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The purpose of this paper is to explore how the sourcing process of the electric sports car sector is changing with respect to competitive advantage, required capabilities and emerging opportunism.

The case study data collection covered the period from January till August 2017, which implies a total period of eight months. The empirical analysis implies a sequence of 20 conducted interviews with senior managers, team leaders and operational employees from various organizational departments and functions within Company A, various suppliers and experts from the automobile industry as well as primary and secondary literature.

This work makes a contribution to the operations capability literature. It highlights the important role that sourcing will play to achieving strategic advantage in the electric sports car segment. Four key operational capabilities are emerging in the operating model. The first links to “capacity” and the ability of suppliers to be locally based so that they can deliver high-quality products and services in the minimum time (optimizing the “time-value” configuration). The second is the “design” of the supplier network. The third relates to “supplier management.” Finally, the fourth capability relates to the ability of the firm to “integrate” and “align” their marketing and IT planning processes with their sourcing process.

Throughout the adaption of a sourcing framework and its extension to consider operational capabilities, the authors have begun to answer the research question of how the sourcing process for the supply of new electric powertrain components is being transformed. These initial findings, the authors intend to expand with more advanced case study work with the firm that will involve empirical modeling of process efficiency and inventory management.

The work closes the gap regarding the need for practical application tools, designed for process managers, who are being confronted by turbulent, unpredictable and fast moving technological-driven market environments. Although the sourcing framework was developed to test the impact of the electric mobility trend, it can likewise be applied for the sourcing of components in other fast changing environments as well.

The paper raises the issues of the social role of the smart city planners in providing city spaces to enable the servicing of electric vehicles and to assist their production by developing the skills, capacity and capabilities of local city populations which will be needed to sustain and scale up any locally based operating model of electric vehicle production and servicing.

Although much has been written about the technological challenges of electric vehicles and the rise of new entrants such as Tesla to challenge the dominance of the sports car manufacturer’s very little work to data have explored the business-to-business (B2B) dimensions. The focus has been largely with the business-to-consumers (B2C) market.

The case has been developed by using secondary sources of information.

Tesla’s much-awaited foray into the burgeoning Indian electric vehicle (EV) marketplace had hit the “high import tariff” roadblock. Discussions ensued and finally, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and the Indian Government found common ground. The moot point of Tesla’s entry mode was resolved. Musk announced Tesla’s plan to set up an EV supply chain and manufacturing facility in the host country. This case discusses factors affecting location decision, market entry modes and international corporate-level strategies. Tata Motors sold affordable cars and was miles ahead in the EV race in India. Musk had to align Tesla’s India strategy with the company’s global strategy to woo the price-sensitive Indian consumers. What were the options available to him? This case examines different business-level strategic options that could help Tesla drive in the fast lane in India.

The case can be used in international strategy course at graduate level. It can also be used in a session on international marketing in marketing management course.

According to behavioral research, aspirations influence a firm's search – exploitive and explorative – for solutions that satisfy a firm's goals. Yet, such goal seeking behavior is adaptive to a firm's past experiences and not to a manager's expectations of its firm's future. A manager's expectations are often explained in terms of their confidence in future events. The purpose of this study is to address the following research question: how does a manager's confidence influence its expectations of a firm's future performance and goals; and how do these future expectations influence a firm's exploitive/explorative search?

In drawing on cognition and legitimacy research, a conceptual model was developed to explain the antecedents and outcomes of a firm's “forward-looking” aspirations. The antecedents to a firm's forward-looking aspirations are attributed to a manager's overconfidence – anchoring, confirmation and availability – biases. In using strategic legitimacy explanations, these biases introduce distinct types of forward-looking (exploitive/explorative) search that legitimize/de-legitimize a manager's forward-looking aspirations.

A key finding of this study is that it introduces a strategic decision-making process in which a firm's exploitive/ explorative search is adaptive toward its forward-looking aspirations.

This forward-looking strategic decision-making process offers research implications to understand how a firm's future goals and expectations can offer new understandings of their past experiences and traditions and explains how a manager's overconfidence biases can influence the assessment of a firm's social aspirational groups.

In addition, this study also offers practical implications in which illustrative examples are used to explain this study's forward-looking strategic decision-making process.

A distinct contribution of this study is that it introduces a forward-looking orientation that has not been previously examined the backward focus of behavioral research.

Using the constructal law of physics this study aims to provide guidance to future scholarship on global supply chain management. Further, through two case studies the authors are developing, the authors report interview findings with two senior VPs from two multi-national corporations being disrupted by COVID-19. This study suggests how this and recent events will impact on the design of future global supply chains.

The authors apply the constructal law to explain the recent disruptions to the global supply chain orthodoxy. Two interviews are presented from case studies the authors are developing in the USA and UK – one a multi-national automobile parts supplier and the other is a earth-moving equipment manufacture. Specifically, this is an exploratory pathway work trying to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on supply chain scholarship.

