Search results

This study aims to analyse the resilience strategy utilized by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), enabling these businesses to effectively adapt their operations in response to varying conditions by providing them with essential resources. SMEs operate in marketplaces that are both dynamic and frequently tumultuous. These markets provide SMEs with a variety of obstacles, including economic ups and downs, advances in technology, evolving customer tastes and new regulatory requirements. SMEs need to create a strategic strategy to survive and grow in such situations. This strategy ought to help strengthen their resiliency and make it possible for them to make the most of emerging opportunities while simultaneously lowering the dangers.

The questionnaires adopted and adapted from previous research served as the basis for gathering the data. The manufacturing industry was polled through the use of questionnaires. To test the hypothesis, the data were analysed using Smart PLS. Through the use of closed-ended questions directed to the proprietors, managers or senior executives of SMEs, data were collected from each and every institution in the sample. Following the examination of the data by means of descriptive analysis and the presentation of several scenarios using information relating to SMEs, the findings were presented.

The ambidextrous strategies that are used by SMEs have a propensity to offer a constructive contribution to SMEs. In this study, it was discovered that ambidexterity, which is defined as the capacity to both seek and capitalise on possibilities, has a significant bearing on the organisational effectiveness of SMEs. The results showed that ambidextrous strategies have a propensity to work as mediators in interactions involving proactive resilience tactics and performance.

The research expands our understanding of how SMEs in the manufacturing sector may improve their performance by concentrating on growing their ambidextrous strategies.

This study provides a plausible explanation of two crucial management mechanisms for enhancing the sustainability of organisational effectiveness. The relationships between ambidextrous capabilities and firm effectiveness are malleable, and this study suggests that nurturing formal and informal relationships may be the key to SMEs' long-term sustainable performance. Improving the knowledge and performance of supply chain systems for SMEs in the manufacturing sector and boosting their competitiveness in domestic and international markets are the practical contributions of this study.

Our comprehension of monitoring, cooperation and innovation within social management was deepened as a result of these facts. In addition, the study conducted in the sector uncovered four essential connections that outline how managers should actively work towards lowering social risks, developing new possibilities and increasing business performance. These capacities and links, when taken as a whole, provide the foundation upon which an integrated framework and five research propositions are built.

This research offers a convincing explanation of fundamental management processes for enhancing the sustainability of organisational effectiveness. This research implies that developing formal and informal interactions may be the key to the sustainable performance of SMEs over the long run. The relationships between ambidextrous capabilities, methods and organisational effectiveness are flexible, and this study also suggests that these relationships may be shaped. The practical contributions made by this research include boosting the understanding and performance of supply chain systems for SMEs as well as the competitive power of these businesses in both local and international markets.

This study aims to analyse whether the presence of supply chain complexity (SCC) influences firms to improve their supply chain (SC) resilience and SC robustness capability. This study also examines an important paradox: whether investing in both exploitation and exploration practices is conflicting or complementary to enabling SC resilience and robustness in the presence of SCC.

The authors used a survey-based approach to collect 242 useful responses from SC professionals of Pakistani firms, an important emerging economy context. The data were analysed with covariance-based structural equation modelling to statistically validate the model.

The analysis reveals several key findings: the presence of SCC has a direct, positive influence on SC resilience and SC robustness; while exploitation practices only partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they fully mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness; while exploration practices partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they do not mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness and SCC has a significant influence on SC resilience and SC robustness sequentially through exploitation and exploration (i.e. one after the other).

These findings help to reconcile the exploitation versus exploration paradox in cultivating SC resilience and SC robustness in the presence of SCC. The findings assist SC managers in determining how to deploy their limited resources most effectively to enhance SC resilience and SC robustness while facing SCC.

The authors devise and empirically validate a unique framework that demonstrates how the presence of SCC works as a stimulus to build SC resilience and SC robustness.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to provide a measurement instrument for supply chain 4.0 ambidexterity by applying the theoretical perspective of ambidexterity to advance Industry 4.0; secondly, to empirically analyse how supply chain 4.0 ambidexterity and lean supply chain management contribute to enhancing the focal firm’s operational performance.

Empirical results are obtained through analysis of survey data from a sample of 209 Spanish focal firms in industrial sectors in an intermediate position in the supply chain. Structural equation modelling was performed to test the three proposed hypotheses.

