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The advantages of offshoring are increasingly under scrutiny, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has advanced the debate, calling for a redefinition of firms' production location strategies. While attention has primarily focused on the relocation of second-degree strategies, such as back-shoring, near-shoring and further offshoring, there are also other alternatives, including home country-based domestic product and process innovations, and the development of new business activities. The objective of the authors' paper is to identify which factors influence decision-makers when they select and implement such post-offshoring strategic alternatives.

The authors consider 11 Italian manufacturing companies that implemented these strategies and analyze triggers, drivers, enabling factors and barriers of the decision phase, as well as content, governance mode and timing of the implementation phase.

Based on the collected findings, the authors suggest a set of propositions for further research. First of all, firms can simultaneously manage multiple strategies by adopting an ambidextrous approach through which to mitigate supply chain risks. They may integrate their domestic and international production activities, but the home country remains central for innovations and production of high-end products and Industry 4.0 technologies increases the probability of investing in their home country. At the same time, lack of competence induces selective near- and back-shoring, while full back-shoring is mainly a consequence of managerial mistakes. Competence availability acts as a barrier to relocation in the home country, inducing the implementation of either an insourcing strategy or a combination of insourcing and outsourcing.

The authors' work identifies post-offshoring as a dynamic process and provides insights into the post-pandemic scenario. The conceptual framework may represent a useful tool for company managers in re-evaluating their initial offshoring strategies.

Post-socialist urban development changed cityscapes and city life profoundly, reusing public space in a different manner and reinterpreting the role of work, heritage, and consumption among others. Focusing on two case studies – the Outer Józsefváros in Budapest and the Praga North district in Warsaw – the paper examines this transformation, following how and to what extent these characteristic neighbourhoods have changed, how local heritage has been reconceptualised and what role work has played in this process.

The comparative analysis combines a literature review with a case study investigation that includes interviews, on-site visits, experiments with locally driven adaptive reuse, and document analysis.

The two case studies put heritage conservation, identity building and value determination processes in the context of architectural design, economic investment and labour market. The paper shows the relation between aesthetics and economic transition, how work, or its loss, has shaped the areas, creating a milieu of transition in a physical and a social sense, offering a reconceptualization of local identity. It also highlights the seminal value of civic initiatives and artists/artisans to increase the engagement of the local community.

The paper provides a rarely done comparison between two former Socialist cities undergoing similar transformations. It focuses on work as intangible heritage, the connected architectural aesthetics and their role in shaping the identity of various groups.

Customer-obsessed organizations put customers first, create exceptional value and enhance business performance. This paper aims to offer a framework for implementing the customer obsession construct.

Using relevant customer value literature, syndicated research and a qualitative analysis, customer obsession insights are offered.

Customer-obsessed companies know their customers’ needs and engage with them to offer the best solutions. Four customer-centric stages are evaluated, and applications of customer obsession in the Now Economy are discussed.

This analysis of customer obsession is largely conceptual and presents a case study in one metropolitan statistical area. Although the findings are insightful, it may not be representative of the US or global health-care market.

Strategic implications relate to a bias for action, types of business obsessions, values alignment and benchmarking. This paper features an in-depth case study on Baptist Health South Florida which assesses customer obsession using a customer value framework.

Customer obsession is a strategic mindset built upon strong leadership, a sound business culture and superior value. While critical to business success, there has been limited scholarly work in this area. This paper fills that gap by providing a managerial approach for understanding this key business priority.

Research has largely disregarded consumer–packaging interaction in contexts other than retail. Focusing on the powerful cue of colour and consumers’ pleas for sustainability and drawing on the customer journey and moments of consumption, this study investigates how packaging colour meanings are redefined from retail to home and how the meaning of sustainability for colour transforms.

A qualitative methodology was employed with 27 informants, who were interviewed in pairs or in small groups of three.

First, colour meanings emerge outside the retail context, confirming the idea of the packaging journey. Colours are dynamic, as meanings are redefined throughout the voyage. In retail, colour conveys brand, product, environmental and origin-related meanings, while at home it conveys product, food- and health-related meanings. At the end of the journey, colour communicates disposal, environmental, health and origin-related meanings. Second, the meaning of sustainability for colour transforms during the voyage from being conveyed by a colour hue to being perceived as a material and, therefore, as a waste and recycling concern.

The study adds insight into the role of colour in the packaging life cycle, wherein colour transforms from a visual packaging cue to an issue of materiality. The recyclability of colours is a prevailing sustainability issue that deserves attention within the packaging industry. The study argues that although the consumer–packaging interaction in the retail context is essential, managers should recognise that the interaction continues with colours from in-store purchase decisions to consumers’ homes (use and recycling).