Adopting the approach of Bejan, the authors believe that what is happening today with COVID-19 and other trade disruptions such as Brexit and the USA imposing tariffs is creating new obstacles that will redirect the future flow of supply chains.

It is clear that the COVID-19 response introduced a bullwhip effect in the manufacturing sector on a scale never-before seen. For scholars, the authors would suggest there are four pathway topics going forward. These topics include: the future state of global sourcing, the unique nature of a combined “demand” and “supply shortage” bullwhip effect, the resurrection of lean and local production systems and the development of risk-recovery contingency strategies to deal with pandemics.

Supply chain managers tend to be iterative and focused on making small and subtle changes to their current system and way of thinking, very often seeking to optimize cost or negotiate better contracts with suppliers. In the current environment, however, such activities have proved to be of little consequence compared to the massive forces of economic disruption of the past three years. Organizations that have more tightly compressed supply chains are enjoying a significant benefit during the COVID-19 crisis and are no longer being held hostage to governments of another country.

An implicit assumption in the press is that COVID-19 caught everyone by surprise, and that executives foolishly ignored the risks of outsourcing to China and are now paying the price. However, noted scholars and epidemiologists have been warning of the threats of pandemics since the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus. The pundits would further posit that in their pursuit of low-cost production, global corporations made naive assumptions that nothing could disrupt them. Both the firms the authors have interviewed had to close plants to protect their workforce. It was indicated in the cases the authors are developing that it is going to take manufacturers on average one month to recover from 4–6 days of disruption. These companies employ many thousands of people, and direct and ancillary workers are now temporarily laid off and face an uncertain future as/when they will recover back to normal production.

Using the constructal law of physics, the authors seek to provide guidance to future scholarship on global supply chain management. Further, through two case studies, the authors provide the first insight from two senior VPs from two leading multi-national corporations in their respective sectors being disrupted by COVID-19. This study is the first indication to how this and recent disruptive events will impact on the design of future global supply chains. Unlike the generic work, which has recently appeared in HBR and Forbes, it is grounded in real operational insight.

Through a critical review of the impact of luxury international business, this study aims to contribute to an understanding of business activities that depend on an unequal distribution of income and wealth.

Drawing on a wide range of academic and practitioner literature, this study adopts a critical luxury studies approach to provide an assessment of the economic and social impact of luxury international business.

Luxury is an increasingly important sector of the economy, which contributes to the welfare of increasing numbers of people across the world. Alongside its dependence on an unequal distribution of income and wealth and the negative aspects to which this gives rise, luxury business generates significant benefits to the economy and society through promoting economic growth, innovation, cultural enrichment, improved quality of the built environment and environmentally sustainable business practices. Nevertheless, an appropriate level of regulation and taxation on the excesses of contemporary luxury consumption could improve the welfare of all. Hence, luxury international business warrants investigation by critical scholars who recognize the complexity of the benefits and dark sides arising from luxury.

This study draws on an extensive review of academic and practitioner literature. However, primary research is required to investigate further the key issues identified.

Through an exploration of the impact of the production and consumption of luxury, this study reveals how luxury businesses serving the super-rich can contribute to the welfare of society whilst also giving rise to negative outcomes.

By adopting a critical luxury studies approach, this study offers an original contribution to the field of international business and introduces avenues for future critical international business research.

This study investigates the extent to which a firm’s centrality and autonomy in its supply network are associated with the intensity and complexity of its competitive actions.

Utilizing social network analysis and dynamic panel data models, this study analyzes a comprehensive panel dataset with 10,802 firm-year observations across various industries between 2011 and 2018 to test the hypotheses.

Our findings show that a firm’s level of centrality in its supply network has an inverted U-shaped relationship with both competitive intensity and competitive complexity. In addition, the turning points of these two inverted U-shaped relationships differ in that firms with a lower level of centrality tend to compete aggressively by launching more actions within fewer categories, while firms with a higher level of centrality tend to compete aggressively by launching fewer actions that cover a larger range of categories. Finally, we find that a firm’s structural autonomy has a positive relationship with competitive complexity.

This study bridges the gap between the supply chain management literature and strategic management literature and investigates how supply networks shape competitive aggressiveness. In particular, this research investigates how a firm’s structural position in its supply network affects its competitive actions, an important intermediate mechanism for competitive advantage that has been overlooked in the supply chain management literature.

This paper discusses motorsport from the viewpoint of environmental sustainability amid growing concerns about the impact of human activity on the environment. It reviews the literature that positions motorsport in a global environmental context and explores the often used but rarely defined concept of sustainability. The author suggests that while motorsport is a significant sporting activity for economic and social reasons, there are considerable doubts as to whether it is currently managed and marketed in an environmentally sustainable way.