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Microfoundations have received increasing attention in several management disciplines. This study aims to outline the uniqueness of microfoundations research in innovation, look at where it comes from and where it is going and provide rich opportunities for future work.

To advance research in this area, this study conducted a systematic literature review combining mixed methods and creating a mapping framework to take stock of progress in the innovation microfoundations research field.

This study shows how distinct subfields have formed around key ideas expressed in subsets of seminal articles, shedding light on the relational nature of knowledge creation – uncovering these subfields’ characteristics, evolution and future trajectories.

This study develops a framework that reflects a critical analysis of the microfoundations of innovation within dos three research levels – individual, process and interaction and structure – and highlights the research gaps and potential research questions for future research that reflect the broad spectrum of approaches in the microfoundations of innovation literature.

The aim of this work is to provide a theoretical model that can help companies to develop a unique approach to achieve both corporate environmental sustainability (CES) and successful customer experience management (CEM).

A two-phase study achieved the research aim. The first phase consisted of the analysis of contemporary theoretical contributions with a focus on CES and CEM. In the second phase, taking a qualitative approach, the key dimensions identified in the initial analysis were investigated to explore the dominant perceptions of practitioners and to hone the theoretical categories.

Five innovative pathways emerged from the study to inform decision-making while maintaining the dual objectives of CES and successful CEM. These pathways are combined to offer a strategic tool for managers and for research advances. This original integrated model also offers six novel theoretical propositions that describe how to shape corporate decisions to achieve environmental sustainability in CEM.

Firms can benefit from an approach that integrates CES and CEM to develop a new mindset for an innovative and valuable decision-making process and to design more captivating experiences for customers. Nevertheless, the efficacy and generalizability of the theoretical framework and propositions require empirical testing.

This paper makes an original contribution to the environmental sustainability and marketing literature by bringing together all elements in these fields of research in a conceptual model. Moreover, this paper proposes theoretical propositions that advance knowledge of the subject and offer ideas for future research and managers.

The paper offers a comprehensive understanding of how digital transformation affects business models and how firms operate and compete effectively and successfully in a digital economy.

The research adopted an abductive approach (Dubois and Gadde, 2002) through constant movement between theory and empirical evidence. A systematic literature review led the first conceptual development and examples of practices from cultural heritage sectors were used in the theorizing process.

This paper depicts a digital model framework through a set of assumptions about how an organization creates and delivers value in an interconnected way by orchestrating new interactive processes, and providing experience propositions to customers, and about how value is framed in terms of economic, social and cultural outcomes.

The study contributes to the scientific debate by discussing the role of digital business models as enhancements more rather than replacements of traditional business models; it frames a digital business model as consisting of three main pillars: value orchestration, experience propositions and value sharing.

This paper aims to present a methodology for volumetric error compensation. This technique is applied to an Objet Eden350V 3D printer and involves a custom measurement strategy.

The kinematic model of the printer is explained, and its error model is simplified to 18 independent error functions. Each error function is defined by a cubic Legendre polynomial. The coefficients of the polynomials are obtained through a Levenberg–Marquardt optimization process. This optimization process compares, in an iterative algorithm, nominal coordinates with actual values of the cloud of points. The points are built in the faces of a gauge artefact as conical sockets defining one unique point for each socket. These points are measured by a coordinate measuring machine self-centring measurement process.

Most of the errors of the 3D printer are systematic. It is possible to obtain an improvement of 70 per cent in terms of global mean error reduction in single points within a volume of 120 × 120 × 40 mm. The forecast of the final error compensation fully matches the actual final error.

This methodology can be used for accuracy improvement in additive manufacturing machines.

Unlike the calculation of geometric errors, the proposed parametric determination through optimization of the error model allows global error reduction, which decreases all sort of systematic errors concurrently. The proposed measurement strategy allows high reliability, high speed and operator independence in the measurement process, which increases efficiency and reduces the cost. The proposed methodology is easily translated to other rapid prototyping machines and allows scalability when replicating artefacts covering any working volume.

Operations and supply chain management (OSCM) is a theoretically and philosophically fragmented field. Researchers must consider how they use theory and explain empirical phenomena. This paper aims to use critical realism to introduce more coherence into this fragmented field.

