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The ecosystem concept has attracted attention in information system research to explain business competition, innovation and many other emerging phenomena. Existing studies focus more on a single ecosystem type or a single ecosystem goal and pay little attention to the ecosystem’s evolution. The objective of the study is to investigate the factors that impact the evolution of the information ecosystem (IE) to gain a better understanding of strategic thinking.

The IE involves many actors, so the multi-case study approach is conducted with purposeful sampling to recruit all the significant ecosystem actors. The collected qualitative data are analyzed by coding data, exploring data relationships and structuring pattern steps; institutional theory is used as a theoretical framework.

The results demonstrate that industry practices, laws and regulations, new actors and the mimetic pressure of outsourcers drive the growth of the ecosystem. Strategy intention, cost pressure and normative pressure all contribute to the IE’s evolution.

The concept of ecosystems has attracted attention in information system research. The study investigates the factors contributing to the evolution of the IE from an institutional theory perspective. Our suggestion is that new players can find a niche in offering information technology (IT)/ information services (IS)-related solutions to survive in the ecosystem; however, they need to pay attention to the normative pressure.

Offsite construction (OC) is an efficient method to reduce waste in the construction industry from a circular economy perspective. Yet, its uptake is subdued by the ambiguities around its supply chain. Hence, the purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the OC project delivery models, the limitations in their procurement approach to facilitate the resilience of the supply chain and interventions to promote supply chain resilience (SCR) and to identify the gaps in the existing procurement process and propose further research areas that implement strategies to improve SCR.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. In total, 41 peer-reviewed research papers published between 2013 and 2023 were shortlisted through the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines. A descriptive analysis was conducted, followed by a thematic analysis.

The descriptive analysis reveals that the emphasis on digitising OC has shifted to transforming the business model, procurement and supply chain with a human-centric view. In thematic analysis, the predictability of the SC partners and the probabilities of evaluating the prospects are revealed as arbitrary characteristics in the current procurement strategies. Rewarding collaborative relationships among SC partners and incorporating provisions to postpone the module delivery are some interventions to promote flexibility. Drafting comprehensive and effective contracts that address transparency issues and facilitating the need for continuous development of capabilities through procurement are among the further research avenues proposed.

This study is a precursor demonstrating the potential of the procurement process to implement the decrees of SCR for better goal congruence of the OC supply chain.

Infrastructure forms a basis for the operations and sustainability of the modern society. This paper aims to recognize value creation from the infrastructure procurement ecosystem perspective to achieve those goals. The pursuit of enhancing value creation involves an examination of infrastructure procurement challenges, boundaries as well as boundary spanners that facilitate effective knowledge transfer and interaction.

The qualitative study is based on content analysis of 25 thematic interviews. Data was transcribed and coded via Atlas.ti software.

Infrastructure procurement value creation challenges appear complex and related to boundaries that hamper collaboration, coordination and knowledge sharing. Our results show that these boundaries locate within and between different levels of procurement ecosystem. Therefore, value creation in infrastructure procurement requires boundary spanners for leveraging knowledge sharing and interaction. Artifacts, discussion, processes and brokers as identified boundary spanners are strongly nested and interrelated in the industry. Special attention should be given to supporting individuals to act as brokers, since they play the key roles in trust building, culture steering and usage of other boundary spanners.

Promoting value creation in infrastructure procurement helps to achieve socio-economic development goals.

This study offers a unique perspective on value creation in the context of infrastructure by adopting an ecosystem lens and examining boundary crossing mechanisms. The results support future development of collaboration and knowledge sharing practices fostering procurement productivity.

The building sector is vital to a nation’s economy, as it has a major influence on economic activity and growth, job creations and the advancement of infrastructure. Intricate challenges that are inherent in crises such as the COVID-19 outbreak lead to material scarcities, project delays, labor shortages, escalated expenses, funding challenges, regulatory obstacles and dwindling investment funds, all of which culminate in costs that are in excess of those budgeted. While numerous studies have explored the ramifications of COVID-19 on project budgets, there is little, if any, data available on forecasting the magnitude of this impact.

This investigation seeks to bridge this knowledge deficiency by devising a predictive tool grounded in an ordinal logistic regression method. An online survey was designed and disseminated to gauge the views of construction field experts about the diverse contributors to excessive costs during the viral outbreak, and a predictive tool, crafted from the survey participants’ feedback.

Findings showed that smaller-scale enterprises and contractor-centric establishments faced greater adversities than medium-to-large ones and consultancy-or-owner-type entities.

The insights from this research shed light on the amplified risk of higher project costs amid health crises or analogous events, underlining the imperative need for fortified risk management approaches to bolster project outcomes. By factoring in demographics, this research offers policymakers a refined lens through which to customize interventions and promote balanced and enduring advancement in the construction industry.

This study aimed to address a gap in subcontractor management by focusing on previously unexplored complexities surrounding subcontractor management in developing countries. While past studies concentrated on selection and relationships, this study delved into how effective subcontractor management impacts project success.

This study used the Bayesian Network analysis approach, through a meticulously developed questionnaire survey refined through a piloting stage involving experienced industry professionals. The survey was ultimately distributed among participants based in Accra, Ghana, resulting in a response rate of approximately 63%.

