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The purpose of this paper is to examine the uptake of supply chain integration (SCI) principles internationally and the resultant integration maturity.

A rigorous supply chain diagnostics methodology called the Quick Scan is used to assess the integration maturity of 72 value streams located in New Zealand, Thailand and the UK.

The majority of the organisations studied are struggling to turn the SCI concept into reality. Supply chains on average are poorly integrated. However, there exist a handful of exemplar cases that provide guidance; levels of integration maturity appear not to differ internationally.

Only three nations are compared, hence the sample is not fully representative of all countries and industries. There is a significant gap between supply chain rhetoric and practice; clear guidance on how to enable effective integration is required. National settings do not appear to affect the extent of application of supply chain management concepts.

SCI is a very difficult undertaking. Indifferent practice is the norm. If organisations can attain even the middle ground of internal integration they will outperform many of their competitors.

The paper presents an international benchmark of SCI maturity involving three triangulated measures of supply chain performance.

Beyond a mandated use, rationales behind executive choice to accept or reject building information modelling (BIM) are ambiguous. BIM acceptance is complex for organisations, and existing decision-making models are impractical to make realistic choices. A practical solution must assist a holistic reflection of internal and external BIM success factors. Nevertheless, extant literature is largely focused on software use and awareness. Thus, this paper aims to suggest a novel framework for assessing firm readiness, aimed at facilitating BIM uptake.

Extant explanatory studies are inadequate in assessing the soft nature of BIM uptake. Thus, a design science research was employed as an alternative methodology. A means-end analysis was utilised for solution incubation, and cross-disciplinary reasoning, the strategy to establish valid solutions on firm readiness. Previous studies were reviewed on BIM, technology acceptance (generally) and complexity.

“Technology attitude” is presented as involving more holistic variables than a simplistic reliance on software use to mirror BIM acceptance. Technology acceptance model (TAM) is appropriate to explain BIM attitude attributes, but its current use is sub-optimal. Selective information processing and unconscious thought theory were integrated into TAM to explain attitude formation from multiple perspectives, resulting in a novel BIM attitude scale (BIMAS). Upon verification, the proposed framework will facilitate an objective authentication of biases that associate with BIM acceptance.

Whilst BIM readiness is assessed largely with a primary focus on theory building, practical relevance must be at the forefront of BIM development. This study articulates that design science research can enhance the practical relevance of BIM adoption models. BIM acceptance attitude must be assessed through a verified scale contrary to the assessment of self-biases of executives in literature. BIMAS suggests a testable solution for this. Theory building research must be the future focus to enhance the relevance of this initial solution.

This paper aims to examine the employment of the military metaphor by the management thinker and writer Lyndall Urwick who in the twentieth century developed and articulated his ideas over a 60-year period, arguably the longest continuous period of any management writer of his day.

This study draws on published research into Urwick as well as upon the breadth of his published writings over a 60-year period. It offers a contextualised explanatory analysis of his military theory ideas and explores their lack of traction by reference to British military, economic and social history.

The study reveals the wartime context that surrounded the emergence of his ideas and motivated Urwick’s faith in the military approach to management. This stood in contrast to the countervailing forces of the post-war decline in British industry and a populist mythology of British Army mismanagement and failure in the Great War.

In this case of a management idea’s failure to gain traction, the importance of the congruence between management theory and societal beliefs emerges as crucial to the likely uptake of new management thinking.

Given the increasingly significant investments in high‐speed broadband (HSB) internationally and the heightened rhetoric surrounding its benefits, the purpose of this paper is to assess the social impact of HSB.

Based on a case study concerning HSB delivered in the ambit of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN), the study contributes a conceptual framework to evaluate the social impact of HSB initiatives.

The authors found that key sectors, including education, health and community development, should be critically assessed across pertinent dimensions in evaluating the social impact of HSB.

The framework provided in this study is significant as it can be used strategically by managers and policy makers in both leveraging HSB opportunities in key sectors and monitoring the performance of such initiatives.

The research extends the technology adoption literature by contributing a framework that moves beyond the individual and organizational levels of technology adoption towards the wider sectoral level; and second, attempts to examine post‐adoption impact of technology.

The research debate on the direct relationship between environmental strategy and environmental management accounting (EMA) is quite popular; however, integration challenges between these two factors still persist at the firm level. This paper seeks to adopt the contingency theory perspective to examine how EMA implementation varies across organizations with different intensity levels of environmental management strategy implementation (i.e. environmental management maturity, EMM).

The paper uses a web-based survey, designed and administered to public listed companies and members of three industry chambers in Sri Lanka.

This study finds that EMA implementation is significantly different among organizations at varying EMM stages. Further, it is observed that organizations at higher stages of EMM use significantly greater domain-based EMA tools and EMA for functional purposes. Therefore, the results show that when organizations progress from reactive to proactive environmental strategies, the EMA evolves to encapsulate and diversify to deal with more-sophisticated environmental management activities.

This is the first study to provide cross-sectional evidence on the relationship between the application of EMA tools and functional uses and the intensity of the environmental strategy pursuance (or EMM). It also proposes a multi-item comprehensive measurement tool for EMA implementation.

Introduces Freud’s discovery of an active unconscious as at the heart of many psychodynamic processes. Also introduces the papers in this special issue.

The present study examines the impact of the different dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance on the financial performance of food companies.

As proxies for the financial performance, two different indices are employed: a single index, namely, operating income and an aggregate financial index, namely, economic score. The CSR performance based on Thomson Reuter’s data stream methodology involves three distinct aspects of the CSR concept: environmental, social and governance for the time spanning 2012–2017.

Findings based on estimated generalized least squares (EGLS) indicate that the higher level of environmental performance (as described by an aggregate environmental index), the publishing of a stand-alone sustainable report and the implementation of quality principles, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean and Six Sigma positively affect the financial performance.

The results provide useful implications to stakeholders, mainly to corporate managers and investors for uptaking initiatives aiming toward the eco-efficiency of the food company.

The purpose of this New Zealand study is to analyse the influence of the literacy course from an initial teacher education degree, to support beginning teachers to view themselves as policy actors, not mere policy subjects. In our role as teacher educators, we sought to support beginning teachers to find freedom within the constraints of official literacy policy to include multiliteracies.

Using de Certeau’s dialectic of strategies and tactics, the authors critically analysed the influence of the literacy course. The data included an assignment from the literacy course, an end-of-literacy course survey and a follow-up interview six months into their first teaching position with a group of five beginning primary school teachers.

The findings shed light on our apparent inability to support beginning teachers to see themselves as policy actors/subjects. The analysis reveals the beginning teachers’ tactical responses to our strategies intended to position them as policy actors. The analysis also illustrates how the tactics the authors deployed were viewed as strategies by the beginning teachers, ironically further solidifying the literacy policy they had sought to critique and destabilise and (re)positioning them as policy subjects.

de Certeau’s framework supported the illumination of the complex interplay of strategies and tactics deployed by ourselves and beginning teachers as the authors sought to support them to identify the freedoms within the constraints of official literacy policy. Any future attempt to develop beginning teachers as policy actors/subjects will benefit from the careful examination of the strategies and tactics at play in initial teacher education.