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Despite the growing importance of workplace spirituality, organisations have been reluctant to integrate spirituality into their workplaces; this paper discusses how to integrate spirituality into the workplace.

This is a theoretical paper that builds its arguments on the synthesis of workplace spirituality and contemporary management paradigms.

The study argues that workplace spirituality is an extremely important driving force for the sustainable and healthy growth of any organisation; however, infusing workplace spirituality into companies in the industrial and digital eras would be a futile effort, as industrial organisations are built on an ethos highly incongruent with spiritual principles. Therefore, in the post-digital era, spirituality-driven organisations (SDOs) will emerge, marking the beginning of a true “spiritual paradigm” for business and human society at large. The study also elaborates on the characteristics of the post-digital era and the nature of SDOs.

Workplace spirituality has been a research topic for years but has never gained sufficient momentum. The Covid-19 global pandemic has made workplace spirituality a more pertinent issue on corporate agendas. Therefore, this paper provides the theoretical foundation to embed workplace spirituality in contemporary management thoughts and practices.

This paper collects together quotations and extracts from 19th and 20th century thinkers who were little-known for being supporters of workplace democracy.

Industry 4.0 is a promising concept that allows industries to meet customers’ demands with flexible and resilient processes, and highly personalised products. This concept is made up of different dimensions. For a long time, innovative digital technology has been thought of as the only dimension to succeed in digital transformation projects. Other dimensions have been identified such as organisation, strategy, and human resources as key while rolling out digital technology in factories. From these findings, researchers have designed industry 4.0 theoretical models and then built readiness models that allow for analysing the gap between the company initial situation and the theoretical model. Nevertheless, this purely deductive approach does not take into consideration a company’s background and context, and eventually favours one single digital transformation model. This article aims at analysing four actual digital transformation projects and demonstrating that the digital transformation’s success or failure depends on the combination of two variables related to a company’s background and context. This research is based on a double approach: deductive and inductive. First, a literature review has been carried out to define industry 4.0 concept and its main dimensions and digital transformation success factors, as well as barriers, have been investigated. Second, a qualitative survey has been designed to study in-depth four actual industry digital transformation projects, their genesis as well as their execution, to analyse the key variables in succeeding or failing. 46 semi-structured interviews were carried out with projects’ members; interviews have been analysed with thematic content analysis. Then, each digital transformation project has been modelled regarding the key variables and analysed with regards to succeeding or failing. Investigated projects have consolidated the models of digital transformation. Finally, nine digital transformation types have been identified.

The purpose of this paper is to identify integrated solutions business as the first generation of servitized offerings and modular solution offerings as the second development phase in servitization of original equipment manufacturers. This study examines how the servitized manufacturer, Kone, moves from integrated solutions to modular solutions business and develops the requisite capabilities to design, produce and implement modular solution offerings.

The paper reports a longitudinal case study of a provider of integrated solutions installed in buildings. During the ten years studied, the manufacturer implemented a strategic initiative to modularize its integrated solutions offering.

The firm’s transition to modular solutions progressed through three major capability development phases: solutions based on ad hoc integration, smart solutions based on modular design and through-chain modularity. The modular structure aims at fostering the efficiency of the solution offering and the associated production system.

Leveraging the benefits of modularity calls for an aligned combination of strategic, operational and technical capabilities contributing to the integration of resources in a modular production system for the solution providers’ competitive performance.

The study reports how a solution provider can develop the operational capabilities to integrate the core and peripheral components into the solution, and orchestrate the modular production system.

This study is a rare longitudinal analysis of how a manufacturer builds a modular offering, the solution platform and the required competitive capabilities to provide the solution.

Currently, China’s economy is in the critical phase of transforming economic development patterns and replacing old growth drivers with new ones. Whether it can successfully overcome the “middle-income trap” has become a significant issue attracting wide attention.

