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Despite the growing interest in the field of supply chain sustainability (SCS), little exploration of new theories exists. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce practice theories to SCS studies through a practice turn.

This is a conceptual paper in nature. Hence, based on theoretical arguments, the authors elaborate on how the practice turn can arise in the SCS field.

The theoretical elaboration is rooted in the understanding that sustainability is not limited to the materiality of environmental and social issues, as often observed. Instead, there is a need to include immaterial, emotional and intangible elements to better comprehend SCS practice. The authors argue that a continuum exists for a practice turn, including practice-based view, practice-based studies and critical practice theory.

The authors provide a research agenda with a comprehensive perspective of understanding the application and implications of practice theories to SCS.

The practice turn in SCS studies can support managers to better understand their practices not only through recognizing explicit activities but also mainly by reflecting on hidden elements that affect their performance.

SCS studies can better engage with grand challenges through a practice turn, which helps increase its contribution to solving social problems.

Unlike previous literature, the paper elaborates on how practice theories are powerful in supporting both scholars and practitioners in moving away from an extremely economic focus to genuinely embrace sustainability practice. In doing so, the practice turn appears as an important phase for SCS field maturity.

The purpose of this study is to explore the strength and value-relevance of social capital in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) provides a new perspective to explaining the configurations and interactions that shape entrepreneurial outcomes in regions. Research on the nature of interactions in EEs is still an ongoing debate. The authors draw from “organisational fields” studies to critically examine the interactions among actors in a non-transparent EE using the case of the Lagos region.

The methodology is based on a qualitative study of 40 semi-structured interviews with various ecosystem actors in the Lagos region, including financiers, government officials, universities, founders and venture capitalists. Additionally, data from the semi-structured interviews were triangulated with data obtained from a two-day focus group discussion Summit where Lagos’ EE issues were raised. This study analysed both data using thematic analysis.

This study suggests that in a non-transparent EE, four types of interactions are apparent: collaborative, stratified, clustered and unleveraged. Authors argue that in a non-transparent EE, there are blockages and distortions in the flow of resources to entrepreneurs and a higher proportion of entrepreneurs are unable to plug into the ecosystem to extract value for their businesses without a strong social capital.

The authors argue that entrepreneurs require deliberate effort to improve structural and relational social capital to plug into their ecosystem to extract value for their businesses.

The focus on interaction in a non-transparent EE is a novel approach to studying interactions within EEs. In addition, the study is an early attempt to explore entrepreneurial interactions within the Lagos region.

This chapter builds upon the analysis of the last chapter, as fans have to deal with the issues that arise from their team’s financial superiority. Here, we question what happens when that financial superiority is accompanied by significant moral and ethical issues. Recent involvement of state actors in the ownership of English football has been evidencable and occasionally appears clear. Various reflexes and cognitive distancing occur from fandoms when football club ownership engages in practices that, according to the normative models that fans ascribe to their clubs, are mutually exclusive with the values of the fanbase and the club’s history. A common form of fan reflex often takes the form of distancing the players on the pitch from the club’s institutional structures, effectively teasing out the matchday experience from the structures that benefit from the raw emotion it generates. Another reflex is questioning why the fan should surrender their club when a morally, ethically problematic ownership model has acquired it. Here we have perhaps the greatest challenge to the normative model and, rather than negotiating that tension, as often as not the response is to try and ignore it.

This study examines the possibility of asymmetric impact of inflation on the financial development (FD) in the case of Indian economy from 1980 to 2020. Moreover, the finance–growth hypothesis is also tested.

The authors incorporated the “Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag” (NARDL) model due to Shin et al. (2014) to investigate the asymmetric impact of inflation on financial development. Asymmetric cumulative dynamic multipliers are also used to track the traverse of any short-run distortion towards the long-run cointegration.

The results revealed that inflation impacts the financial development negatively whereas the economic growth (EG) and trade openness have a positive effect. However, the effect of inflation on financial development is not symmetric. Moreover, the findings support the demand-led growth hypothesis.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study examining the asymmetric effects of inflation on financial development in the Indian context. In addition, instead of using a single proxy to measure financial development, an index for financial development encompassing different aspects of the financial system has been incorporated.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0094

This study tests whether environmental awareness affects firm creation by using Google Trends data and a novel region-level data set from Italy.

Forward-looking entrepreneurs drive firm creation. The authors hypothesize that more environmentally conscious entrepreneurs will emerge as environmental awareness rises, increasing the number of green and energy firms. The authors test the prediction using Google Trends data and a novel region-level data set from Italy.

The authors find that not only the number of green and energy-innovative firms but also that of all innovative start-ups increases with rising environmental consciousness. The results imply some “innovation spillover” effects from green sectors to other industries with rising environmental awareness.

The paper hypothesizes that as environmental awareness rises, more environmental-conscious entrepreneurs will emerge, which would increase the number of green and energy firms. Robustness and falsification tests are also offered.

