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Environmental sanctions and pressure from governments and customers can play an essential role in driving the manufacturing industry to adopt more sustainable practices and reduce their environmental impact. Thus, this study explores how pressures from customers and governments influence sustainable firm performance and customer satisfaction through green production, green creativity, green brand innovativeness and green brand image in the Chinese manufacturing industry? Further, the moderating role of green knowledge was analyzed.

640 valid responses from the Chinese manufacturing industry were collected through web-based and physical surveys and later assessed through structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study validated the direct relationship between the proposed construct. Mediation analysis found the mediating role of green brand innovativeness, green brand image green and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the moderating impact of green knowledge was also proved.

The empirical findings of this research filled the literature gap on cleaner production and sustainable firm performance by focusing on green production, green creativity and green knowledge in the Chinese manufacturing industry context.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of how discursive practices shape the promotion of public relations undergraduate programmes in the context of market-driven UK higher education.

Research combines a descriptive analysis of the UK universities offering public relations undergraduate degrees and a critical discourse analysis of the online prospectus entries of 25 public relations undergraduate programmes (often called “courses” in the UK), focussing on the course/programme overview and career path sections.

This wide-ranging review of UK universities’ communication of their public relations provision demonstrates that although the student as consumer has choice, the presentation of the programmes is sometimes “headline grabbing” and often positions public relations as a tactical subject, emphasising promotion and practical skills. Overall, public relations is taught alongside subjects such as marketing, journalism and advertising, and these subjects are foregrounded in promotional material when discussing teaching and potential career paths. Public relations is a difficult subject to explain within the confines of a university prospectus, with the result that it is frequently presented as a promotional practice with little connection to management, leadership or academic research.

To the best authors' knowledge, this is the first study exploring the discursive practices that shape the promotion of public relations undergraduate programmes in UK universities.

The widespread uptake of digital technology tools for online teaching and learning reached its peak during the nationwide lockdown triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. It transformed the higher education institutions (HEIs) marketplace both in developed and developing countries. However, in this process of digital transformation, several HEIs, specifically from developing countries, faced major challenges. That threatened to affect their sustainability and performance. In this vein, this study conducts a bibliometric review to map the challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest strategies for HEIs to cope with post-pandemic situations in the future.

This comprehensive review encompasses 343 papers published between 2020 and 2023, employing a systematic approach that combines bibliometrics and content analysis to thoroughly evaluate the articles.

The investigation revealed a lack of published work addressing the specific challenges faced by the faculty members affecting their well-being. The study underscores the importance of e-learning technology adoption for higher education sustainability by compelling both students and teachers to rely heavily on social media platforms to maintain social presence and facilitate remote learning. The reduced interpersonal interaction during the pandemic has had negative consequences for academic engagement and professional advancement for both educators and students.

This has implications for policymakers and the management of HEIs, as it may prove useful in reenvisioning and redesigning future curricula. The paper concludes by developing a sustainable learning framework using a blended approach. Additionally, we also provide directions for future research to scholars.

This study has implications for policymakers and HEI management to rethink the delivery of future courses with a focus on education and institute sustainability. Finally, the research also proposes a hybrid learning framework for sustainability and forms a robust foundation for scholars in future research.

Pre-positioning and distributing relief items are important parts of disaster management as it simultaneously considers activities from both pre- and post-disaster stages. This study aims to address this problem with a novel mathematical model.

In this research, a bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model is developed to tackle pre-positioning and distributing relief items, and it is formulated as an integrated location-allocation-routing problem with uncertain parameters. The humanitarian supply chain consists of relief facilities (RFs) and demand points (DPs). Perishable and imperishable relief commodities (RCs), different types of vehicles, different transportation modes, a time window for delivering perishable commodities and the occurrence of unmet demand are considered. A scenario-based game theory is applied for purchasing RCs from different suppliers and an integrated best-worst method-technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution technique is implemented to determine the importance of DPs. The proposed model is used to solve several random test problems for verification, and to validate the model, Iran’s flood in 2019 is investigated as a case study for which useful managerial insights are provided.

Managers can effectively adjust their preferences towards response time and total cost of the network and use sensitivity analysis results in their decisions.

