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This Impact Pathways paper aims to provide a timely and structured discussion of real-world problems at Marks and Spencer and in retail in general, evoked through the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The article presents collaborative research based on more than five hours of interviews and several iterative paper writing steps between management scholars and Marks & Spencer’s Head of Procurement - Logistics and Supply Chain. Continuous discussions for more than ten months among the research team assure the timeliness and relevance of the findings. The exceptional position of the executive and his career biography allowed the integration of a variety of intra-organisational and inter-organisational stakeholders.

This paper highlights the impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic on operations and supply chain management (OSCM) in the retail industry, structured in upstream, internal and operational, and downstream and customer perspectives. The paper concludes with a practice-infused research agenda, which aims to trigger relevant research about the current and potential future crises.

Although the research agenda is directly related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the retail industry, the future research pathways are expected to inform business responses to potential future external shocks other than pandemics and in different industries as well.

Despite a plethora of studies already published on COVID-19 and OSCM, little is known on how the outbreak affects specific firms and industries. This paper offers an overview of COVID-19 related change as it happens at the retailer and in the retailing industry in general. This article is among the first to provide a practice-infused call for research on urgent issues being faced by business leaders directly relevant to our domain.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how, and by whom, institutional logics are determined in the action of sustainable organisation. The authors analyse a supply chain network structure to understand how multiple stakeholders' perceptions of sustainability emerge into a dominant logic and diffuse across an organisational field.

Stakeholder network theory provides novel insights into emerging logics within a chocolate supply chain network. Semi-structured interviews with 35 decision-makers were analysed alongside 269 company documents to capture variations in emergent logics. The network was mapped to include 63 nodes and 366 edges to analyse power structure and mechanisms.

The socio-economic organising principles of sustainable organisation, their sources of power and their logics are identified. Economic and social logics are revealed, yet the dominance of economic logics creates risks to their coexistence. Logics are largely shaped in pre-competitive activities, and resource fitness to collaborative clusters limits access for non-commercial actors.

Powerful firms use network structures and collaborative and concurrent inter-organisational relationships to define and diffuse their conceptualisation of sustainability and restrict competing logics.

This novel study contributes to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) through presenting the socio-economic logic as a new conceptual framework to understand the action of sustainable organisation. The identification of sophisticated mechanisms of power and hegemonic control in the network opens new research agendas.

This study examines whether certification improves the dimensions of total quality management (TQM) and whether the impact of certification is similar across companies of different sizes and industries. The benefits of certification for companies have been widely discussed in recent years. The general debate has been partly marked by the dispute about whether companies will benefit more from certification or the implementation of TQM. This debate has led to numerous studies on the benefits of certification; however, few studies simultaneously have examined traditional TQM issues and the requirements of the new quality standard, ISO 9001: 2015, as well as the updated European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) criteria.

This study was conducted via a survey of Finnish SMEs and covered both industrial and service companies. The study comprehensively compared industrial companies with service companies and small companies with medium-sized companies.

In industrial and small enterprises, certification clearly has a positive effect on the dimensions of TQM, but a similar effect was not observed in medium-sized enterprises or in the service sector.

This is one of the first studies to examine the effect of certification on TQM in different types of SMEs while simultaneously considering EFQM and ISO 9001:2015 in Finland. The significant originality of this research lies in the formation of a comprehensive research framework for the dimensions of TQM.

The European Union (EU) member states are obligated to implement the separate collection of textile waste by the year 2025. Nowadays, non-profit organizations (NPOs) are the largest collectors of post-use textiles. In support of upcoming changes, this study develops an understanding of barriers and drivers for establishing partnerships between NPOs and companies in reverse textile supply chains.

This study adopts the embedded single-case design. The main data source is semi-structured interviews with NPOs, companies and research institutes in Finland, identified through intensity case sampling. The drivers and barriers are categorized into seven categories: environmental, economic, social, institutional, technological and informational, supply chain and organizational categories.

This study elaborates on the barriers and drivers in a new context of textile valorization and prioritizes them. The study identifies the alignment of interests and goals, increased transparency and clarity of terminology and other main factors in establishing the partnership.

Expanding the geographical boundaries of current research will capture the experiences of NPOs and companies in other contextual settings.

This study contributes to the existing knowledge with a broad picture of different barriers and drivers. The findings intend to support the integration of NPOs in reverse textile supply chains.

The partnership can potentially minimize the export of post-use textiles to developing countries, thus reducing the negative environmental footprint and social impact of the textile industry.

The study looks at an emerging form of partnership between NPOs and companies in reverse supply chains for enabling valorization of post-use textiles.

We studied the relationship between job engagement and systematic problem solving (SPS) among shop-floor employees and how lean production (LP) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems moderate this relationship.

We collected data from a sample of 440 shop floor workers in 101 manufacturing work units across 33 plants. Because our data is nested, we employed a series of multilevel regression models to test the hypotheses. The application of IoT systems within work units was evaluated by our research team through direct observations from on-site visits.

Our findings indicate a positive association between job engagement and SPS. Additionally, we found that the adoption of lean bundles positively moderates this relationship, while, surprisingly, the adoption of IoT systems negatively moderates this relationship. Interestingly, we found that, when the adoption of IoT systems is complemented by a lean management system, workers tend to experience a higher effect on the SPS of their engagement.

One limitation of this research is the reliance on the self-reported data collected from both workers (job engagement, SPS and control variables) and supervisors (lean bundles). Furthermore, our study was conducted in a specific country, Italy, which might have limitations on the generalizability of the results since cross-cultural differences in job engagement and SPS have been documented.

