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This research employs a transformative service lens to examine the role of the supply chain ecosystem in ensuring the health and safety of employees and customers as a well-being outcome during the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

This is a conceptual paper examining the response of the supply chain to the current food crisis caused by the pandemic.

Based on the service-dominant logic (SDL) paradigm, the COVID-19 examination of the supply chain ecosystem provides a foundation for further research employing a transformative lens.

The COVID-19 situation is primarily explored from a Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies’ context. Future research should explore the applicability of the transformative service lens to other societies.

The conceptual discussion and research agenda provide direction for researchers, practitioners and policymakers towards a transformative supply chain ecosystem.

This research includes the well-being of employees and customers in the service supply chain outcome measures, draws supply chain management into the TSR domain, while also solidifies a service ecosystem perspective of supply chain management.

The purpose of this explorative research is to analyse the resilience of the United Kingdom's (UK) healthcare supply chains from a customer’s perspective in the light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Using the capabilities of preparedness, robustness, recovery and adaptability as the foundational percept for supply chain resilience, 22 healthcare professionals in 17 of the UK's National Health Scheme (NHS) Trusts were interviewed to explore their personal and organisational approaches adopted relative to the provision of eye protection, gloves, gowns, aprons, masks and respirators. The Dynamic Capabilities View is mapped to the resilience capabilities and used to analyse the data from a transformational supply chain research perspective.

The supply chains were largely unprepared, which was not particularly surprising even though the availability of gloves was significantly better compared to the other personal protective equipment (PPE). Techniques adopted to ensure robustness and recovery revealed the use of unsanctioned methods such as extended use of PPE beyond recommended use, redefinition of guidelines, protocols and procedures by infection control and the use of expired PPE – all of which compromised customer well-being.

As the paper views resilience through the lens of customers, it does not provide the perspectives of the supply chain practitioners as to the reasons for the findings and the challenges within these supply chains.

The compromise of the well-being of healthcare workers due to the vulnerabilities of healthcare supply chains is highlighted to managers and prescriptions for post-disruption adaptability are made.

This paper introduces transformative research to supply chain resilience research by uniquely looking at resilience from the customers' well-being perspective.

This paper aims to explain the role of supply chain capital (SCC) in developing transformative supply chain resilience (SCRes) to cope with environmental dynamism. Through a panarchy theory lens, this paper holistically examines how supply chains and their resilience are impacted by the multilevel structure in which they are embedded.

Contextualised explanation-building case studies are used to examine the transformative SCRes of 10 companies. Data were collected via interviews, documents, archival records and observations.

Studying transformative SCRes leads to generating insights into the application of SCC for managing environmental dynamisms at the organisational and supply chain levels. Furthermore, the linkages between different levels of the panarchy and their impact on the change in SCC to cope with the dynamisms are identified and explained.

This paper contributes to the new and timely paradigm of transformative SCRes by studying this phenomenon in a holistic manner (rather than a traditional reductionistic view). Through a panarchy lens, the need to examine and analyse different hierarchy levels simultaneously to interpret SCRes responses to environmental dynamism is highlighted.

Valuable insights are provided to practitioners in developing an understanding of structural and relational SCC and their management in the development of transformative SCRes.

This paper is one of the first empirical studies using a multilevel social-ecological-based panarchy framework in the supply chain management context. Applying this novel approach is highly relevant and reveals several new research opportunities.

This article investigates how micro-foundations of sustainability can build supply chain resilience (SCRes). Specifically, by defining supply chains as social-ecological systems, this article explores how sustainability as a supplier capability leads to the transformative development of SCRes capabilities.

Longitudinal multi-case studies were developed over the first year of the COVID-19 outbreak. A total of 52 interviews were conducted with managers and employees of 12 global supplier firms as well as associated local cooperative and consultancy managers. Secondary data were also used for triangulation. An inductive approach was used for data analysis to elaborate theory through a metaphor.

