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This paper explores the connection between agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) and levels of circular economy (CE): supply chain (SCs), firm, and product/materials. We aim to answer the following crucial research questions: (1) What are the specific characteristics of the AFSC that affect the implementation of CE? (2) How can the interplay of AFSC characteristics and CE levels be understood and utilised to close the current knowledge gap in CE implementation? (3) How do the CE levels established (in question 2) correspond to the notion of cascade chains? (4) Can the Triple-Bottom Line (TBL) principles be used to report CE impacts in the agri-food industry? (5) What future research directions need to be explored for sustainable CE configuration in AFSCs? Answering these questions expands the knowledge of the implementation of CE in AFSCs, which is crucial for sustainable configuration based on the TBL principles.

We conducted a comprehensive narrative overview (a type of narrative literature review) followed by a case study guided by the cascade chain theory. The sugar cane industry, a significant source of bioenergy that can contribute to sustainable development, was selected for the case study. To validate our findings from the narrative overview, we interviewed five directors from international sugar companies.

Our research has shown that CE can significantly benefit the sugar cane industry. Based on TBL principles, we have developed a framework to achieve sustainable configurations in AFSCs. The framework starts with regenerative agriculture, material reuse, and energy recovery, where different CE levels intersect. This intersection can guide firms to improve decision-making, promote sustainable practices, and inform policymaking across the sugar cane value chain.

Narrative overview has limitations such as potential subjectivity and bias and may not be suitable for generalisation. To mitigate this limitation, we have included a case study to produce a rounded analysis. We have also gathered information from secondary sources, such as reports and company news articles, to prevent biased results.

This research provides valuable insights to assist companies in aligning their practices with CE levels, leading to sustainable outcomes in AFSCs. The study emphasises the importance of integrating CE levels and AFSC characteristics for policymakers to validate and develop new policies. Through our in-depth analysis of sugar cane SCs, we demonstrate that the various CE levels are interdependent and work in tandem with the unique characteristics of sugar cane, resulting in a sustainable configuration.

Analysing the connectedness between CE levels and AFSC characteristics is crucial to fully understanding the CE sustainable configuration. Unlike other frameworks that only describe the CE concept, the framework presented in this paper clearly explains the implementation of CE in AFSCs. It helps industrial practitioners and policymakers validate current practices and future policies. The paper also highlights future research directions and provides valuable insights.

The highly uncertain and turbulent environments nowadays intensify the paradoxical effects of supply base concentration (SBC) on improving cost efficiency while increasing idiosyncratic risk (IR). Digitalization is regarded as a remedy for this paradox, yet digitization's potentially curative effect has not been empirically tested. Leveraging the lenses of paradox theory and information processing theory (IPT), this study explores how two distinct dimensions of digitalization, i.e. digitalization intensity (DI) and digitalization breadth (DB), reconcile the paradoxical effects of SBC.

Using a panel dataset of 1,238 Chinese manufacturing firms in the period of 2012–2020, this study utilizes fixed-effects regression models to test the proposed hypotheses.

The authors discover that SBC enhances a firm's cost efficiency but induces greater IR. More importantly, there is evidence that DI restrains the amplifying effect of SBC on IR. However, DB weakens the enhancing effect of SBC on cost efficiency and aggravates the SBC's exacerbating effect on IR.

This study advances the understanding of the paradoxical effects of SBC on cost efficiency and IR from a paradox theory perspective. More importantly, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the authors' study is the first to untangle the differential roles of DI and DB in reconciling the paradox of SBC. This study also provides practitioners with nuanced insights into how the practitioners should use appropriate tactics to deploy digital technologies effectively.

By recognizing the decisive role of top managers (TMs) of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study attempts to explicate the microfoundation of pro-environmental operations of SMEs by examining the influence of institutional pressure on managerial cognition and subsequent SME pro-environmental operations. This study highlights the personal ethics of TMs, so as to examine the moderating effect of TMs' place attachment on SMEs' pro-environmental operations.