The model locates RFs, allocates DPs to RFs in the pre-disaster stage, and determines the routing of RCs from RFs to DPs in the post-disaster stage with respect to minimizing total costs and response time of the humanitarian logistics network.

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.

The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.

When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.

Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.

Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.

This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.

This research studies circularity brokers, the economic actors facilitating the transition of companies towards circular operations. The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of “circular brokerage”, deriving from the concept of brokerage existing in network theory and applied to the specific context of the circular supply network. Recent papers have been devoted to particular facets of circular brokerage, with studies dedicated to circular incubators or platforms. This study proposes how these new actors can have a significant role in facilitating circular economy in general.

The methodology is qualitative using 17 semi-directed interviews with circularity brokers. The theoretical approach draws on the network view and builds on recent developments of the theory in the context of circular economy.

Circularity brokers support organisations and their networks, helping them to overcome the problems that stand in their way of adopting circular economy at different levels (micro, meso and macro). To do this, circularity brokers deploy a wide range of activities involving technical, methodological and relational skills. The study extends previous research by elaborating on the relationship between the position these actors occupy within their network and the benefits they can bring in terms of circularity.

This research provides evidence on the role of circularity brokers and moves the state of knowledge from a specific sector or cases to other sectors and a broader role beyond network position specifics. Network theory, with the constructs of broker exchanges and the influence of embeddedness, is used to develop theoretical implications.

This study aims to develop the first Theory of Technological Response and Progress in Chaos (TRPC) and examine the case of technological development during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research objectives of this study were to: identify the key technologies that act as a response mechanism during the chaos event, specifically in the case of COVID-19; examine how technologies evolve, develop and diffuse in an immediate crisis and a chaotic environment; theorise various types and periods of technological response and progress during the emergence of chaos and the stages that unfold; and develop policy-oriented recommendations and establish technological foundations to address subsequent chaos events.

This study used the grounded theory as a methodology with a mixed-method approach that included quantitative and qualitative methods. The authors used the quantitative method to assist with the qualitative step to build the TRPC theory. Accordingly, this study integrated machine learning and text mining approaches to the qualitative data analysis following the steps of the grounded theory approach.

As a result of the TRPC theory development process, the authors identified three types of technologies (survival, essential and enhancement technologies) and five types of periods (stable, initial, survival-dominant, essential-dominant and enhancement-dominant periods) that are specific to chaos-technology interactions. The policy implications of this study demonstrate that a required technological base and know-how must be established before a chaotic event emerges.

Concerning the limitations of this study, social media data has advantages over other data sources, such as the examination of dynamic areas and analyses of immediate responses to chaos. However, other researchers can examine publications and patent sources to augment the findings concerning scientific approaches and new inventions in relation to COVID-19 and other chaos-specific developments. The authors developed the TRPC theory by studying the COVID-19 pandemic, however, other researchers can utilise it to study other chaos-related conditions, such as chaotic events that are caused by natural disasters. Other scholars can investigate the technological response and progress pattern in other rapidly emerging chaotic events of an uncertain and complex nature to augment these findings.

Following the indications of the OECD (2021a) and considering the study conducted by the European Parliamentary Research Service (Kritikos, 2020), the authors identified the key technologies that are significant for chaos and COVID-19 response using machine learning and text intelligence approach. Accordingly, the authors mapped all technological developments using clustering approaches, and examined the technological progress within the immediate chaos period using social media data.

The key policy implication of this study concerns the need for policymakers to develop policies that will help to establish the required technological base and know-how before chaos emerges. As a result, a rapid response can be implemented to mitigate the chaos and transform it into a competitive advantage. The authors also revealed that this recommendation overlaps with the model of dynamic capabilities in the literature (Teece and Pisano, 2003). Furthermore, this study recommends that nations and organisations establish a technological base that specifically includes technologies that bear 3A characteristics. These are the most crucial technologies for the survival- and essential-dominant stages. Moreover, the results of this study demonstrate that chaos accelerates technological progress through the rapid adoption and diffusion of technologies into different fields. Hence, nations and organisations should regard this rapid progress as an opportunity and establish the prior knowledge base and technologies before chaos emerges.

