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In this chapter, we discuss the main themes of the book and give examples of how the rest of the chapters are related to these themes. We have identified two main aspects that are partly overlapping and are equally relevant for international firms’ work with ethical questions related to their business. One concerns how ethical behaviour related to sustainability can be applied as a main part of firms’ corporate strategy and how this may strengthen the international competitive position. This is particularly relevant when considering that it cannot be taken for granted that there is always a positive relationship and that actors may sometimes question an emphasis on ethical behaviour that goes beyond the accepted norms and regulations. The other main theme is related to international firms’ crucial role in supporting sustainability on an international level and contributing towards achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). Solving many of the challenges related to climate change, migration, poverty and inequality is likely to require the involvement of international firms. The book identifies several routes forward to achieve this.

Smart industry initiatives focus on intelligent and interconnected cyber-physical systems. These initiatives develop complex technical architectures that integrate heterogenous technologies, causing significant organizational complexity. Tapping into the digital capabilities of distant partners while capturing profit from such innovation is demanding. Furthermore, firms often need to establish and orchestrate inter-organizational collaborations without prior relations or established trust. As a result, smart industry initiatives bring together disparate organizational forms and institutional environments, distinctive knowledge bases, and geographically dispersed organizations. We conceptualize this organizational capability as ‘distant capabilities integration’. This research explores the governance mechanisms that support such integration and their relation to value capture. We analyse 11 IoT case studies organized in three categories (process, product and technologies) of smart industry initiatives. Building on existing literature, we consider different ways to describe distance, including knowledge heterogeneity and organizational, geographical, institutional, cultural and cognitive distance. Finally, we describe the governance mode appropriate for upstream (developing foundational technologies) and downstream (leveraging existing distant technologies) smart industry initiatives.

Due to the global labor market challenges, international companies react and adjust fast to these circumstances by implementing digital solutions into all business processes. Organizational ambidexterity is seen as the response of digital transformation and it can be divided into structural, contextual, and sequential dimensions. In this context, organizations representing the smart industry will need employees with specific competencies which let them meet technological challenges.

This chapter aims to clarify the state of opinion on expectations towards, and preparedness for, the impact of Industry 4.0 on human resources management and the implementation of various types of ambidexterity in these companies. We have conducted interviews with key HR informants from manufacturing companies operating in Germany and Poland. We have found that Industry 4.0 has a significant impact on HR practices. In both international companies, various digital solutions in employee recruitment, development, and performance, have been implemented. There have also been mature examples in both companies of structural, contextual, and sequential ambidexterity.

Singapore’s research has grown significantly since the first national R&D plan was launched in 1991, the same year Nanyang Technological University (NTU) was established. NTU’s research progression, vitally funded by the government, mirrored the substantial growth of Singapore’s research. NTU began as an engineering-based higher education institution that also had a school for accountancy and business, but more schools were added after 2000. Since then, the university has established a research ecosystem that includes research centres of excellence, corporate labs, and medium-sized research centres. Concurrently, the development of research administration in NTU has evolved from providing pre- and post-award support, extending to include outreach, research integrity and ethics, bibliometrics analysis, and talent recruitment and career support. The evolution of administrative needs and capabilities following the changing environment underscores the dynamic nature of research management and administration in Singapore.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Company Dynamic Response Map (CDRM) risk management model that uses the dynamic capabilities concept. The study examines risks associated with strategic decision-making in construction projects and evaluates proposed methods that connect the dynamic capabilities of project-based organisations with risk management.

This preliminary study examines risks associated with strategic decision-making in construction projects and evaluates a proposed model that connects the dynamic capabilities of project-based organisations with risk management. Specifically, the CDRM model is evaluated, a risk management model developed by Arena et al. (2013) to better respond to risks and opportunities based on the concept of dynamic capabilities.

We argue that although the CDRM presents a promising development in that it uses dynamic capabilities prospectively in a risk management model to produce tangible results, there are, nonetheless, impediments to the CDRM being used by construction clients. The primary impediment relates to the issue of categorisation, the difficulty in assigning a specific identified risk to a particular category of dynamic capabilities.

A conceptual argument is made and not an empirical one.

The CDRM model was developed to be used in practice and this paper evaluates that model.

Contributes to both the dynamic capabilities literature as well as risk management literature. The paper ends with a discussion on the possible merits of the CDRM, and an evaluation on potential impediments to its use by construction clients.

Social relationships play an important role in organizational entrepreneurship. They are crucial to entrepreneurs’ decisions because, despite the bleeding-edge technological advancements observed nowadays, entrepreneurs as human beings will always strive to be social. During the COVID-19 pandemic many companies moved activities into the virtual world and as a result offline Social relationships became rarer, but as it turns out, even more valuable, likewise, the inter-organizational cooperation enabling many companies to survive.

This chapter aims to develop knowledge about entrepreneurs’ SR and their links with inter-organizational cooperation. The results of an integrative systematic literature review show that the concept of Social relationships, although often investigated, lacks a clear definition, conceptualization, and operationalization. This chapter revealed a great diversity of definitions for Social relationships, including different scopes of meaning and levels of analysis. The authors identify 10 building blocks and nine sources of entrepreneurs’ Social relationships. The authors offer an original typology of Social relationships using 12 criteria. Interestingly, with regard to building blocks, besides those frequently considered such as trust, reciprocity and commitment, the authors also point to others more rarely and narrowly discussed, such as gratitude, satisfaction and affection. Similarly, the authors discuss the varied scope of sources, including workplace, family/friendship, past relationships, and ethnic or religious bonds. The findings of this study point to a variety of links between Social relationships and inter-organizational cooperation, including their positive and negative influences on one another. These links appear to be extremely dynamic, bi-directional and highly complex.

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.

In recent years, both academics and institutions have acknowledged the crucial role multinational enterprises (MNEs) can play in addressing the sustainability challenges, as formalized by the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, because of their extensiveness and their design as country-level targets, SDGs have proven challenging to operationalize at a firm level. This problem opens new and relevant avenues for research in international business (IB). This chapter attempts to frame the topic of extended value chain sustainability in the IB literature. In particular, it addresses a specific topic, that is, how sustainability and resilience-building practices interact in global value chains (GVCs). To do so, the present study develops the case of STMicroelectronics (ST), one of the biggest semiconductor companies worldwide.

This chapter offers novel insights into how global corporations can innovate to tackle the global waste crisis and gain sustainable competitive positions. Using two of the most prominent types of global waste crises – food and plastic wastes – we discuss the dilemma of food and plastic waste, why innovations in global firms are needed to address them, and argue that a different perspective among those firms is needed, one which conceptualizes the development, dissemination and use of innovations in waste management, and one which recognizes that innovations, thus, created contribute to advancing the creation of economic, environmental and social value. We conclude using an overarching conceptual framework that depicts the complexity of the new perspective.

The concept of circular economy (CE) has been receiving a lot of attention over the past years from academics, practitioners and policymakers. This is particularly the case for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who find in CE a way to overcome their resource scarcity. However, little is known about how embracing the CE perspective can contribute to meet the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The present chapter aims at answering this question. Through a single case study, we explore the drivers, managerial practices and collaborations implemented by SMEs to generate economic, social and environmental values.