Empirical data are collected from a questionnaire survey of 509 SMEs in China. Hierarchical regression results are subject to cross-validation using secondary public data.

This study demonstrates that coercive and mimetic pressures have inverted U-shaped effects, whilst normative pressure has a U-shaped effect on the threat cognition of TMs. The results also show that TMs' threat cognition (as opposed to opportunity cognition) positively influences SMEs' pro-environmental operations. Moreover, both the emotional (place identity) and functional (place dependence) dimensions of place attachment have positive moderating effects on the relationship between threat cognition and SMEs' pro-environmental operations.

Findings of this study lead to important implications for practitioners such as regulators, policy makers and trade associations. Enabling better understanding of the nature of SMEs' pro-environmental operations, they allow for more targeted development and the provision of optimal institutional tools to promote such operations.

This study allows some important factors that differentiate SMEs from large firms to surface. These factors (i.e. institutional pressures, managerial cognition and place attachment) and the interactions between them form important constituents of the microfoundations of SMEs' pro-environmental operations.

Over the last few decades, management has witnessed a proliferation of research on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and strategic alliances (SAs). Although both fields have been widely studied, the relationship between the two bodies of literature has not been sufficiently explored. Despite the enormous commonality between both phenomena in terms of the drivers behind them and of the critical success factors associated with the M&A and alliance process management, scholars from the two fields have rarely exchanged findings and insights, even though they may be highly relevant to each other. M&A and SA research remain mostly separated from each other, thus minimizing the ability for more mutually beneficial complementary and synergetic knowledge sharing effects.

This chapter synthesizes and compares existing theoretical perspectives from the M&A and SA literatures and identifies opportunities for future research and knowledge cross fertilization between the two fields. Building upon previous review studies about M&A and SA literatures, the authors develop a comparative longitudinal review of both literatures published in top management journals over a 27-year period. For that purpose, the authors resort to machine learning algorithms to discover thematic patterns that may have gone unnoticed by using traditional review methods.

By highlighting some of the shortcomings that limit the authors’ theoretical and practical understandings, they challenge scholars from both fields (M&A and SA) to go beyond what they think they know from compartmentalized received theory, and draw upon novel and meaningful ideas, concepts, and theoretical approaches from “the other side of the fence.” The authors believe that such a dialog will facilitate further theoretical exploration and empirical investigation of both phenomena and produce insights that will influence the practical management of M&A and SAs.

Recognizing the heterogeneity of services, this paper aims to clarify the characteristics of forward and the corresponding reverse supply chains of different services.

The paper develops a two-dimensional typology matrix, representing four main clusters of services according to the degree of input standardization and the degree of output tangibility. Based on this matrix, this paper develops a typology and parsimonious conceptual models illustrating the characteristics of forward and the corresponding reverse supply chains of each cluster of services.

The four main clusters of service supply chains have different characteristics. This provides the basis for the identification, presentation and explanation of the different characteristics of their corresponding reverse service supply chains.

The findings of this research can help future researchers to analyse, map and model forward and reverse service supply chains, and to identify potential research gaps in the area.

The findings of the research can help managers of service firms to gain better visibility of their forward and reverse supply chains, and refine their business models to help extend their reverse/closed-loop activities. Furthermore, the findings can help managers to better optimize their service operations to reduce service gaps and potentially secure new value-adding opportunities.

This paper is the first, to the authors ' knowledge, to conceptualize the basic structure of the forward and reverse service supply chains while dealing with the high level of heterogeneity of services.

Differences in corporate commitments to sustainability have attracted increasing attentions of both researchers and practitioners. However, reasons behind such differences still lack a generic theorization. We propose that one source of these differences lies in the development and application of what we refer to as dynamic capabilities for corporate sustainability within the firm. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities view, the objective of this paper is to examine the fundamental role of dynamic capabilities in corporate sustainable development.

The research developed a framework of dynamic capabilities for corporate sustainability and used the approach of content analysis to verify the framework based on the CSR reports of UK leading companies.

