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The paper aims to investigate the role of the network in managing the tradition and innovation paradox in the agribusiness industry. In particular, this study aims to demonstrate that agribusiness firms can innovate through tradition by joining a network, to capture the way intellectual capital (IC) is created, shared and transformed.

The authors approached the study using the social capital conceptual framework, considering the network a critical determinant of social capital, which enhances the organization's ability to share, create and utilize knowledge. Then, the authors also employed the extended territorial strategy theory. The authors derived empirical evidence from companies belonging to the PGI-labeled Consortium of Pasta di Gragnano (Consortium). The authors used a quantitative approach, carrying out a panel data analysis.

The results suggested that belonging to Consortium had a positive impact on the operating performance, the financial performance and the environment where consortium firms operate. Thus, being part of a network helps firms to innovate in a traditional industry.

The evidence of this work provided several implications for managers, IC community and the policy public. For managers, the authors observed that agribusiness firms can preserve their traditions through knowledge sharing with firms that operate in the same network. For IC community, the authors contributed to the debate on the social capital theory, arguing that the one area of IC that has received significant attention is the role of the network, which enhances the organization's ability to generate, share and apply knowledge effectively (Lin, 2017; Solitander and Tidström, 2010). Finally, the authors argued that policymakers should implement new reforms that facilitate the formation of networks, especially in socio-economic contexts where the unemployment rate is high.

This is the first study that employs quantitative analysis to investigate this paradox.

This exploratory research aims to identify the types of social networks established by German and French expatriates.

The authors use the concepts of social capital and social networks, as well as the societal and cultural approaches, to investigate the way expatriates develop their social networks. The authors' empirical study is based on 40 semi-structured interviews conducted with German and French expatriates.

The authors' findings show that German expatriates mainly establish professional networks, whereas their French counterparts also focus on personal networks. They further indicate that managing social capital lies within the individual responsibility of German expatriates, whereas it is part of higher education institutions in France.

The authors highlight the way German and French expatriates manage their social networks and provide novel insights into the role played by higher education systems and the cultural characteristics of their home country context.

Research examining the joint role of serial acquisitions and subsidiary autonomy in holistic value provision within servitizing industrial firms is scarce. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the role of serial acquisition and subsidiary autonomy in providing value within servitizing industrial networks.

A conceptual framework is developed based on the case study of a large Swedish industrial group specializing in selling industrial products and providing industrial solutions to business customers through its numerous subsidiaries.

The analysis of 14 interviews with the five subsidiaries and seven customer firms and secondary data reveals interesting findings concerning the role of serial niche acquisition strategy and subsidiary autonomy in customer value provision in servitizing organizations. In particular, the authors find that the role of acquisitions in industrial firms extends beyond growth to customer sensing and proximity. Likewise, the authors find that subsidiary autonomy facilitates value provision to customers in industrial networks.

The paper provides a more nuanced understanding of how serial acquisitions and subsidiary autonomy are intertwined and jointly affect industrial firms’ value provision activities amidst the servitization transition in an intraorganizational network.

The authors examine the effect of supply chain resilience (SCR) on supply chain performance (SCP) while considering the moderating effect of supply chain network complexity (SCNC) on the nexus between SCR and SCP of manufacturing firms.

The quantitative research approach and explanatory research design were utilised for this study. A sample of 345 manufacturing firms in the Accra metropolis was drawn. The partial least square structural equation modelling was employed.

Findings from the study revealed that SCR has a significant positive effect on SCP. However, SCNC had a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between SCR and SCP.

The authors advocate that manufacturing firms are prone to stronger impact from complex networks that mitigate the already existing positive relationship between SCR and SCP and is dependent on the context in which the study is executed, and the extent to which resilience strategies are robust. Thus, the SCNC has an adverse impact on how well partners interact and how well the supply chain functions.

This is the first study that quantitatively investigates the SCR impact on SCP in the presence of SCNC of manufacturing firms in the context of a developing economy. The study redefines SCNC from earlier studies.

To be able to continuously provide affordable services to consumers, managers of critical infrastructure (CI) maintenance supply networks have to balance investments in resilience with costs. At the same time, CI providers need to consider factors that influence resilience such as the geographical spread or the location of the network. This study aims to contextualize supply chain resilience knowledge by exploring how maintenance resource configurations impact resilience and costs in CI supply networks.

