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Using a soft-hard continuum of drivers and barriers, this research seeks to explain wood companies' adoption of circular economy (CE) practices.

Multiple interviews, complemented by secondary documents and site observations were used to investigate three wood-based companies that have adopted CE practices. The 10R framework and soft-hard continuum are used to guide data analysis.

The adoption of 10R practices were explained by soft-factor incentives of leaders' values and vision and openness for innovation, all within a regulatory void, and eventually overcome hard-factor barriers of process development, supply chain capability and customer behaviours at product end-of-life.

Crucial for CE model adoption are leaders' positive attitudes, subsequently grown across the companies. The 10Rs are a prompt for CE practice adoption to capture and retain value and generate revenue. Collaboration across the supply chain, including customers and other value capture companies (e.g. repurposing companies), is essential to maximise value retention. Government should play an increased soft-factor incentive regulatory role and support CE practices to overcome hard-factor barriers.

This study contributes an explanation of CE adoption within a relatively unsupported context. Despite the regulatory void, CE practice adoption was driven by leader values. To achieve their vision and overcome the numerous barriers, suppliers and customers required a large investment in education. Indeed, customer behaviour, previously thought to be an incentive for CE adoption, is also identified as a barrier.

Technologies continue to disrupt logistics and freight transport (known as smart logistics), but their impacts on smart city sustainability is underinvestigated. Drawing on technology, organisation and environment (TOE) perspective, the objective of this study is to empirically investigate the hierarchical effects of smart logistics on smart city sustainable dimensions (i.e. environmental, social and economic).

The study used cross-sectional survey to collect data from urban transporters, warehouse managers, retailers and information technology (IT) managers in Australia. Data were analysed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesised relationship between constructs of smart logistics and smart city sustainable performance.

The findings reveal that information and communications technologies (ICTs) use and IT capability (ITC) have positive and significant effects on smart logistics. Technology-enabled smart logistics have an immediate positive effect on smart city environment, which in turn has positive impacts on social and economic performance.

The study informs managers that smart logistics equipped with freight transport telematics can improve smart city environment through enhanced tracking and tracing of goods movement. The improved environmental stewardship is likely to support social and economic performance.

Smart city research remains primarily theoretical and focussed on concerns surrounding sustainable growth amid urbanisation and digitalisation. City logistics and urban freights play key role in smart city economic growth, but vehicular pollution pose social and environmental challenges. Technology-assisted smart logistics are likely to improve smart city sustainable performance but yet to find how they affect each other.

Healthcare provision is costly, and patient expectations are increasing. Lean implemented within healthcare settings is one possible solution for dealing with this issue, with much of the current research in this respect mostly focused on developed countries. The research examines the applicability of lean in the healthcare sector of a developing country, specifically Oman.

Interviews were conducted with 32 individuals representing four public sector hospitals, along with two major hospital suppliers and the Ministry of Health. The readiness of lean thinking was assessed against seven criteria. Data were then analyzed thematically.

The authors found that Oman's healthcare sector is strong on leadership support, understanding value and customer groups, ability to undertake an end-to-end process view and engaging in the required training for lean. Interviewees showed awareness of the challenges, including aligning lean with the strategic agenda of healthcare settings, aligning measurement and reward systems to lean thinking and matching demand and capacity levels. The authors conclude that Oman's healthcare sector is ready for widespread application of lean, and if executed successfully, will generate strong strategic and operational outcomes.

This paper provides evidence of the applicability of lean in a very different context to the one that has been generally reported in the literature. The authors propose that lean thinking can be applied in countries and regions with similar cultural contexts such as the Middle East.

In the field of business, digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of business, from generating to deliver value to customers. This concept is essential for sustainable growth of a company and its overall economy. Based on this fact, this authentic and informative research is conducted whose major aim is to examine the importance of digital transformation within a business through big data, the Internet of things and blockchain-based capabilities for overall strategic performance within the telecom sector in China.

For that aim, data quality and technology competence are considered as independent variables, strategic performance as dependent variable and big data analytics capabilities, Internet of things capabilities and blockchain capabilities routinization acted as mediators within this paper. In its data collection mechanism, an online survey was conducted in which questionnaires are randomly distributed to the telecom sector's professionals in which only 343 of them gave their valid outcomes. After collecting primary data, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM)–based statistical outcomes have been generated.

Results indicate that there is a significant relationship between data quality and strategic performance and between technological competence and strategic performance. Also, the big data analytics and Internet of Things capabilities acted as significant mediating role between both independent and dependent variables. But blockchain capabilities routinization is that variable that acts as an insignificant mediator between independent and dependent variables' relationship.

Overall, this study is an informative and attractive source for the Chinese government, its telecom industry, administrative body and related ones to understand the importance of such IT capabilities' implications within their operating activities for their strategic performance management. Also, related field scholars can utilize its reliable data in their research analysis. Its major limitations are (1) lack of qualitative/ mixed method of research and (2) lack of comparative analysis that may impact the acceptability factor of this paper, and this weakness can be overcome by upcoming scholars in their research.