Indirect knowledge leakage to rivals located near alliance partners represents a significant risk that has received limited scholarly attention. Hence, the question of how to manage this risk – which the authors term “partner-rival co-location risk” – in nonequity alliances remains unanswered, and this study aims to suggest establishing a steering committee to oversee the partnership.

Drawing on the agglomeration economies and alliance governance literatures, the authors develop a set of hypotheses and perform a series of empirical tests on 470 nonequity alliances in the US biopharmaceutical industry.

The authors propose that there is a positive linkage between partner-rival co-location risk and the formation of a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, which receives strong empirical support. Further, this relationship is significantly moderated by the breadth (alliance scope) but not the depth (reciprocal interdependence) of interaction between the partnering firms.

This paper is a pioneer to shed light on “partner-rival co-location risk” and how partner-rival co-location risk affects the governance decision of whether to establish a steering committee in a nonequity alliance, thus offering important theoretical and practical insights into competition and cooperation in alliance management.

The paper contributes to the discussion on valuation in organization studies and strategic management literature. The nascent literature on valuation practices has examined established markets where producers and consumers are known and rivalry in the market is a given. Furthermore, previous research has operated with a narrow meaning of value as either a financial profit or a subjective consumer preference. Such a narrow view on value is problematic and insufficient for studying the interlacing of innovation and value creation in emerging technoscientific business domains.

The authors present an empirical study about value creation in an emerging technoscience business domain formed around personalized medicine and digital health data.

The results of this analysis show that in a technoscientific domain, valuation of innovations is multiple and malleable, entails pursuing attractiveness in collaboration and partnerships and is performative, and due to emphatic future orientation, values are indefinite and promissory.

As research implications, this study shows that valuation practices in an emerging technoscience business domain focus on defining the potential economic value in the future and attracting partners as probable future beneficiaries. Commercial value upon innovation in an embryonic business milieu is created and situated in valuation practices that constitute the prospective market, the prevalent economic discourse, and rationale. This is in contrast to an established market, where valuation practices are determined at the intersection of customer preferences and competitive arenas where suppliers, producers, service providers and new entrants to the market present value propositions.

The study findings extend discussion on valuation from established business domains to emerging technoscience business domains which are in a “pre-competition” phase where suppliers, customers, producers and their collaborative and competitive relations are not yet established.

As managerial implications, this study provides insights into health innovation stakeholders, including stakeholders in the public, private and academic sectors, about the ecosystem dynamics in a technoscientific innovation. Such insight is useful in strategic decision-making about ecosystem strategy and ecosystem business model for value proposition, value creation and value capture in an emerging innovation domain characterized by collaborative and competitive relations among stakeholders. To business managers, the findings of this study about valuation practices are useful in strategic decision-making about ecosystem strategy and ecosystem business model for value proposition, value creation and value capture in an emerging innovation domain characterized by collaborative and competitive relations among stakeholders. To policy makers, this study provides an in-depth analysis of an overall business ecosystem in an emerging technoscience business that can be propelled to increase the financial investments in the field. As a policy implication, this study provides insights into the various dimensions of valuation in technoscience business to policy makers, who make governance decisions to guide and control the development of medical innovation using digital health data.

This study's results expand previous theorizing on valuation by showing that in technoscientific innovation all types of value created – scientific, clinical, social or economic – are predominantly promissory. This study complements the nascent theorizing on value creation and valuation practices of technoscientific innovation.

The production planning problem with fine-grained information has hardly been considered in practice. The purpose of this study is to investigate the data-driven production planning problem when a manufacturer can observe historical demand data with high-dimensional mixed-frequency features, which provides fine-grained information.

In this study, a two-step data-driven optimization model is proposed to examine production planning with the exploitation of mixed-frequency demand data is proposed. First, an Unrestricted MIxed DAta Sampling approach is proposed, which imposes Group LASSO Penalty (GP-U-MIDAS). The use of high frequency of massive demand information is analytically justified to significantly improve the predictive ability without sacrificing goodness-of-fit. Then, integrated with the GP-U-MIDAS approach, the authors develop a multiperiod production planning model with a rolling cycle. The performance is evaluated by forecasting outcomes, production planning decisions, service levels and total cost.

Numerical results show that the key variables influencing market demand can be completely recognized through the GP-U-MIDAS approach; in particular, the selected accuracy of crucial features exceeds 92%. Furthermore, the proposed approach performs well regarding both in-sample fitting and out-of-sample forecasting throughout most of the horizons. Taking the total cost and service level obtained under the actual demand as the benchmark, the mean values of both the service level and total cost differences are reduced. The mean deviations of the service level and total cost are reduced to less than 2.4%. This indicates that when faced with fluctuating demand, the manufacturer can adopt the proposed model to effectively manage total costs and experience an enhanced service level.

