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Transformative value is a central tenet of transformative service research (TSR) because it affects individual and community well-being, quality of life and sustainability. Although transformative value plays a significant role in well-being, the literature suffers from a lack of sound interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks that delineate how transformative value is created in services throughout the service consumption process. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and role of service communications during the various stages of the service consumption process to enable the creation of transformative value for people and the environment.

To achieve the above goal, the authors integrate agenda-setting theory (media theory) combined with framing and relational dialectics (communication theories) as well as TSR.

In line with the objectives of the study, the authors propose an integrative framework named Transformative Value Creation via Service Communications (TVCSC) that explains how firms set their transformative corporate agendas through their dialectics with consumers, society and media. This transformative agenda is reflected in the marketing mix of their services (7Ps) as communicated with various means, physically and digitally (sales/frontline personnel, advertising, CSR, social media and website). Recommendations for a transformative marketing mix are provided. Furthermore, TVCSC illustrates how value is co-created in all customer–firm interactions via relationship dialectics throughout the service consumption process to result in transformative value outcomes.

The proposed framework identifies several research gaps and provides useful future research directions.

This is the first comprehensive framework that explains how transformative value is created through the various communications in services and is the outcome of value co-creation interactions of the service consumption process.

The main research attempts guiding questions about management research agendas had been relevance questions versus rigor questions. Researchers have also attempted to set management research agendas in particular sectors. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research, however, has addressed the infrastructural and foundational questions of what moral priorities and ethical principles should guide the future development of management research. Because the Islamic theological approach is a “transcendental values integration” approach, it presents a potentially viable source of reference particularly for scholars interested in ethical philosophical paradigmatic approaches. Islamic literature has presented guiding principles as to how to balance priorities through the Jurisprudence of Priorities (Fiqh Al-Awlawiyyat). The purpose of this exploratory conceptual paper is to synchronize the Islamic background literature on the jurisprudence of priorities with management research development and agendas. The research is exploratory in nature.

The paper is conceptual, merging Islamic literature with management research for the development of a framework to potentially guide management researchers in prioritizing their research agendas.

The research resulted in the conceptualization of a framework aiding researchers in the prioritization of their research agendas.

The research has implications for management scholars who are interested to prioritize their research projects and agendas. The research presents a schematic diagram and guiding framework through which scholars can reflect on their choice of research topics.

The research is also relevant to funding agencies as they devise the funding priorities in the management field.

This paper addresses the unique and foundational question of what moral priorities and ethical principles should guide the future development of management research. The authors build on a religious-philosophical approach, drawing on the Islamic jurisprudence of priorities as a literature base. The authors, therefore, address the key principles of responsible research regarding how it can be relevant on the infrastructural level to society and how the benefit to key stakeholders should be tackled. To the authors’ knowledge, this was not done in previous literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the contingency effects that contextual factors of a networked service environment have on the phased Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation frameworks.

This paper employs the critical realism (CR) case study research methodology to examine the contingent and causal relationships between contextual configurations of business networks, the DMAIC or PDCA phases in an LSS implementation agenda, and business management functions. The authors conducted a single case study on the basis of challenges they met in kicking off lean transportation in the Port of Houston.

The key finding from the study is a mid-range theory regarding the contingency effects of contextual factors of service business networks on the phased LSS implementation frameworks. The authors found that when there are complexity and dynamics of contextual factors at the field layer, management should focus more on tasks in early LSS phases to emphasize influencing. When there is no centralized authority in the network and the value-system is loosely coupled, management needs to execute more tasks as described in the define, measure and analyze phases with the purpose of both influencing and orchestrating. When individual actors have goals not aligned well with the goal of the business network and have unmatched operations capabilities, these factors should be considered as early as possible in these LSS phases. When a business network has complicated business processes with high unpredictability and uncertainty and individual actors’ value-creation systems are not well embedded in the entire value-creation system, PDCA will be the preferred core structure of an LSS implementation agenda.

