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The current paper aims to analyse the antecedents of leader–member exchange relationships (LMX) by specifically focusing on the influence of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.

This study uses qualitative research methods with primary interviews as the main data source. Primary interviews with 40 managers from top supermarkets in Nigeria, South Africa and the UK were undertaken.

The authors found that both high-quality positive feedback and constructive criticisms produced the same feelings – more positive interpersonal relationships with their supervisors, higher levels of commitment to their organisations, higher job satisfaction and thus, high-quality LMX relationships. Where criticisms were delivered without greater interpersonal treatment, feedback was perceived as negative, and participants revealed lack of job satisfaction, lack of commitment to their organisations, poor interpersonal relationship with their supervisors, high turnover intent and thus low-quality LMX relationship.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current paper is one of the first studies to highlight the consequences of different feedback delivery tactics on subsequent LMX quality particularly in African context. The authors specifically develop a process-based model of enhancing high-quality LMX, which shows the role of the supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic in the process. The authors also develop a process-based model that illustrates how negative/unconstructive feedback could result in a low-quality LMX. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is also one of the first to offer a comparative assessment between African and British (the UK) empirical settings and highlight some interesting dynamics concerning LMX quality and role of supervisor’s feedback delivery tactic.

Despite the continuation of hospital mergers in many western countries, it is uncertain if and how hospital mergers impact the quality of care. This poses challenges for the regulation of mergers. The purpose of this paper is to understand: how regulators and hospitals frame the impact of merging on the quality and safety of care and how hospital mergers might be regulated, given their uncertain impact on quality and safety of care.

This paper studies the regulation of hospital mergers in The Netherlands. In a qualitative study design, it draws on 30 semi-structured interviews with inspectors from the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (Inspectorate) and respondents from three hospitals that merged between 2013 and 2015. This paper draws from literature on process-based regulation to understand how regulators can monitor hospital mergers.

This paper finds that inspectors and hospital respondents frame the process of merging as potentially disruptive to daily care practices. While inspectors emphasise the dangers of merging, hospital respondents report how merging stimulated them to reflect on their care practices and how it afforded learning between hospitals. Although the Inspectorate considers mergers a risk to quality of care, their regulatory practices are hesitant.

This qualitative study sheds light on how merging might affect key hospital processes and daily care practices. It offers opportunities for the regulation of hospital mergers that acknowledges rather than aims to dispel the uncertain and potentially ambiguous impact of mergers on quality and safety of care.

Despite many efforts within organizations toward business process orientation (BPO), research on real-world experiences remains in its infancy. The purpose of this paper is to redress the existing knowledge gap by analyzing a Swedish public housing company that has made notable effects regarding BPO and to explore lessons learned from the BPO journey (from 1998 to 2013).

The point of departure is principles in the BPO foundation, principles of successful BPM and effects in empirically based literature. The reconstruction of the narrative case study describes milestones and critical junctions, as well as effects based on quantitative and qualitative data.

Effects in BPO are demonstrated in terms of higher customer satisfaction, increased innovative ability, improved operational performance, higher employee satisfaction and, as a result of these, increased profitability. Theoretical constructs with implications for the theory building on BPO are suggested in a three-layer management framework – with capabilities and abilities emerging from the case study used as an illustrative example.

Lessons are learned regarding critical practices related to advancement in BPO. A strategy-building process based on eight design propositions is suggested to define the pre-conditions for BPO in an organization.

This is the first longitudinal case study to provide a comprehensive view and detailed insights of a BPO journey and top management performance toward a business process-oriented organization. Practitioners and BPM community get valuable insights into how the temporality and the context shape the BPO maturity process in terms of new organizational structure and roles during the journey.

A key issue to manage sustainability is to be able to operationalise it. Relevant indicators require an appropriate definition of sustainability and sustainable development for the studied organisation. A common problem is inadequate understanding of what sustainability is from an organisational perspective. The purpose of this paper is to propose how to understand, define and measure diagnosing of sustainability from an outside-in perspective.

The building, health care, education and tourism value chains are studied. Based on interpreted stakeholder sustainability needs the stages of understanding, defining and measuring of diagnosing are reviewed, and interpretations proposed. This is with focus on identifying the vital few sustainability impacts in the studied value chains.

The resulting definitions and proposed performance indicators for the chosen areas indicate that the approach works resulting in proposed definitions and indicators for sustainability and sustainable development based on stakeholders need focus. Having clear definitions and performance indicators will support working effectively with sustainable development.

The resulting definitions and proposed performance indicators for the chosen areas indicate that the approach works. Further, proposed definitions and indicators for sustainability and sustainable development based on stakeholder needs focus is useful. Having clear definitions and performance indicators will help an organisation engage with sustainability and be sustainable within an organisational context.

The proposed approach enables using quality management for sustainable development.

Social sustainability is viewed from a poverty and affordability perspective.

Results indicate that there is a value in using an outside-in approach with focus on stakeholder needs in connection with a process-based approach. The approach is in contrast with the customary way of defining sustainability which mostly is based on an inside-out approach identifying several indicators and then adding these to a measure of sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the strategic management of a technology-enabled shift from a product-centric to a service-centric logic and to identify the sociotechnical dynamics underlying this transition. The study focuses on how manufacturers manage to create value in industrial markets through digital servitization.

