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This study aims to investigate the impact of digital transformation on supply chain resilience. Additionally, the paper examines the mediating effect of supply chain process integration as well as the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty in the relationship between digital transformation and supply chain resilience.

Drawing on digital empowerment theory, this study proposes a theoretical model. Using survey data collected from 216 enterprises in China, the study employs structural equation modeling to validate the theoretical model.

The results reveal that digital transformation has a significant impact on supply chain resilience. Three dimensions of supply chain process integration, namely, information flow integration, physical flow integration, and financial flow integration mediate the relationship between digital transformation and supply chain resilience. In addition, environmental uncertainty including market uncertainty and technology uncertainty positively moderates the relationship between digital transformation and supply chain resilience.

First, this paper provides empirical evidence on both the direct and indirect effects of digital transformation on supply chain resilience. Second, this paper enriches the understanding of how supply chain integration impacts supply chain resilience in the digital transformation era by adopting a more granular perspective of process integration rather than broad external and internal integrations. Furthermore, this paper extends the knowledge of the role of external environment in digital transformation and supply chain risk management by examining the moderating effects of market uncertainty and technology uncertainty.

In aircraft assembly, standard reference points with nominal coordinates are commonly applied for coordinate transformation between multiple measurement stations and the assembly coordinate system. For several reasons in practical application, these points often fail to envelop the key assembly space, which leads to large transformation uncertainty. This paper aims to analyze and further reduce the coordinate transformation uncertainty by introducing a new hybrid reference system (HRS).

Several temporary extension points without known coordinates are added to enhance the tightness between different stations, especially at the weakness area in the network, thus constituting an HRS together with the existing standard reference points. The coordinate transformation model of the HRS-based measurement network is established based on an extend Gauss–Markov model. By using the geometrical differential property and variance-covariance propagation law, the covariance matrixes in the transformation model are calculated, and the analytical solution of the uncertainties of transformation parameters are ultimately derived. The transformation uncertainty of each check points is presented by Helmert error expression.

The proposed analytical solution of transformation uncertainty is verified using the state-of-the-art Monte Carlo simulation method, but the solution process is simpler and the computation expenses are much less.

The HRS with three temporary extension points is practically applied to a tail boom in-site measurement for assembly. The average transformation uncertainty has been reduced by 26 per cent to less than 0.05 mm.

The hybrid coordinate transformation model is proposed for the first time. The HRS method for transformation uncertainty reduction is more economical and practical than increasing the number of standard reference points.

For start-ups or growing firms, to effectively navigate the unpredictable nature of digital development and achieve superior innovative performance, it is crucial to have a workforce comprised of creative and innovative employees. Drawing upon the principles of social information processing theory, this study aims to investigate whether specific combinations of organizational internal and external environments, as well as work characteristics in the digital age, can foster a high level of employee innovative behavior.

By collecting a multilevel and multisource data set comprising 693 employees and 88 CEOs from 88 start-ups or growing firms, this study used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the distinctive configurations associated with achieving a high level of employee innovative behavior.

The study found that six solutions enabled employees to innovate more effectively, but six solutions led to the absence of employee innovative behavior.

The findings of this study offer important theoretical and practical implications to motivate employee innovative behavior in Chinese enterprises.

First, this study contributes to the literature on employee innovative behavior by addressing the need to explore the impact of the digital context on promoting innovation among employees. Second, this study adds to the existing literature on employee innovation and entrepreneurship by examining multiple organizational contexts and their influence on innovative behavior. Third, this study makes a significant contribution to the field of employee innovative behavior by examining the macroenvironment surrounding digital transformation within enterprises and integrating both internal and external organizational factors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine innovative practices and emphasize the mechanism of knowledge transfer across knowledge boundaries. By comparing and discussing the emerging boundary issues in knowledge transfer among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) registered in the incubation centers in China, this paper identified the main knowledge transfer approach and several contextual and organizational factors impacting knowledge transfer.

The authors conduct 39 semi-structured in-depth interviews with employees working within business incubation centers in China. The study uses thematic analysis for data analysis.

Our results contribute to the literature of knowledge transfer and in particular to our understanding of boundary conditions and knowledge transfer approaches in emerging economies. The results also highlight several contextual and organizational factors which impact knowledge transformation across the pragmatic boundary in the context of China.

First, organizations need to establish an effective process with tools to accommodate novelty; second, organizations should be aware of the impact of entrepreneurial orientation on innovative performance; and third, it will help organizations if they adopt and integrate information-rich media in managing innovative practices.