This study contributes to the LSS research stream by introducing a causal/contingency model that prescribes the contingency effects of three contextual configurations on LSS implementation. It also contributes to the emerging discipline, business network management, regarding how to use LSS frameworks in strategic planning. It also contributes to the CR school of problem-driven case study by using a strategic initiative framework as a platform and each phase in the framework as a unit. This conceptualization of the entity of interest helps explore the interactions among three theoretical constructs: contextual configurations, phased LSS implementation agenda and management functions.

Managerial implications of this study are twofold. One is the procedure of analyzing the impacts of contextual factors on the causal relationships between LSS implementation phases and network management functions. The entire procedure represents the agenda-setting process of LSS implementation, the most daunting and challenging managerial task in LSS projects. Another one is the guideline on how to determine whether DMAIC or PDCA is appropriate for the LSS agenda when used in a networked environment.

This paper would serve as an excellent resource for both academicians and LSS practitioners in initiating, orchestrating and managing an LSS project in a networked service environment. This study represents the first effort to explore the impact of contextual factors of business networks on lean transformation.

Corporate‐community partnerships, the collaboration between business and community groups, have risen to prominence recently. This paper seeks to examine how internal organisational factors affect the agenda of corporate‐community partnerships.

The internal factors considered in this research were the processes involved in the partnerships' agenda development and the attitudes of participating members towards the partnership and its social or environmental goals. Interviews were conducted with representatives from both the corporate and community members of two major partnerships in Australia.

The findings suggest that internal organisational processes and attitudes affect five major features of the partnerships' agenda: form, target, scope, stability and sustainability.

The study proposes a framework for understanding how internal organizational factors affect the various features of agenda formation in corporate‐community partnerships.

This research provides a practical understanding of corporate‐community partnerships in relation to the influences on agenda formation, and would be useful to both corporations and stakeholders, especially community groups.

This study stresses the increasing importance of corporate‐community partnerships and suggests that government policies should encourage the development of such partnerships.

The paper examines the influences on the agenda formation of corporate‐community partnerships through the voices of corporations and community groups.

This study aims to examine factors, beyond child requests, that influence parents’ perceptions of the most important gifts to give their children by assessing the influence of television advertising on children’s programming.

Using agenda-setting as a theoretical and methodological template, a content analysis of 7,860 commercials in children’s programming was compared using a questionnaire to 143 parents of 240 children to test the transfer of salience between advertising and parents’ perceptions. The study also examined the role of child purchase requests in this relationship.

The product categories that most prevalently advertised on children’s television had a significant relationship with the product categories that parents perceived to be the most important to give their children as gifts. Furthermore, the results indicate that this relationship was not contingent upon parental advertising mediation or child product requests.

The results are limited to a single broadcast market during the Christmas season. Strategically, the research suggests that advertising through children’s television programming may be an effective way to directly inform parents’ gift-giving consideration sets, and this target and outlet should be strategically evaluated in subsequent campaign decisions about the marketing mix.

The findings add new insights to the gift-giving literature, indicating that advertising in children’s programming may be an alternative direct influence on parents’ perceptions. This research also extends research on advertising agenda setting into the new context of commercial advertising of consumer products.

This paper aims to establish a two‐part research agenda for marketing in supply chain management (SCM) through the application of an interdisciplinary model, using marketing, operations, logistics/purchasing, and information technology as the nodes for a model.

After generating a list of the highly ranked and relevant journals in each of the four disciplines, an exhaustive search was conducted of the literature published from January 1999 through December 2002, using the keywords supply chain and supply chain management. The keywords were searched for in any field (i.e. title or abstract). The authors also conducted a Delphi study of experts to identify relevant journals in each field. The resulting articles were sorted by topic and mapped to one of the other remaining three functional disciplines. This yielded six intersections between functions, three of which are examined in this manuscript as dyads with marketing. Thus, it was possible to identify current overlap in topics researched and potential areas of overlap, representing opportunities for collaboration between the disciplines.

