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Supply chain (SC) configuration has gained increased acceptance as an important issue when evaluating new customization possibilities and this evidence has contributed to the strengthening of the debate between global vs local production locations. This work contributes in enrichment of this topic by studying how local or global SC location decisions influence performances by considering a SC point of view, in terms of cost and time, in traditional and customized productions.

A discrete event simulation approach, based on experimentation through executable configurations, was used to evaluate different SC scenarios for customized as well as traditional products within the footwear industry.

The results indicated that to identify proper SC locations, existing trade-offs between the time and cost performances should be studied, avoiding the evaluation of a single performance independently and, instead, adopting a complete SC point of view while considering these performances.

This evidence has contributed to the reinforcement of the discussion between far-shore destinations vs near-shore production locations. Further studies are encouraged to adopt the present model, in which addition of other variables such as specific manufacturing competences to differentiate suppliers, both local and global suppliers, or the possibility of realizing special types of product customization required by final consumers can be done.

The paper contributes to the academic and practitioners' debate by proposing a systemic approach to assess SCs’ performances in customized contexts and to compare them to traditional collections. Results indicate that cost and time performance must find a balance that does not necessarily correspond to an exclusively local or global production.

This work contributes to the SC configuration issue by considering the trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness (i.e. SC costs and SC times) for customized productions by reviving and enriching it with an SC perspective in customization contexts.

Digital advancements offer several opportunities to firms to gain competitive advantages, pushing them to transform their operating models. From the managerial standpoint, governing a digital transformation process is a complex task, as it means steering the process that goes from the exploration of the ample spectrum of opportunities that digital technologies provide, to the reduction of this complexity to a final set of actions to be designed and executed. As design theories are suited to solve complex problems, the purpose of this paper is to frame a design-driven approach to plan and execute a digital transformation.

This study pivots on an in-depth case study of a large Italian firm in the fashion sector that adopted design thinking to craft its digital transformation strategy and turn it into a list of projects to be executed.

Drawing from design theories, the authors framed a three-stage process (understanding reality, defining a digital transformation strategy and converting the digital transformation strategy into digital projects).

The external validity of the study is limited due to the choice to rely on an in-depth single case study.

The framework provided offers a structure for managing the digital transformation through strategy development and execution. Moreover, practitioners and companies can evaluate if their digital transformation process is under control and reflect whether they have been giving the right attention to each of the three identified stages. They could follow the footsteps of EYEWEAR and adopt the proposed framework to design their company’s digital transformation process.

This paper is supposed to help firms in reflecting on how to organize their digital transformation process. A positive transition to digital technologies enabled by the human-centeredness of design is likely to improve the quality of life of the people that belong to the transformed organization.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first research attempts at the crossroad between the fields of design, strategy and technology management and a groundwork for further studies to be conducted in this field.

Risks in implementing green building (GB) projects have emerged as a significant obstacle for GB development, especially in developing countries. In recent years, both academics and construction practitioners have paid considerable attention to the risks associated with GB. In this study, the authors aimed to create a comprehensive risk assessment model that considers three crucial risk features: impact level, probability of occurrence and risk manageability.

In the research, authors adopted the mean scoring and fuzzy synthetic evaluation method to assess GB risks. Based on expert assessments, this model can determine the significance of risk factors, risk groups and overall risk. Notably, this research applied the proposed model to assess GB risks in Vietnam by surveying 58 GB experienced professionals.

The findings revealed that GB risks are relatively high in Vietnam, implying that risk management is essential for GB projects to succeed. The results also showed that “lack of experience of GB designers” is the most critical factor, and “human resources risk in the design phase” is the top crucial risk group.

This study contributes a novel and practical model to help practitioners assess risks in GB projects. In addition, this research offers detailed GB risk evaluations in Vietnam and thus could be a valuable reference for construction practitioners and future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether the adoption of e-commerce improves company business, innovation and operational performance and whether sales internationalisation might moderate this relationship.

The research is based on a survey within the fashion industry and a multi-step linear regression model investigating the relationships between e-commerce and performance.

Results reveal that e-commerce improves innovation performance but has no significant relationship with business and operational performance. Also investigating whether the sales internationalisation might moderate the relationship between e-commerce and performance, the findings reveal that the adoption of these tools might even be negative when applied at the international level in particular by considering innovation operational practices, and the research suggests for fashion companies the necessity to develop strong markets’ knowledge and brand awareness among foreign markets and customers before investing internationally.

This paper offers an original analytical approach to identifying the relationships between a company’s adoption of e-commerce, performance and internationalisation within the fashion industry.

Risks are considered a significant obstacle to Green Building (GB) development and have recently received significant attention from both construction practitioners and academics. This study aimed to identify critical GB risks and explore the relationship between participants' characteristics and risk assessment.

