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The basic tasks of a business are straight‐forward – getting and keeping customers and making profits, both set within the context of the short and long term. Explicit in these is not only a need for marketing and manufacturing to work well in themselves but to work well together. Companies, however, typically fail in this provision. To move to a more competitive response in today′s difficult markets requires more than co‐existence, it requires a shared partnership between the core parts of the firm. Shared understanding of marketing and manufacturing′s approach is the starting point. The other is building on a shared understanding of the market itself. In such a way, a move to being customer‐driven starts to take shape.

The purpose of this paper is to identify critical gaps in the conceptualization and interpretation of sustainability by investigating the postgraduate research (theses and dissertations) conducted with a reference to sustainability in Turkish higher education institutions and synthesizing the underlying themes and trends pertaining to sustainability issues in the local discourse.

The study adopts a mixed-method design. The sample (n=343) consists of the theses and dissertations conducted over a ten-year period in Turkish universities. Data analysis procedures include a quantitative investigation through numbers to address the level of value attached to postgraduate research on sustainable development; a content analysis on the focus and scope of each study to determine prevalent sustainability themes and dimensions frequently addressed in the studies; and a collocation analysis conducted on the texts of the studies to depict linguistic and cultural connotations of sustainable development in the local discourse and key terms that frequently collocate with sustainable development in the Turkish context.

Neither a sufficient number of direct references to sustainability nor a substantial increase in the number of studies throughout the decade is depicted. Only one-third of Turkish universities steer postgraduate research on sustainability, which is not evenly distributed to various institutions across the country. Three-quarters of the studies are conducted within economy-related and engineering-related programs. The social dimension of sustainability is under-researched. The topics tend to ply between environmental and economic edges. Turkey, as a word, is collocated frequently with the concepts of external debt, current deficit, energy, policy, and EU. Linguistically, the concept of sustainable development is predominantly associated with economic growth in the majority of the studies. Sustainability is contextualized mostly with making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work.

The value of the paper lies in the paucity of studies tracking the research initiatives taken on sustainability, assessing research trends in postgraduate programs of higher education institutions, and looking into a global concept from a local perspective in a developing country, Turkey.

This study aims to investigate the dispositions of early career teacher educators as young academics toward sustainability and accountability for sustainability issues. Through their interpretations, concerns, awareness and ownership of sustainability, the study portrays how a global phenomenon is articulated specifically within the local context of teachers colleges in Turkey.

The study was designed as a survey, and the data were collected through a cross-sectional online questionnaire. The sample (n = 72) was limited, through purposeful sampling, to early career teacher educators teaching and being trained in well-established Turkish teachers colleges to become prospective faculty members of newly founded teachers colleges across the country. The data were analyzed primarily through quantitative methods. For the analyses, STATA software was used to perform descriptive and inferential statistics.

The general results indicated that the participants were highly concerned about sustainability problems. However, their concerns were not reflected to the same degree on their perceived awareness and ownership of education for sustainable development (ESD). Hunger and poverty, loss of biodiversity, climate change and epidemic diseases were all perceived to be urgent more in the global context. On the other hand, unemployment, refugees and terrorism were perceived to be locally urgent problems. Different agencies within the community were addressed to be accountable for different types of sustainability problems. The accountability for economic, environmental and societal problems were mainly placed on governments. Additionally, individuals/families and educators were held more accountable for environmental issues, while corporations and super powers were held more accountable for economic issues. As for societal issues, educators, individuals/families and non-governmental organizations were addressed to be more responsible.

The significance of the study is mainly twofold. If sustainable development is conceptualized with a futuristic viewpoint that attaches a great importance to next generations' needs, focusing on the dispositions of early career teacher educators as young academics is a reasonable way of addressing the current gaps and eliminating the future inefficacies. Building on the assumption that ESD would remain imperfect without the commitment of teacher educators who have the potential to bring changes in educational systems and shape knowledge and skills of future teachers, in turn future generations; this study becomes even more valuable as it includes specifically the academicians in the field of teacher education.