For simplicity and focus, this paper presents only marketing SCM research. The mapping process yielded: topics that are being researched from the marketing perspective but not in the IT, logistics, or operations perspectives; topics that are being researched from the IT, logistics, or operations perspectives but not from the marketing perspective; and similar (or identical) topics that are being researched from both the marketing and the IT perspective, the marketing and logistics perspective, and the marketing and operations perspective. Based on these mappings, an interdisciplinary research agenda for marketing SCM researchers was derived.

Using an automated extraction of articles from published databases by using keywords may present inconsistencies. The authors have attempted to minimize the inconsistencies by documenting the process and cross‐validating the work in each function with at least two of the research team independently extracting, categorizing, and mapping the articles. Another limitation that arose was in terms of language. Since the research team consisted of researchers from different functional areas, it had to address semantics issues as the study was conducted. The authors also limited the initial endeavor to mapping only as a dyad and only using dichotomous variables. Future work on this model may include an ordinal ranking system or multi‐function mapping.

This work presents a useful model for determining an interdisciplinary research agenda in marketing. Since business and supply chain integration are increasingly important, concepts in business, academic research should take an interdisciplinary approach, providing the prospects for richer and more applicable results. Interdisciplinary research can also help to combat the silos that people tend to work in, creating new knowledge.

This paper provides the example of a model for determining an interdisciplinary research agenda. Supply chain management has been co‐opted by almost every business discipline. There is much to be learned by working together to bring new ideas and knowledge to bear on the issues related to managing the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand agenda setting by international human rights organizations in the online environment and at the same time contribute to agenda‐setting theory. The role of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) in the area of human rights is clarified, and agenda setting and related concepts are discussed.

The study focuses on how attention is drawn to human rights issues in online communication by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International. A content analysis of online forums of HRW and Amnesty International was conducted by monitoring their web sites and Facebook and Twitter pages over a period of three months. In addition, two expert interviews with representatives of Amnesty Finland were conducted to better understand how the organization's online communication activities relate to its policies in drawing attention to human rights.

Based on this study, drawing attention to human rights issues is a goal that leads to active online communication. NGOs aim at attracting attention to their issues online by initiating a dialogue via online forums and motivating the public to participate in activities that may influence the media and the political agenda. The existing agenda‐setting research tends to emphasize the role of journalists in setting the public agenda, and mentions NGOs primarily as a source for journalists and as a political player. The online environment shows, however, that these NGOs mostly aim at setting the public agenda to create social change, while the media and political agenda are also not forgotten.

This study suggests that the interdependence of the media, public and political agendas is more complex than has thus far been considered in agenda‐setting theory, especially in the current online environment. It investigates online agenda setting by two international NGOs, but does not discuss the role of the media or the public at large in their relationship with these NGOs. As this study has a limited time frame, a content analysis over a longer period and interviews with representatives of a wider variety of NGOs could be a next step. Future research could also compare the online communication of NGOs with that of profit organisations.

The findings show how agenda setting is supported by intricate multi‐platform activities in the present‐day online environment by the organizations studied in order to initiate a dialogue on societal issues. This suggests that in the online environment, the media, public and political agendas are becoming increasingly interrelated and within this triangle the public agenda seems to be gaining further in importance.

The impact that NGOs have on today's society is growing, and hence studying their online agenda setting is valuable from the perspective of corporate communication. International NGOs early on recognised the value of online communication.

Industry 4.0 implies that global challenges exist within the manufacturing sector. Both theoretical and empirical research has been developed to support these transformations and assist companies in the process of changing. The purpose of this paper is to gather previous articles through an updated review and defines a research agenda for future investigation based on the most recent studies published in the field.

Key articles on the subject are analysed. The articles were published in 39 journals from which 107 papers dating from 2005 to 2018 have been selected.

The main findings imply the definition of a research agenda where: a common terminology should be created; the levels of implementation of Industry 4.0 should be defined; the stages of the development of Industry 4.0 should be identified; a lean approach for this industry is defined and the implications of Industry 4.0 in either a sustainable or circular economy should be understood; the consequences of human resources should be analysed; and the effects of the smart factory in the organisation are the areas identified and studied in the mentioned research agenda.

