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This research investigates what is driving corporate sustainability within South African organisations and to what extent these drivers intersect with risk management. This is important as new and emerging business risks are proving to be directly linked to sustainability issues having implication on long-term organisational performance. This implies that sustainability and risk should not be mutually exclusive.

By means of semi-structured interviews, sustainability managers of 11 South African organisations were engaged to gain insight relating to the immediate sustainability issues, risk landscape and the possible intersection between these issues within their organisations. Questions posed were around drivers of sustainability, risks to an organisation, changes in risks, relationship between sustainability and risk. By means of thematic analysis key issues emerging from the responses of the sustainability managers could be identified and themes determined based on similarities. This was followed by trend analysis of the frequency of responses to different sustainability and risk themes to interpret the data.

Results reveal that sustainability and risk management are similar in their intent purpose and output both aligned towards reducing impacts and managing uncertainty. However even though sustainability has increasingly become integral to business its value contribution and linkage with risk management differ significantly amongst organisations. This suggests that sustainability and risk management remain two distinct frameworks for managing uncertainty in business.

Research on integrating a sustainability perspective in risk management is at an early stage. To understand and respond to emerging risks, organisations need to integrate sustainability and risk management into their decision strategies – not only to minimize potential losses but also to exploit new business opportunities arising from the sustainability agenda. Future research should be directed towards advancing systematic methods for identifying and managing sustainability risks such that key sustainability challenges are firmly embedded in the risk management of the business. In this regard, organisations would be in a position to build resilience into their business models and operations.

This study aims to focus on the connection between digital business strategy and performance measurement and management (PMM).

The implications of digital business strategy and its dimensions with regard to PMM were investigated through a survey. The survey questionnaire provided 202 valid cases with a focus on senior management of small- and medium-sized enterprises. Strategic dimensions were identified from the literature on management in the context of digitalization to build a theoretical framework that highlights the mechanisms that companies should focus on when managing and implementing digital technologies successfully.

The aspects that comprise digital business strategy are grouped into five major dimensions: technological understanding, goals, resources, management and responsibilities. The study reveals a direct and positive relationship between goals and management related to digital business strategy and PMM.

The study contributes to the existing PMM literature in the context of digitalization.

The results indicate that if a company has excellent goals and management with regard to its digital business strategy, it uses PMM in a more successful and effective way.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine PMM in terms of managing digital business strategy by trying to determine the extent to which the elements of digital business strategy can be integrated effectively into PMM.

The aim of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review to understand the state of the art of partnerships between humanitarian organizations and business corporations in managing humanitarian logistics.

A systematic literature review is conducted based on the steps proposed by Denyer and Tranfield (2009). The context-intervention-mechanism-outcome (CIMO) logic is applied to identify the state of the art of partnerships between humanitarian organizations and business corporations in humanitarian logistics. Thirty-six papers related to the topic are extracted from recognized journal databases and then classified into four categories based on the CIMO logic: situational context, intervention factors, mechanisms and outcomes.

The study shows that while the context and mechanisms for developing cross-sector partnerships between the humanitarian and the business sector have been examined and illuminated by many researchers, additional research (in particular, empirical studies) is needed to measure outcomes as well as the contributions of partnerships to the performance of humanitarian logistics. In addition to synthesizing the literature in this area, this study also presents challenges of such partnerships.

The study improves the understanding of the state of cross-sector partnerships in humanitarian logistics as well as identifies opportunities for future research in this area. The study provides reasons and motives of initiating humanitarian–business partnerships in humanitarian logistics as well as their mechanisms and potential outcomes. This may help in developing successful logistics partnerships with each other.

This is the first systematic literature review to examine the nature of partnerships between humanitarian organizations and business corporations in humanitarian logistics using CIMO logic.

This study aims to explore how Russian-origin immigrant entrepreneurs manage to adapt their business-to-business (B2B) relationship management practices and moral concerns to the business ethics of their country of origin and of the host country via the prism of ethical relativism. By focusing on the ethical values of immigrant entrepreneurs in a business relationship context, the study aims to extend the currently limited understanding of these issues in the B2B marketing field.

A qualitative approach is applied to provide findings from eight in-depth interviews with first-generation Russian entrepreneurs living and doing business in Finland. A narrative approach to the data analysis is used, in particular by applying a thematic analysis of the collected interviews because of the focus on the personal experiences of the interviewees.

The results illustrate how the immigrant entrepreneurs adapt to ethical values and norms in Russia and Finland and how they enact those values in B2B relationship management in the countries. Immigrant entrepreneurs share several national and ethical backgrounds, which may influence their interaction in international markets, helping them adapt to country-specific business ethics.

The results imply that managers should acquire knowledge on ethical norms at the global level and at the national level, where they aim to expand their business. Productive business relationships involve the premises of honesty, transparency, fairness toward business partners and minimizing opportunism. However, business relations between developed and emerging markets may demand relativism when addressing ethical behavior.

This is one of the few studies that explore the ethical values of immigrant entrepreneurs in the context of international business relationships. The study contributes to the limited literature on ethics in the fields of B2B marketing and immigrant entrepreneurship. The authors encourage further research on ethical values adoption by immigrant entrepreneurs, which is an essential topic in times of increased workforce immigration.

Bootstrapping is a practitioner-based term adopted in entrepreneurship to describe the techniques employed in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to minimise the need for external funding by securing resources at little or no cost and applying strategies to effectively use resources. Working capital management (WCM) is a term used in financial management to define a set of practices used to manage business resources, including cash management. This paper explores the overlap and divergence between these two disciplinary distinct concepts.

