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To examine enterprise resource planning (ERP) adoption in Greek companies, and explore the effects of uncertainty on the performance of these systems and the methods used to cope with uncertainty.

This research was exploratory and six case studies were generated. This work was part of a larger project on the adoption, implementation and integration of ERP systems in Greek enterprises. A taxonomy of ERP adoption research was developed from the literature review and used to underpin the issues investigated in these cases. The results were compared with the literature on ERP adoption in the USA and UK.

There were major differences between ERP adoption in Greek companies and companies in other countries. The adoption, implementation and integration of ERP systems were fragmented in Greek companies. This fragmentation demonstrated that the internal enterprise's culture, resources available, skills of employees, and the way ERP systems are perceived, treated and integrated within the business and in the supply chain, play critical roles in determining the success/failure of ERP systems adoption. A warehouse management system was adopted by some Greek enterprises to cope with uncertainty.

A comparison of ERP adoption was made between the USA, UK and Greece, and may limit its usefulness elsewhere.

Practical advice is offered to managers contemplating adopting ERP.

A new taxonomy of ERP adoption research was developed, which refocused the ERP implementation and integration into related critical success/failure factors and total integration issues, thus providing a more holistic ERP adoption framework.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the theoretical work conducted in the fields of e-business adoption by small businesses in the UK. This chapter aims to explore the benefits and drawbacks that influence small businesses in adopting Internet-based e-business. We are thus responding to a need to recognise and measure the perceived importance of driving forces and barriers in the adoption of e-business solutions among small businesses. Currently, adoption of e-business is rapidly growing among business organisations throughout the world. Crucially, it is often seen as an essential strategic tool that attracts many companies in turning their traditional business strategy to e-business and as a more complex concept of interfirm cooperation.

A structured work was applied to synthesise a theoretical model. A meticulous search of available literature was conducted, focussing on key terms such as e-business adoption, benefits, drawbacks and small businesses in the UK. We identify that e-business adoption within small businesses is affected by perceived relative advantage, perceived compatibility, CEO’s innovativeness, information intensity, buyer/supplier pressure, support from technology vendors and competition. Furthermore, the value of such adoption depends on how, in the face of rapid growth, small businesses can effectively expand IT resources, strategic planning and business partnerships to develop e-business capability and business process competence. These are the key areas of activity which help adopting companies to achieve outstanding business performance. The findings of this study to date are presented within the limiting parameters of methodology based upon use of self-report scales to measure the constructs of the theoretical model. The main orientation of the work of this study is theoretical and sectional which provides a static picture of e-business adoption by small businesses – offering guiding practical insight and providing foundations for subsequent empirical study.

This chapter offers researchers a broader and more comprehensive view of the benefits and drawbacks that influence small businesses in adopting Internet-based e-business. Educators, researchers and practitioners will be all benefitted. In recent years, e-business has been adopted by many corporations to improve operational efficiency and profitability and to strengthen their competitive position and potential for survival in the new economic era (the information era).

In response to calls for conceptual frameworks and generic theory building toward the advancement of sustainability in supply chain resource utilization and management, the purpose of this paper is to advance a circular framework for supply chain resource sustainability (SCRS), and a decision-support methodology for assessing SCRS against the backdrop of five foundational premises (FPs) deduced from the literature on resource sustainability.

Taking a conceptual theory-building approach, the paper advances a set of SCRS decision-support criteria for each of the theoretical premises advanced, and applies the theory of constraints to illustrate the conceptual and practical applications of the framework in SCRS decision making.

This study uses recent conceptualizations of supply chains as “complex adaptive systems” to provide a robust and novel frame and a set of decision rules with which to assess the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, and social capital of supply chain resources from pre-production to post-production.

The paper contributes to theory building in sustainability research, and the SCRS decision framework developed could be applied in tandem with existing quantitative hybrid life-cycle and input-output approaches to facilitate targeted resource sustainability assessments, with implications for research and practice.

The novel SCRS framework proposed serves as a template for evaluating SCRS and provides a decision-support methodology for assessing SCRS against the five theorized FPs.

This paper seeks to show how enterprise resource planning (ERP) could create a competitive advantage for small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

The main methods used in this study were questionnaires and interviews based on the application of an uncertainty diagnosing business model. Data were collected, using a questionnaire administrated to 126 SMEs, in the form of percentage contributions of the underlying causes of uncertainty (structured in the business model) on product late delivery. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was carried out in SPSS to analyse the effects of the underlying causes of uncertainty in SMEs.

ERP could create a competitive advantage in delivery for SMEs by being responsive and agile to change, but not to uncertainty. Results suggested that only a few features in an ERP system were used to deal with change due to uncertainty. It was found that SMEs generally use their ERP system to generate a plan for production and use it as a guideline. SMEs concurrently use a range of buffering or dampening techniques to tackle uncertainty for crating a competitive advantage in delivery.

The application of the business model in SMEs has provided useful knowledge to make‐to‐stock (MTS), make‐to‐order (MTO) and mixed‐mode (MM) manufacturing enterprises in which underlying causes of uncertainty were significantly affecting their product late delivery performance.

This is a highly original application of an uncertainty diagnosing business model to SMEs using ERP systems.

