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This study aims to understand the culture of excellence by examining the role of entrepreneurial culture in shaping how firms achieve sustainable competitive advantage (CA). This study takes into consideration the firms’ capability to transform the entrepreneurial culture into a sustainable CA by generating product development and adapting the information technological turbulence.

This study first gathers evidence from literature then carries out a detailed study to propose a structural equation model followed by an online survey that supports empirical evidence. This empirical test involves a data set with 782 usable responses following the 4,000 emails sent to the respondents and removed data due to the missing values. The population data are taken from the firm directory in Surabaya City that the Indonesian Ministry of Trade and Industry published.

There is a strong tendency that entrepreneurial culture is imperative for firms to attain sustainable CA by supporting new product development. The results show that product development provides a partial mediating effect, which indicates that entrepreneurial culture may affect the sustainable CA directly and with the product development support. This study also touches on dynamic capability by proposing a scenario approach that suggests that firms should refine the entrepreneurial culture to adapt to the information technological turbulence.

This study extends the understanding of the culture of excellence by underpinning the dynamic capability theory, which argues that entrepreneurial culture is a valuable resource, which helps firms achieve sustainable CA by promoting product development.

This paper focusses on the factors to sustainable product development (SNPD) projects success. More specifically, it aims to explore and understand the role of supplier involvement (SI) within SNPD. Additionally, it investigates how effective project leaders can facilitate effective supplier involvement and enhance focal firm's ability to successfully carry out sustainable achievement in product development.

A theoretical framework among SI, SNPD, project leader's personality and leadership style has been established. Six interviews collected from different industries are used to further explore the relationship among SI, SNPD, leader's personality and leadership style.

The difficulties in managing suppliers, the timing and extent of supplier involvement, communication method and frequency, as well as supplier contribution and challenge in SNPD has been summarized. The interviews also confirmed that effective leaders who possess certain personality traits enable appropriate supplier involvement, promote prosperous SNPD and enhance the relationship between SI and SNPD performance by allowing individual members, teams and organizations to function well.

Sustainable new product development (SNPD) has been recognized as one of the key factors to achieve environmental and economic success. The paper explores the role of supplier involvement in SNPD project and emphasizes the role of project leaders in the process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how big-picture sustainability strategies are translated into tangible product development efforts. The authors assert that most sustainable products currently remain confined to niche markets and do not permeate the mainstream. The authors propose that there is a missing link between strategic sustainability goals and operational product development initiatives. The authors establish a path to bridging this gap.

The manuscript is based on a qualitative research design with a sample of 32 companies. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with product developers as well as secondary data analysis.

The authors delineate three empirically derived approaches firms from the sample pursue to develop sustainable products. The authors identify a phenomenon that the authors’ call the fallacy of trickle-down product sustainability. The authors find that only one of the three approaches – codification – is equipped to successfully turn strategic sustainability targets into authentic sustainable products.

This study provides an actionable guide to executives and product developers with respect to bridging the gap between often elusive sustainability aspirations and tangible product improvements via the process of rigorous codification.

This study provides a novel and unique perspective into strategy, sustainability and product development. The authors synthesize the extant literature on sustainable product development, juxtapose the emergent structure with primary interview data, and elaborate the resource-based view (RBV) to provide theoretical and practical implications. The authors establish scalability as the missing RBV capability of many attempts toward mass–market compatibility of more sustainable products.

Innovation has been considered as the most important factor in today’s global and competitive environments for meeting growth, customer demands and expectations for any product development environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine the concepts of sustainable development, its practices and impacts within demand-driven supply chain (DDSC) environments. This paper is part of a wider project and within later stages of the study, a novel framework will be developed in order to link new product development (NPD) and demand chain management (DCM) aspects from the analysis of the research findings.

This research has adopted the approach of descriptive method which tends to examine demand chain concept and its evolution through recent years, while having a particular focus into NPD projects.

The paper investigates early study models through key findings of the literature that focuses on demand chain and NPD for the use and implementation of sustainability measures within manufacturing environments. The research study highlights the need for incorporation of NPD–DCM through the entire business ecosystem entities and also through the flow of information, materials and resources within the structure of the SC. The study finds out the key hurdles of the companies towards adoption of DDSCs in NPD environments, such as lack of cross-organisational association and lack of innovative demand chain frameworks.

