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Many future research proposals of Lean Manufacturing (LM) are presented in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine these future research proposals of LM which are country-related and classify them.

A systematic literature review (SLR) of peer-reviewed journal articles in LM was conducted. A total of 145 articles published in 34 journals during 2010–2020 were collected from four major management science publishers namely, Emerald Online, Elsevier/Science Direct, Springer Link and Taylor and Francis. The country-related future research proposals of LM identified in the literature were classified according to, firstly, the continent of the country of reference, and secondly, some form of natural affinity of these proposals creating meaningful themes. The quality tool “affinity diagram” was applied to classify the country-related future research proposals of LM.

The country-related future research proposals of LM, which are increasing in the literature over time, refer mostly to studies to be conducted in several continents/countries and to multinational studies. Conducting studies specifically in Asia, Europe, South and North America, Africa and Australia–New Zealand is also suggested. The plethora of the country-related future research proposals of LM were classified, based on the affinity of their content, into 18 meaningful themes. These themes were also classified based on their affinity into two broad categories, namely “themes concerning the LM approach itself” and “themes concerning factors outside the LM approach”.

The restricted number of the databases searched and the subjectivity of classifying the large number of the country-related future research proposals into themes are the main limitations of the present SLR. Based on these limitations, future literature review studies can be carried out.

Useful proposals are provided to researchers of several countries for conducting original and country-specific research studies which can enrich the knowledge of the implementation of LM under the specific circumstances of a country for the benefit of practitioners.

This study goes beyond previous literature review studies on LM by focusing exclusively on the LM future research agenda which is country related. The analytical presentation of the country-related future research proposals as well as the formulation of clusters of these proposals make the present SLR study substantially different from those carried out worldwide so far.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision model for choosing the tendering procedure in PPP that minimizes the transaction costs borne by the public sector.

A conceptual model that relates the procurement procedures described in the EU legal framework to launch PPPs and the transaction costs, considering the level of information managed by each procurement procedure has been developed. The authors use this conceptual model to develop propositions about the impact that specific project- and country-related factors have on the choice of the procurement procedure that minimizes the transaction costs.

The application of the proposed model to the case of the Italian highway “Cispadana” shows its usefulness in orienting the public authority’s choice between the different tendering procedures, taking into account project- and country-related factors.

The present study fills the gap existing in the literature on transaction costs of PPP projects and the procurement procedure used to launch those projects by developing a model that relates the level of transaction costs with a set of key factors, namely the level of information managed during the tendering process, the number of bidders, the project size, the project complexity, and the institutional environment.

As for practitioners, the main contribution of this study lies in offering a tool for supporting the public authority in the decision-making process about the tendering procedures in PPPs without imposing the selection of a specific procedure.

The approach developed provides a new tool to support the contracting authority in the design and choice of the tendering procedures in PPP.

To date, country-of-origin research has commonly explored structural relationships among country image (CI) constructs, together with attitudinal constructs, using a variety of halo, summary construct and flexible models, drawing on consumer samples. There has been no previous attempt to examine or synthesize these three models with respect to business-to-business (B2B) buying behavior. To fill this gap, this study reconceptualized these three models with B2B constructs using multi-cue settings and tested on B2B samples. This study aims to examine and estimate the relative impact of company- and country-specific images on B2B buyers’ evaluations of suppliers, and the direction of structural relationships with mediation among the constructs.

Data collection was administered through a web-based structured questionnaire. The final sample consisted of 276 purchasing managers. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study’s hypotheses.

Company image is significantly influenced by product country image (PCI) but not by overall CI. The existence of a significant relationship between PCI and perceived supplier performance in a multi-cue setting is an important new finding. In addition, company image significantly influences supplier performance and mediates the relationship between PCI and supplier performance. Among the three models that test structural relationships among CI and other constructs, the reconceptualized halo model fits the data best.

The study results revealed the contribution of company and country-related facets on B2B buyers’ perceptions of supplier performance while purchasing intermediate goods internationally. The significance of PCI on supplier performance emphasizes the strength of the industry sector within a country that may enable an industry to build a product-specific CI in international marketing.

This study advances the country-of-origin issue and debate concerning the strength of the country influence in the academic literature by addressing B2B buyers’ international purchasing behavior of intermediate goods. Additionally, the examination of multiple country facets, multi-cue settings and the CI influence structure in a single study, from a B2B perspective, offers a novel dimension to CI studies.

