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The food supply chain worldwide has suffered severely due to the COVID-19 pandemic countermeasures. Previous research suggests that business model innovation (BMI) could be a viable solution for recovering from the pandemic and fostering organizational resilience. This study analyzes the capabilities that enable food companies to innovate their business model and thereby increase organizational resilience.

Results were obtained using a multiple-case study approach consisting of 15 companies along the entire food supply chain. Managers and decision-makers were interviewed, and the collected insights were enriched with additional material.

The results show several capabilities that enable companies to innovate their business model due to disruption. These capabilities are categorized into four phases based on the processual representation of BMIs.

This study contributes to the understanding of BMI in the food supply chain and provides empirical evidence on the potential for business recovery through BMI.

The paper studies how the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) positioned itself in the process through which capacity building in developing countries was interpreted and enacted within the global development aid agenda from 1999 to 2016.

The paper is an in-depth case study drawing on a comprehensive analysis of publications, reports and archival materials.

The paper unveils how IFAC shaped the interpretation of capacity building and its associated practices in a manner aligned with its expansionary aims thereby transforming itself into a prominent actor within, what we term, the capacity building issue-based field. It unpacks the strategies pursued by IFAC as it mobilised economic, social and cultural resources in support of its global capacity building ambitions for the accountancy profession. It reveals how key interactions between actors in the international development exchange field and the professional exchange field of accounting underpinned IFAC’s infiltration of, and impact on the evolution of, the capacity building issue-based field. We show how IFAC increased its influence in this field despite initially operating on the periphery of the global development aid agenda.

The paper reveals how the global accountancy profession’s engagement with the capacity building activities of international development agencies became central to its commitment to serving the public interest. Our analysis suggests that deeper explorations of capacity building by the global accountancy profession in specific developing countries are required in order to determine whether these efforts have effectively catered to the needs of the citizens of those countries.

The work of professional accountancy organizations (PAOs) operating at the global level in the area of capacity building has been addressed in a fragmented fashion in prior research. This paper presents a unique analysis of developing alliances between the global accountancy profession and international aid agencies aimed at supporting the globalising efforts of IFAC within the realm of capacity building in international development aid. Theoretically, the paper advances prior work exploring the evolution of issue-based fields, in particular the role of inter-field relations in interstitial spaces within these processes.

This study aims to investigate the impact of supply chain concentration (SCC) on corporate research and development (R&D) investment and determine the moderating roles of industry concentration and financing constraints on the relationship between SCC and R&D investment.

The study collected data from Chinese listed companies, used the fixed effects model to test the research hypotheses and further used the two-stage Heckman test and propensity score matching (PSM) to address potential endogeneity issues.

The result reveals a negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment. In addition, industry concentration mitigates the negative impact of SCC on corporate R&D investment, but financing constraints strengthen the negative impact.

This study introduces the concept of SCC and empirically tests its effect on R&D investment, further explaining the lack of corporate innovation. This study inspires companies to strengthen SC management and weigh the level of SCC with environmental factors.

Under the digital wave and the new industrial competition pattern, the automobile industry is facing multiple challenges such as the redefinition of new technologies and supply chain changes. The purpose of this study is to link big data analytics and artificial intelligence (BDA-AI) with digital supply chain transformation (DSCT) by taking Chinese automobile industry firms as a sample and to consider the role of supply chain internal integration (SCII), supply chain external integration (SCEI) and supply chain agility (SCA) between them.

Data were collected from 192 Chinese firms in the automotive industry and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Importance-performance map analysis is used to extend the standard results reporting of path coefficient estimates in PLS-SEM.

The results indicate that BDA-AI, SCII, SCEI and SCA positively influence DSCT. In addition, this study found that SCII, SCEI and SCA play an intermediary role in BDA-AI and DSCT.

The paper enriches the research on the mechanism of digital resources affecting DSCT and expands the research of organizational information processing theory in the context of digital transformation. The paper explores how the resources deployed by firms change the strategic measures of firms from the perspective of responsiveness. By exploring the positive impact of SCA as a response capability on the DSCT strategy and its intermediary role between digital resources and DSCT, which is helpful to the further theoretical development of logistics and supply chain disciplines.