Nine micro-foundations of sustainability were identified and categorised using the dynamic capabilities steps: sensing, seizing and reconfiguring. They were found to move together with the preparing, responding and transforming steps of SCRes, respectively, and thus to perform as dance partners using our dance performance metaphor. Moreover, ten supplier cases were found to be adopting a transformative social-ecological perspective as they performed all key stages of our dance performance metaphor. The transformations all resulted from either institutional or social sustainability, and the associated micro-foundations generated six main SCRes capabilities, most commonly linking visibility and organisation with institutional and social sustainability respectively.

A deeper understanding of sustainability micro-foundations is provided for supply chain managers to enhance the development of SCRes strategies in preparation for future sustainability-related crises.

Unlike previous research, this article explores an intertwined understanding of SCRes and sustainability during a crisis. Through the micro-foundations of sustainability we explain how sustainability capability builds transformative SCRes using a supplier perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the humanitarian service management categories that influence long-term transformation within complex community-based service ecosystems.

This study utilizes mixed methods to present a dynamic model that provides insight into the complexities of supplying, distributing and transporting charitable resources to underserved communities. The interdisciplinary study draws on the theory of service-dominant logic and service science, presents critical elements of transformative service research and uses system dynamics approach to propose a visual causal loop model.

This study develops a dynamic model for studying humanitarian service and value propositions in underserved communities. This paper combines the extant literature to emphasize key humanitarian service categories that influence, and are influenced by, service exchanges within community-based contexts.

This paper is limited in providing quantitative methods in analyzing the case study data. However, the research is still helpful in providing acumen via the causal loop diagram to specifically look into each variable and see their cause and effect relationships in the community-based ecosystem. The research represents an opportunity to model the humanitarian aid and relief scenarios to help make more effective decision-making interventions.

The model serves as a managerial tool to determine critical services that optimize resource utilization within the community-based service ecosystems. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (HLSCM) solutions for community-based ventures.

This paper conceptualizes how the management of service-for-service exchanges, logistics services and charitable donation management provides transformational humanitarian services and value propositions within underserved communities. This study further provides fundamental contributions by addressing research gaps in the HLSCM domain by supporting service research and the community-based context.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the concept of “transformative business sustainability”. “Business sustainability” refers the total effort of a company – including its demand and supply chain network – to reduce the impact on the Earth's life‐ and eco‐systems –, i.e. the total e‐footprint. “Transformative” highlights the need for an open minded, dynamic and flexible approach to “business sustainability” not governed by blinkers.

This paper discusses a conceptual development of transformative business sustainability, derived from a frame of reference. The essence is the introduction of a multi‐layer model of units (i.e. different businesses or other stakeholders), a network of e‐footprint sources and a “recovery pool and redistribution buffer” at the interface.

Transformative business sustainability is both a theoretical and managerial concept. It could also be seen as a roadmap to plan, implement and evaluate business sustainability.

Transformative business sustainability provides opportunities for development. Suggestions for further research are presented.

E‐footprint sources in business, applying an Earth‐to‐Earth approach, are described. The concept of transformative business sustainability contributes by achieving genuine and continuous business sustainability and awareness at strategic, tactical and operative levels of business, avoiding use of buzzwords and window dressing.

Well‐being of the planet Earth has to be at the core of business sustainability. The authors contend that the “recovery pool and redistribution buffer” is crucial in the planning, implementation and evaluation of transformative business sustainability.

This article encourages novel approaches in the SSCM literature to create transformative change for workers in developing countries' apparel supply chains. It examines how suppliers' implementation of social sustainability is moderated by buyers' pressures (through dyadic ties) and by similar suppliers' pressures (through extended ties).

The article adopts a qualitative method design based on fieldwork and 21 face-to-face interviews with suppliers' senior managers. The data were collected between 2017 and 2020 in the factory premises of suppliers in Pakistan.

This article distinguishes the pressures that moderate suppliers' implementation of social sustainability positively (top-down encouragement, informal exchange and competitive convergence) and negatively (unrewarded commitment) through social ties. Hence, it shows how suppliers experience constrained proactivity as a state of tension.

The article primarily contributes to the SSCM literature by informing how similar suppliers' pressures in the business community constitute important processes of social governance and are key to create transformative change upstream in apparel supply chains. Against this backdrop, it cautions about buyers' opposite pressures and misuse of their negotiation power, which indirectly holds back and dilutes transformative change.