This paper aims to identify the relationship between national culture, enterprise application (EA) implementations and firm value for a sample of the largest and most actively traded firms in Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA. The study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the cultural traits that play a role in successful technological innovation.

Using 11 years of price and accounting data, as well as corporate announcements from English- and Japanese-speaking sources, this study applies event study methodology and fixed-effects regressions to a sample of international adopters of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management and firm-specific applications.

The results show a country-related contrast in the way investors perceive value in EAs. Investors with national cultures that are more collectivist perceive their firms to be well-prepared to extract value from large-scale technologies. In contrast, individualistic cultures seem to face more implementation challenges.

Although the study provides statistically significant results, a larger sample of countries and enterprise systems adopters would further enhance a generalization of results.

The empirical results provide evidence of the national culture traits that seem to increase the likelihood of success in enterprise systems implementations as seen from the perspective of actual investors.

The empirical study of how multiple EAs (ERP, SCR, CRM and SPECIFIC) and national culture differences interact with a market-based metric of value (stock market prices), while also using an international sample of firms from three distinct regions, is novel to the existent literature.

The first aim of the chapter is to offer a characterization of back-reshoring as a possible step of the firm’s nonlinear internationalization process. The second aim is to review the empirical literature on back-reshoring and to complement it with the findings of an extensive data collection.

In this chapter we adopted an explorative approach building on both theoretical and empirical literature from the fields of international business and international operations Management. We also collected secondary data on back-reshoring decisions in order to define the magnitude of the investigated phenomenon and to offer a primary characterization.

Our findings confirm that, though it cannot be considered a generalized trend, back-reshoring is a very topical issue for international business scholars. It represents an autonomous phenomenon consistent with the idea of nonlinear internationalization process.

The chapter is based on cross-sectional data. Longitudinal research is required in order to address the proposed research questions and help understanding “how much” and what kind of manufacturing will be housed in western countries in the near future.

This is the first attempt to conceptualize back-reshoring as a possible step of the firms’ internationalization process. It is also the first chapter that summarizes and discusses the literature and empirical evidence on back-reshoring emerging from a wide range of countries.

This paper aims to analyze the impact that sustainable board governance has on corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the European capital market because of the current debate of future European regulations on the topic.

Based on a legitimacy and stakeholder theoretical framework, the author conducts a structured literature review and includes 86 quantitative peer-reviewed empirical (archival) studies on board gender diversity, sustainability board expertise and sustainability-related executive compensation and their impact on CSR variables.

Gender board diversity represents the most important variable in this literature review. The included categories of sustainable board governance positively influence both the total CSR and environmental outputs.

A detailed analysis of sustainable board governance proxies is needed in future archival research to differentiate between symbolic and substantive use of CSR. In view of the current European reform initiatives on sustainable corporate governance in line with the EU Green Deal project, future research should also analyze the interactions between the included sustainable board governance variables and their contributions to CSR.

As both stakeholder demands’ on CSR outputs and CSR washing have increased since the financial crisis of 2008–2009, firms should be aware of a substantive integration of sustainability within their boards of directors (e.g. because of composition and compensation) to increase their CSR efforts and long-term firm reputation.

This analysis makes useful contributions to prior research by focusing on sustainable board governance as a key determinant of CSR outputs on the European capital market. The European Commission’s future evidence-based regulations [e.g. the corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) and the corporate sustainability due diligence directive (CSDD)] should be promoted.

This paper aims to analyse whether and how different types of institutional investors influence shareholder proposal initiations, say-on-pay (SOP) votes and management compensation from a sustainability perspective.

Based on the principal-agent theory, the authors conduct a structured literature review and evaluate 40 empirical-quantitative studies on that topic.

The traditional assumption of homogeneity within institutional investors, which is in line with the principal–agent theory, has to be questioned. Only special types of investors (e.g. with long-term and non-financial orientations and active institutions) run an intensive monitoring strategy, and thus initiate shareholder proposals, discipline managers by higher SOP dissents and prevent excessive management compensation.

A detailed analysis of institutional investor types is needed in future empirical analyses. In view of the current debate on climate change policy, future research could analyse in more detail the impact of institutional investor types on proxy voting, SOP and (sustainable) management compensation.

With regard to the increased shareholder activism and regulations on SOP and management compensation since the 2007/2008 financial crisis, firms should be aware of the monitoring role of institutional investors and should analyse their specific ownership nature (time- and content-driven and as well as range of activity).