This study aims to explore how operational resilience can be achieved within supply ecosystems in the delicate yet harsh natural environments of the Arctic.

An in-depth, multiple qualitative case study of offshore supply operations in Arctic oil and gas field projects is conducted. Data from semi-structured interviews, personal observations and archival materials are analysed through institutional work and logics approaches.

The findings suggest that achieving social-ecological resilience depends on the interaction between social and natural (irreversible) systems, which are shaped and influenced by various institutional dynamics. Different resilience solutions were detected.

This study develops a comprehensive understanding of how social-ecological resilience emerges in supply ecosystems through institutional dynamics. The study’s empirical basis is limited to offshore oil and gas projects in the Arctic. However, due to anticipated future growth of Arctic economic activities, other types of supply ecosystems may benefit from the study’s results.

This research contributes with empirical knowledge about how social-ecological resilience is created through institutional interaction within supply ecosystems to prevent disruptions of both social and ecological ecosystems under the harsh natural conditions of the Arctic.

Automation and the new buzzword, “Industry 4.0”, have dominated the media headlines in recent months. In this scenario, apparel manufacturers should not only install automatic machines but also standardise them based on specific industry requirements, and precise measures are required for daily target demands.

This study demonstrates the application of Predetermined Motion and Time System (PMTS) tools in various automatic and semiautomatic machines to obtain higher productivity and the highest utilisation percentage of operator and automats between the 1:1 and 1:2 man vs machine configuration models. In this study, timeSSD® was used to calculate the micro motions of humans. In addition, a video annotation and modelling software Tracker was used to calculate high-speed machine movements with loading frames of 30 FPS.

After the implementation of PMTS tools, it was found that for a 1:1 man vs machine configuration, the operator utilisation is 75% per shift and the operator idle time is 50% per cycle time, and the operator is sitting idle for 2 h per 8 h of shift. So, there is scope to improve the utilisation and idle time of operator.

With the PMTS software, an industrial engineer professional with knowledge of the micromotion economy can only calculate micromotion.

Exploring the first time in the world to establish standard allowed minute (SAM) of a partly automated single-unit sewing machine with partial human intervention and a semiautomatic machine. Theoretical underpinnings indicate that manufacturers use the experience to determine the SAM of any operation over time, necessitating this work to calculate standard minutes automatically.

The purpose of the paper is to delve into innovation and happiness management linked to the definition of transcendence at work. The paper analyses in the context of innovation and happiness management the relation of the three dimensions taken from Khari and Sinha (2020: Sense of we-ness, self-connectedness and work as a service. The paper also proposed indicators to applied transcendence and moral competencies to the banking sector guiding behaviour toward successful experiences at work as an antecedent of both, transcendence and employees´ performance.

The article starts with a VOSviewer-based bibliometric analysis to examine the recent development of happiness management as an emergent topic of research. A co-word analysis served to identify that the main research theme related to the topic is transcendence at work. The theoretical framework serves for developing a conceptual model that is analysed by taking structural equations modelling (SEM) as the method and partial least squares (PLS) as the technique. To test the hypotheses, the authors employed a sample of 354 employees from the main banks in Spain in 2021 (Santander, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), CaixaBank, Bankia and Sabadell).

The results confirm that Innovation and happiness management is related to moral competencies, which refer to the set of knowledge, skills and abilities that facilitate ethical behaviour in the banking sector. Innovation and happiness management include individual attributes for good performance in each job; this research is in line with the prominent call in the literature to consider moral competencies in human resources management.

Originality lies on the answer of the question: what is the role of employee transcendence in the turbulent banking sector today? This paper seeks to approach and measure the relation of innovation, happiness and transcendence at work, Transcendence at work often arises when individuals connect their work to a higher purpose or mission, that connection is based on the idea that any effort to improve any of these three attributes provides successful solutions for the complex banking sector's performance.

The paper aims to investigate the empirical impact of working capital management (WCM) on firm performance (FP) in the emerging markets of Africa. This paper also aims to investigate this relationship during the global financial crisis of 2008 (GFC, 2008).

