 UK‐based companies, and 340 buyer‐supplier relationships. A novel data collection approach is used, which minimizes social desirability and common methods bias, to capture socially responsible supply chain management. The data are analysed through a set of OLS regressions.

Business strategies significantly influence socially responsible supply chain management. Low‐cost producers largely neglect their social responsibilities in the supply chain. In contrast, firms pursuing differentiation strategies are considerably more engaged with these issues, partly because they have better supply chain processes.

Practitioners should carefully consider the fit between strategic position and level of engagement with SR‐SCM, since our results emphasise the relationship between SR‐SCM and business strategy. Proactive engagement with SR‐SCM, however, also implies sound supply chain processes, which must also be aligned with business strategy. Policy‐makers should consider the low engagement with SR‐SCM of low‐cost producers and the implications for SR‐SCM in cost sensitive and competitive global markets.

This is the first systematic cross‐sectional study of the relationship between business strategy and socially responsible supply chain management (SR‐SCM). These results suggest that there is a clear relationship between the strategic position of the firm and their SR‐SCM practices. These results contribute to the on‐going debate on relationships between strategy and supply chain management, and the emerging debate on the relationships between strategy and SR‐SCM.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate corporate social disclosure (CSD) assurance from a stakeholder perspective within a study which encompasses both stakeholder preferences and demand drivers of CSD assurance.

Stakeholder perceptions of and their demand for CSD assurance are examined through a questionnaire survey. The analysis is based on responses in an empirical study from 147 organisations which are investing, procuring and third-sector stakeholders.

Overall, stakeholder comments suggest an emphasis on the importance of specialist environmental assurors and the role of trust. The demand for assurance is positively related to stakeholders’ assessment of the value of CSD and the use of information from information intermediaries such as responsible investment indices, and negatively related to stakeholder perceptions of CSD representational faithfulness.

This paper only draws on data from the UK. Similar research can be explored in a context outside the UK.

Better understanding of stakeholder defined determinants of the demand for CSD assurance as well as their perceptions of CSD assurance will inform regulators and enable companies to better discharge accountability towards stakeholders.

This is one of the few empirical studies that investigate CSD assurance and one of the first to focus on stakeholder perceptions of, and demand for, CSD assurance within a multiple stakeholder perspective, rather than practitioner or corporate perceptions of CSD assurance.

This study aims to investigate the availability and performance of different types of supplier in China.

The analysis is based on a survey of the purchasing behaviour of 75 western firms with manufacturing facilities in the eastern seaboard region of China and 167 separate supply relationships with foreign‐invested and indigenous Chinese suppliers.

The results suggest that, while the availability of indigenous suppliers is limited, private Chinese enterprises have the flexibility and potential to perform well if both the supplier and buyer are willing to make significant investments, especially in the areas of workforce training and quality procedures.

Firms should treat state‐owned enterprises with caution, carefully considering whether they have the willingness and flexibility to respond to investment.

This should prove beneficial to both supplier and buyer companies based in China, both now and in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a snapshot of environmental management practices in the UK and discuss managerial responses to environmental issues in comparison with earlier research.

A telephone interview survey approach is adopted encompassing both quantitative and qualitative open‐ended questions with a sample of 167 UK companies stratified by firm size and industry sector.

The majority of firms are undertaking efforts to reduce their environmental impacts, yet economic considerations such as cost and risk reductions and achieving compliance with environmental legislation dominate firms' environmental behaviour. Especially small and medium‐sized firms appear to rely on relatively short‐term planning horizons, which ultimately prevent them from becoming more proactive in their environmental outlook. Comparison with earlier studies suggests that the overall behaviour of firms towards environmental issues remains reactive and economically‐oriented.

Despite the growing salience of many environmental challenges, businesses fail to employ more proactive environmental strategies, suggesting that more has to be done at policy level to stimulate the incentives involved with adopting such an approach.

By using a mixed methods approach the paper aims to overcome problems of respondent identification and social desirability bias.

The purpose of this research is to provide a systematic insight into corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship (CC) in supply chain development, by analyzing the current literature, contemporary concepts, data and gaps for future discipline research.

This research identifies information from existing academic journals and investigates research designs and methods, data analysis techniques, industry involvement and geographic locations. Information regarding university affiliation, publishers, authors, year of publication is also documented. A collection of online databases from 2001 to 2018 were explored, using the keywords “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in their title and abstract, to deliver an inclusive listing of journal articles in this discipline area. Based on this approach, a total of 164 articles were found, and information on a chain of variables was collected.

There has been visible growth in published articles over the last 18 years regarding supply chain sustainability, CSR and CC. Analysis of the data collected shows that only five literature reviews have been published in this area. Further, key findings include 41% of publications were narrowly focused on four sectors of industry, leaving gaps in the research. 85% centered on the survey and conceptual model, leaving an additional gap for future research. Finally, developing and developed nation status should be delineated, researched and analyzed based on further segmentation of the industry by region.

This research is limited to reviewing only academic and professional articles available from Emerald, Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Taylor and Francis, Springer, Scopus, JSTOR and EBSCO containing the words “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in the title and abstract.