Compared with previous studies, the authors develop a two-step data-driven optimization model by directly incorporating a potentially large number of features; the model can help manufacturers effectively identify the key features of market demand, improve the accuracy of demand estimations and make informed production decisions. Moreover, demand forecasting and optimal production decisions behave robustly with shifting demand and different cost structures, which can provide manufacturers an excellent method for solving production planning problems under demand uncertainty.

This paper aims to examine the convergence and divergence of business and production practices in the global wine industry, particularly focusing on Pinot Noir producers in Burgundy, New Zealand and South Africa (SA). This study explores the interplay between firm-specific factors and regional contexts to identify competitive advantage drivers among Pinot Noir producers.

This research uses a comparative analysis approach, using data from a comprehensive winery level survey. This study applies methodologies akin to value chain analysis to unravel the configuration of productive and technology/knowledge creation activities within wineries across three regions.

This analysis reveals both convergence and divergence in business and production practices among Pinot Noir producers in Burgundy, New Zealand and South Africa. Although there is a degree of convergence in marketing, distribution and competition strategies, differences exist in production practices and firms’ capabilities. Burgundy emphasizes tradition and terroir expression, contrasting with the modernization and innovation focus observed in New Zealand and South Africa. However, all regions share a commitment to quality as a competitive advantage.

This study acknowledges limitations such as the focus on a specific grape variety and regions, the absence of performance impact analysis and the need for additional variables like environmental, institutional and cultural factors and consumer preferences to provide a comprehensive understanding of industry dynamics.

The insights from this study offer practical implications for winemakers, industry stakeholders and policymakers. Producers can optimize production and marketing strategies based on regional contexts and market segments, whereas stakeholders can identify emerging trends and opportunities in the global wine market. Policymakers can develop targeted policies supporting innovation, sustainability and competitiveness.

This paper provides a unique contribution by conducting a comparative firm-level analysis across distinct wine-producing regions, shedding light on the nuanced interplay of factors shaping competitive advantage among Pinot Noir producers. This study’s comprehensive data set and methodological approach enhance understanding and offer valuable insights for industry stakeholders and policymakers.

Democratic renewal in Sri Lanka as well as a cross the Global South depends on strengthening democratic social movements within varieties of patrimonial capitalism. Patrimonial capitalism, emphasising patron–client relations, coincide with weakening democratic institutional cultures and practices. The dominant corruption/anti-corruption narrative is bracketed with elite class strategies aimed at negotiating a ‘managed corruption’. The realm of representative politics creating consent for patrimonial capitalism is shaped by: ethnic and class relations; the weakening of working-class parties; patriarchal cultures within parties; links with criminal networks; opaque finances and the integration of mainstream media with party patronage.

Democratising the realm of representative politics points towards democratic social movements. The internal dynamics of social movements, their relationships with political parties and collective learning are significant factors that shapes the strategic orientation of social movements. State repression of social movements highlights the need for demilitarisation and the abolition of prisons. The global sense of this local struggle relates to transforming financial markets and platform economies towards notions of financial and digital commons. The integration of different realms of politics, such as representative, movement, life and emancipatory politics, is vital for reinforcing solidarity as the basis for counter-hegemonic struggles.

The aim of this study is to gain important insights on integration oriented servitization identifying essential dimensions of effective structures, coordination approaches and management controls adopted by manufacturing firms that integrate forward towards distribution, sales and services.

The study adopts a theory-guided qualitative abductive methodology to conduct a comparative case-study of two manufacturing firms in the same industry integrating forward to enhance servitization but with significantly different performance outcomes. The findings are uncovered from a broad spectrum of primary and secondary data spanning two decades.

The consistently high-performing firm puts equal emphasis on production and downstream distribution, sales and services and motivate individuals to engage in entrepreneurial efforts to develop combined product-services offerings that are valued by customers. The underperforming firm prioritizes operating efficiency driven by engineering prowess and managed through planning, standardization, authority and central controls.

The study is based on two representative firms operating in a specific industry context, which has ramifications for the generalizability of results and calls for replication studies to substantiate and extend findings.

Forward integration from manufacturing into distribution, sales and services represents a specific servitization strategy that needs structure and particular coordination approaches to be effective in complex dynamic product-markets. The characteristics of the outperforming case company provide useful insights on effective integrated servitization efforts.

Forward integration is a commonly adopted strategy among manufacturing firms that constitute the backbone of modern economies and effective governance of these integration oriented servitization efforts has important implications for societal value creation.

This study builds on rationales from management science including economic theory, corporate strategy and different micro-foundational lenses and thereby hone recent calls for broader theoretical foundations to enlighten studies of the servitization puzzle.