An abductive research approach is used to investigate two manufacturing firms, and an interpretive framework is used as an analytical template. A cross-case analysis is conducted.

The case companies strategically managed sociotechnical processes of digitization to co-create value. Their service orientation delineates dissimilarity in terms of digital servitization. It reflects a viable ecosystem that moves toward datatization through adaptation in one case and a viable ecosystem that moves toward digitization through reconfiguration in the other case.

A theoretically grounded, empirically informed framework is proposed to detect transformational mechanisms to manage value co-creation in digitally servitized contexts, thus contributing to ecosystem viability.

This is the first study to adopt a system perspective such as the viable system approach combined with service-dominant logic to reconceptualize the overall sociotechnical processes and the underlying mechanisms leading to digitized value creation. In line with a systems view and a systematic process based on a transformative attitude toward digital servitization, the empirically informed framework identifies specific co-creation activities and recursive feedback loops.

This article aims to map the expectations of manufacturing companies towards suppliers in terms of implementing improvement activities. The article poses two research questions: RQ1: What kind of improvement of activities do the surveyed producers expect from their suppliers? RQ2: Do factors such as size, capital or implemented systems influence different assessments of the analyzed requirements toward suppliers?

The Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) technique was used to collect data. The sample consists of 150 producers (employing over 50 people) who were suppliers for enterprises from the automotive, electromechanical and chemical sectors operating in the Polish business-to-business (B2B) market. We analyzed 11 improvement activities, while their correlation structure was examined by exploratory factor analysis.

We have identified three latent factors – risk reduction, product innovation and increasing efficiency – which summarize the main expectations of manufacturing companies towards suppliers. Expectations for these factors are independent of the implemented management system, although the analysis showed higher expectations for product innovation in organizations with the implementation of Kaizen.

The article fills the research gap in the literature. The research results presented in the literature so far have focused on the expectations of enterprises towards suppliers in terms of meeting the criteria for their initial and periodic assessment. The research gap in the article is the result of empirical research presenting the expectations of manufacturers towards suppliers in terms of improving their processes. Based on the findings of the presented study, development trends and implications for managers responsible for purchasing processes and relationships with suppliers can be determined.

This study describes how maintenance capability should be created during the design and construction phases of construction projects. Purpose of the abstract to define the elements for creating the maintenance capability and the process to be used in construction life cycle projects for buildings.

An inductive and qualitative research method was used to construct the proposed process based on the literature and 18 interviews in two large construction companies.

The results indicate that the maintenance phase is usually overlooked during the design and construction phases, and capabilities are not systematically built. In particular, processes are lacking in data management, causing severe problems in maintenance.

This study presents a process including key requirements and activities for creating maintenance capability in conjunction with the design and construction phases, which is novel to the literature. The validated process can be adapted based on the needs of the construction company.

Although innovation ecosystems (IEs) are generally considered capable of creating shared value (SV), this potentiality has often been taken for granted and not deeply analysed, yet. As a result, in the literature, there is not a framework that defines the process of SV creation in IEs or which aspects should be considered for understanding it. Moving from these considerations, this paper aims to propose a conceptual model of how IEs can create SV, identifying the main building blocks of the process and the aspects that characterize these building blocks.

The authors reviewed the literature on IEs and value creation over the last 15 years, by structurally analysing 120 articles. On the basis of such review, the authors identified main dimensions of analysis focusing on the conceptualization of SV in IEs.

First, the authors developed a conceptual model relying on a process-based logic and framing the SV creation in terms of inputs, here intended as four key characteristics (actors, structure, governance and relations), internal processes (strategies and internal mechanisms) and outputs (the value created). Second, each element of value creation is explored, highlighting the main evidence emerging from prior studies in connection to each block.

This paper drives the identification of some relevant relationships that connect the characteristics of the IEs, the strategies and the internal mechanisms to the output of the process, i.e. the SV created.

This chapter highlights how implementing circular economy principles can help companies working with sustainability to move from a reductionist and waste management approach to marketing competitive circular value propositions that intentionally design out waste (e.g. emissions and pollution) by rethinking, reinventing and redesigning the value chain. Schijvens, a Dutch family-owned corporate fashion textile company, acts as a case for exemplifying successful implementation of circular economy principles as a marketing strategy in a sector that struggles with finding solutions to the ethical challenges of producing and marketing textile fashion. The textile industry has, for many years, been accused of production that is based on environmentally harmful processes and conditions that are not socially fair. Circular economy principles provide a range of suggestions to address the ethical challenges occurring from covering the human needs of having clothes to wear. Yet, implementing circular economy principles is not a panacea. It is not only a question of delivering a technological quick fix but also a question of managing the new processes and human mindset guiding the actions in the value chain. This chapter, therefore, outlines reasons for a different perspective on the traditional linear value chain and related implications managers face when undertaking a journey from sustainability based on a reductionist approach to a closed-loop approach. It is argued that implementing circular economy principles by pro-actively managing the value chain processes based on eco-centric dynamic capabilities can provide even more radical changes than the incremental reductionist approach often associated with being a green sustainable company.