A dual methodology is employed. First, the usage of the two terms in prior literature is analysed and synthesised. Second, the study uses factor analysis to explore how bootstrapping practices described by owners of 167 established MSMEs relate to the components of WCM in financial management.

The factor analysis identifies two main bootstrapping practices employed by MSMEs: (1) delaying payments and owner-related bootstrapping and (2) customer-related bootstrapping. Delaying payments is an integral practice in trade payables management and customer-related bootstrapping includes practices that are integral to trade receivables management. Therefore, links between bootstrapping practices and WCM practices are firmly established.

The study is not without limitations. Based on cross-sectional evidence for established firms in Ireland only, future studies could explore cross-country longitudinal panel data to fully examine life cycle and sectoral effects, as well as other external shocks (for example, COVID-19) on bootstrapping and WCM practices. This study does not explain why some factors (for example, joint utilisation and inventory management) are present in some bootstrapping studies and not in others; further case study research might help explain this. Finally, changes in the business environment facing start-ups and established enterprise, including increased digitalisation, online trading, self-employment, remote hub working and sustainability, offer new avenues for bootstrapping research.

This is the first study to comprehensively explore the conceptual and empirical links between bootstrapping and WCM. This study will enable researchers and practitioners in these two distinct disciplines to learn from each other. Accounting researchers and practitioners can broaden their understanding of how WCM “works” in MSME settings. Similarly, entrepreneurship researchers and practitioners can deepen their understanding of how bootstrapping can be adopted by businesses to manage resources effectively.

The survival and growth of organizations presently depend on managing processes and capabilities to effectively use large volumes of data from different sources to assist organizations’ strategic and operational goals. This paper aims to test the relationship between organizational analytical capabilities (OAC), the performance results in organizational resilience (OR) and the business process management maturity (BPMM).

Based on a survey of companies operating in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil, a conceptual model was proposed and tested using the partial least squares algorithm.

The results confirm the proposed theoretical hypotheses that OAC and BPMM positively impact OR. In addition, the results show that OAC exert a moderating effect on the relationship between BPMM and OR.

It is understood that stimulating the practice of data and information analysis in the organizational routine translates into a relevant managerial behavior, as this attitude leverages the knowledge development and understanding about how to manage unexpected risk events, enabling companies to assess their ability to react to disruptions, even in terms of operational failures.

Due to the convergence of rapid business developments and digitization challenges, service orientation is back on the research agenda as a concept to improve firms’ business services. Yet, little is known about the type of determinants that are relevant and to what degree they affect a firm’s service-oriented strategy.

Building on structural equation modeling (SEM) and a unique data set of 131 international firms from different continents, the authors identify and analyze the key determinants in the context of a firm’s service-oriented strategy.

The findings show that in order to cater for changes, organizations have to manage and adapt the coherence of the determinants’ business services, business processes and knowledge sharing continuously. Moreover, the results show that a service-oriented strategy is not only influenced by business services as such, but business services mediate the relationships between business processes, governance and process-aware information systems to a service-oriented strategy.

A limitation is imposed by the limited sample size and the unbalanced response of participants (executive management). In future research, a more extensive survey among a broader group of participants will help the authors to develop their model further in order to generalize the results, as well as more finely grained research related to geography and size might be pursued. Future empirical research is necessary to identify and test the relationships between other constructs and study their effect on a firm’s service-oriented strategy.

On a practical level, the authors postulate that an organization’s executive management should pay attention to invest in an organizational entity (department) that manages business services continuously. This organizational entity has to ensure that related processes and knowledge sharing are in place to establish and maintain a service-oriented strategy.

This research contributes to service-oriented literature by operationalizing the implementation of an organization’s service-oriented strategy. The authors’ insights go beyond the findings of Aier et al. (2011). The authors found that a service-oriented strategy influences service-oriented project success positively. The authors extended these findings, based on a unique data set, by studying business services and influencing determinants (i.e. business processes, governance, PAIS and knowledge sharing) within the context of service orientation. The renewed attention to the concept of service orientation provides insights into critical determinants that influence the implementation of a service-oriented strategy.

This paper expands theory on strategists by investigating how non-executive strategy professionals in multi-business firms strategize. In focus is the strategizing of two groups of non-executive strategy professionals: a corporate strategy team and eleven business strategists employed in each of the incorporated units.

A case study design was employed to explore privileged accessed data to gain first-hand in-depth qualities of strategists' work. The design was characterized by phenomenon driven immersed participatory insider research with retrospective reflection and theorizing. Data includes strategies, interview data, calendars, meeting minutes, workshop material and observational field notes.

Non-executive strategy professionals in multi-business firms are either employed at the corporate center or in the peripheral businesses. Based on this location and their individual experiences they assume an exclusive content or an inclusive process strategizing orientation. In practice, the groups strategize tightly together.

Case studies are useful in explorative research providing thick descriptions. While empirically rich, the results of this study are limited by the context of one single case. Future research is encouraged to confirm, contradict and refine the results presented.

The insights from this study can help organizations regarding how to employ strategy professionals in multi-business firms.

This paper contributes to a recognized need to explore strategists' work. In contrary to the majority of existing research, focusing on senior management and/or strategy formulation, this paper highlighted non-executive strategy professionals' strategizing.