The novelty of the research is to develop an early understanding within DDSCs, considering the product development programmes particularly focused on marketing activities. The study provides future researchers with the platform to undertake studies within similar function of DDSC environments.

Business excellence relies heavily upon sustainable innovation. Still, sustainable innovation is an emerging concept in business practices and has yet to reach a common perception among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This study aims to address sustainable innovation in SMEs and the factors driving sustainable innovation development.

An exploratory study was conducted to gain insight into the emerging concept of sustainable innovation in the SMEs’ context. Empirical evidence was collected from five case studies. Twenty-five interviews were conducted.

This study findings show that SMEs have different ways of understanding sustainable innovation, resulting in different approaches to integrate sustainable innovation into their business. In SMEs, sustainable innovation may not be a fixed concept due to its ambiguous boundaries and various ways of understanding. External and internal factors are driving SMEs’ sustainable innovation. It depends mainly on organizational culture and the capabilities of SMEs and their members in terms of cooperation and integration in work teams, conditions to achieve consensus, articulation of activities, coherence and commitment to the firms’ objectives. These factors collide and enhance each other and positively impact SMEs’ sustainable innovation.

The scientific relevance of this study lies in the integration of sustainable innovation research in the context of SMEs. There has been limited exploration of how SMEs perceive and engage in sustainable innovation and the factors that drive sustainable innovation development outside of large firms. This study empirically explored the concept of sustainable innovation in the context of SMEs to understand underlying factors related to sustainable innovation.

The Sustainable Lean Six Sigma (SLSS) adoption approach, advancements in Internet technologies and the use of Industry4.0 technologies has resulted in faster customer need fulfilment. The Industry4.0 technologies have resulted in a new paradigm where strategic and operational decisions are in favour of profitability and long-term viability. The purpose of this study is to identify Industry4.0-SLSS practices and sustainable supply chain performance metrics, as well as to develop a framework for decision-makers and managers to make supply chains more sustainable.

The 33 Industry4.0-SLSS practices and 24 performance metrics associated with the sustainable supply chain are shortlisted based on extensive literature review and expert opinion. The Pythagorean Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (PF-AHP) approach is used to evaluate the weights of Industry4.0-SLSS practices after collecting expert panel opinions. The Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) methodology used these weights to rank performance metrics.

According to the results of PF-AHP, “Product development competencies (PDC)” are first in the class of major criteria, followed by “Advanced technological competencies (ATC)” second, “Organisational management competencies (OMC)” third, “Personnel and sustainable competencies (PSC)” fourth and “Soft Computing competencies (SCC)” fifth. The performance metric “Frequency of NPD” was ranked first by the WASPAS method.

The proposed paradigm helps practitioners to comprehend Industry4.0 technology and SLSS practices well. The identified practices have the potential to boost the sustainability and supply chain's performance. Organizational effectiveness will benefit from practices that promote a sustainable supply chain and the use of developing technology. Managers can evaluate performance using performance metrics that have been prioritized.

The present study is one of the unique attempts to establish a framework for enhancing the performance of the sustainable supply chain. The idea of establishing Industry4.0-SLSS practices and performance measures is the authors' original contribution.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to examine the impact of entrepreneurial competencies and innovation on manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) sustainable performance and to explore the role of innovation as a mediator on the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and manufacturing SMEs' sustainable performance.

Data collected from manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia were analysed via the partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.

The results reveal that entrepreneurial competencies play a robust and noteworthy role in promoting innovation and the sustainable performance of manufacturing SMEs, respectively. Further, innovation has a partially mediated effect on the link between entrepreneurial competencies and manufacturing SMEs' sustainable performance. Manufacturing SMEs' aspirations to be the first to market with new products are reflected in these SMEs' implementation of positive entrepreneurial competencies or capabilities which enable them to scan the environment to identify high-quality business opportunities and respond through these SMEs' Research and Development (R&D) activities to create products that provide real benefit to customers' needs. Hence, these SME's seize the market opportunities.

Manufacturing SMEs' sustainable performance should be strengthened by linking entrepreneurial competencies with innovation to nurture greater agility to respond quickly to change and market demands. These SMEs should conduct tactical meetings on a regular basis to discuss current projects and assess critical indicators, as well as to identify and test fresh ideas for innovation and new business ventures in order to achieve sustainable performance in challenging business environments.