Driven by underlying digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and big data, the fourth industrial revolution featuring the booming digital economy has provided significant opportunities for China’s economy to “overtake” and overcome the “middle-income trap”. The transformation of economic development pattern, the optimization of industrial structure, and the change of growth drivers, brought by the deep integration of digital and real economies are the keys to leaping over the “middle-income trap”.

From the supply side, the digital economy can improve the quality and efficiency of the supply side and promote the supply-side structural reform and economic growth from the following three aspects: First, promote the quality, efficiency and diversification of the supply system; second, promote networking, opening-up and synergy in the innovation system and third, promote the socialization, modularization and flexibility of production pattern. From the demand side, the digital economy can boost the new drivers of the “troika” of economic growth consisting of consumption, exports and investment by changing the market investment direction, promoting consumption upgrade and fostering export strengths. However, once these two attributes interact with each other, especially when data is combined with capital, the most adhesive factor in the market economy, a series of new social relations will then be produced based on the technical attribute, resulting in significant adjustments in social relations, involving both positive and negative externalities.

To overcome the “middle-income trap”, it is necessary to adapt to the laws of economic evolution and promote a fundamental change in economic growth drivers; boost the high-quality development of the digital economy by strengthening the support role of data in the digital economy; and accelerate digital industrialization and industrial digitalization to realize the integration of digital and real economies.

Social innovation (SI) acknowledges socio-economic challenges as opportunities to make communities more sustainable and cohesive through inclusive grassroots practices. The question remains, however, as to whether and how socially innovative practices can be effectively supported in developing inclusive economies. Drawing on the findings from two South African in-depth case studies, This paper aims to discuss how social innovation ventures may be supported to drive inclusiveness.

This paper purposively sampled two social enterprises (SEs) and conducted in-depth case studies through interviews and secondary data review.

The SEs selected promoted digital, economic and social inclusion. Despite the diversity of the two organisations, they shared similar challenges in undertaking their practices mostly deriving from South Africa’s lack of legal recognition and policy framework for social purpose-driven businesses.

Applying Moulaert et al.’s (2007) SI classification criteria to the case studies in focus, this paper seeks to extend our understanding of the challenges that innovative SE organisations face in tackling exclusion and contributing to build inclusive economies in the South African context.

This paper considers supply chain management organizations with the aid of 'chaotic systems theory' developed originally in physics and mathematics. Since innovations in supply chain management are vital for organizational survival 'complex systems theory' may assist in fine-tuning managerial philosophies that provide stability in supply chain management because it is on the boundary of chaos that the greatest innovational creativity occurs. Neither 'management by rigid objectives' (MBO) nor 'management by instruction' (MBI) will be suitable for the information society of the twenty-first century because chaotic social systems will no longer be effectively managed. However, the capacity for self-organization will be derived essentially from how supply chain management members accept a shared set of values or principles for action-'management by values' (MBV). Complex systems theory deals with systems that show complex structures in time or space, often hiding simple deterministic rules. This theory holds that once these rules are found, it is possible to make effective predictions and even to control the apparent complexity. The state of chaos that self-organizes is attributable to the appearance of the 'strange attractor' and provides the ideal basis for creativity and innovation in the twenty-first century. In the self-organized state of chaos, social members are not confined to narrow roles and gradually develop their capacity for differentiation and relationships, growing progressively towards their maximum potential contribution to the efficiency of the organization. In this meaning, values act as organizers of 'attractors' of disorder, which, in the theory of chaos, are systems represented by usually regular geometric configurations that predict the long-term behavior of complex systems. In supply chain management organizations (as in all kinds of social systems) the initial principles end up as the final principles in the long term. An attractor is a model representation of the behavioral results of the system. The attractor is not a force of attraction or a goal-oriented presence in the system; it simply depicts where the system is heading based on its rules of motion. In supply chain management organizations that cultivate or shares values of autonomy, responsibility, independence, innovation, creativity, and proactivity, the risk of short-term chaos is mitigated by external complexities that organizations are currently confronting. The strategy is to alter the supply chain management's surroundings so that they can benefit from management by values (MBV).