This paper draws on existing critical realism and abduction literature and this study uses a research process from two PhD projects to investigate critical realism’s role in OSCM research. This paper uses a narrative approach to collect data over a long timeframe, capturing data not commonly used in OSCM research.

Research that struggles to bridge the gap between theory and data benefits from critical realism, which provides a philosophy and associated methods to identify a suitable theory and guide researchers when they encounter obstacles. While clear steps often outline established methods, researchers are sometimes unable to identify when their research process has reached an obstacle. This paper argues that such obstacles can be treated as “crossroads” offering new research opportunities when correctly evaluated and addressed.

Importantly, researchers should be able to reflect upon their own research processes, enabling a better understanding of these processes and the discovery of new research directions. Researchers can use critical realism, abduction and systematic combining to bridge the divide between theory and data in OSCM.

This paper contributes to the field’s discussion regarding the roles of critical realism and abduction, synthesizing multiple academic sources, highlighting critical realism’s importance and providing a novel means of addressing difficulties in navigating an eclectic research area. This paper offers a philosophical alternate to the field, which is often instead considered from a positivistic standpoint. The paper is valuable to researchers in the OSCM field, who can use the research to improve their selection of data and theories, as well as their understanding of their own research processes.

The purpose of this study is to convey lessons learned from a long-term research project and present a coherent approach for researching relevant areas, ranging from ontology to quality.

A PhD process is used as a case to present conceptual ideas on performing research in logistics/supply chain management (SCM).

The research integrates different views on knowledge and the world and how to perform research in logistics/SCM. Models explaining micro and macro abduction, and the relationship between research, the context and researcher subjectivity are suggested.

Knowledge on why and how critical realism can be used in logistics/SCM research is advanced. Abduction is presented as a micro/macro process, which should not have any specific “finish line”, and is supported with both ontological and epistemological arguments.

Research in logistics/SCM can be improved by connecting different aspects of viewing and creating knowledge. Reflecting on how exactly a publication is related to a project, researchers can better describe how they contribute to knowledge creation, and also understand the relationship between micro and macro abduction.

Through presenting an approach to knowledge creation in the context of a PhD thesis, this research distinguishes itself in a field with a growing need to define its own views of the world and of knowledge. The paper advances current understanding of knowledge creation in logistics/SCM, expanding on earlier models and presenting a broader view of the research process and the associated dilemmas. The paper also contains novel considerations of the differences between publication types and how these affect the presentation of the research.

Sensemaking models generally lack an objective determinant to distinguish between CEO fault and changes in systematic risk caused by exogenous negative shocks like a banking crisis. The interdisciplinary approach of this paper combines attribution theory with econometric time series analyses to provide an objective measure of exogeneity and persistence of a negative shock to an organization. The purpose of this paper is to address the exploratory research question, of how scapegoating by managers can be avoided by the use of an objective and empirical measurement and if the recent financial crisis can be seen as an exogenous shock to manufacturing firms.

By testing for stationarity with a structural break with an econometric time series analysis, the model helps to reduce agency costs during organizational crisis by effectively determining crisis causation and avoid scapegoating by managers.

By combining the sensemaking models of Haleblian and Rajagopalan (2006), Staw (1980), and Weick (1988), an integrated model of sensemaking in performance crises under the specific context of simultaneously occurring external crises is provided. By applying the authors approach the results suggest that the financial crisis of 2008/2009 has true exogenous adverse effects on US manufacturing firms.

The interdisciplinary approach encourages the integration of econometric time series analysis as an objective determinant in sense making models.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the existing knowledge system of lean supply chain management (LSCM), i.e. by using main path analysis, and the authors extract the main development track of LSCM. It is advantageous for relevant scholars to deepen their understanding of this academic field from a bibliometrics view to grasp the future directions better.

Structuring a citation network with the processed data set containing 866 papers and relevant information collected from Web of Science (WoS). Conducting review analyses aiming at the main paths that are extracted from the above citation network.

