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This paper presents an interpretation of freehand drawings produced by supply chain management undergraduates in response to the question: “What is sustainability?” Having to explain sustainability pictorially forced students to distill what the essence of sustainability meant to them and provided insights into how they perceived sustainability and their roles in achieving sustainability in the context of supply chain management.

Students were asked to draw and answer the question “What is sustainability?” These drawings were discussed/interpreted in class. All drawings were initially examined quantitatively, before a sample of four were selected for presentation here.

Freehand drawing can be used as part of a critical pedagogy to create a visual representation to bypass cognitive verbal processing routes. This allows students to produce clear, more critical and inclusive images of their understanding of a topic regardless of their vocabulary.

The authors offer this as a model for educators seeking alternative methods for engaging with sustainability and for creating a learning environment where students can develop their capacity for critical self-reflection.

This study shows how a collaborative learning experience facilitates learners demonstrating their level of understanding of sustainability.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0718

To explore the value in reminiscing about past festivals as a potential way of improving wellbeing in socially isolated times.

The paper uses previous research on reminiscence, nostalgia and wellbeing to underpin the analysis of self-recorded memory narratives. These were gathered from 13 pairs of festivalgoers during Covid-19 restrictions and included gathering their individual memories and their reminiscences together. The participant pairs were a mix of friends, family and couples who had visited festivals in the UK, Finland and Denmark.

Four key areas that emerged through the analysis were the emotions of nostalgia and anticipation, and the processes of reliving emotions and bonding through memories.

Future studies could take a longitudinal approach to see how memory sharing evolves and the impact of this on wellbeing. The authors also recommend undertaking similar studies in other cultural settings.

This study findings have implications for both post-festival marketing and for the further development of reminiscence therapy interventions.

The method provides a window into memory sharing that has been little used in previous studies. The narratives confirm the value in sharing memories and the positive impact this has on wellbeing. They also illustrate that this happens through positive forms of nostalgia that centre on gratitude and lead to hope and optimism. Anticipation, not emphasised in other studies, was also found to be important in wellbeing and was triggered through looking back at happier times.

This study aims to contribute to the field of customer portfolio management by proposing a novel approach rooted in dialectic critical realism (DCR). DCR, as an ontological theory, enables a fundamental reimagining of customer portfolio management as a dialectic process. The conceptualized dialectic portfolio management is motivated by the concept of “absence”, akin to Hegelian “antithesis”, which highlights limitations, problems and tensions in portfolio management. In essence, “absence” serves as a diagnostic tool that directs portfolio actions towards resolving problems by pursuing a more comprehensive “totality”, similar to the Hegelian notion of “synthesis”.

This conceptual paper theorizes DCR in business marketing and customer portfolio management.

DCR conceptualizes customer portfolios as relational structures characterized by omissions and tensions. These issues are addressed through a dialectic synthesis aimed at achieving a more comprehensive “totality”. Consequently, DCR guides portfolio management to continually re-think the connections and distinctions that define a portfolio within its network context. This dialectic process is facilitated by a novel vocabulary that enhances the understanding of network and portfolio relations, incorporating concepts such as “intrapermeations”, “existential constitutions”, “intra-connections” and “intensive” and “extensive” portfolio practices.

This study aims to foster a fresh and process-oriented perspective on portfolio management, drawing inspiration from the growing demand for enriched dialectic theorizing within the realm of business marketing. The adoption of a dialectic process orientation based on DCR revolutionizes the comprehension of portfolio management by fundamentally reimagining the underlying ontological assumptions that underpin the existing body of literature on customer portfolios. Moreover, DCR asserts that ethical considerations are inextricably linked to human experiences and associated practices, emphasizing ethics as an integral component of customer portfolio management.