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The organization of services can affect the adoption of sustainable practices within the relationship between a buyer (e.g. a shipper) and a supplier (e.g. a logistics service provider–LSP). The purpose of this paper is to analyse, within this relationship, the mechanisms affecting collaboration between shippers and LSPs towards adopting green logistics practices to reduce the negative environmental effects of logistics processes. The authors take the perspective of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which represent – although less investigated than large enterprises – a relevant field of investigation given their impact on the environmental sustainability of logistics processes.

The authors conducted a multiple case-study investigation on a set of dyads involving shippers and LSPs. The authors explored the antecedents shaping the approach to sustainability in logistics and, adopting the absorptive capacity (AC) theory, the learning and knowledge transfer processes leading to the adoption of green practices.

Collaboration between shippers and LSPs for better sustainability in logistics seems not to work when relationships are limited to simple annual (or pluriannual) contracts, and when shippers do not show ambition to improve the level of sustainability of their logistics processes (regardless of whether they show an interest in general sustainability matters). On the other hand, successful cases show higher commitment in the dyadic relationship with respect to improving logistics sustainability, good levels of communication and a more structured process of knowledge sharing, enabled by IT integration, shared performance monitoring, and creation of inter-organizational teams.

While most of the existing research focuses on the perspective of shippers or LSPs, this work is original since it explores collaborative mechanisms within a buyer-supplier relationship simultaneously taking the perspective of both parties, according to the lens of the AC. It identifies directions for improving collaboration within the shipper-LSP relationship in the context of SMEs to foster the adoption of collaborative green logistics practices to impact sustainability positively.

Mixed methods research is useful to enhance theoretical and practical research contributions. However, single methods have predominated much logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) research. This paper presents a review of mixed methods research across ten years in LSCM to determine their usage, identify benefits and inhibitors, and provide suggestions for LSCM researchers to realise the benefits from using mixed methods.

This paper adopts a mixed methods approach through a quantitative analysis of methods used in six leading LSCM journals, an e-mail survey of mixed methods article authors during the review period, and four published case studies that used mixed methods.

Only 144 (ten percent) of all empirical articles were published using mixed methods during the review period. A range of benefits and inhibitors regarding mixed methods adoption were found. Suggestions for LSCM authors include research training in mixed methods use and developing a project-specific research design due to the specificity and complexity associated with mixed methods research.

LSCM is at a critical juncture, shaped by new contexts, themes and challenges, and would benefit from different research approaches and methods. This paper contributes to the LSCM domain through analysing the current state, benefits and inhibitors of mixed methods research in LSCM journals to provide a renewed call to action and guidelines for mixed methods LSCM research, and suggesting research design adaptation to enable agile and resilient research when investigating rapidly changing and complex phenomena.

The matter of interest is the reporting and disclosure of intellectual capital (IC) in the global “knowledge economy” era. The aim of the paper is twofold: to verify the level of disclosure of IC through the non-financial statements (NFSs) published by public companies and to identify the main firm-specific factors that explain the propensity to disclose.

Based on the 27 components of IC, a scoring system is designed to measure the level of disclosure of IC by 47 listed Italian companies. Content analysis (CA) is performed on the NFSs these companies published in 2020, to measure each company's so-called intellectual capital disclosure index (ICDI). A regression analysis is then applied to relate the ICDI scores to some firm-specific variables to determine their relevance and influence on the level of disclosure.

Although the NFS was not designed specifically for IC, the results of the analyses show an overall barely satisfactory ability of the NFS to give certain information on IC. Furthermore, the propensity to disclose IC appears significantly related to some firm characteristics considered here, such as capitalization, profitability, productivity, intangibility and financial structure.

The analysis relates to a representative but limited sample that does not allow for sectoral or time-series analyses. Extending the companies and years under observation would allow the results to be validated with broader and more in-depth analysis.

This paper provides exploratory but interesting evidence about the relationships between IC disclosure (ICD), firm characteristics and market capitalization. Despite several previous studies on the disclosure of IC, no analyses were found that focused on the information capacity of the NFS. Also, to the authors' knowledge, relatively few researchers have considered a set of financial ratios that include capital structure indices.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly recognized among technologies potentially driving the digital innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Nevertheless, the implications of AR/VR adoption in innovation processes have yet to receive much attention to date, with the need to explore the issues facilitating a systematic implementation in the SME context. This study aims to investigate the possible innovation paths of SMEs as a result of AR/VR adoption.

The authors performed a multiple case study research involving six Italian SMEs in manufacturing and service sectors that are investing in AR and/or VR solutions and are digitally innovating thanks to these technologies.

AR/VR solutions lead to different types of innovation in SMEs, i.e. for innovating product or service offerings, business processes or even the business model, when AR/VR extends to the company business logic. SMEs demonstrate being able to leverage internal sources with the essential commitment of top management and low resistance of employees in all kinds of AR/VR-enabled innovations. Conversely, they involve different external innovation sources according to the type of innovation pursued. Organizational issues emerged as more relevant than technological issues.

Results contribute to the literature on digital transformation of SMEs and provide managerial guidance on innovation sources and organizational issues to be considered to effectively deploy AR/VR solutions into specific innovation paths.

This study explores the impact of emergent technologies in the innovation process along with multiple perspectives, degree of complexity, and strategic importance in the SME context.

The present study investigates a nexus between digital public services (DPS) and international tourism empirically.

This article analyzes the nexus of DPS and international tourism by using the international sample of 23 European countries in the span of nearly 10 years from 2011 to 2019. Various econometric techniques, including the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) model and the feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) model, are employed to confirm the author’s findings. Furthermore, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method is applied to measure the short- and long-run effects of DPS on international tourism developments.

Tourism is positively influenced by digitalization, implying that the enhancement of digital public service usage results in the development of the tourism industry. However, when looking at the effect of DPS in the short term, a negative impact can be found on tourism, as the density reported in the previous analysis stated a negative response to the tourism density. This effect spans the course of several facets, such as international tourism arrivals, international tourism receipt, international tourism, receipts (% of total exports) and global tourism expenditure (% of total imports). Although the result is unfavorable in the short term, digitalization promises great prospects for tourism in the long term. Notably, an improvement in economic growth, financial development as well a reduction in the pervasiveness of corruption and an improvement of environmental quality are transmission channels through which DPS have favorable influences on tourism activities.

The author’s findings are vital for managers and policymakers to establish a comprehensive grasp of digitalization's role in deciding tourist adoption. This is because digitalization has been proven to play a role in determining tourism adoption.

The present study is the first to examine the relationship between DPS and international tourism empirically. The author is also the first to distinguish the effects of digitalization in the short and long run.