The sample of this study comprises two leading emerging markets in Africa (Egypt and South Africa) based on the MSCI world market classification list for the period 2007–2020. The study employs various regression techniques such as fixed effect and system generalized method of moments. In addition to baseline regressions, the authors applied various preliminary tests and, finally robustness measures. Besides the dependent, independent variables, the study uses firm-level and country macroeconomic-level explanatory variables.

The study's results indicate that (1) WCM and FP exhibit a direct relationship and (2) the WCM components such as cash conversion cycle, average collection period and the average age of inventory, have a significant inverse relationship, whereas the average payment period has a direct relationship with FP. The robustness results are assessed based on the selection of an alternative proxy for FP measurement, controlling for industry, country, year effect and the exclusion of the GFC 2008.

This study has various implications in terms of theoretical, societal and practical application for practitioners, managers, investors and regulators. In terms of theoretical implications, this is the first study that contributes to the existing body of knowledge in corporate finance and managerial accounting in relation to the examination of this relationship in the African region. Finally, practitioners, including regulators, can benefit from the study's findings while devising investment policies for investors in the region. More specifically, the financial sector conduct authority (FSCA) in South Africa and the financial regulatory authority (FRA) in Egypt can consider these findings to devise financial policies that aim to foster the FP.

Society benefits from the study's findings too. The efficient management of the WCM components will raise firm profits and investment opportunities for the society in Egypt and South Africa. A firm with good performance levels will increase salaries and will provide compensation to their employees in terms of bonuses. These compensations are one of the sources for achieving FP, which is evident from existing literature as well in the case of corporate governance studies. These compensations have psychological impacts as well. As society has its basic needs and goods, compensation levels will be tilted less toward societal ethical issues.

This study has various distinguishing features, which prior studies mostly lack, as most of these studies are on an individual country dataset, shorter periods, mixed results, lesser explanatory variables and no country-related control variables. The authors addressed all these challenges and provided robust results based on various measurement alternatives for the African markets. The study's results confirm a direct relationship between WCM and FP for South Africa and Egypt reflecting the emerging markets in Africa.

According to the Project Management Institute, 70% of projects fail globally. The causes of project failure in many instances can be identified as non-technical or behavioral in nature arising from interactions between participants. These intangible risks can emerge in any project setting but especially in project settings having diversity of cultures, customs, beliefs and traditions of various companies or countries. This paper provides an objective framework to address these intangible risks.

This paper presents a structured approach to identify, assess and manage intangible risks to enhance a project team’s ability to meet its objectives. The authors propose a user-friendly framework, Intangible Risk Assessment Methodology for Projects (IRAMP), to address these risks and the factors that cause them. Meta-network (e.g., a network of networks) simulation and established social network analysis (SNA) measures provide a quantitative assessment and ranking of causal events and their influence on the intangible behavior centric risks.

The proposed IRAMP and meta-network approach were utilized to examine the project delivery process of an international energy firm. Data were gathered using structured interviews, surveys and project team workshops. The use of the IRAMP to highlight intangible risk areas underpinned by the SNA measures led to changes in the company’s organizational structure to enhance project delivery effectiveness.

This work extends the existing project risk management literature by providing a novel objective approach to identify and quantify behavior centric intangible risks and the conditions that cause them to emerge.

As a response to global population growth and increasing demand for food, farmers have been complementing traditional agriculture practices with vertical farming (VF) and indoor hydroponic systems. To facilitate the growth of the VF industry, this paper aims to identify business model elements and their configurations that lead to high firm performance.

The research goals were met by conducting literature reviews coupled with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on five business model elements, “superior” OR “strong” performance as two possible outcomes, and the top-ranked global VF growers listed in the Crunchbase Database.

From the fsQCA results, it was observed that several business model configurations lead to strong firm performance. Vertical farms growing in urban settings and having strong customer engagement platforms, coupled with a presence of business-to-business (B2B) sales channels, are more consistently associated with superior performance. These results imply that the decision configuration of location, along with customer engagement activity and sales activity are differentiating factors between good firm performance and superior firm performance in the case of vertical farms.

This paper contributes to expanding the knowledge of business model theory, business model configurations and VF management, providing specific guidelines for vertical farm owners and investors related to decision-making for higher firm performance, as well as positive environmental, social and economic impact.