An in-depth longitudinal single case study of a representative CI provider that has centralized its maintenance supply network is used. Data were collected before and after the change to evaluate the effect of the changes on the maintenance supply network.

This study shows that in this specific CI maintenance context, structural resource choices such as the quantity or location of spare parts and tools, the creation and exploitation of tacit knowledge and staff motivation impact both resilience and costs due to geographical spread, network location and other network properties.

This study extends general supply chain resilience knowledge to a new setting (i.e. CI) and shows how existing insights apply in this context. More specifically, it is shown that even in engineered supply networks there is a need to consider the effect of human agency on resilience as the creation and exploitation of tacit knowledge are of immense importance in managing the network. In addition, the relationship between normal accidents theory and high reliability theory (HRT) is revisited as findings indicate that HRT is also important after a disruption has taken place.

The purpose of this paper is to explore networked business models on a nascent market for a sustainable innovation.

The study takes a qualitative approach through a comparative case study of three solar photovoltaic (PV) parks in Sweden. Data was collected from 14 interviews with multiple supply chain and network actors as well as secondary data. Industrial marketing and purchasing is applied for theoretical framing.

The study demonstrates transactional, relational, environmental and social drivers for participating in the network. The study reveals the duplicity of the nascent market, which encourages supply chain actors to develop their individual business models to take a larger market share or become future competitors to current collaborators. On the nascent market with few developed regulations, the network enables actors to influence regulations on local and regional levels.

The study is limited to the nascent solar PV industry in Sweden, which is characterized by institutional turbulence, market uncertainties and few established supply networks.

Practitioners need to consider multifarious drivers for participating in networked business models, where the economic driver may be the least motivating.

This study provides several multiactor business models and classifies them into specific applications and general applications. The study provides unique insight into the complexity of interactions among supply chain actors in networked business models on a nascent market for sustainable innovation. Due to the scarcity of available partners on the nascent market, actors need to look beyond their on-going relationships and their network horizon, or actors’ roles evolve to include activities that was not part of their individual business models.

This study aims to fill several gaps in the literature. First, it examines the Umrah industry from the supply side, investigating the pivotal factors for travel agencies’ performance. Second, it empirically investigates service leaders’ competencies specific to the hospital and tourism industry. Third, it clarifies whether there is a direct impact of organisational service orientation on business performance. Fourth, it explores the influence of network capabilities in a service context, specifically in travel agencies, which has rarely been discussed.

This is a mixed-method study with sequential explanatory research design. First, a quantitative approach was conducted with 150 authorised travel agencies in Indonesia, with two manager-level employees representing each agency. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and structural equation modelling. A qualitative study was conducted to enrich the findings by interviewing the Director of Umrah and Hajj Development of the Ministry of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia and three other respondents.

Service leaders’ competencies and resource capacity significantly influence organisational service orientation, leading to enhanced perceived service quality and performance. In addition, resource capacity influences network capabilities, improving performance.

This study identifies factors affecting the performance of Umrah travel agencies in an intensely competitive environment, which has rarely been discussed. This sheds light on how travel agencies can survive and succeed in this competitive industry. Moreover, this study provides evidence regarding the role of network capabilities in the tourism industry and the impact of organisational service orientation, both directly and indirectly, on performance.

This exploratory study illustrated an integrated academic library supply chain (IALSC) model to design the strategic planning management tool of the academic library. The supply chain (SC) model has been widely used in manufacturing industries and has also been applied in many service industries with the same objectives. However, very few studies for academic libraries, particularly the implementation of the integrated SC model, are being executed, although it has been proven that SC management in practice can enhance stakeholder satisfaction, increase revenues and decrease total costs. The academic library also needs to be successful in providing quality products, services and information to fulfil the library users’ needs within the library budget. This research aims to develop a verified model of the integrated SC for the academic library.

This research used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to achieve its objectives. The proposed conceptual SC model, named as IALSC, for the academic library has been developed using the system thinking method; eventually, it has been validated through the fuzzy Delphi method, an expert judgement technique.

The research findings could contribute to academic library management in planning and formulating a roadmap for the library to increase its quality services for all stakeholders.

