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This article studies the role played by sustainability operations management (OM) practices in the relationship between governance and environmental and social performance adopting the lenses of the upper echelons theory and the resource-based view. In particular, the authors study three main relationships: (1) the impact of governance on the implementation of sustainability OM practices, (2) the impact of sustainability OM practices on sustainability performance and (3) the mediating role of sustainability OM practices in the relationship between governance and sustainability performance.

To test this study’s research model, the authors retrieved secondary data of 430 firms from the United Stated (US) and Europe and analyzed it using partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study’s results suggest that sustainability OM practices are needed to achieve higher social and environmental performance outcomes from governance, highlighting the key role of the OM department in the achievement of a sustainability strategy.

This paper adopts the environmental, social, governance (ESG) neglected focus and aims to provide a better understanding of and reveal the interrelationship between governance and sustainability OM practices (i.e. environmental and social).

The purpose of this paper is to study how budgetary constraints can have ethical implications on patient treatment options.

By applying a qualitative methodological approach (interviews) and participant observation, this paper studies the behaviour of surgeons in scenarios of financial restriction.

The empirical findings show that despite the conflict between the economy and the leges artis, surgeons maintain the ethical and deontological principles of their profession with fair rules of orientation.

The importance of this study can be realised by its continuity. One of the authors is already implicated on a wider research to investigate the influence of the economic scarcity of resources on general surgeons’ ethical behaviours.

This paper is a contribution to understanding the rules that restrain the activities of surgeons. Politicians sometimes do not have a full understanding of the pressures that the medical profession faces in their day-to-day activities. Currently, with the addition of problems relate to COVID-19, politicians and populations seem to better understand the importance of the Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS), This paper hopes that this understanding will be not only a conjectural moment.

In conjunction with the economic recession that began in the first decade of this century, health institutions have long faced budgetary constraints that condition their material and human resources and correspondingly shape the scope of health professional activities. Until now, it has not been studied the impact of economic crises on the ethical behaviour of Portuguese surgeons. Therefore, this research is a first step and a useful contribution to understanding the rules that can restrain (or not) the ethical conduct of these health professionals.

In total, 19 practices of circular economy divided into three groups, internal environmental management, ecological design and investment recovery were studied in a local network composed of small companies and individual entrepreneurs related to common product and by-product flows. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This research presents an applied nature, is characterized as exploratory and adopted the case study as a technical procedure using sources and methods of data collection. The primary data were collected through direct observation of the processes and semi-structured interviews with managers and owners.

The most widespread practices are related to product design. However, in most cases, the implementation was punctual and did not present continuous and corresponding actions, which highlights the embryonic contours of European Commission (EC) in the observed network. The practices from the management category were less observed, which revels the environmental variable is not included in the strategic business planning.

The research documents the application of CE practices in a local network and brings this current paradigm shift to the Brazilian context.

To overcome barriers to the implementation of EC practices, it is suggested to restructure commercial relations, to formulate public policies and to develop infrastructures that facilitate the materiality of flows and the market.

The study highlights the need of public policies that promotes cross-sectoral cooperation in accordance with NSWP objectives.

Despite the focus on EC implemented practices this study offers a framework of the research routes on the main barriers and suggests actions to overcome the challenges in the transition from the economy to the circular model.

This research aimed to describe the phenomenon of the growth of enterprises in the vision of social entrepreneurs.

This is a qualitative study developed joining eight social entrepreneurs in four organizations, two cooperatives and two associations. Data were obtained in semi structured interviews. Data were analyzed with interpretativist and the classical content analysis.

The main findings indicated the growth phenomenon presented in five categories: growth intentions, growth meanings, support of other organizations and participation in networks, strategies and difficulties. The results of the research have shown that the growth for the social entrepreneurs is a collective phenomenon, characterized by search of economic value and empowerment.

The main limitation of the research was study only two types of organizations, one garbage cooperative and two association.

The results can help managers of social incubators and stakeholders because it was evidenced the efforts and difficulties that social entrepreneurs face to survive and to search growth.

Our findings may contribute to the formulation of public policies oriented to social entrepreneurs.

This paper presents the first theoretical contribution about the growth in a specific context, the context of social entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to map the process of opening an innovation network in the context of the Brazilian agroforestry sector.

Qualitative case study of the open innovation network Embrapa Florestas (17 semi-structured interviews, observation and documentary data). Social network analysis (SNA) of the open innovation network from primary data is available at Embrapa Florestas’ system.

Three primary triggers to the opening process of Embrapa Florestas’ innovation network were identified. The process starts with an innovation network with closed network characteristics. The process of opening the innovation network is motivated by a restructuring in its source of fundraising (trigger 1), by the change in strategic orientation toward the internationalization of its network activities (trigger 2) and by opening the black box of its innovation with greater proximity to the productive sector and partner universities (trigger 3). Comparing the pre-opening and post-opening networks (open innovation network), sociometric data allows us to verify that the opening of the innovation network presents better density, clustering and centrality indexes for the network as a whole and for the Embrapa Florestas specifically.

