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Organisational strategy becomes reality by connecting organisation’s resources and capabilities in daily operations, and physical workspace is one of the environments in which this takes place. This study aims to explore to what extent factors required for successful strategy implementation are considered when designing, using and managing workspaces of knowledge-intensive organisations.

For the study, managers in 25 large and medium-sized knowledge-intensive organisations were interviewed. The semi-structured interviews focused on organisation’s strategy, strategy implementation practices and workspace design and management. To form a comprehensive framework of strategy implementation success factors for the study, the factors of 11 frameworks were analysed, grouped and renamed.

Current workspace design, usage and management mainly support human-related strategy implementation factors. However, both organisation- and human-related factors are needed for the strategy implementation to be successful. Therefore, the organisations studied may have unused potential in their workspaces to ensure strategy-aligned operations and behaviour.

Due to the potential imbalance between organisation- and human-related strategy implementation factors, a more holistic, organisational-level approach to workspace design, usage and management is recommended to ensure the success of strategy implementation.

Workspaces have extensively been studied from individual strategy implementation factors’ as well as employees’ perspectives. Prior to this work, there are only few studies exploring workspace in the holistic, strategy implementation context.

This study is focused to support an ongoing development project of the case company's current state and the challenges of the order-to-cash (O2C) process. The O2C process is the most visible process to the customer, and therefore, its punctual and fluent order management is vital. It is observed that the high degree of manual work in the O2C process causes mistakes, delays and rework in the process. The purpose of this article is therefore to analyze the case company's current state of the O2C process as well as to identify the areas of development in this process by deploying the means of Lean Six Sigma tools such as value stream mapping (VSM).

The study was conducted as a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Based on both the quantitative and qualitative data, a workshop on VSM was organized to analyze the current state of the O2C process of a case company, engaged in the energy and environment sector in Finland.

The results found that excessive manual work was highly connected to inadequate or incorrect data in pricing and invoicing activities, which resulted in canceled invoices. Canceled invoices are visible to the customer and have a negative impact on the customer experience. This study found that by improving the performance of the O2C process activities and improving communication among the internal and external stakeholders, the whole O2C process can perform more effectively and provide better customer value.

The O2C process is the most visible process to the customer and therefore its punctual and fluent order management is vital. To ensure that the O2C process is operating as desired, suitable process performance metrics need to be aligned and followed. The results gathered from the case company's data, questionnaire interviews, and the VSM workshop are all highlighted in this study. The main practical and managerial implications were to understand the real-time O2C process performance, which is necessary to ensure strong performance and enhance continuous improvement of the O2C process that leads to operational excellence and commercial competitiveness of the studied case company.

This study aims to explore how sustainable business models (SBM) can be developed within agri-innovation systems (AIS) and emphasize an integration of the two with a systemic understanding for reducing food loss and value loss in postharvest agri-food supply chain.

This study conducted longitudinal qualitative research in a developing country with food loss challenges in the postharvest supply chain. This study collected data through multiple rounds of fieldwork, interviews and focus groups over four years. Thematic analysis and “sensemaking” were used for inductive data analysis to generate rich contextual knowledge by drawing upon the lived realities of the agri-food supply chain actors.

First, this study finds that the value losses are varied in the supply chain, encompassing production value, intrinsic value, extrinsic value, market value, institutional value and future food value. This happens through two cumulative effects including multiplier losses, where losses in one model cascade into others, amplifying their impact and stacking losses, where the absence of data stacks or infrastructure pools hampers the realisation of food value. Thereafter, this study proposes four strategies for moving from the loss-incurring current business model to a networked SBM for mitigating losses. This emphasises the need to redefine ownership as stewardship, enable formal and informal beneficiary identification, strengthen value addition and build capacities for empowering communities to benefit from networked SBM with AIS initiatives. Finally, this study puts forth ten propositions for future research in aligning AIS with networked SBM.

This study contributes to understanding the interplay between AIS and SBM; emphasising the integration of the two to effectively address food loss challenges in the early stages of agri-food supply chains. The identified strategies and research propositions provide implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accelerate sustainable practices for reducing food loss and waste in agri-food supply chains.

The present study is performed to identify the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect as well as examine the simultaneous impact of risks on supply chain (SC) performance.

A theoretical framework with many hypotheses regarding the relationships between SC risk types and performance is established. The data are collected from a large-scale survey supported by a project of the Japanese government to promote sustainable socioeconomic development for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region, with the participation of 207 firms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the hypotheses of the theoretical framework.