Blockchain, in general, diversifies supply chain management in record-keeping and maintains authenticity. In addition, traditional issues and challenges like overflow and information overload press down mysteriously whenever the blockchain steering wheel of the supply chain turns. Factually, the miracle and twists in supply chain resilience have not been incorporated under systematic review homogeneously. As a result, this study reviews the potential impact of blockchain on logistics and supply chain (LSC) efficiency. The methodology of this study provides a subjective assessment of the utility of blockchain-based LSC performance.

On the other hand, the review reveals new insights on its current acceptance and applications, with a particular emphasis on the Limit Redundancy Mechanism and Core Information-based Direct Comparison. Prospectively, the identified facts under the research paradigm and extensive literature survey will subsidize the practices of blockchain technology and possible areas of extension in supply chain resilience in luminous fashion in the future. After all, this study materializes new solid magnitudes, adaptability, and a realistic overview of blockchain-based LSC movements.

Although studies have demonstrated the importance of supply chain integration (SCI) strategies in improving firm performance, very little is understood about how the organizational structure (OS) of focal firms affects the successful implementation of SCI initiatives across supply chains (SCs). Taking into consideration the importance of the oil and gas (O&G) industry, as well as the impact of uncertainties on OS and strategy choices, it is important to understand how OS and SCI affect the operational performance of O&G SCs. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Taking a contingency approach and using a global sample of 181 O&G firms, this study examines the mediating role of internal, customer, and supplier integration on the relationship between three main dimensions of OS – the degree of centralization, formalization, and hierarchical relationships and operational performance, using structural equation modeling.

Findings reveal that OS dimensions negatively impact operational performance. Further testing for the mediation found that by increasing SCI, O&G SCs can mitigate the negative effect of high centralization, formalization, and hierarchical relationship on operational performance.

Classifying OS into “structuring” and “structural,” this research provides evidence on which of the two has a stronger negative impact on operational performance. This is significant since it may be difficult for O&G companies to restructure and reform their OS.

This study examines the impact of OS and SCI on improving the operational performance of the O&G SCs. Theoretical and practical contributions to the field of operations management and organizational studies are also discussed.

This research aims to determine to what extent uncertainties affected manufacturing enterprises' delivery performance, to analyse the performance of their contingency plans in dealing with uncertainties and to explore what technical and organisational factors affected managers' decisions to implement an uncertainty‐diagnosing model.

The methodology included a literature review, postal questionnaire survey and telephone interviews.

A total of 30 companies responded to the questionnaire, 56 per cent of which thought their systems worked well and 80 per cent reported that material shortages were responsible for tardy delivery performance. Tardy delivery was directly or indirectly caused by poor supplier delivery performance in the opinion of 92 per cent of respondents. Seven companies had developed an uncertainty‐diagnosing model. Not all companies needed to adopt the model.

Uncertainty and contingency plans were investigated in UK and Chinese organisations using MRP/MRPII/ERP systems. Therefore, the findings will be directly relevant to the organisations, but may be adapted to other similar organisations.

A detection method was proposed to determine the steps required for organisations to adopt the uncertainty‐diagnosing model.

The paper provides some empirical data on uncertainty and the contingency plans used in ERP‐controlled manufacturing environments in organisations in the UK and China. Data on uncertainty are scarce and this research gives further insights into the ways managers perceive and handle uncertainty.

This chapter focuses on the care of our “common home,” emphasizes the complexity of the crisis, and suggests the path to overcome it through renewed environmental, economic, anthropological, and social ecology. Starting from the premise of the Encyclical Letter Laudato Sì (Pope Francis, 2015), the chapter discusses the role of leadership models based on virtues and moral constructs to promote a new business culture. Which leadership models and which business models are necessary to guide companies toward the integral development?

After a review of the Encyclical Letter, the chapter traces the theoretical framework of leadership theories connected with the emergence of a sustainability-oriented business model. The empirical analysis explores three cases of exemplary Italian companies which show how entrepreneurs can promote cultural reorientation, can help others to unlearn the bad habits of “turbo-capitalism,” and place value on humanity, relationships, and the love of the place in which they do business.

This chapter contributes to the development of leadership approaches and models incorporating the orientation toward the common good. Accordingly, it highlights the “roots” of entrepreneurial and managerial behavior which appear to inspire a profound rethinking of business conduct. From the business examples analyzed, the chapter shows models that make integral development possible.

This paper proposes a knowledge management approach for managing uncertainty in manufacturing enterprises.

The knowledge management approach consists of a knowledge‐enriched manufacturing system, which is modelled using SIMAN simulation language and programmed using Visual Basic applications. A knowledge‐based planning module and an execution platform are simulated so that signals could be transferred, and configuration to the planned parameters could be made, in order to minimise variations due to uncertainties. A reference architecture and intelligent agent are created to store tacit knowledge and create explicit knowledge, respectively.

Manufacturing enterprises should use both tacit knowledge about uncertainties and buffering and dampening techniques, simultaneously with the explicit knowledge that is generated by the intelligent agent, for managing uncertainty. The design of the knowledge management approach enables easy integration with material requirements planning, manufacturing resource planning or enterprise resource planning systems, and complements with the adoption of advanced technology.

A new concept – management by valued‐added urgency, emerges that underpins the knowledge management approach. It is grounded from the previous literature on managing uncertainty classified into: masking approach; standardising approach; prioritising approach; and optimising approach and extended Westbrook's priority management theory. This concept focuses selectively on value‐added changes that need to be made to counteract variations caused by significant uncertainty.