The research demonstrates that the dynamic capabilities for corporate sustainability enable firms to monitor the emerging sustainability needs of various stakeholders, seize sustainable development opportunities from the rapidly changing stakeholders’ expectations, and reconfigure existing functional capabilities for corporate sustainability.

The framework of dynamic capabilities for corporate sustainability developed in this paper may be used by practitioners to better understand firms’ status in the corporate sustainable development, identify areas of improvement, and more effectively overcome emerging sustainability challenges.

This study makes an early attempt to extend the dynamic capabilities perspective to the area of corporate sustainable development.

The authors examine the role of entrepreneurial business models in the reverse supply chain of apparel/fashion retailers. The purpose of this paper is to offer an alternative approach to the “return to the point of origin” prevalent in the reverse chain of manufacturers but less technically and economically feasible in the case of apparel/fashion retailers. This approach, second-life retailing, not only reduces waste but also democratises consumption.

The paper is based on an extensive literature review, semi-structured interviews with managers of two second-life retailers in Malaysia and observations of a number of stores.

Using the Business Model Canvas, the authors demonstrate the essential characteristics of second-life retailers. Retailers in this study, unlike retailers in the developed world, combine traditional business models with off-price retailing. There is no clear demarcation between the forward and reverse supply chain used to manage first- and second-hand retailing.

The paper demonstrates the potential of innovative business models in the reverse supply chain. It encourages managers to look beyond the “return to the point of origin” and seek imaginative alternatives. Such alternatives potentially could result in additional revenue, enhanced sustainability and democratisation of consumption meeting triple bottom line objectives.

This paper highlights the importance and relevance of entrepreneurial business models in addressing the reverse supply chain, demonstrating this with the aid of two Malaysian off-price retailers. It also contributes to our nascent knowledge by focusing on emerging markets.

The objective of this paper is to address the question whether and how firms can follow a standard management process to cope with emerging corporate social responsibility (CSR) challenges? Both researchers and practitioners have paid increasing attention to the question because of the rapidly evolving CSR expectations of stakeholders and the limited diffusion of CSR standardization. The question was addressed by developing a theoretical framework to explain how dynamic capabilities can contribute to effective CSR management.

Based on 64 world-leading companies’ contemporary CSR reports, we carried out a large-scale content analysis to identify and examine the common organizational processes involved in CSR management and the dynamic capabilities underpinning those management processes.

Drawing on the dynamic capabilities perspective, we demonstrate how the deployment of three dynamic capabilities for CSR management, namely, scanning, sensing and reconfiguration capabilities can help firms to meet emerging CSR requirements by following a set of common management processes. The findings demonstrate that what is more important in CSR standardization is the identification and development of the underlying dynamic capabilities and the related organizational processes and routines, rather than the detailed operational activities.

Our study is an early attempt to examine the fundamental organizational capabilities and processes involved in CSR management from the dynamic capabilities perspective. Our research findings contribute to CSR standardization literature by providing a new theoretical perspective to better understand the capabilities enabling common CSR management processes.

Preventing and tackling bullying effectively are important agenda for schools to safeguard all children’s well-being, engagement and sense of belongingness. Children perceived to be different from their peers tend to have a higher risk of being bullied at school, in particular, children with disabilities. It can be challenging for teachers to stop bullying that targets children with disabilities. This chapter considers bullying as a barrier to ensuring inclusive and quality education for everyone. It draws on findings from an ethnographic study concerning the status of inclusion of children identified as having learning difficulties in mainstream schools in China, by listening to what children and teachers have to say (Wang, 2016). The study found that the child participants were subject to forms of bullying. They found it useful to gain support from others when bullying happened, and they showed empathy towards peers’ well-being. The teacher participants reflected on the dilemmas and challenges of dealing with bullying and were keen to share experiences about what they found helpful in addressing the issue. The chapter discusses how insights about bullying learned from children and teachers can be used to inform the enactment of inclusive pedagogy. It is concluded that an inclusive pedagogical response that recognizes every child’s voice is necessary for tackling bullying and co-creating an inclusive environment.