It is indicated that human-made risk causes operational risk, while natural risk causes both supply risk and operational risk. Furthermore, the impacts of human-made risk and natural risk on performance are amplified through operational risk.

This study is one of the first attempts that identifies the propagation mechanism of the ripple effect and examines the simultaneous impact of risks on performance in construction SCs.

Although many studies on risk management in construction SCs have been carried out, they mainly focus on risk identification or quantification of risk impact. It is observed that research on the ripple effect of disruptions has been very scarce.

A maturity model for Industry 4.0 (I4.0 MM) with influencing factors is designed to address maturity issues in adopting Industry 4.0. Standardisation in I4.0 supports manufacturing industry transformation, forming reference architecture models (RAMs). This paper aligns key factors and maturity levels in I4.0 MMs with reputable I4.0 RAMs to enhance strategy for I4.0 transformation and implementation.

Three steps of alignment consist of the systematic literature review (SLR) method to study the current published high-quality I4.0 MMs, the taxonomy development of I4.0 influencing factors by adapting and implementing the categorisation of system theories and aligning I4.0 MMs with RAMs.

The study discovered that different I4.0 MMs lead to varied organisational interpretations. Challenges and insights arise when aligning I4.0 MMs with RAMs. Aligning MM levels with RAM stages is a crucial milestone in the journey toward I4.0 transformation. Evidence indicates that I4.0 MMs and RAMs often overlook the cultural domain.

Findings contribute to the literature on aligning capabilities with implementation strategies while employing I4.0 MMs and RAMs. We use five RAMs (RAMI4.0, NIST-SME, IMSA, IVRA and IIRA), and as a common limitation in SLR, there could be a subjective bias in reading and selecting literature.

To fully leverage the capabilities of RAMs as part of the I4.0 implementation strategy, companies should initiate the process by undertaking a thorough needs assessment using I4.0 MMs.

The novelty of this paper lies in being the first to examine the alignment of I4.0 MMs with established RAMs. It offers valuable insights for improving I4.0 implementation strategies, especially for companies using both MMs and RAMs in their transformation efforts.

Operational risks can cause considerable, atypical disturbances and impact food supply chain (SC) resilience. Indicatively, the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions in the UK food services as nationwide stockouts led to unprecedented discrepancies between retail and home-delivery supply capacity and demand. To this effect, this study aims to examine the emergence of digital platforms as an innovative instrument for food SC resilience in severe market disruptions.

An interpretive multiple case-study approach was used to unravel how different generations of e-commerce food service providers, i.e. established and emergent, responded to the need for more resilient operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

SC disruption management for high-impact low-frequency events requires analysing four research elements: platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency. Established e-commerce food operators use partner onboarding and local waste valorisation to enhance resilience. Instead, emergent e-commerce food providers leverage localised rapid upscaling and product personalisation.

Digital food platforms offer a highly customisable, multisided digital marketplace wherein platform members may aggregate product offerings and customers, thus sharing value throughout the network. Platform-induced disintermediation allows bidirectional flows of data and information among SC partners, ensuring compliance and safety in the food retail sector.

The study contributes to the SC configuration and resilience literature by investigating the interrelationship among platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency for safe and resilient food provision within exogenously disrupted environments.

This article aims to evaluate published food cold chain (FCC) literature against risk management and supply chain sustainability concepts.

The article uses the theory refinement logic proposed by Seuring et al. (2021) to analyze the contents of FCC management-related literature published over the past 20 years. A sample of 116 articles was gathered using Web of Science and subsequently analyzed. The respective articles were then systematically coded against the frameworks of Beske and Seuring (2014) and Vlajic et al. (2012), which focused on building sustainable and robust supply chains, respectively.

The literature review revealed that debates around managing contemporary sources of disruptions/vulnerability and making FCCs more sustainable and resilient are gradually developing. However, an overarching risk management perspective along with incorporating social and environmental dimensions in managing FCCs still needs the adequate attention of the respective research community.

The deductive internal logic of theory refinement approach used in this paper could have been further strengthened by using additional frameworks. This limitation, however, opens avenues for further research. The findings of the paper will stimulate the interest of future researchers to work on expanding our understanding related to sustainability and risk management in FCCs.

The paper is the first attempt to organize published FCC literature along dimensions of supply chain sustainability and risk management. The paper thus provides the respective researchers with a foundation that will help them adopt a focused approach to addressing the research gaps.