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Cloud computing is a major enabling technology for Industry 4.0 and the Big Data era. However, cloud-based firms, who establish their businesses on cloud platforms, have received scant attention in the extant operations management (OM) literature. To narrow this gap, the purpose of this paper is to investigate cloud-based firms from an operations strategy perspective.

A two-phase multi-method approach was adopted. In the first phase, content analysis of 27 reports from cloud-based firms was conducted, aided by text mining keyword extraction. Two data-related operations capabilities were identified and hypotheses were posited regarding the relationships between data resources (DR), operations capabilities and firm growth (FG). In the second phase, a sample of 190 cloud-based firms was collected. Seemingly unrelated regression and bootstrapping method were employed to test the proposed hypotheses using the survey data.

The content analysis indicates data as a key resource and both data processing capability and data transformational capability as critical operations capabilities of cloud-based firms. FG is regarded as a top priority in the cloud context. The regression results indicate that DR and the two capabilities contribute to the growth of cloud-based firms. Moreover, a follow-up bootstrapping analysis reveals that the mediating effects of the two capabilities vary between different types of FG.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this is one of the first OM studies on cloud-based firms. This study extends the operations strategy literature by identifying and testing the key operations capabilities and priorities of cloud-based firms. It also provides insightful implications for industrial practitioners.

The digital revolution has brought many challenges and opportunities for the manufacturing firms. The impact of Industry 4.0 technology adoption on sustainable manufacturing and circular economy has been under-researched. This paper aims to review the latest articles in the area of Industry 4.0, sustainable manufacturing and circular economy and further developed a research framework showing key paths.

Qualitative research is performed in two stages. In the first stage, a review of the extant literature is performed to identify the barriers, drivers, challenges and opportunities. In the second stage, a research framework is proposed to integrate Industry 4.0 technology (big data analytics powered artificial intelligence) adoption, sustainable manufacturing and circular economy capabilities.

This research extends the knowledge base by providing a detailed review of Industry 4.0, sustainable manufacturing, and circular economy and proposes a research framework by integrating these three contemporary concepts in the context of supply chain management. Through an exploration of this integrative research framework, the authors propose a future research agenda and seven research propositions.

It is important to understand the interplay between institutional pressures, tangible resources and human skills for Industry 4.0 technology (big data analytics powered artificial intelligence) adoption. Industry 4.0 technology (big data analytics powered artificial intelligence) adoption can positively influence sustainable manufacturing and circular economy capabilities. Managers must also put more attention to sustainable manufacturing to develop circular economic capabilities.

Factory workers and the local communities generally suffer from various adverse effects resulting from the traditional manufacturing process. The quality of the environment is deteriorating to such an extent that people even staying miles away from the factory are also affected due to environmental pollution that is generated from factory operations. Hence, sustainable manufacturing is the only choice left to manufacturers that can help in the transition to a circular economy. The research framework can help firms to enhance circular economy capabilities.

This review paper contains the most updated work on Industry 4.0, sustainable manufacturing and circular economy. It also proposes a research framework to integrate these three concepts.

The present study conceptualizes and examines the interplay of transformational leadership, ambidexterity and wireless information technology (IT) competency for enhancing innovative capability.

Drawing primarily on the knowledge-based and dynamic capabilities view theory, the present study explored supply chains of a large global apparel company and their effect on innovative capability through a mixed methods approach.

The results show that transformational leaders strongly influence the development of ambidexterity and enhance radical innovative capability through wireless IT competency.

The results of this study suggest that supply chain integration through transformational leadership and wireless IT competency can promote simultaneous exploration and exploitation to enhance innovation.

The growth of cloud and/or virtual supply chains facilitated by digital wireless communications and Internet technology is advancing logistics and supply chain innovations. With increasing global competition, digitalized supply chains and ever-growing environmental uncertainty, leadership traits, especially transformational leadership and ambidextrous leaders, can be major contributing factors for successful development of wireless IT competency to support innovative capability.

Wireless IT competency facilitates knowledge integration particularly for combining prior internal knowledge of exploitative innovation with new external knowledge to develop explorative innovation.