Drawing on resource orchestration theory and the relational resource-based view, this study empirically demonstrates the full mediating role of lean supply chain management in the relationship between supply chain 4.0 ambidexterity and the focal firm’s operational performance.

Although recent research has highlighted the pertinence of applying inter-organisational ambidexterity to foster Industry 4.0 (Hofmann et al., 2019), to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to apply this theoretical framework to explain the transition to supply chain 4.0. In addition, to date, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study exists that has developed a measurement scale and used this concept in an empirical analysis to advance theory development.

This study aims to explore the need for highly technological complexes for control and monitoring, as well as, new concepts and methodologies for maritime resource exploration and exploitation, which are in great demand nowadays.

This paper provides an analysis of demand, means of creation and development of the methodology and infrastructure for global monitoring, pollution control and supervision of smart systems for activities in exploration, future resource exploitation in deep-water and coastal areas based on Smarthub architecture, Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), Continuous Acquisition and Life-Cycle Support (CALS) and Blockchain technologies.

Observational, experimental, simulation, derivational, hybrid descriptive and analytical models, as well as, surrogate models were created, analyzed and implemented for assigned tasks realization. Concept of distributed system for marine environmental monitoring, control and supervising as pilot technology in the context of Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 3–5 was designed and evaluated.

The activities described in this article should be realized in the design and development of a complex, reliable, robust and sustainable monitoring and inspection system for the control and evaluation of the impact and risk assessment of the exploration and future exploitation of maritime resources.

Unlike the traditional growth model of emerging markets after economic liberalization, India’s inward foreign direct investment (FDI) surged paralleling its strong economic growth in the 2000s, despite the failure to establish a strong secondary sector. This creates an opportunity to deepen the conceptual and contextual understanding of the pivotal mechanisms that impel foreign multinational enterprises to invest into India and provides a natural setting to better understand the nature of its institutional, political and economic environment.

The authors develop a theory contextualized to Indian inward FDI patterns for the 2000–2017 period. The theoretical framework expands upon received investment motives, with explicit consideration given to the idiosyncrasies of developments in India’s recent macro and socioeconomic environment. The authors test the hypotheses using panel data from 134 countries that invested in India, using a Hausman–Taylor estimation.

The authors find that India’s transition toward a knowledge economy attracts asset augmenting rather than asset exploiting FDI. Investors appear to target long-term investments by gaining access to India’s digital capabilities, R&D, and growing talent base with a high degree of specialization within analytics, biotechnology, engineering, or pharmaceuticals. Foreign investors do not seem to be notably deterred by infrastructural challenges nor by legal and regulatory restrictions.

By providing a new perspective on India’s atheoretical economic development and FDI environment, this study offers a distinct point of comparison with regard to established hypotheses within the extant literature on FDI into emerging markets. Rethinking contemporary investment motive theory by introducing an adapted conceptual framework provides further opportunity to inform the understanding of firm strategies in similar environments.

This paper aims to investigate possible interdependencies affecting short-term profitability between internal and process business aspects which can play a critical role in sustainability operationalisation.

The authors adopted the panel data approach to perform a partial least square structural modelling equation analysis on a sample of 391 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) non-financial-listed companies, considering a timeframe of five years.

Corporate sustainability is a result of interplays between managerial commitment, strategy, slack resources’ exploitation, innovation, the sustainable management of internal production and procurement processes that managers can catalyse to foster short-term firms’ profitability.

The study is focused on internal process business determinants of sustainability, and the analysis is limited to a short-term timeframe and on non-financial OECD-listed companies.

Managers searching for trade-offs between financial and non-financial performances should enhance their commitment towards sustainability by defining appropriate strategies suitable to employ mainly slack resources derived from core business activities enabling innovation processes, which, in turn, are able to foster sustainability of internal production and procurement processes.

The execution of sustainability is a complex process that needs to be investigated using a holistic approach net of endogeneity biases to better appreciate those interrelationships within multiple drivers determining the firm sustainable growth.

This study aims to investigate the viewpoints of heterodox economic thoughts and Islamic economic thought concerning the concept of waste. Additionally, it explores the shared criticisms that both perspectives hold against mainstream economic thought in relation to waste.