This paper aims to develop and apply a measurement instrument to identify a comparative metric that identifies operational sustainability maturity across sectors and countries.

Using structured interviews to complete the operations sustainability maturity model (OSMM) in financial services organisations, data were compared to show differences for developed and developing countries.

The preliminary findings indicate that there is no significant difference in the sustainability maturity index between countries. However, size and profitability are strong indicators of sustainability maturity.

These findings represent preliminary findings drawn from the financial services sector in a limited number of countries. Expansion of the data set will give greater confidence of results.

The OSMM is an empirical tool used to collect data that allows statistical evaluation of sustainable strategies used by firms in various sectors and in different countries.

Sustainability is of critical importance in the economic development of all countries. The OSMM embraces fiscal, operational and environmental considerations. The research gives new insights to alternative strategic imperatives.

With increased awareness of organisational sustainability, academics have developed a number of tools, approaches and strategies to ensure commercial viability. However, few corporations have successfully institutionalised ongoing sustainability. OSMM is unique. Its wider application to embrace additional industry sectors and countries will bring new insight to strategic intent.

The aim of this series of papers is to offer key insights from eminent professors or practitioners within the field of Operations Management. This is the first of a series of interviews with “Operations Masters” and future contributions will include a range of inputs from manufacturing and services, private and public sectors. This series will provide an important contribution to the strategic importance of operations management in a range of settings.

An interview with Professor Terry Hill, Emeritus Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK and a leading international figure in the field of operations management and operations strategy, conducted by Professor Steve Brown, Editor‐in‐Chief of International Journal of Operations & Production Management.

Terry Hill explains that his motive when writing his seminal book Manufacturing Strategy in 1985, which built on the work of Wickham Skinner, was to fill the gaps in both the language and concepts that comprise operations strategy, which would enable operations executives to exercise their strategic roles more fully. He goes on to describe the challenges that still exist in getting operations strategy onto the agenda in most companies and in the classroom. Finally Terry Hill makes recommendations for research which would help to elevate the strategic importance of operations.

Professor Terry Hill is a leading international figure in the field of operations management and operations strategy. In this interview he offers many insights into how this field has developed, both in business and in academia and highlights some of the challenges faced, particularly if research is to have real value in business.

Few scholars become notable figures in their areas of specialization. Understanding how and why some scholars are identified by their unusual accomplishments, therefore, can be difficult, especially when some scholars achieve more notable careers and are invisible in their professions than others, more recognized colleagues. The reasons for some scholars’ visibility and their colleagues’ invisibility may be unclear or ambiguous. One common reason for invisibility is being a woman in a patriarchal discipline. Men’s ideas, values, and careers are privileged and more highly rated in a patriarchal subject like sociology.

Here, I analyze case studies of invisibility that emerge from deliberate suppression but focus on the more hidden processes of making women invisible in sociology. These less overt processes of invisibility require different theories, networks, and methods to discover the women’s notable careers than those used in examples of more overt processes.

Making invisible women visible requires multiple processes, over time, by a number of professionals and gatekeepers.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

For work organizations and their members, establishing and maintaining mutually satisfying employment relationships is a fundamental concern. The importance that scholars attach to employment relationships is reflected in research streams that explore the optimal design of strategic human resource management systems, the nature of psychological contract fulfillment and violation, and the factors associated with achieving person-environment fit, among others. Generally missing from theory and research pertaining to employment relationships is the perspective of individuals who reside at the employee-employer interface – managerial leaders. We argue that, for managerial leaders, a pervasive concern involves the tangible and intangible resource requirements of specific employees. We then provide the groundwork for study of the leader’s perspective on employment relationships by proposing a model that identifies how employees come to be perceived as low versus high maintenance and how these perceptions, in turn, influence leader cognition, affect, and behavior.