Despite over 30 years of focus on supply chain collaboration, companies continue to struggle to achieve collaborative advantage. To better understand why some companies are able to collaborate for competitive advantage and others can't, the authors explore how managerial commitment enables collaborative capabilities.

The authors employed a longitudinal inductive study, interviewing companies with reputations for intense supply chain collaboration at four different times over 20 years.

The authors identified managerial commitment as a super-ordinate enabler. They describe the dynamics of commitment development and explore three types of commitment: instrumental, normative and transformative. The authors document key antecedents and outcomes of each type of commitment.

Theory regarding the antecedents to commitment to collaborative capability is underdeveloped. The authors elaborate these antecedents and the dynamics that enable or undermine the commitment necessary to build effective collaboration capabilities.

The authors provide insight (i.e. a practical and actionable roadmap) into the process companies use to cultivate commitment to collaboration and value co-creation.

Collaboration is critical to value co-creation, including effective supply chain risk mitigation and lasting sustainability efforts. The authors elaborate a theory of commitment dynamics that explains why most companies never go beyond basic levels of collaboration. At the same time, the authors provide a roadmap for deep, transformative collaboration.

To study the learning processes and mechanisms involved in sustainability-oriented supplier development (SSD), including how knowledge is transmitted by the buyer and how it is received, understood and internalised by the supplier.

An exploratory longitudinal multi-case study approach is adopted. The research context is a social SSD project focusing on occupational health and safety (OHS) management at four supplier factories. The paper draws on the constructs of absorptive capacity and boundary objects.

The development of a supplier's absorptive capacity for OHS management is triggered by the transfer of boundary objects that are created by the buyer. Findings suggest that each supplier starts explorative learning in a similar and passive way in order to accept the knowledge, but then each supplier proactively transforms and exploits the knowledge through continuous sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring loops that develop the boundary objects in a way that fits their own needs and contexts, incorporating the objects into organisational structures and routines.

The research furthers the understanding of the development of supplier absorptive capacity for sustainability via SSD projects, including how it is triggered and sustained. The impact of ostensive and performative aspects of boundary objects on knowledge transfer is presented. Finally, insight is provided into how absorptive capacity and dynamic capabilities are linked in the context of SSD.

Buying firms should seek to develop boundary objects that can trigger and maintain learning momentum for sustainability at supplier organisations in addition to effectively transferring SSD-related sustainability knowledge. There is also a need to allow for sufficient flexibility in the design of the boundary objects, and to pay sufficient attention to how suppliers contextualise and embed them into their own organisations, providing support for this process where necessary. For the supplier, establishing structures and routines for OHS management can help to prepare for future audits, thereby reducing audit fatigue.

The paper contributes to the supply chain learning literature by exploring the development of supplier absorptive capacity for sustainability triggered by the focal buying firm. It sheds new light on the role of boundary objects for facilitating knowledge transfer and learning between supply chain members in the context of SSD projects.

Corporations operating global value chains must grapple with a multiplicity of ethical and practical considerations, most notably when value chains extend to emerging markets. Such contexts involve interactions with diverse stakeholders who possess the ability to impact supply chain performance, but who also bring conflicting needs, values and interests. The purpose of this paper is to outline a transformative model of supply chain fairness, arguing that adopting plural fairness principles and practices generates a higher fairness equilibrium which includes all affected stakeholders in the production of fairness outcomes, with consequent positive organizational and system level impacts.

Through a philosophically informed overview of the literature on organizational fairness, the paper applies fairness to the management of supplier relations to identify the institutional features of ethically sustainable supply chains. The proposed conceptual model uses a complex adaptive systems approach (CADs), supplemented by describing the contribution of fairness norms and practices.

This paper argues that a transformative approach to supply chain fairness can suggest new structures for interaction between firms, stakeholders, mediating institutions and governments.

Emerging market supply chains are facing significant changes. Adopting a complex adaptive systems perspective upon stakeholder relationships, this paper offers insights from the theoretical literature on fairness, and proposes a normative model of supply chain fairness which accounts for both the normative and empirical aspects of relational complexity.