Firstly, a list of GB risks was developed based on a comprehensive literature review and interviewing GB experts. After that, a survey of 207 construction professionals was then conducted to validate these GB risk factors. Finally, this research adopted the ANOVA test and hierarchical regression analysis to examine the relationship between participants' characteristics and risk assessment.

The results provided a list of GB risks classified and evaluated according to the GB project life cycle and, thus, may serve as a helpful reference for GB practitioners. Notably, the ANOVA analysis revealed that risk assessment negatively correlates with participants' GB experience, while their industry experience does not affect risk assessment. Furthermore, the hierarchical regression analysis proved that participant roles do not moderate the association between risk assessment and GB experience.

This study contributed to GB literature by implementing empirical research on GB risks in a developing country. The results implied the essential role of professionals with rich GB experience in risk management in GB projects. Furthermore, this research could help construction practitioners understand GB risks adequately and thereby have better risk-management strategies for future GB projects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine which environmental and social sustainability practices companies in the Italian fashion industry adopt and how these companies communicate their sustainability commitment through their corporate websites.

The multiple case studies approach was selected and the practices of 12 companies in the Italian fashion industry were investigated.

The findings showed that four different approaches in the field of sustainability practices and web-based communication are available within the Italian fashion industry (i.e. low commitment, high commitment, low disclosure, high marketing) by highlighting the alignment (i.e. fit or misfit) among these dimensions and by discussing the practices as well as the drivers/barriers of each approach.

The paper contributes to the literature by deepening the understanding of both the environmental and social dimensions of the sustainability issue. Moreover, the work investigates the relationship between sustainability practices and web-based sustainability communication, a topic that has not yet been addressed in the current literature.

This paper aims to examine how companies enact traceability in their global supply chains (SCs) to achieve sustainability goals and how this so-called traceability for sustainability (TfS) can contribute to (sustainable) supply chain management ([S]SCM). For this, the paper focuses on the paramount example of the apparel industry.

This study presents an integrative and systematic literature review of 89 peer-reviewed journal articles on the confluence of traceability and sustainability in global apparel SCs. It comprises content analysis and abductive category-building based on previous literature.

A conceptual framework emerges to describe TfS as an evolving cycle, comprising three dimensions: governance, collaboration and tracking and tracing. Resources and capabilities literature set the foundations for conceiving TfS as a distinctive meta-capability construct. Hence, besides being associated to increased performance, risk management and SC process transformation, TfS ultimately blurs boundaries and integrates non-traditional SC actors into the same ecosystem with important implications for sustainability and (S)SCM. This study refers to the industrial upgrading potential of global SCs to explain how leveraging enabling technologies for TfS may help to improve the triple-bottom-line (TBL) performance of the actors in the broad ecosystem while reducing the risks associated to those technologies. Thus, TfS can contribute to (S)SCM and to TBL sustainability within and beyond SC boundaries.

This study conceptually frames (S)SCM exploring TfS as a meta-capability and contributes to the underexplored question of how to achieve sustainability in global SCs.

This research investigates the role that having a trademark and a social media presence play in the development of international activities as well as their influence on performance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating within the fashion sector of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Quantitative analysis was carried out by integrating information from several data sources. The hypotheses proposed in the authors’ research model are tested on a sample of 102 SMEs, applying bivariate analysis and variance-based structural equation modelling (partial least squares).

Based on the authors’ empirical evidence, the fashion SMEs could improve their performance through two important marketing tools: registered trademark and social media. On the one hand, SMEs with a registered trademark are more present in the international markets, and it also implies higher performance. On the other hand, there is no significant relationship between SMEs with social media and a presence in international markets.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of trademark and social media participation on firms which varies depending on what managers of fashion-related SME companies want to prioritize. Hence, these two marketing tools could be useful for managers to decide on what resources to invest, to register a trademark or to be present in social media, subject to their firms' strategy and objectives.

This research analyzes the current knowledge regarding the use of maturity models (MMs) in SSCM, aiming to identify the main characteristics, trends and research gaps on the subject. Facing the growing interest in carrying out studies directed at sustainability, to the detriment of more prescient environmental and social impacts and the need to consolidate the concepts present in the literature regarding the SSCM, an absence of similar studies in the current literature was found. The authors have selected articles to compose a database that allows users to analyze and classify publications on MMs in SSCM, being those subdivided into 7 categories: focus, methodology, analyzed sector, sustainable practices, dimensions of sustainable development, type of MM and model/framework validation method.

To achieve this purpose, a literature systematization was conducted by searching publications using defined keywords in two databases and following a process of classification. The systematic process has five steps, from the selection of databases to the filtering of publications, review of information and analysis of the sample.

The topic under study is promising, with a few publications dealing with it, mainly in Brazil, and there is a trend to exploit more of the area in future research.

This research provides a detailed analysis of an emerging theme, divided into seven thematic categories. Results demonstrate that the topic is still underexplored, indicating an important research gap to be filled.