This study provides theoretical and empirical insights into how firms can enhance their performance strategically and financially by integrating learning and transformational capabilities into research and development (R&D) activities based on the dynamic capabilities approach. To achieve this, the authors propose that transformational capabilities in R&D mediate the relationship between learning capabilities in R&D and competitive advantage.

Using a purposive sampling technique and standardized questionnaires, data were collected from 118 R&D and senior managers. To analyze the data, multiple regression analysis, along with SPSS PROCESS macro (Model 4), was used.

The results support the theoretical assumption that there are direct and indirect positive and significant effects between learning capabilities in R&D and competitive advantage as mediated by transformational R&D capabilities.

This study explores R&D from a dynamic capabilities perspective and suggests that learning capabilities should come first to enhance businesses’ competitive advantage. Furthermore, transformational R&D capabilities can explain the relationship between learning capabilities in R&D and competitive advantage. The authors recommend that researchers should investigate the contributions of R&D to promote competitive advantage.

Given the importance of leadership practices and knowledge resources in fostering innovation capabilities of firms, the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of transformational leadership on exploitative and exploratory innovation via mediating role of knowledge management capability. This study also attempts to increase understanding of the appropriate mechanisms for firms to pursue innovation capability by examining the moderating mechanism of competitive intensity.

This study utilized the structural equation modeling and cross-sectional design to test hypotheses in the proposed research model using survey data collected from 351 participants in 120 manufacturing and service firms.

The findings indicate that transformational leadership induces greater effect on exploratory innovation compared to its effect on exploitative innovation. The mediating role of knowledge management capability between transformational leadership and aspects of innovation capability is also supported. Especially, the influences of knowledge management capability on exploratory innovation capability are enhanced and depended on the degree of competitive intensity.

Future research should examine the mediating mechanisms of knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing and knowledge application to provide deeper insight on the role of specific components of knowledge management capability in linking transformational leadership and innovation capability.

The paper highlights the important role of transformational leadership practices for fostering knowledge management capability and specific aspects of innovation capability under high level of competitive pressure.

The paper is unique in the attempts to provide a prospective solution for firms to pursue and improve innovation based on the meaningful insights on the mediating role of knowledge management capability and moderating effect of competitive intensity in the relationship between transformational leadership and specific dimensions of innovation capability.

There is currently a proliferation of digital analytics and machine/artificial intelligence productivity tools for creating and sustaining competitive advantage through strategic flexibility. Transformational e-HRM enables organizations to achieve and sustain competitive advantage through exploitation of these new productivity tools and approaches. However, it has been observed that many organizations have not been able to realize this. Using findings from an empirical exploration of e-HRM’s contribution to sustaining business performance, derived through an interpretative phenomenological analysis of a single case study, we propose in this chapter that for organizations to leverage the productivity gains of implementing Transformational e-HRM, HR and frontline managers require access to readily available artificial intelligence productivity tools. For e-HRM to contribute to sustaining business performance, we add to strategic flexibility theory that this can be realized by using e-HRM to enable strategic flexibility and adaptive capability. As we propose that it will be about organizations using the strategic capability derived by using Transformational e-HRM to create flexible and adaptive organizations. Its implications for practice are stated.

This study aims to offer and validate an integrated marketing capability-product innovations framework. Particularly, it aims to examine the role of adaptive marketing capability in enabling market ambidexterity and incremental as well as radical product innovation. Also it intends to investigate the moderating role of transformational leadership between adaptive marketing capability and market ambidexterity.

Manufacturing firms in Pakistan, an emerging economy, are taken as the context for this study. A designed survey questionnaire is used for data collection. Partial least square technique is employed to empirically validate and test the hypothesized model with a sample of 192 manufacturing firms. Particularly, the two-stage approach in SmartPLS is used to validate measurement models, and structural equation modeling technique is used to test the proposed hypothesis.