The authors have contributed to the chaos studies and the relationship between chaos and technological development by establishing the first theoretical foundation using the grounded theory approach, hereafter referred to as the TRPC theory. As part of the TRPC theory, the authors present three periods of technological response in the following sequence: survival technology, essential technology and enhancement technology. Moreover, this study illustrates the evolving technological importance and priorities as the periods of technological progress proceed under rapidly developing chaos.

The purpose of this article is to summarize three Luhmannian critiques on morality, illustrate new roles for morality and add constructive interpretations.

Luhmann has recently been described as downright negative toward morality, resulting in a refusal to use ethics as a sociologist, thus leading to a limited use of his theory in moral issues. A constructive interpretation could support a more functional use of morality in social system theory.

First, Luhmann signals that morality can no longer fulfill its integrative function in society but also that society has recourse to moral sensitivity. Second, Luhmann describes how anxiety is crucial in modern morality and indicates which role risk and danger could play. The author builds further on this and proposes the concept of “social system attention” that can provide answers to individual and organizational anxiety. The author proposes that institutionalized socialization can support an integrative morality. Third, Luhmann states that ethics today is nothing more than a utopia but also that the interdiction of moral self-exemption is an essential element. The author adds that a relational ontology for social systems theory can avoid ethics as utopia.

This article is a programmatic plea to further elaborate morality from a system theory perspective in which meaning is relationally positioned.

This article could potentially provide a more functional application of morality in social systems, thus leading to improvements of attempts of ethical decision-making. The originality of the approach lies in the interpretation of basic assumptions of Luhmann social system theory that are not core to his theory.

Autonomous and connected mobility technologies have led to a reconfiguration of the automotive industry value chain. This may involve an impact on the geography of the European automotive industry, especially for peripheral countries. The aim of the paper is to analyse the repositioning of a peripheral country (Portugal) in the core-periphery model of the automotive industry derived from this new technological context.

An eclectic theoretical framework, based on the global value chain (GVC) approach, the spatial division of labour and location theory, supports this research. Moreover, an original empirical study was developed. This study comprised a comparative analysis of two samples of firms based on the key variables related to country position. One sample comprised Portuguese traditional automotive firms and the other Portuguese firms linked to autonomous and connected mobility technologies.

The results highlight the upgrading of Portugal in the European core-periphery model of the automotive industry. This is due to the presence of domestic firms, especially multinationals, linked to autonomous and connected mobility technologies in the country. The decision power derived from their position on the first levels of supply and the added value of activities and technological innovation of these new actors change the role of the country in the European automotive industry. The main implication is that managers of domestic firms and policy makers in peripheral countries can upgrade a country’s position in the European core-periphery model by shifting its competitiveness toward knowledge-based activities linked to the new mobility technologies.

This research is supported by a novel eclectic theoretical framework based on the global value chain (GVC) approach, the spatial division of labour and location theory. Moreover, country position is analysed through empirical evidence. An original comparative empirical study based on the key variables defined under this theoretical framework was developed.

An appreciative inquiry process was collaboratively undertaken with an inner city local authority and personal advisors where systemic social work practice was embedded. The purpose of this study is to explore how systemic social work principles could be integrated into the support of young adults leaving the care system, especially when safeguarding concerns exist.

Three fortnightly, reflecting team-style, appreciative inquiry workshops explored the integration into practice of systemic concepts under the themes of safeguarding, uncertainty and new possibilities.

Within the contexts of the organisation, other agencies and the relationship, six paired themes emerged: learning and navigating; positioning and risk-taking; and feeling and engaging. Core systemic concepts, such as self-reflexivity and mutual influence, can enable personal advisers to use themselves and their relationship with care leavers as a context for change. Considering responses to risk from different family member positions may support holding greater levels of uncertainty. Seeing resilience as a process rather than a personal attribute enabled personal advisors to think about how they connected with care leavers through shared life experiences, fostering narratives of hopes and dreams where new possibilities abound.

Appreciative inquiry is generally seen as a defined model for implementing large organisational changes; this study comprised a small sample group, and the model’s application was less defined.

A gap exists in the extensive care leaver research, addressing safeguarding and working systemically. A conceptual model for practice is offered, with potential utility in developing further systemically informed training and supervision for practitioners. A less structured and more relationally engaged model for appreciative inquiry is presented.