By applying the resource-based view (RBV) theory and the triple bottom line (TBL) framework into a single framework, this study highlights the role of innovation as a meaningful mediator between entrepreneurial competencies and manufacturing SMEs' sustainable performance. As exploration of this relationship has been very limited, the study makes a novel contribution to the extant literature.

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is a new subfield of supply chain management. The purpose of this research is to develop a framework for assessing the impact of agile new product development (ANPD) practices on the environmental SSCM performance.

The ANPD practices and SSCM environmental performance metrics (SEPMs) are identified through the literature review. The shortlisted ANPD practices are categorized into five major criteria each with an own set of sub-criteria. A four-level conceptual framework is developed. The weights of these ANPD practices are computed using the Pythagorean fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (PFAHP), and the SEPMs are ranked using the Pythagorean fuzzy Combined Compromise Solution (PFCoCoSo).

The results show that the major criterion “Innovation Aspects” is the most important with a weightage of 0.2368, followed by “Policy Aspects” having 0.2228, “Technology Aspects” with 0.1959, “Organisation Aspects” having 0.1786 and “Executive Aspects” with 0.1658 weightage. The SEPMs “Frequency of NPD” is ranked first with an assessment value (Ki) of 2.5569, followed by “Lead time reduction” and “Number of design iterations” with Ki of 2.4482 and 2.3897, respectively. The research findings show that the ANPD practices like customer need assessment, availability of multidisciplinary team and Industry 4.0 technology usage contribute more to achieving environmental SSCM.

Managers can enhance environmental SSCM performance by adopting the ANPD practices and prioritizing SEPMs. Corporate effectiveness will be increased by the practices that promote SSCM and the use of technological innovations.

This study identified a unique set of 22 performance metrics that quantitatively measure NPD performance as well as environmental SSCM performance by adopting the 31 ANPD practices that were shortlisted. The proposed framework is a novel synthesis of literature from various disciplines such as new product development (NPD), environmental management, SSCM and performance evaluation.

By drawing attention to the finite rather than unlimited nature of physical resources, the purpose of this paper is to: examine the implications of the (near absolute) emphasis placed on firm growth on sustainable consumption; and discuss complementary perspectives spanning individual, firm and societal levels that allow for both firm growth and sustainable consumption.

The authors integrate multidisciplinary insights from marketing, sociology, environmental sciences, management and economics, to understand the inherent tensions between unchecked firm growth, consumption and sustainability. Five propositions link production, consumption and marketing from a resource standpoint.

A ceaseless economic growth paradigm and overconsumption causes an unwarranted depletion of resources and is at odds with sustainability. Firms can play an important role by guiding future marketing and production toward sustainable ends. Several alternate perspectives support the case that growth may coexist and align with sustainable consumption. Consequently the authors consolidate and reflect on seven approaches (voluntary simplicity, humane consumption, CSR 2.0, social marketing, marketing 3.0, anti-positional economy and degrowth) that hold promise for achieving sustainability via responsible growth and consumption.

The authors consider the complex triad of growth, consumption and sustainability that spans multiple levels. A focus on the pattern and nature of growth and consumption helps to identify its effects on sustainability. Specifically, two value chain activities – production and marketing may be leveraged as firm level initiatives to achieve sustainable goals. In addition, the authors present seven heterogeneous perspectives that complement firm attempts to achieve growth with sustainable consumption. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective approach to decide design details using benchmarking to capture the existing practice in sustainable design.

This paper reports a systematic method for sustainable product design. The method uses benchmarks as references searching for design details to achieve sustainable solutions. Quality function deployment is used to guide the search process for competitive products using benchmarking to meet quantitative targets of product and to increase knowledge for sustainable design.

The proposed method can meet both functional and sustainable requirements of product design. 18.55 percent reduction in carbon equivalent emissions is achieved compared to benchmarks in wheelchair design. The research reveals that when weight, material and number of components used in product decrease, environmental footprints and cost of the product improve.

The research improves the existing method of sustainable product design. Both sustainable requirements and functional demands of product are identified from qualitative criteria to quantitative metrics using benchmarking and the life cycle assessment.