The findings not only confirm that adaptive marketing capability is instrumental to both incremental and radical product innovations but also reveal that adaptive marketing capability serves an important antecedent to market ambidexterity shedding new lights on its mediating role in the relationship of adaptive marketing capability with incremental and radical product innovations. Moreover, the results find that the effectiveness of adaptive marketing capability to support market ambidexterity may involve a possible trade-off between exploitation and exploration when the leaders exhibit a low or high level of transformational leadership behavior.

This study contributes to outside-in strategic perspective and contextual ambidexterity literature by revealing the role of adaptive marketing capability as an important enabler of market ambidexterity which, in turn, allows the firm to simultaneously introduce incremental and radical product innovations. In this way, this study advances the current understanding of the antecedents and consequences of contextual ambidexterity. Also, this study provides insight into the types of capabilities needed for the firm's contextual and employees' behavioral adaptation to simultaneously manage exploitation and exploration within the same business unit which was lacking in the previous literature. Further, this study also offers a novel understanding of the conditional role of transformational leadership between adaptive marketing capability and market ambidexterity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between transformational leadership, knowledge management capabilities, organizational learning and innovation performance in the context of higher education institutions.

Using a survey research design, data was collected from 219 respondents comprising faculty and administrative staff from two public and five private universities in Ghana. The data were analysed by using the partial least squares approach to structural equation modelling with the use of Smart PLS software.

The results revealed that transformational leadership significantly predicts knowledge management capabilities and organizational learning and also has a positive effect on innovation performance.

Although some studies have covered the theoretical and empirical analyses of links between transformational leadership, innovation performance and some knowledge management capabilities, this study examines the direct links between transformational leadership and knowledge management capabilities, on one hand, and transformational leadership and organizational learning on the other, as well as their overall effect on innovation performance, which has been less discussed in literature, particularly in the tertiary educational sector and in the Ghanaian context.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the antecedents of the development of dynamic capabilities from an HRM perspective, considering the leading role of leadership styles and their potential impact on the orientation of HR systems and a firm’s capabilities.

The authors designed an empirical study of a sample of 107 Spanish industrial firms, asking HR, production and marketing managers to assess the CEO’s leadership styles, the system of HRM practices applied in their organizations and dynamic capabilities. They applied multiple regressions and mediation analysis.

The authors’ results suggest that both transactional and transformational leadership styles are positively associated with dynamic capabilities (sensing, seizing and reconfiguration), directly and indirectly, through their effects on HR systems.

This paper approaches dynamic capabilities by using cross-sectional data. A longitudinal analysis would enrich this study. Also, the data aggregation in this paper does not allow to check different HR orientations from different departments. Finally, other HRM practices and strategic orientations could be assessed.

This paper highlights the need to develop CEOs who are able to combine leadership behaviors in such a way that they promote HR systems (skill-based development vs job-based development) and to use them as mediating mechanisms and in order to generate greater dynamic capabilities in the organization.

The authors are proposing that HRM can be applied to leverage a firm’s competitive advantage, as HR systems mediate for obtaining different dynamic capabilities. Second, it could be concluded that any CEO should combine or display traits of both forms of leadership styles (transformational and transactional) in order to develop the full range of dynamic capabilities. Finally, this paper can provide some insights into the way dynamic capabilities can be measured and approached, through HRM microfoundations.

This study aims to investigate the logic between digital transformation and export performance by analysing a large sample of Vietnamese exporters. The theoretical model is further extended by investigating the driving role of digital transformational leadership and mediating effects of firm digital capabilities and employee exploration and exploitation innovation.

The study sample comprised 364 middle managers at 107 export firms in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The data are analysed using a partial least square-structural equation model (PLS-SEM).

Digital transformation may be an indispensable tool for enhancing the export performance of businesses. Moreover, digital transformational leadership may drive digital transformation through the mediating mechanisms of firm digital capabilities and employee exploration and exploitation innovations to achieve high export performance.

This initial study contributes significantly to international business theory through the lens of dynamic capabilities theory, which reveals the role of digital transformation in export performance via mechanisms of digital transformational leadership, firm digital capabilities and employee exploration and exploitation innovation.