This is one of the first studies that aims to investigate the transition from a closed innovation network to an open innovation network by a public research institute. It may also be considered innovative because it presents practical and managerial relevance – in addition to contributions to public policy makers – which allows for improvements in the development of innovation and technology in the country's strategic sectors.

In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.

This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.

Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).

Service research offering a view of both the dark and bright sides of smart technology remains scarce. This paper embraces a critical perspective and examines the conflicting outcomes of smart services on the customer experience (CX), with a specific focus on chatbots.

This study uses empirical research methods to examine a single case study where an online retail service provider implemented a chatbot for customer service. Using discourse analysis, we analysed 7,167 conversations between customers and the chatbot over a two-year period.

The analysis identifies seven general themes related to the effects of the chatbot on CX: interaction quality, information gathering, procedure literacy, task achievement, digital trust, shopping stress and shopping journey. We illuminate both positive (i.e. having a pleasant interaction, providing information, knowing procedures, improving tasks, increasing trust, reducing stress and completing the journey) and negative outcomes (i.e. having an unpleasant interaction, increasing confusion, ignoring procedures, worsening tasks, reducing trust, increasing stress and abandoning the journey).

The paper develops a comprehensive framework to offer a clearer view of chatbots as smart services in customer care. It delves into the conflicting effects of chatbots on CX by examining them through relational, cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions.

The purpose of this article is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of information technology (IT) projects using cloud computing. CSFs are variables that can influence the success of projects and therefore need to be identified and managed appropriately.

This is an exploratory qualitative study with 23 experts in cloud computing projects through semi-structured interviews. The data was analyzed using content analysis.

The results present a list of CSFs for projects in a cloud computing environment. The study demonstrated that the CSF with greater relevance to cloud projects is the team’s technical capacity, followed by the support of senior management and the team’s soft skills. In addition, results demonstrated that contract item management is a limiting factor for cloud projects.

The sample comprised only Brazilian experts, so it may not represent the same scenario as in other locations. The CSF ratio for cloud computing projects may vary depending on the company’s maturity in projects of this nature.

The CSF relationship can guide managers in properly conducting cloud computing projects, contributing to minimizing the risks and challenges that may interfere with the project.

The relationship of the CSFs in cloud computing projects proposed fills a gap in studies specifically related to this context and tries to minimize project managers’ stress.

Contract items for the cloud context are added to the CSF literature in IT projects, which have not been addressed so far.

Only a few concepts in the service literature are as pervasive yet as undertheorized as is the concept of the actor. With a growing interest toward value creation as a systemic and institutionally guided phenomenon, there is a particular need for a more robust conceptualization of humans as actors that adopts a processual, as opposed to a static, view. The purpose of this paper is to build such processual conceptualization to advance service-dominant (S-D) logic, in particular, and service research, in general.

The paper is conceptual and extends S-D logic's institutionally constituted account of the actor by drawing from identity theory and social constructionism.

The paper develops a processual conceptualization of the human actor that explicates four social processes explaining the dynamics between two identity concepts—social and personal identity—and institutional arrangements. The resulting framework reveals how humans are simultaneously constituted by institutions and able to perform their roles in varying, even institution-changing, ways.

By introducing new insights from identity theory and social constructionism, this paper reconciles the dualism in S-D logic's current description of actors, as well as posits the understanding of identity dynamics and the processual nature of actors as central in many service-related phenomena.

This paper is among the few that explicitly theorize about the nature of human actors in S-D logic and the service literature.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of meaning as a relevant but missing link in understanding the building blocks of service innovation informed by service-dominant (S-D) logic. In exploring the role of meaning in service innovation, especially related to new value propositions, resource integration and new value cocreation, the authors suggest using the conceptualization of meaning within human-centered design, which has an established body of knowledge on addressing how actors engage and interact.

The paper builds an actionable conceptual framework that relates meaning to central tenets of service innovation, such as resource integration, value propositions and cocreation of value. It delineates the central building blocks of service innovation and conceptually integrates them with meaning to explain the underlying mechanisms of service innovation related both to its development and adoption.

The findings highlight how and why meaning precedes value creation and directs resource integration. Indicating that meaning is driven by experience of earlier interactions it delineates its relationships with new value formation and positions resource interpretation as a driver of this process.

This paper extends the understanding of service innovation in relation to S-D logic, with meaning as a conceptual link to aspects of S-D logic that claim a phenomenological nature. Meaning contributes to S-D logic by providing an understanding of how beneficiaries form intentions to engage in value creation and resource integration. Additionally, by integrating service and design research domains, this paper suggests possibilities for multidisciplinary contributions in future research.