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This paper adds to the literature on societal grand challenges by shifting the focus away from business firms and other formal organizations as key actors in addressing such challenges toward the inherent organizing capacity that lies in the use of language itself. More specifically, we focus on the organizing capacities of metaphor-based communication, seeking to ascertain which qualities of metaphors enable them to co-orient collective action toward tackling grand challenges. In addressing this question, we develop an analytical framework based on two qualities of metaphorical communication that can provide such co-orientation: a metaphor’s (a) vividness and (b) responsible actionability. We illustrate the usefulness of this framework by assessing selected metaphors used in the public discourse to make sense of and organize collective responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the flu metaphor/analogy, the war metaphor, and the combined metaphor of “the hammer and the dance.” Our paper contributes to extant research by providing a means to assess the co-orienting potential of metaphors in bridging varied interpretations. In so doing, our framework can pave the way toward more responsible use of metaphorical communication in tackling society’s grand challenges.

We illustrate the potential of diaries for advancing scholarship on organization studies and grand challenges. Writing personal diaries is a time-honored and culturally sanctioned way of animating innermost thoughts and feelings, and embodying experiences through self-talk with famous examples, such as the diaries written by Anne Frank, Andy Warhol, or Thomas Mann. However, the use of diaries has long been neglected in organization studies, despite their historical and societal importance. We illustrate how different forms of analyzing diaries enable a “deep analysis of individuals’ internal processes and practices” (Radcliffe, 2018) which cannot be gleaned from other sources of data such as interviews and observations. Diaries exist in different forms, such as “unsolicited diaries” and “solicited diaries” and have different purposes. We evaluate how analyzing diaries can be a valuable source to illuminate the innermost thoughts and feelings of people at the forefront of grand challenges. To exemplify our arguments, we draw on diaries written by medical professionals working for Doctors Without Borders as part of our empirical research project conducted in extreme contexts. We show the value of unsolicited diaries in revealing people’s thought world that is not apprehensible from other modes of communication, and offer a set of practical guidelines on working with data from diaries. Diaries serve to enrich our methodological toolkit by capturing what people think and feel behind the scenes but may not express nor display in public.

This chapter goes into more detail about how experimentation can be used as a strategy of innovation and how cocreation can support this strategy. It first draws out lessons from research on sustainability transitions, design thinking, and grassroots innovation for the development of experimentation. Prototyping is found to be a particularly valuable strategy for cocreating experimentation because it allows stakeholders to develop low-cost designs and to quickly improve them based on group feedback. A range of prototyping strategies are available to cocreators, ranging from mock ups to pilot projects. Finally, the chapter examines how to support, scale and diffuse cocreated experiments.

The purpose of the paper is to present an empirical study on the logistics innovation capability and its impacts on the supply chain risk in the Australian courier firms. Based on the resource-based review, logistics innovation capability provides valuable insight into mitigating supply chain risks in the Industry 4.0 era.

The research model focuses on the relationships between logistics innovation capability and supply chain risk. Partial least squares approach for structural equation modelling is used to validate the research model by empirically analysing survey data.

The empirical result shows negative relationships between logistics innovation capability and supply chain risks. These relationships may imply that firms can mitigate the negative impacts of supply chain risks by developing logistics innovation capabilities. The findings demonstrate the applicability of logistics innovation capability for mitigating supply chain risks in the Australian courier firms.

There are very few empirical studies on the mitigating supply chain risk through logistics innovation capability. The empirical results provide an insight into innovation management and risk management in logistics and supply chain. This insight offers practical guidance for developing and deploying logistics innovation capability to support and enable supply chain risk management strategies in the Industry 4.0 era.

This paper investigates how the adoption of additive manufacturing (AM) impacts upstream supply chain (SC) design and considers the influence of drivers and barriers towards the adoption.

Ten case studies investigating AM adoption by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in five industries were conducted. This research is driven by a literature-based framework, and the results are discussed according to the theory of transaction cost economics (TCE).

The case studies reveal four patterns of AM adoption that affect upstream SC design (due to changes in supply base or types of buyer–supplier relationships): make, buy, make and buy and vertical integration. A make or buy decision is based on the level of experience with the technology, on the AM application (rapid manufacturing, prototyping or tooling) and on the need of control over production. Other barriers playing a role in the decision are the high initial investments and the lack of skills and knowledge.

This paper shows how different decisions regarding AM adoption result in different SC designs, with a specific focus on the upstream SC and changes in the supply base. This research is among the first to provide empirical evidence on the impact of AM adoption on upstream SCs and to identify drivers of the make or buy decision when adopting AM through the theoretical lens of TCE.

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of integrating material from the arts into postgraduate curricula to deepen students’ engagement with marketing phenomena. The authors assess the use of arts-based activities, within a broader critical pedagogy, for encouraging imaginative and analytical thinking.