The conceptual model would have a high potential to be proposed as the strategic decision-making tool for an academic library, i.e. the flow of funds through the operations of the library, the library stakeholders’ satisfaction measurement, the decision process currently made by the library management team on the purchase of new library resources, the library resource suppliers, etc.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension in brand management created through the rapid transformation of social media, mapping the maintenance of increasingly complex B2B relationship dynamics with key intermediaries.

In-depth interviews with 17 social media practitioners from leading fashion brands, agencies and platforms in the UK and Australia informed this study. Analysis used grounded theory, and results were interpreted through the lens of network and stakeholder theories.

Social media platforms have evolved into critical brand stakeholders, serving as gatekeepers in an increasingly unbalanced system between provider and marketer. The perpetuation of a hierarchical power dynamic affects the development of both practitioner and firm capabilities with negative implications and consequences for organisational control of branded social media communications. Three theoretical propositions are offered relating to the nature of platform hegemony, the notion of social media democratisation and the limiting impact of rapid change on the formation of relational ties.

This study extends the conceptualisation of communal custody of brands in social media settings to incorporate a growing number of commercial stakeholders, challenging the traditional dyadic consumer-brand relational paradigm. This study sheds new light on the impact of digital transformation on power distributions in social media communities not hitherto addressed.

The logistics industry has undergone a tremendous transformation. This transformation is necessary to cope with the fundamental changes in customer expectations and the need for digitalization imposed by the pandemic, changes in the socioeconomic world, and innovative technology solutions. This paper aims to present digital transformation as an integrated framework for transforming the operating model and applying advanced solutions to the ecosystem of a quintile logistics (5PL) company. 5PL operators are typically an ecosystem. Loosely coupled or self-organized entities that collaborate in a symbiotic relationship represent this ecosystem. They aim to jointly develop capabilities, create innovative services or solutions, share knowledge, facilitate transactions, and leverage network synergies in a logistics environment to provide optimized or novel customer- or partner-centric solutions (Lamberjohann and Otto, 2020).

Currently, there is no single definition of an integrated logistics operations model in 5PL practice, so the qualitative method used in this paper allows for investigation from an exploratory perspective. The paper follows a qualitative research methodology, collecting and analyzing data/facts through interviews and visits to subject matter experts, industry practitioners, and academic researchers, combined with an extensive review of academic publications, industry reports, and written and media content from established organizations in the marketplace. This paper follows a qualitative research methodology, as it is an inquiry rather than a statistical study. The qualitative method allows the study of the concepts of phenomena and definitions, their characteristics, and the defining features that serve as the basis (Berg, 2007). It emphasizes generalized interpretation and deeper understanding of concepts, which would be more difficult in quantitative, statistically based research. Fact-finding was conducted in two ways: in-depth interviews with experts from academia, information and communication technology organizations, and key players in the logistics industry; and academic publications, industry reports, and written and media content from established national and international organizations in the market.

The operations model introduced considers six aspects: persons, processes, platforms, partners, protection and preservation. A virtual team approach can support the personal side of the 5PL ecosystem’s digital transformation. Managing a 5PL ecosystem should be based on collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment methods (Parsa et al., 2020). A digital platform can support trust among the stakeholders in the ecosystem. A blockchain solution can powerfully support the 5PL ecosystem from partner relationships’ points of view. The implementation of a cybersecurity reference model is important for protection (Bandari, 2023). Reverse logistics and an integrated approach support the preservation of the ecosystem.

While the author has experience applying the different components of the operations model presented, it would be interesting to find a 5PL that would use all the components presented in an integrated way. The operations model presented applies to any similar ecosystem with minor adaptations.

This paper addresses operations models and digital transformation challenges for optimizing 5PL operators. It provides several opportunities and considerations for 5PL operators interested in improving their management and operations to cope with the growing challenges of today’s world.

The competitiveness and long-term performance of 5PL operators depend on selecting and carefully implementing their operations models. This paper emphasizes the importance of using advanced operations models.

The operations model derives from the author’s personal experiences in research and the innovative application of these models to logistics operators (DHL, UPS, Poste Italiane and others). This paper brings together academic and industry perspectives and operations models in an integrated business digital transformation. This paper defines an original optimal operations model for a 5PL operator and can add sustainable value to organizations and society. In doing so, it outlines different solution requirements, the critical success factors and the challenges for solutions and brings logistical performance objectives when implementing a digital business transformation.