This research highlights the impact of contextual and organizational factors of SMEs on knowledge transfer in emerging markets and chooses incubation centers as study subjects, which is an organizational context that has not been thoroughly studied due to its unique nature and emerging complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how decisions regarding organisational flexibility can be improved through targeted resource allocation, by focusing on the supply chain's level of uncertainty exposure. Specifically, the issue of where and in what ways flexibility has been incorporated across the organisation's supply chain is addressed.

A two-phase methodology design based on literature review and case study was used. Using 83 journal articles in the areas of uncertainty and flexibility an analytical process for assessing uncertainty-flexibility mismatches was developed. Furthermore, results from ten interviews with senior/middle managers within the Australian manufacturing sector were used to provide preliminary insights on the usefulness and importance of the analytical process and its relationship with organisational practice.

The paper emphasises the importance of having a systematic and encompassing view of uncertainty-flexibility mismatches across the supply chain, as well as the significance of socio-technical engagement. The paper both conceptually and empirically illustrates how, using a structured analytical process, flexibility requirements across the supply, process, control and demand segments of a supply chain might be assessed. A four-step analytical process was accordingly developed and, its application, usefulness and importance discussed using empirical data.

The analytical process presented in this paper can assist managers to obtain a comprehensive overview of supply chain flexibility when dealing with situations involving uncertainty. This can facilitate and improve their decision-making with respect to prioritising attention on identified flexibility gaps in order to ensure stability of their performance.

The paper presents a supply chain-wide discussion on the difficulties that uncertainty brings to organisations, and how organisational flexibility might serve to moderate those challenges for supply chain management. It discusses how to identify the flexibility gap and proposes an original analytical process for systematic assessment of uncertainty-flexibility mismatches.

As part of an evaluation of the nationally mandated Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) “transformation” in one foundation NHS trust, the authors explored the experiences of mental health staff involved in the transformation.

The authors employed a qualitative methodology and followed an ethnographic approach. This included observation of mental health staff involved in the transformation and informal interviews (80 h). The authors also undertook semi-structured interviews with key staff members (n = 16). Data were analysed thematically.

The findings fall into three thematic areas around the transformation, namely (1) rationale; (2) implementation; and (3) maintenance. Staff members were supportive of the rationale for the changes, but implementation was affected by perceived poor communication, resulting in experiences of unpreparedness and de-stabilisation. Staff members lacked time to set up the necessary processes, meaning that changes were not always implemented smoothly. Recruiting and retaining the right staff, a consistent challenge throughout the transformation, was crucial for maintaining the service changes.

There is little published on the perceptions and experiences of mental health workforces around the CAMHS transformations across the UK. This paper presents the perceptions of mental health staff, whose organisation underwent significant “transformational” change. Staff demonstrated considerable resilience in the change process, but better recognition of their needs might have improved retention and satisfaction. Time for planning and training would enable staff members to better develop the processes and resources necessary in the context of significant service change. Developing ways for services to compare changes they are implementing and sharing good practice around implementation with each other are also vital.

In a work environment marked by unprecedented complexity, volatility and ambiguity, managers must accomplish their objectives while navigating many challenges. This paper aims to investigate potential interrelations among environmental transformations, cognitive biases and strategic decisions. In particular, the purpose of the study is to crystallize the state of art on the impact of cognitive biases on strategic decisions, in the context of environmental transformations.

The authors have conducted a systematic literature review to identify existing relevant work on this topic and to detect potential avenues for future research.

The findings highlight how decision-making is influenced and enabled by internal (e.g. perception) and external factors (e.g. digitalization). Specifically, the strategic role of cognitive biases appears to be crucial when investigating the related impact on strategic decisions in times of environmental transformation.

Implications are drawn for scholars and practitioners interested in evaluating the role of specific decision-making determinants for the formation and implementation of strategic decisions. In this sense, we stress that decision-makers need to manage their cognitive biases and select the right information out of a wide data set in order to adapt to environmental transformations.

By systematizing the literature review, potential interrelations among environmental transformations, cognitive biases and strategic decisions are identified. Furthermore, the primary phases that drive the decision-making process are proposed (analysis, decision, onboarding and control).

This paper aims to explain the uncertainties associated with food security and, in doing so, classifies them within the context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). In using this lens to frame the challenges of food security, the viewpoint proffers the need to be even more sensitive to heightened levels of uncertainty and highlights the need of governments to be prepared to meet a wider variety of external forces, risks, opportunities and threats to mitigate food insecurity.