This review has some limitations. First, a number of grey literature, such as reports from non-governmental organisations and front-line practitioners’ reflections, were not included. Second, only research studies in English and Spanish were reviewed.

This review helps practitioners in their implementation of Industry 4.0. Moreover, the identified future research areas may help to define priorities in this implementation.

After examining previous research, this paper proposes a research agenda covering issues about Industry 4.0. This research agenda should guide future investigations in the smart industry.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an increasingly important issue for service brands in fast fashion retailing, as consumers' negative impressions about retailers' CSR activities influence brand experience. Consumers' impressions of CSR efforts arise based on agendas communicated through many channels from different sources. The paper unravels the ‘wrinkles’, i.e. possible mismatches in CSR communication around service brands by studying differences between the three main sources of fast fashion brand-related CSR agendas: Autonomous company communication, news media and social media postings by consumers.

The authors use structural topic modeling (STM) to analyze a corpus of texts focusing on the CSR efforts of three major fast fashion service brands over three years. The texts included 89 items of company communication (CSR reports and press releases), 5,351 news media articles about the brands' CSR efforts and 57,377 consumer generated tweets about the brands.

The STM analysis extracted 26 different CRS-related topics from the texts. Results showed differences in how much the three sources emphasized topics. The brands' own communication puts emphasis on environmental responsibility. News media tended to report on economic issues, treatment of employees and specific CSR-related events. Twitter showed more activity in discussing incident-based and emotionally charged topics.

The results feed into the ongoing discussion about how companies' CSR communication relates to communication in the press and among consumers. The authors highlight themes in the individual topics that are emphasized by the three sources, and discuss how CSR themes emerge in the overall transformative agenda.

The paper highlights how fast fashion service brands can identify and understand different CSR agendas arising around their brand. Insight into such agendas can be used to tailor the brands' communication strategies.

The paper contributes to the understanding of the factors behind fashion service brands' CSR reputation, highlighting how the three main sources of CSR reputation (company reports, news and social media) emphasize different types of agendas.

Following the surge of documents laying out organizations' ethical principles for their use of artificial intelligence (AI), there is a growing demand for translating ethical principles to practice through AI governance (AIG). AIG has emerged as a rapidly growing, yet fragmented, research area. This paper synthesizes the organizational AIG literature by outlining research themes and knowledge gaps as well as putting forward future agendas.

The authors undertake a systematic literature review on AIG, addressing the current state of its conceptualization and suggesting future directions for AIG scholarship and practice. The review protocol was developed following recommended guidelines for systematic reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA).

The results of the authors’ review confirmed the assumption that AIG is an emerging research topic with few explicit definitions. Moreover, the authors’ review identified four themes in the AIG literature: technology, stakeholders and context, regulation and processes. The central knowledge gaps revealed were the limited understanding of AIG implementation, lack of attention to the AIG context, uncertain effectiveness of ethical principles and regulation, and insufficient operationalization of AIG processes. To address these gaps, the authors present four future AIG agendas: technical, stakeholder and contextual, regulatory, and process. Going forward, the authors propose focused empirical research on organizational AIG processes, the establishment of an AI oversight unit and collaborative governance as a research approach.

To address the identified knowledge gaps, the authors present the following working definition of AIG: AI governance is a system of rules, practices and processes employed to ensure an organization's use of AI technologies aligns with its strategies, objectives, and values, complete with legal requirements, ethical principles and the requirements set by stakeholders. Going forward, the authors propose focused empirical research on organizational AIG processes, the establishment of an AI oversight unit and collaborative governance as a research approach.

For practitioners, the authors highlight training and awareness, stakeholder management and the crucial role of organizational culture, including senior management commitment.

For society, the authors review elucidates the multitude of stakeholders involved in AI governance activities and complexities related to balancing the needs of different stakeholders.

By delineating the AIG concept and the associated research themes, knowledge gaps and future agendas, the authors review builds a foundation for organizational AIG research, calling for broad contextual investigations and a deep understanding of AIG mechanisms. For practitioners, the authors highlight training and awareness, stakeholder management and the crucial role of organizational culture, including senior management commitment.