The authors devised two learning activities and an interpretive method for studying their value. The activities were an individual essay connecting themes in song lyrics to marketing, and a group photography project. These were applied, within a broader, critical approach, in postgraduate modules on sustainability, ethics and critical marketing. Data collection comprised diaries kept by the teachers, open-ended feedback from students and students’ assignments.

Students showed high levels of engagement, reflexivity and depth of thought, in felt experiences of learning. Their ability to make connections not explicitly in the materials, and requiring imaginative jumps, was notable. Several reported lasting changes to their behaviour. Some found the tasks initially intimidating or, once they were more engaged, stressful or saddening.

This adds to scholarship on management education by showing the usefulness of an arts-based approach towards a transformative agenda.

It offers a template of how to draw from the arts to strengthen critical engagement upon which marketing teachers can build. It also contains practical advice on the challenges and benefits of doing so.

The authors provide evidence that this approach can enhance sensitivity and reflexivity in students, potentially producing more ethical and sustainable decisions in future.

The pedagogical interventions are novel and of value to lecturers seeking to enhance critical engagement with theory. An empirical study of an attempt to integrate arts into teaching marketing represents a promising direction, given the discipline’s creative nature.

The purpose of this paper is to ease the methodological application of critical realist multilevel research in business marketing. Although there has been plenty of theoretical contributions in this field, it is not always clear how critical realism can be best applied in business marketing settings. Accordingly, this paper addresses this gap in literature. Also, this paper addresses the calls for a multilevel conceptualization for resilience, based on the critical realist laminated systems.

This is a conceptual paper, which uses pre-existing literature to develop a critical realist methodological approach for the purposes of multilevel business marketing research. The contribution is based on literature by combining pre-existing ideas in a new way in the context of business marketing.

This paper makes a methodological contribution by introducing the critical realist “laminated systems” to business marketing as a multilevel research approach. Furthermore, the authors conceptualize a specific laminated model, the Laminated Interactional Model (LIM), that is designed for the purpose of business marketing research. The LIM is a methodological tool that conceptualizes business marketing based on six levels of analysis, easing the methodological application of critical realism in business marketing settings. In addition, to provide an example, the authors apply the LIM to the literature on resilience, providing a multilevel conceptualization. This is a timely contribution, as resilience has emerged as a central concept addressing interorganizational survival during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper makes three main contributions to business marketing. First, this paper provides a methodological contribution by introducing the critical realist notion of “laminated systems” to business marketing. Second, this paper conceptualizes a specific laminated model for business marketing, namely, the LIM. Third, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper will apply critical realism and the LIM to the notion of resilience, addressing the calls for multilevel conceptualizations.

This study aims to explore the downstream pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC) and provides insight to the delivery process of medicines and associated operational inefficiencies.

An exploratory, qualitative approach was adopted to examine PSC inefficiency within two European contexts, namely, the UK and Greece. Data was gathered through interviews and a thematic analysis conducted to analyse the data and identify challenges faced by both supply chains(SCs).

The medicines delivery system needs to be enhanced in terms of quality, visibility, speed and cost to perform effectively. The findings demonstrated that although the healthcare SCs in the two European contexts have different operational structures, the results are in concordance with each other. Financial, communication, waste and complexity issues were the major concerns.

To the knowledge this is the first study to examine aspects of the medicines SC via a cross-case analysis in the UK and Greece and extends the body of knowledge. A broader sample of responses is warranted to further validate these findings.

The study outputs can inform pharmacies’ strategic to instigate targeted improvement interventions. The implications of which may be extrapolated further to other European healthcare organisations.

This research contributes to the academic literature by adding further theoretical insights to SC strategy development, especially those that have been characterised as highly complex. The study identifies four key areas of intervention needed within this SC (in both countries) to promote higher level efficiencies and effectiveness.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown have hit the food service industry very hard. The COVID-19 outbreak has created a sharp downturn for firms in the food service industry, compelling actors across the whole food service supply chain to rethink their strategies. The purpose of this paper is to document the impact of COVID-19 on the food service supply chain, as well as to identify crisis management strategies food service firms use during the hectic early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to survive the current and prepare for future pandemics.

We performed a qualitative descriptive study using 21 semi-structured interviews with actors across the food service supply chain (i.e. farmers, wholesalers and food service providers). Data were collected to shed light on food service firms' decision making during the hectic early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to uncover various crisis management strategies used.

By integrating the disaster and crisis pyramid and resilience theory, four core crisis management strategies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic are conceptualized, i.e. (1) managing resources, (2) diversifying strategically, (3) prioritizing long-term outcomes and (4) bonding socially.

The theoretical contributions include documenting the performance impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food service supply chain and exploring crisis management strategies food service firms employed during the hectic early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, functioning and survival during a pandemic, an emerging field in literature, are central to this study. Additionally, while recent research suggests that integrating crisis management and resilience literature may provide a more complete understanding of the organization–crisis relationship, these literature streams mainly developed in isolation. By integrating the literature streams of crisis management and resilience and applying these theories to the COVID-19 crisis, our study provides specific managerial guidelines.