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This study aims to investigate the impact of stakeholders’ nonfinancial resources (NFRs) on companies’ profitability, filling a significant gap in the literature regarding the role of NFRs in value creation.

Data from 76 organizations from 2017 to 2019 were collected and analyzed. Four primary NFRs and their key value drivers were identified, representing core elements that support different dimensions of a company’s performance. Statistical tests examined the relationship between stakeholders’ NFRs and financial performance measures.

When analyzed collectively and individually, the results reveal a significant positive influence of stakeholders’ NFRs on a firm’s profitability. Higher importance assigned to NFRs correlates with a higher return on sales.

This study contributes to the literature by empirically bridging the gap between stakeholder theory and the resource-based view, addressing the intersection of these perspectives. It also provides novel insights into how stakeholders’ NFRs impact profitability, offering valuable implications for research and managerial practice. It suggests that managers should integrate nonfinancial measures of NFRs within their performance measurement system to manage better and sustain companies’ value-creation process.

The pharmaceutical industry is facing significant pressure to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Other ecological, societal and regulatory pressures are also driving the industry to “go green”. While such a (green) transition could be possible through appropriate green practices’ implementation, the present understanding about it is superficial and vague. A key reason is the lack of green practices’-related studies on pharmaceuticals, which are also insufficiently comprehensive. This knowledge gap is sought to be addressed.

A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted with 73 carefully selected articles, then subjected to thematic content analyses for synthesising the relevant themes and sub-themes.

Around 76 operational-level green practices covering all key stakeholders across the drug lifecycle were identified. It was revealed that designing drugs having accelerated environmental degradability is important to combat AMR. Also, redesigning existing drugs is environmentally more resource-intensive than developing new ones with significant cost-saving potential in solvent recycling and flexible manufacturing, both of which are not common at present. With regards to green-related barriers, stringent quality requirements on drugs (and therefore risks in making relevant green-oriented modifications) and time-consuming and costly regulatory approvals were found to be the key ones.

The operational green practices’ framework developed for individual pharmaceutical supply chain stakeholders could help practitioners in benchmarking, modifying and ultimately, adopting green practices. The findings could also assist policymakers in reframing existing regulations, such as Good Manufacturing Practices or GMP-related, to promote greener drug development.

This work is the first systematic attempt to identify and categorise operational-level green supply chain practices across stakeholders in the pharmaceutical sector.

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  Biodegradability of drugs is more important than environmental degradability.

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  Flexible manufacturing process design (or quality by design) reduces resource wastage.

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  Ecopharmacovigilance is effective in combating PIE and AMR-related issues.

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  Upstream and downstream coordination is key to greening pharma operations.

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  Costly and time-consuming regulatory approval is a key barrier to greening pharma processes.

Biodegradability of drugs is more important than environmental degradability.

Flexible manufacturing process design (or quality by design) reduces resource wastage.

Ecopharmacovigilance is effective in combating PIE and AMR-related issues.

Upstream and downstream coordination is key to greening pharma operations.

Costly and time-consuming regulatory approval is a key barrier to greening pharma processes.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of stakeholder integration and project complexity on information technology (IT) projects in Kenya. The following research question guided our inquiry: what is the influence of project complexity and stakeholder integration on the performance of IT projects in Kenya?

To advance the current understanding of the effect of stakeholder integration and project complexity on IT projects, multiple regressions were used to predict how project complexity and stakeholder integration influence project performance. Both government-funded and privately funded IT projects from a developing country were examined.

The study found that any project’s complexity and stakeholder integration levels offer a distinctive contribution to its success. Theoretically, the study contributes to linkages between stakeholder integration and project complexity concerning IT project performance. Through the adoption of actionable research and theoretical elaboration, we have shown that the successful execution of IT projects is driven by the successful integration of stakeholders and monitoring the level of complexity at each phase of the project.

The findings of this study add to the burgeoning literature on the performance of IT projects and come with several managerial implications as well. It brings to the fore the concept of stakeholder integration as an essential element of project success. The findings suggest that the inclusion of stakeholder integration into corporate decisions, strategies and policies can be an asset to the production of sustainable competitive advantages needed during the implementation of IT projects in government entities and organisations. As shown in this study, all the above require a collaborative platform allowing for data sharing among diverse stakeholders to ameliorate distrust or lack of information.