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review with a clear focus on institutional investor range and nature, shareholder proposal initiation, SOP and management compensation (reporting) from a sustainability viewpoint. The authors explain the main variables that have been included in research, stress the limitations of this work and offer useful recommendations for future research studies.

In this paper, the authors aim to explore the relationship between the concepts of Industry 4.0 and circular economy (CE) as a contribution to the management decision on emerging countries. By analyzing the trends of scientific production to ascertain the interface of both constructs, the purpose of this paper is to identify limitations for Industry 4.0 and CE implementation in Brazil, as well to present an original framework and strategic pathways to overcome limitations for emerging countries.

Supported in the Brazilian case, the authors draw a framework using the structuralism approach to indicate pathways for the strategic positioning of emerging economies that consider their limitation and potential for competitive advantage. By understanding country-related limitations such as social and economic contingencies, the authors conceive a structure of implications for Brazil’s capacity to develop CE in the digital era.

Results show that Brazil has a reasonable, institutional and stable environment, as well as strong regulatory policies for solid waste that can stimulate CE in the country. However, it requires more communication between actors, especially public and private institutions, performing long-range relationships. Also, the country requires consolidation of industrial policies and investments in the remanufacturing process in the supply chain. Likewise, despite Brazil’s ability to take advantage of CE’s benefits, the country presents a huge lack of qualification to fulfill the competences that the digitization process demands. Economically, Brazil has been fighting against an economic crisis since 2014 that has limited general investments, especially in the industrial sector. Industry presents low performance and decreasing GDP participation, which leads to constant overseas production transfer as a consequence of the workforce’s high costs.

The authors can affirm that Brazil is far behind developed countries in searching for the capacity to provide CE through technological industrial change. The main problems are related to the lack of articulation of public and private spheres to promote new digital business models. Therefore, the structured framework enables managers and public agents to provide solutions and to properly address supply chain bottlenecks in emerging economies.

Exploring the relationship between the concepts of Industry 4.0 and CE through the specific lens of the structuralist method, this work can contribute to the management decision on emerging countries, looking into four important perspectives: political, economic, social and technological.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of country affinity, ethnocentrism and product quality judgment on self-brand connection regarding both domestic and foreign brands.

The study involved an online experiment and was conducted using online questionnaires. Sampling was done among undergraduate students of a Southwestern university in the US. The data was analyzed using SEM with PLS.

The results showed, for foreign brands, consumer self-brand connection increased through the effect of country affinity and product quality judgment. For domestic brands, self-brand connection was influenced by ethnocentrism (and not country affinity or product quality judgment).

This study only focused on one industry (i.e. Television industry), and the authors recommend future studies examine a broader range of industries. Moreover, other country related constructs such as national identity need to be examined in future studies.

Marketers focusing on global branding and international marketing can benefit from the findings of this paper by understanding the routes through which consumers build self-brand connections in foreign vs domestic settings. Additionally, marketers can, more effectively, invest their resources by focusing on the factors that can be influential (i.e. ethnocentrism for domestic brands vs country affinity and product judgment for foreign brands).

This study examines the effect of country affinity, ethnocentrism and product quality judgment for consumers' domestic country as well as a foreign country. Moreover, this study contributes toward the global branding literature by incorporating self-brand connection as a behavioral outcome.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the contribution of European Commission (EC) initiatives to stimulate cultural heritage research over the last 20 years and the contribution of the research results to cultural heritage management and sustainable development.

From a brief introduction to the EC initiatives related to cultural heritage, the paper continues with an overview of the research projects so far funded by EC Framework Programmes. It includes the main conclusions and recommendations reached during the NET‐HERITAGE conference last March, in support to the debate on the existing gaps, and to suggest ways forward, which can be useful to research institutes as well as other funding organizations.

Although the EC should be commended for its substantial contribution to the field of cultural heritage research over the last 20 years, it is the first, however, to acknowledge that this is just the beginning and that much more needs to be done in order to help ensure sustainability and the consequent transmission of the European cultural legacy to future generations, at both regional and national levels.

In providing an overview of EC‐funded cultural heritage research, the paper is useful to the readers of the journal, who might consider obtaining EC funding and so stimulate their participation in future funding schemes and related projects. It highlights some potential areas for research and continues to scientifically underpin that cultural heritage research can help increasing competitiveness in Europe and beyond.