Moving away from the stories of financial disaster we encountered in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 examines what it means for fans when their club is suddenly awash with more financial muscle than some nation-states due to the generosity of a wealthy benefactor who is seemingly more interested in sporting glory than in financial gain. This chapter engages with the notion of the football club as a billionaire’s plaything. Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 saw the West London club embark on an eye-watering spending spree and a sustained period of on-field successes, one that was unknown in the club’s history to that point. As a result, we take Chelsea during the Abramovich era as a starting point for considering how this model of ownership affects the relationship between fans and the connection that they have with their club. The evident success that financial muscle can bring shows owners what a happy fanbase is capable of, what they are capable of doing, and what they are capable of ignoring. The success of the financially doped teams of the 2000s created a precedent for winning over a fanbase with a successful football club, but nevertheless sat awkwardly with the normative ideals of how a football club should exist in the world and relate to its supporters.

The purpose of this paper is to help better understand the translation process of the management control system (MCS) of privatised solid waste management (SWM) towards creating a stable network.

Drawing on the actor network theory (ANT), the case of a privatised SWM was studied. Data were collected from all entities involved in the privatisation process of SWM, which include Department A, Corporation X and the private sector concessionaire. Six documents were reviewed, 20 interviews were conducted and two observations were carried out.

The findings reveal that the control mechanism of SWM is complex, involving the interaction between human and non-human actors. Non-human actors include the key performance indicators (KPIs) and the concessionaire agreement (CA), which are the main control mechanisms towards creating a stable SWM network. Essentially, stability is achieved when the KPIs and CA can influence the activities of both intra- and inter-organisational relationships.

This paper provides a better understanding of the translation process of the MCS that adds to the stability of the network of a privatised SWM from the lens of the ANT.

In this case study, we examine how a citrus peel valorising company based in the Netherlands was able to adopt a circular business model while navigating regulatory, managerial, and supply chain-related barriers.

In-depth, semi-structured interviews with key personnel in the company, notes from field observations, photographs of the production process, and documents from a legal judgement served as data for this single, qualitative case study. Data were coded inductively using the in vivo technique and were further developed into four themes and a case description.

Results from our study indicate that the regulatory and political contexts in the Netherlands were critical to the company’s success. Like in the case of most fruitful industrial symbioses, partnerships founded on mutual trust and economically appealing value propositions played a crucial role in ensuring commercial viability. Collaborating with larger corporations and maintaining transparent communication with stakeholders were also significant contributing factors. Lastly, employees’ outlook towards circularity combined with their willingness to learn new skills were important driving factors as well.

In addition to expanding the scholarship on the adoption of circular business models, this research offers novel insights to policymakers and practitioners. It provides empirical evidence regarding the importance of public awareness, adaptable legislation, and harmonised policy goals for supporting sustainable entrepreneurship in the circular economy.

Introduction: Today the ability of nations to develop and implement innovations is core for their international competitiveness. Ukraine is striving for innovation progress; however, its innovation performance is relatively low. The research problem is to find the bottlenecks, affecting Ukraine’s innovation capability.

Purpose: This study aims to research the national innovation capability profiles, based on cluster analysis, to develop an understanding of drivers and threats for the innovation capability of Ukraine.

Need of the study: The knowledge-based economy, which had already turned into one of the most efficient developmental models of the 21st century, became a key driver of international competitiveness for the leading developed countries due to their progressive structural shifts towards the growth of high-technology manufacturing and knowledge-intensive sectors. These trends are significant to capture for the sake of increasing the innovation capability of the economy of Ukraine.

Methodology: The study is based on the K-means clustering method, which is employed for identifying 10 country clusters based on the indicators of their R&D and innovation activities, which allowed us to assess the innovation capability of Ukraine in comparison with 140 countries of the world. Data selection and normalisation were based on the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report indicators.

Findings: The study showed that Ukraine’s innovation capability problems are typical for most developing countries and are prevalently connected to low R&D expenditures, patent applications, and international co-invention activities. Most countries, except for the technologically developed ones, follow the so-called ‘passive technological learning’ strategies, which usually result in low economic productivity.

Practical implications: Several innovation policy implications have been developed for the government of Ukraine based on the cluster analysis results and accounting for the problems of the national innovation system (NIS).

The role of labor unions in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains both ambiguous and crucial for union members and business leaders. Given the complex relationship between labor unions and corporations, this study aims to address whether labor unions keep corporations honest (by monitoring CSR activities) or potentially render CSR initiatives less necessary.

Using data from the MSCI Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Database for firms in the Russell 1000 Index, this study examines the link between labor unions and CSR in U.S. companies over a six year period. Generalized least squares models were used to test the hypotheses for 3,937 firm-year observations.

The findings show that unionized companies generally pay less attention to CSR compared to nonunionized ones. The presence of labor unions and positive union-management relations both show a significant negative impact on CSR ratings, where positive union-management relations negatively affect CSR ratings more than just the presence of labor unions. Further, when considering the environmental, social and governance aspects of CSR separately, the results are more complex, suggesting that the relationship between labor unions and CSR varies depending on specific ESG dimensions.

CSR, a well-researched area, rarely addresses the companies' relationships with labor unions. Studies in South Korea and the UK have touched on the impact of labor unions on CSR, but in the USA it remains unexplored. This study extends this line of work by examining U.S. companies.