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This study identifies benefits and challenges of PL partnerships, and recommendations to improve the PL partnership process.

Qualitative data was collected via semi-structured interviews (n = 8) with Irish PL retail buyers (n = 4) and producers (n = 4). Data was coded and thematically analysed.

Three key themes were identified. Theme 1 provides an overview of the benefits of PL partnerships for producers (e.g. volume driven orders, increased efficiencies) and for retailers (e.g. unique products, meeting consumer demand). Theme 2 presents challenges of PL partnerships specific to small and large producers (e.g. small producers may need significant investment to upgrade facilities, while larger producers may require significant volume to justify adaptation of production lines). Challenges common to both (e.g. risks related to short-term contracts, concerns about brand identity) are also discussed. Theme 3 summarised recommendations for successful PL partnerships generally (e.g. setting clear expectations and goals, building rapport and trust), and recommendations specific to producers and buyers specifically (e.g. producers should diversify customers to reduce risk, and retailers should communicate needs and direction).

There is currently limited research on PL partnerships between producers and retailers. This study addresses this gap by identifying key aspects for producers to consider when entering PL partnerships and key aspects for retailers to be aware of to help improve the attractiveness and success of these partnerships.

This article focusses on the hybrid strategy, a simultaneous combination of cost leadership and differentiation strategy. The study aims to examine the impact of hybrid strategy on firm performance through its anticipated positive effects on process and product innovation. In addition, we study the moderating role of adaptive capacity in the direct relationships of hybrid strategy with process and product innovation.

Structural equation modelling was used to analyse 1,842 Spanish firms with fewer than 250 employees. We randomly selected small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in Spain from the Spanish Central Business Directory (2021) database. The overall sample design was based on stratified sampling.

We found that hybrid strategy is positively related to firm performance and to process and product innovation. Additionally, in firms implementing hybrid strategies, process innovation fostered firm performance. Finally, adaptive capacity strengthened the relationships of hybrid strategy with process and product innovation. This sheds light on how and when hybrid strategy is most effective in fostering SME performance.

We highlight that SMEs need to establish strategies that use diverse resources and capabilities and not just generate competitive advantage using one strategy (cost leadership or differentiation strategy). This requires an agile and flexible systems and structures.

Our research provides novel results by proposing the adoption of hybrid strategies instead of pure strategies (cost leadership and differentiation strategy) as a way for SMEs to survive during crises. Unlike “stuck in the middle” strategies, our study demonstrates the importance of hybrid strategies in a comprehensive model that links them to innovation and firm performance, with adaptive capacity being a determining factor.

COVID-19 is bringing hardship and tragedy. Health workers are having to take appalling risks; loved ones are being lost; lockdown is causing great distress. And, as always in testing times, the disadvantaged are being hit worst. As we emerge from the shadows, the call from the vested interests, from the systems current winners, will be for a rapid return to business as usual. We must resist this; business as usual got us into this mess.

COVID-19 is trying to tell us something; we health educators and social marketers must listen, think and, above all, take action.

In this article, we offer a contribution to the ongoing study of food by advancing a conceptual framework and interdisciplinary research agenda – what we term “food system resilience”. In recent years, the concept of resilience has been extensively used in a variety of fields, but not always consistently or holistically. Here we aim to theorise systematically resilience as an analytical concept as it applies to food systems research. To do this, we engage with and seek to extend current understandings of resilience across different disciplines. Accordingly, we begin by exploring the different ways in which the concept of resilience is understood and used in current academic and practitioner literatures – both as a general concept and as applied specifically to food systems research. We show that the social-ecological perspective, rooted in an appreciation of the complexity of systems, carries significant analytical potential. We first underline what we mean by the food system and relate our understanding of this term to those commonly found in the extant food studies literature. We then apply our conception to the specific case of the UK. Here we distinguish between four subsystems at which our “resilient food systems” can be applied. These are, namely, the agro-food system; the value chain; the retail-consumption nexus; and the governance and regulatory framework. On the basis of this conceptualisation we provide an interdisciplinary research agenda, using the case of the UK to illustrate the sorts of research questions and innovative methodologies that our food systems resilience approach is designed to promote.