This study aims to investigate the causal relationships among environmental, social and governance reporting (ESGR), stakeholder sustainability awareness, use of artificial intelligence (AI), sustainability culture, innovation performance and climate resilience of organizations across diverse sectors in Sri Lanka.

A survey was conducted among 327 respondents, including senior accounting professionals, operations managers and functional heads to gather company-level data in various industries in Sri Lanka. A disjoint two-stage approach validated the measurement model, and the partial least squares structural equation model (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The analysis evidences the mediating role of stakeholders' sustainability awareness on the relationship between ESGR and sustainability culture. Furthermore, it emphasizes the role of sustainability culture in driving climate resilience. Innovation performance acts as a moderator, strengthening the relationship between the use of AI and sustainability culture.

The study suggests that organizations should strategically use ESGR, integrate AI and prioritize stakeholder engagement to strengthen their commitment to sustainability. These provide insight for decision-making in organizations seeking to align with sustainable business practices.

It explores the use of AI to enhance ESGR and sustainability culture, providing a broader understanding of how organizations manage AI and stakeholders in sustainability issues.

Personal influence is one of the most powerful strategies to influence publics’ behaviours. Yet, there is scant attention on how personal influence is leveraged for different public relations purposes in different cultural contexts. This study empirically investigates the presence and use of personal influence among Italian public relations professionals.

A survey was conducted through a self-administrated, web-based questionnaire and was developed from earlier studies investigating personal influence in public relations literature. Survey participants included public relations professionals across public, non-profit and private sectors.

The findings empirically show the presence and regular use of personal influence by professionals from all sectors to cultivate interpersonal relationships. Personal influence is considered a personal resource and used to leverage own influencing power. The findings also document four major manifestations of personal influence, which were named: relational closeness strategy, engagement strategy, expertise strategy and added value strategy.

This study enhances our understanding of personal influence in a specific cultural context and offers strategic insights for international professionals seeking to leverage influence in the socio-political environment of Italy. It also offers elements to improve public relations education and training.

The study offers some preliminary understandings of how Italian professionals leverage their personal influence in their daily public relations activities contributing with empirical evidence to the body of knowledge in public relations.

This paper aims to provide a starting point to discuss how social enterprises can drive systemic change in terms of social impact through operations and supply chain management.

This paper reviews existing literature and the four papers in this special issue and develops a conceptual framework of how social enterprises and their supply chains create social impact and further enable systematic change.

Our paper finds that social impact and systemic change can be shaped by social enterprises at three different levels of analysis (organization, supply chain and context) and through three enablers (cognitive shift, stakeholder collaboration and scalability). Such dimensions are used to position current literature and to highlight new research directions.

This paper proposes a novel understanding of operations and supply chain management in social enterprises intended as catalysts for systemic change. Based on this premise we distinguish different practices and stakeholders to be considered when studying social impact at different levels. The conceptual framework introduced in the paper provides a new pathway for future research and debate by scholars engaged at the intersection of social impact, sustainable operations and supply chain management.

Social impact research remains in its infancy. The purpose of the paper is to build on Keeling and Marshall’s (2022) “Call for impact” paper and develop a comprehensive social impact pathway (SIP) framework. The aim is to encourage marketing researchers, non-profits and corporations to pursue impactful work that is valued, planned, monitored and evaluated.

The conceptual paper explores the complexities of estimating social impact drawing from a range of illustrative cases.

The paper identifies a lack of clarity in the understanding and application of impact and presents a pathway aimed at increasing focus on social impact across future work to deliver the net-positive changes that are needed to reverse biodiversity decline, climate change and social and health inequalities that continue to be persist and be experienced by so many planet wide.

This paper contributes a pathway forward to encourage and support increased utilisation of the framework in future marketing research.

Mapping and measuring SIPs are concerted efforts directing understanding towards identifying the activities that are contributing to the delivery of outputs that can achieve intended outcomes. The measurement of impact directs investment towards activities that ensure net-positive gains are achieved.

Ever growing social inequities, health disparities, loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation occur when practices are left unchecked. A focus on impact avoids greenwashing practices, ensuring that an understanding of what has changed because of the work is transparently reported.

This paper aims to encourage marketing researchers to engage in social change projects, rather than solely disseminating academic findings. Emphasising the importance of an outside-in approach, this paper highlights the necessity of showcasing accumulated outcomes to demonstrate impact.