This research constructs a novel morphology of food security and food waste policy futures based upon a range of scenario types based on contextual narratives relating to constraint, collapse, growth and transformation. In doing so, offering a representation that suggests order, complexity and chaos occur across a range of four domains of interaction: known (repeatable cause and effect); knowable (cause and effect separated over time); complex (cause and effect are unique and non-repeatable); and chaos (no cause and effect relationship perceivable). This orientation is represented in the form of a novel morphology that can be used to support decision-making and policymaking/consideration.

The authors have presented and identified a combination of a structured and unstructured methods to develop and hence classify a range of food security scenarios. Using the VUCA worldview and classification, the authors subsequently identify seven underlying and seven United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)-derived factors, which when combined with the Institute for the Future (IFTF) four food security scenarios in a pairwise manner led to the generation of a further 16 subsequent VUCA-inspired scenarios composed within a morphological grid. These were subsequently reclassified against three sets of stakeholders and then finally mapped to the Cynefin framework as a set of ten scenarios to show the potential of making greater sense of the VUCA nature of food security.

The paper proposes a novel conceptual approach to framing and understanding the wider holistic aspects of explaining and providing foresight to the complexities of food security. Hence, this paper provides policymakers with two contrasting, yet complementary, food security scenario planning techniques (VUCA and Cynefin), which envelope 16 narrative food security scenarios which can be used with stakeholders and advocacy groups in facilitating discussion about complex, messy and “wicked” interlinkages within the food security domain.

This is the first time in the extant literature that a combination of structured and unstructured, problem-based versus mess-based, contrasting perspectives have been brought together and developed, with the intention of creating a normative family or portfolio of narrative-driven food security scenarios. The authors present and extend four existing scenarios from the extant food security literature, and subsequently, through interpreting these scenarios via a dual and combined lens (notably using UN SDG and VUCA elements), a grid of alternative food security scenarios is produced. By then using applying the Cynefin complexity framework to these new configurations, a thematic categorisation of alternative futures is presented, which may aid policy and decision-makers when considering this topic.

Multi-robot laser-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in large-scale environments is an essential but challenging issue in mobile robotics, especially in situations wherein no prior knowledge is available between robots. Moreover, the cumulative errors of every individual robot exert a serious negative effect on loop detection and map fusion. To address these problems, this paper aims to propose an efficient approach that combines laser and vision measurements.

A multi-robot visual laser-SLAM is developed to realize robust and efficient SLAM in large-scale environments; both vision and laser loop detections are integrated to detect robust loops. A method based on oriented brief (ORB) feature detection and bag of words (BoW) is developed, to ensure the robustness and computational effectiveness of the multi-robot SLAM system. A robust and efficient graph fusion algorithm is proposed to merge pose graphs from different robots.

The proposed method can detect loops more quickly and accurately than the laser-only SLAM, and it can fuse the submaps of each single robot to promote the efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the system.

Compared with the state of art of multi-robot SLAM approaches, the paper proposed a novel and more sophisticated approach. The vision-based and laser-based loops are integrated to realize a robust loop detection. The ORB features and BoW technologies are further utilized to gain real-time performance. Finally, random sample consensus and least-square methodologies are used to remove the outlier loops among robots.

Drawing on chaos theory as an overarching approach, as well as guidelines from effectuation and transformative learning theories, this study aims to evaluate the changing marketing channels in the hospitality industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also aims to develop a conceptual framework that demonstrates the transformation of the marketing structure; in particular, the transformation of hospitality organizations, employees and customers.

The study uses the hermeneutic method and conceptually evaluates the existing actors of the services marketing structure. It also discusses how to transform this structure into the new normal in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings of the study demonstrated that COVID-19 has resulted in changing marketing channels in the hospitality industry. These include external, internal, interactive and substitutional marketing channels. In response to these changes, the hospitality industry needs to adopt a more transformative marketing structure that requires the transformation of hospitality companies, employees and customers.

The conceptualized transformation of the services marketing structure could help hospitality practitioners, employees and customers to understand the new normal and acquire new abilities, meanings, awareness and learning accordingly.

This study uses chaos, effectuation and transformative learning theories to reconceptualize the hospitality services marketing structure. The contribution of this paper lies in the conceptual pathways it suggests for transforming hospitality firms, employees and customers and for demonstrating their transformed roles and positions in the wake of the pandemic.