This article draws upon our perspective as academic-practitioners working in the fields of food insecurity, food systems, and inequality to comment, in the early stages of the pandemic and associated lockdown, on the empirical and ethical implications of COVID-19 for socio-economic inequalities in access to food in the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharpened the profound insecurity of large segments of the UK population, an insecurity itself the product of a decade of “austerity” policies. Increased unemployment, reduced hours, and enforced self-isolation for multiple vulnerable groups is likely to lead to an increase in UK food insecurity, exacerbating diet-related health inequalities. The social and economic crisis associated with the pandemic has exposed the fragility of the system of food charity which, at present, is a key response to growing poverty. A vulnerable food system, with just-in-time supply chains, has been challenged by stockpiling. Resultant food supply issues at food banks, alongside rapidly increasing demand and reduced volunteer numbers, has undermined many food charities, especially independent food banks. In the light of this analysis, we make a series of recommendations. We call for an immediate end to the five week wait for Universal Credit and cash grants for low income households. We ask central and local government to recognise that many food aid providers are already at capacity and unable to adopt additional responsibilities. The government's – significant – response to the economic crisis associated with COVID-19 has underscored a key principle: it is the government's responsibility to protect population health, to guarantee household incomes, and to safeguard the economy. Millions of households were in poverty before the pandemic, and millions more will be so unless the government continues to protect household incomes through policy change.

The study aims to determine whether a relationship exists between the potential significance of corporate controversies for stakeholders and how organisations respond to them in their annual and sustainability reports.

This paper employs content analysis on annual and sustainability reports of 48 listed companies from the Refinitiv database. The logit regression was used to estimate the model.

The study revealed that the main factors increasing the probability of a controversial issue being addressed in a corporate report are the controversy’s potential significance, companies’ financial performance and lawsuits.

Our study has three major limitations. These are a relatively small sample of companies and reports, focusing on disclosures made in corporate reports and omitting other channels of communication, for example, social media, and a certain amount of subjectivity in the process of coding information.

Former studies show that corporations face a serious risk of their hypocritical strategies becoming too evident for stakeholder groups. Our findings suggest that the risk is already materialising and may undermine the idea of CSR and sustainability reporting.

Our research focuses on high-profile adverse incidents widely reported in the media, the omission of which from corporate reports seems to constitute a particular case of organised hypocrite. It also demonstrates that companies use an impression management strategy to defuse adverse publicity and that major controversies cause minor ones to be omitted from their reports.

This paper aims to address the question: What is the distribution of value (in pounds) created in a sample of domestic takeovers in the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2020 among acquirer and target stockholders?

The author employs a traditional event study methodology to calculate the percentage excess returns of companies on the announcement date. These returns are then converted into pound-denominated excess returns using the companies' market capitalizations. This allows the author to estimate the synergies of the mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and how they are allocated between acquirers and targets. This innovative transformation from percentage to pound excess returns establishes a new ratio methodology for addressing the paper's objective.

This paper reveals that in UK takeovers, 40 percent of the synergies in pounds are allocated to the stockholders of acquiring companies, while 60 percent go to the stockholders of target companies. In other words, acquirers retain a significant portion—more than half—of the synergies generated in these domestic deals. This original finding is statistically significant at the one percent level and strongly contradicts the hypothesis that acquirers, at best, merely break even.

The evidence that UK takeovers distribute value gains nearly equally between domestic deal parties challenges the enduring conventional insight in the M&A literature. This conventional wisdom suggests that the value created by business combinations is entirely distributed to target company stockholders. Consequently, this reexamination may have broader implications, offering an alternative perspective on the motives behind business combinations. This perspective differs from the “managerial hubris hypothesis,” which aligns with the prevailing conventional insight but receives limited support in the original finding reported here.

There is growing interest around the world in more effectively linking public payments to the provision of public goods from agriculture. However, published evidence syntheses suggest mixed, weak or uncertain evidence for many agri-environment scheme options. To inform any future “public money for public goods” based policy, further synthesis work is needed to assess the evidence-base for the full range of interventions currently funded under agri-environment schemes. Further empirical research and trials should then focus on interventions for which there is mixed or limited evidence. Furthermore, to ensure the data collected is comparable and can be synthesised effectively, it is necessary to reach agreement on essential variables and methods that can be prioritised by those conducting research and monitoring. Future policy could then prioritise public money for the public goods that can most reliably be delivered, offering better value for taxpayers and improving the provision of ecosystem services from agricultural landscapes.