Our findings highlight that employees’ strong engagement in SPS behaviors is shaped by the managerial and technological systems implemented on the shop floor. Specifically, we point out that implementing IoT systems without the appropriate managerial practices can pose challenges to fostering employee engagement and SPS.

This paper provides new insights on how lean and new technologies contribute to the development of learning-to-learn capabilities at the individual level by empirically analyzing the moderating effects of IoT systems and LP on the relationship between job engagement and SPS.

Machine learning (ML) analytical tools are increasingly being considered as an alternative quantitative methodology in management research. This paper proposes a new approach for uncovering the antecedents behind product and product–service innovation (PSI).

The ML approach is novel in the field of innovation antecedents at the country level. A sample of the Equatorian National Survey on Technology and Innovation, consisting of more than 6,000 firms, is used to rank the antecedents of innovation.

The analysis reveals that the antecedents of product and PSI are distinct, yet rooted in the principles of open innovation and competitive priorities.

The analysis is based on a sample of Equatorian firms with the objective of showing how ML techniques are suitable for testing the antecedents of innovation in any other context.

The novel ML approach, in contrast to traditional quantitative analysis of the topic, can consider the full set of antecedent interactions to each of the innovations analyzed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how first-tier suppliers in multi-tier supply chains adapt their vertical and horizontal relationships to reduce the risk of slavery-like practices.

Using Archer’s morphogenetic theory as an analytical lens, this paper presents case analyses adduced from primary and secondary data related to the development of relational anti-slavery supply capabilities in Brazilian–UK beef and timber supply chains.

Four distinct types of adaptation were found among first-tier suppliers: horizontal systemisation, vertical systemisation, horizontal transformation and vertical differentiation.

This study draws attention to the socially situated nature of corporate action, moving beyond the rationalistic discourse that underpins existing research studies of multi-tier, socially sustainable, supply chain management. Cross-sector comparison highlights sub-country and intra-sectoral differences in both institutional setting and the approaches and outcomes of individual corporate actors’ initiatives. Sustainable supply chain management theorists would do well to seek out those institutional entrepreneurs who actively reshape the institutional conditions within which they find themselves situated.

Practitioners may benefit from adopting a structured approach to the analysis of the necessary or contingent complementarities between their, primarily economic, objectives and the social sustainability goals of other, potential, organizational partners.

A range of interventions that may serve to reduce the risk of slavery-like practices in global commodity chains are presented.

This paper presents a novel analysis of qualitative empirical data and extends understanding of the agential role played by first-tier suppliers in global, multi-tier, commodity, supply chains.

The research is based on a critically analyzed literature review focused on the unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions of sustainable operations and supply chain management (OSCM), including the articles selected for this special issue.

The authors introduce the key concepts, issues and theoretical foundations of this special issue on “The hidden side of sustainable operations and supply chain management (OSCM): Unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions”. The authors explore these issues within this context, and how they may hinder the authors' transition to more sustainable practices.

The authors present an overview of unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs, tensions and influencing factors from the literature, and identify how such problems may emerge. The model addresses these problems by highlighting the crucial effect of the underlying state of knowledge on sustainable OSCM decision-making.

The authors limited the literature review to journals that ranked 2 and above as defined by the Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide. The main implication for research is a call to focus attention on unanticipated outcomes as a starting point rather than only an afterthought. For practitioners, good intentions such as sustainability initiatives need careful consideration for potential unanticipated outcomes.

The study provides the first critical review of unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions in the sustainable OSCM discourse. While the literature review (including papers in this special issue) significantly contributes toward describing these issues, it is still unclear how such problems emerge. The model developed in this paper addresses this gap by highlighting the crucial effect of the underlying state of knowledge concerned with sustainable OSCM decision-making.

The predominant neoliberal structure of capitalism and tourism as the fuel of capitalism exposes growing problems of injustice, unfairness and inequality. Places and communities around the world are currently expressing the need for radical changes in placemaking to be able to think, plan and act differently. This theoretical contribution adopts a humanistic management (HM) perspective of placemaking to promote places where people enjoy living, working, interacting and having meaningful experiences. Tourist destinations are relevant places to discuss the application of HM principles in practice and promote humanistic destinations and the humanisation of placemaking. This chapter concludes by arguing for an interface with eco-centric and posthumanist transformative approaches to promote holistic value-based placemaking and regeneration of places.

Recently, interest in sustainability has grown globally in the heavy vehicle and equipment industry (HVEI). However, this industry's complexity poses a challenge to the implementation of generic sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices. This study aims to identify SSCM's barriers, practices and performance (BPP) indicators in the HVEI context.

The results are derived from case studies of four multinational manufacturers. Within-case and cross-case analyses were conducted to categorise the SSCM BPP indicators that are unique to HVEI supply chains.

This study's analysis revealed that supply chain cost implications and a deficient information flow between focal firms and supply chain partners are the key barriers to SSCM in the HVEI. This analysis also revealed a set of policies, programmes and procedures that manufacturers have adopted to address SSCM barriers. The most common SSCM performance indicators included eco-portfolio sales to assess economic performance, health and safety indicators for social sustainability and carbon- and energy-related measures for environmental sustainability.

The insights can help HVEI firms understand and overcome the typical SSCM barriers in their industry and develop, deploy and optimise their SSCM strategies and practices. Managers can use this knowledge to identify appropriate mechanisms with which to accelerate their transition into a sustainable business and effectively measure performance outcomes.

The extant SSCM literature has focused on the light vehicle industry, and it has lacked a concrete examination of HVEI supply chains' sustainability BPP. This study develops a framework that simultaneously analyses SSCM BPP in the HVEI.