The research identified diverse components contributing to subcontractor disruptions, highlighted the necessity of a clear regulatory framework, emphasized the impact of financial and leadership assessments on performance, and underscored the crucial role of main contractors in Integrated Project and Labour Cost Management with Subcontractor Oversight and Coordination.

Previous studies have not considered the challenges subcontractors face in projects. This investigation bridges this gap from multiple perspectives, using Bayesian network analysis to enhance subcontractor management, thereby contributing to the successful completion of construction projects.

The pressing issues of climate change and environmental degradation call for a reevaluation of how we approach economic activities. Both leaders and corporations are now shifting their focus, toward adopting practices and embracing the concept of circular economy (CE). Within this context, the Food and Beverage (F&B) sector, which significantly contributes to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, holds the potential for undergoing transformations. This study aims to explore the role that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play in facilitating the adoption of CE principles, within the F&B sector.

This research employs the Best Worst Method, a technique in multi-criteria decision-making. It focuses on identifying and ranking the challenges in implementing AI-driven CE in the F&B sector, with expert insights enhancing the ranking’s credibility and precision.

The study reveals and prioritizes barriers to AI-supported CE in the F&B sector and offers actionable insights. It also outlines strategies to overcome these barriers, providing a targeted roadmap for businesses seeking sustainable practices.

This research is socially significant as it supports the F&B industry’s shift to sustainable practices. It identifies key barriers and solutions, contributing to global climate change mitigation and sustainable development.

The research addresses a gap in literature at the intersection of AI and CE in the F&B sector. It introduces a system to rank challenges and strategies, offering distinct insights for academia and industry stakeholders.

Grounded in strategic fit theory, this study aims to identify external and internal factors that influence retailers’ strategic choices regarding their own product brands. Furthermore, it seeks to explore the variations between different own product brand strategies in achieving both external and internal strategic fit.

The systematic review method, incorporating a thematic analysis, was adopted, and 318 articles were included for review.

The factors that influence retailers’ strategic choices regarding their own product brands encompass a range of external macro and industrial environmental factors, along with various internal resource and capability factors. Moreover, the effects of these factors vary across different own product brand strategies.

To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of research on retailers’ own product brands from a strategic management perspective, offering systematic and structured guidance for retailers.

This study aims to investigate the daily performance of the proposed microgrid (MG) that comprises photovoltaic, wind turbines and is connected to the main grid. The load demand is a residential area that includes 20 houses.

The daily operational strategy of the proposed MG allows to vend and procure utterly between the main grid and MG. The smart metre of every consumer provides the supplier with the daily consumption pattern which is amended by demand side management (DSM). The daily operational cost (DOC) CO2 emission and other measures are utilized to evaluate the system performance. A grey wolf optimizer was employed to minimize DOC including the cost of procuring energy from the main grid, the emission cost and the revenue of sold energy to the main grid.

The obtained results of winter and summer days revealed that DSM significantly improved the system performance from the economic and environmental perspectives. With DSM, DOC on winter day was −26.93 ($/kWh) and on summer day, DOC was 10.59 ($/kWh). While without considering DSM, DOC on winter day was −25.42 ($/kWh) and on summer day DOC was 14.95 ($/kWh).

As opposed to previous research that predominantly addressed the long-term operation, the value of the proposed research is to investigate the short-term operation (24-hour) of MG that copes with vital contingencies associated with selling and procuring energy with the main grid considering the environmental cost. Outstandingly, the proposed research engaged the consumers by smart meters to apply demand-sideDSM, while the previous studies largely focused on supply side management.

This paper investigates the constraints an organisation faces when using recruitment agencies and having to trade-off between the speed of hiring a candidate, the cost of a candidate and the match of the candidate against the job requirements across different job seniorities. We analyse how technology can shift the cost and hiring speed in spite of these constraints.

The research design is exploratory, quantitative and cross-sectional. The study employed a two-factor, unbalanced class Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) including interaction effects to test the difference between the means of the class of interest and a control class.

Our empirical findings confirm that (1) the technological innovation of a recruitment agency marketplace can liberate organisations from their time, cost and quality hiring constraints, accelerating the time to hire by four times and reducing costs by over 12%, and (2) these results hold across varying role seniority levels.

This study contributes to the existing literature in three ways: (1) it introduces the recruitment triangle from project management into the recruitment literature; (2) it demonstrates how technological innovations such as recruitment agency marketplaces are able to provide a shift in the constraints posed by the recruitment triangle.

Drawing upon resource dependence theory, this study aims to examine how a firm’s information technology (IT) capabilities (i.e. IT integration and IT reconfiguration) influence its responses to disruptions – bridging with a current supplier and buffering with an alternative supplier. We further examine how such relationships are moderated by the firm–supplier relative dependence (i.e. firm dependence advantage and supplier dependence advantage).

Based on data from 141 match-paired surveys of firms in China, we test our model.

Our study finds that IT integration positively influences bridging and IT reconfiguration positively influences buffering. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the positive impact of IT integration on bridging is negatively influenced by the firm’s dependence (FD) advantage but positively moderated by the supplier’s dependence advantage. By contrast, the positive impact of IT reconfiguration on buffering is negatively influenced by the FD advantage.

Our study provides a more nuanced insight into the effects of IT capabilities on disruption responses and a better understanding of the buyer–supplier dependence boundary conditions under which these effects vary.