This assessment provides an enhanced appreciation of the current practices of current research and offers further directions within the CSR and CC in supply chain sustainable development.

This study examines the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. Meaningful work is an important driver of individual performance of managers, and employees and can be enabled by sufficient use of management controls. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

Based on bibliometric analyses and a structured literature review of academic research studies from the organizational, management and accounting literature, the authors develop a conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work.

First, the authors propose that the use of formal management controls in a system (i.e. the levers of the control framework) is more powerful than using unrelated formal controls only. Second, they suggest that the interaction of a formal control system together with informal controls working as a control package can even stretch the perception of meaningful work. Third, they argue that the intensity of the control use matters to enhance the perception of meaningful work (inverted u-shaped relationship).

This study presents the first conceptual model of the relationship between the use of management controls and the perception of meaningful work. It provides valuable implications for practice and future research in the field of performance management.

The purpose of this study was to, using a case study research design informed by organizational economics theory, to examine the prospects for micro-insurance in promoting micro-credit in a low-income Anglophone country in sub-Saharan Africa – The Gambia. Two main research questions are addressed: first, what is the most appropriate micro-finance institution (MFI) organizational structure to maximize the economic benefits of micro-insurance? Second, what are the financial management and wider economic benefits of the use of micro-insurance by MFIs?

To address our two research questions, we used a semi-structured interview protocol, informed by the organizational economics literature, to interpret the data collected from our field cases. We believe that these intrinsic qualities of case study methodology are particularly apt in the present study, given the complex and emergent nature of micro-finance and micro-insurance in low-income countries such The Gambia. By focusing on case studies in a single country, we also to some extent help control for variations in business environment that could confound interpretations of field data obtained from different jurisdictions.

The results of our study suggest that the mutual (cooperative) structure of credit unions is likely to be the most cost-efficient and effective organizational form for reducing information asymmetries, agency problems and transaction costs. We also observe that micro-insurance can help reduce the risk of loan defaults, thereby increasing returns on savings and lowering the costs of debt. As such, micro-insurance stimulates the demand–supply of financial intermediation in less developed countries and so helps promote economic development. In addition to contributing new insights, our findings have potentially important commercial and public policy implications.

We acknowledge that our research is subject to inherent limitations such as the focus on three interviews in three different types of MFI organization while excluding other structural forms of organization such as government-owned/sponsored organizations. Nonetheless, the organizational characteristics of the cases examined in the present study are representative of most MFIs in developing countries. Given the prevalent hierarchical nature of corporate systems in sub-Saharan Africa, the views of the interviewees are also deemed to reflect those of other board members. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that the conclusions from our research may need to be tempered in line with these inherent limitations with the research approach adopted.

The insights obtained from our Gambia-based research could be generalized to developing countries elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, and indeed, other parts of the developing world. Consequently, the study could be of interest and relevance to international financiers (e.g. the World Bank), aid agencies, governments and other development organizations.

Despite its evident business and development potential, academic management research on micro-insurance, and in particular, its role in supporting micro-finance initiatives, is still very much at an embryonic stage. Our study thus seeks to fill this knowledge gap.

To outline strategies for balancing a critical approach to sport for development and peace (SDP) interventions with approaches that highlight the potentially positive outcomes of SDP. Two examples of attempts to balance these approaches are highlighted. One is a critical analysis of responses to sport-related environmental problems. The other is a study of how a sport-related reconciliation event led by celebrity athletes was successfully organized.

In the first part of the chapter, the complexity of the SDP concept (and the terms sport, peace, and development) is discussed along with the challenges of negotiating critical and more optimistic stances on SDP. In the second part, two approaches to navigating between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” stances on SDP are outlined through two case studies.

The two case studies are described along with preliminary findings from studies that were conducted. Each case study is accompanied by a discussion of how the author “middle-walked” between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” positions on SDP. A focus in this section is on how theory, methods, and strategies for reporting findings were accounted for in the process of balancing these distinct positions.

The difficulties attempting to balance critical and optimistic positions are discussed. The difficulties connecting critical analysis with practical suggestions for improving SDP-related work were also outlined.

The chapter explores the developments in work on the history of quantification and sport, explaining how quantification in sport is generally understood, and then establishing what a sociological approach offers to scholars interested in exploring new expressions of these developments in biometrics and Big Data. It then outlines some potential directions scholars might pursue to further develop knowledge of these developments in the context of sport.

The chapter synthesizes existing literature from the sociology of quantification, sport sociology and quantification, and Big Data to provide historical, contemporary, and future oriented assessments of sport and datafication.

By situating a discussion of Big Data and biometrics in the context of sport, this chapter argues for the value of a sociological approach to these areas. The chapter engages prior work as a way to move scholars to challenge the assumed epistemological and political power of numbers for the way we engage sport.

The chapter argues for a number of future areas of study that may push the boundaries of existing research in the area.

The chapter provides a survey of the literature on sport, analytics, and Big Data as an impetus for future research into the importance of a sociological approach to these areas in the context of sport.