First of all, the concept of waste is examined and the global effects of waste are investigated. Criticisms directed in the context of waste in mainstream economics in the context of heterodox school thoughts are examined. Likewise, criticisms directed in the context of waste in mainstream economics in the context of Islamic economic thoughts are examined. Finally, the common and different aspects of heterodox and Islamic economic thoughts were discussed, and the common criticisms of mainstream economic thought’s point of view toward waste were examined. This study is a theoretical, qualitative study.

Although both ideas have different aspects, heterodox and Islamic economic thoughts believe that the mainstream economy, which is based on capitalism and materialism, creates waste by ignoring the long-term social and environmental consequences of economic activity. They argue that the pursuit of profits and growth, without considering the impact on society and the environment, leads to an inefficient and unsustainable use of resources.

The best author’s knowledge, by emphasizing the common and different aspects of Islamic economics and heterodox thoughts, this study is the first to examine the concept of waste in the context of the common aspects of these ideas.

This article aims to analyze the anthropocentrism vs ethics of care positions of a group of undergraduate students at a private university in Mexico to test gender variable differences in their perspectives. There are two hypotheses: (1) there is a statistically significant difference between male and female genders related to anthropocentrism vs ethics of care positions, and if so, (2) the differences are attributable to women having a more ethics of care position than men. Participants were 561 undergraduate students from a private university in Mexico (257 female, 304 male). The findings demonstrated that both hypotheses were supported by the ethics of care, where the individual rights perspective is set aside to seek collective and holistic well-being.

T-tests were performed to test gender differences in anthropocentrism and ethics of care.

The results showed statistical differences based on gender (sig.000) and that women are less anthropocentric (or more oriented toward an ethics of care than men (female:1.64 and male:1.94). Ethics of care of female position is more defined than that of men. As a conclusion, men are more oriented to anthropocentrism, which reflects a lack of environmental connection by not assuming themselves as part of it and by defending the right of resources exploitation. On the contrary, women tend to respond from an ethic of care that means a more harmonious relationship with nature. In addition, women tend to assume a relationship with the environment, without hierarchy or supremacy towards it, and tend to reject the demand for the exploitation of the planet's resources as part of a right that human beings have historically assumed.

One of the limitations of this study is that it has been carried out in a university educational context with exclusively undergraduate students. It would be interesting to validate these anthropocentric vs ethics of care positions in different university groups, including professors and academic managers. Studying this concept in diverse contexts such as business, government and civil society would also be engaging. In addition, the authors recognize that the study is limited by its small population, which means that a balance between men and women or disciplines could not be guaranteed. However, the authors believe that although the results may not be considered exhaustive or conclusive, the results shed light for possible new studies in which the population is expanded. This is an exploratory study.

These results have practical implications for universities. In the classroom and in the university environment, students can learn to question the way they relate to the environment. Anthropocentrism (more accentuated in men) is assumed to be separate from the environment and with the right to its exploitation. Contrary to anthropocentrism, it is necessary to explore other positions such as the ethics of care or feminine ethics, more pronounced in women. Universities can develop environmental sustainability projects under the leadership of women, without claiming to be exclusive to them. In this way, the ethic of care approach can be put into practice and thus begin the necessary change for a new environmental relationship perspective.

Universities are required to provide an educational orientation towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) particularly those that respond to the climate crisis. To this end, it is necessary to promote a new environmental awareness that critically question anthropocentric models based on the supremacy over the environment. The ethics of care or feminine ethics, contrary to the previous position, assumes that the person is part of the environment and is oriented to its care and healing of the damage caused to restore this network of the human being with nature. The originality of this study lies in demonstrating how women exhibit a different relationship with the environment, oriented to the ethics of care, and how their posture shows a difference with anthropocentrism, which is stronger in men.

This study focuses on how entrepreneurial bricolage (EB) drives both competitive advantage (CA) and sustainability performance (SP).

Relying on structural equation modeling, data were collected from 200 small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) manufacturers in Ghana.

The results indicate that EB drives both CA and SP positively. SL positively moderated the relationship between EB and CA, while the moderating role of SL in the relationship between EB and SP was not supported.

The study concludes that EB can enhance SP, a notion prior study grossly overlooked.