There are two different evolution paths in LSCM field, i.e. improving corporate sustainability performance through combining lean and green practices, and seeking the balance between lean and agility to structure leagile supply chain for specific industries. LSCM research studies mainly focus on five aspects: (1) establishment and development of LSCM theory; (2) structuration of lean supply chain; (3) research studies of the relationship between LSCM and corporate performance; (4) supply chain evaluation system; and (5) review and vista of LSCM field. The intersection of two knowledge evolute routes would be Industry 4.0, which is an integrated theory system combining lean, agility, green and other supply chain thinking.

The data set collected from WoS cannot contain all the research studies about LSCM is the main research limitation. Sustainability, as represented by environmental performance, will continue to be a major pursuit of this field. Integrating LSCM in Industry 4.0 will be the next hotspot in LSCM field.

Providing the main research contents and common methods of LSCM field. It is conducive to deepening the understanding of relevant practitioners and scholars to LSCM field from a dynamic perspective.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time to reveal the knowledge diffuse trajectories of LSCM under different view with main path analysis. This study is unique that it provides a new view to understand the field of LSCM.

Partnering has been at the top of the management agenda in the construction industry for many years as a means of improving performance. Previous research shows that partnering has not reached the desired level of strategic partnering, but stopped at project partnering. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical framing for transformation from project partnering towards strategic partnering with suppliers.

The framework is based on two building blocks: a case study of a contractor involved in implementing strategic partnering with four of its suppliers and a literature review dealing with partnering in construction; and models for close and long-term buyer-supplier collaboration in other contexts.

Transformation towards strategic partnering should preferably be based on extension of project partnering in two dimensions: extension in time through relationship development with suppliers and extension in space through increasing network orientation across projects.

Succeeding with relationship development and network orientation requires contractors to abandon two significant aspects of established construction logic that serve as significant implementation barriers. Competitive bidding in single projects needs to be replaced by collaboration over series of projects. The decentralisation of authority to the project level needs to be supplemented with increasing centralised decision making.

Previous research showed that despite the considerable interest in partnering there is a lack of systematic theorizing of the phenomenon. This paper contributes to theoretical anchoring through the combining of the case study and the literature review in the abductive approach applied.

The effect of the transition toward digital technologies on today’s businesses (i.e. Industry 4.0 transition) is becoming increasingly relevant, and the number of studies that have examined this phenomenon has grown rapidly. However, systematizing the existing findings is still a challenge, from both a theoretical and a managerial point of view. In such a setting, the knowledge management (KM) discipline can provide guidance to address such a gap. Indeed, the implementation of fundamental digital technologies is reshaping how firms manage knowledge. Thus, this study aims to critically review the existing literature on Industry 4.0 from a KM perspective.

First, the authors defined a structuring framework to highlight the role of Industry 4.0 transition along with absorptive capacity (ACAP) processes (acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation), while specifying what is being managed, that is data, information and/or (actual) knowledge, according to the data-information-knowledge (DIK) hierarchy. The authors then followed the systematic literature review methodology, which involves the use of explicit criteria to select publications to review and outline the stages a process has to follow to provide a transparent and replicable review and to analyze the existing literature according to the theoretical framework. This procedure yielded a final list of 150 papers.

By providing a clear picture of what scholars have studied so far on Industry 4.0 transition, in terms of KM, this literature review highlights that among all the studied digital technologies, the big data analytics technology is the one that has been explored the most in each phase of the ACAP process. A constructive body of research has also emerged in recent years around the role played by the internet of things, especially to explain the acquisition of data. On the other hand, some digital technologies, such as cyber security and smart manufacturing, have largely remained unaddressed. An explanation of the role of these technologies has been provided, from a KM perspective, together with the business implications.

This study is one of the first attempts to revise the literature on Industry 4.0 transition from a KM perspective, and it proposes a novel framework to read existing studies and on which to base new ones. Furthermore, the synthesis makes two main contributions. First, it provides a clear picture of the different digital technologies that support the four ACAP phases in relation to the DIK hierarchy. Accordingly, these results can emphasize what the literature has looked at so far, as well as which digital technologies have gained the most attention and their impacts in terms of KM. Second, the synthesis provides prescriptive considerations on the development of future research avenues, according to the proposed research framework.