Studies showed that construction digitalisation could prevent or mitigate accidents rate on sites. Digitalisation applications may prevent or mitigate building project collapse (BPC) but with some encumbrances, especially in developing countries. There is a paucity of research on digital technologies application to prevent or mitigate BPC in Nigeria. Thus, the research aims to explore the perceived barriers that may hinder digital technologies from preventing or mitigating building collapse and recommend measures to improve technology applications during development.

The study is exploratory because of the unexplored approach. The researchers collected data from knowledgeable participants in digitalisation and building collapse in Nigeria. The research employed a phenomenology approach and analysed collected data via a thematic approach. The study achieved saturation at the 29th interviewee.

Findings show that lax construction digitalisation implementation, absence of regulatory framework, lax policy, unsafe fieldworkers' behaviours, absence of basic infrastructure, government attitude, hesitation to implement and high technology budget, especially in developing countries, are threats to curbing building collapse menace via digitalisation. The study identified technologies relevant to preventing or mitigating building collapse. Also, it proffered measures to prevent or mitigate building collapse via improved digital technology applications during development.

This research contributes to the construction digitalisation literature, especially in developing countries, and investigates the perceived barriers that may hinder digital technologies usage in preventing or mitigating building collapse in Nigeria.

This paper looks at how stakeholders co-create value at mega-events from a service ecosystem perspective. Despite the growing interest, little is known about how value is co-created through such initiatives for individual stakeholders and the community.

Drawing on institutional and stakeholder theory, the study focuses on Cortina 2021, the World Ski Championships held in Italy in February 2021. It investigates how multiple actors co-create value within a service ecosystem through qualitative interviews with key stakeholders combined with the analysis of official documents and reports.

The research established that key stakeholders were willing to get involved with Cortina 2021 if they recognised the value which could be co-created. Such an ecosystem requires a focal organisation with a clear regulative and normative framework and a common cultural basis. The latter helped resilience in the extraordinary circumstances of Cortina 2021 and safeguarded long-term impacts, even though the expected short-term ones were compromised.

From a managerial point of view, the evidence from Cortina 2021 shows how a clear strategy with well-defined stakeholder engagement mechanisms can facilitate value co-creation in service ecosystems. Moreover, when regulative and normative elements are blurred because of an extraordinary circumstance, resource integration and value creation processes need to be entrusted to those cultural elements that characterise an ecosystem.

The study takes an ecosystemic approach to mega-events to explore value creation for the whole community at the macro level, not only at the individual or organisational level, even during a crisis, which greatly impaired the preparation and running of the event.

Organizations are increasingly joining inter-organizational networks to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and mechanisms central to their success as experienced by key stakeholders.

An explorative, qualitative approach was adopted, using four focus groups with network coordinators (N = 18) and HR professionals (N = 14). Fourteen Dutch inter-organizational networks were represented. Respondents were recruited through purposive and snowballing sampling techniques. Thematic analysis was applied using open coding to generate themes.

The results of this study outline environmental, structural, and inter-personal factors and mechanisms that contribute to the success of inter-organizational networks that aim to foster sustainable employability for their employees. The environmental factors and mechanisms consist of challenges stemming from the labor market. The structural factors and mechanisms include: a network’s flat structure, flat fee, lack of informal rules, the allocation of roles and expectations for stakeholders and shared network activities. Lastly, the inter-personal factors and mechanisms are: communication among stakeholders, establishing reciprocity, interaction and collaboration between stakeholders, the valuation of trust, a convivial culture and shared vision among stakeholders. The dynamics between these factors and mechanisms are compared to other forms of inter-organizational networks. Furthermore, several recommendations for network coordinators and practitioners regarding the development of networks are presented.

This study provides insights into the factors and mechanisms that are regarded by stakeholders as influencing the success of inter-organizational networks in their ability to foster sustainable employability for workers. We have identified a unique model that captures this new way of inter-organizational collaboration and builds on insights from literature on collaborative governance regimes, institutional fields and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Specifically, the model provides a framework that consists of environmental, structural and interpersonal factors and mechanisms for network success. This study increases our understanding of how collaborative efforts can be fostered beyond organizational boundaries and existing Human Resource Management practices.