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Despite the extensive body of research on absolute corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance, limited attention has been given to the distinct concepts of optimal and aggressive CSR engagement, as well as their associations with CSR awarding. This study aims to differentiate between optimal and aggressive CSR engagement and examine their relationship with CSR awarding while considering the moderating influence of board characteristics from the perspectives of stakeholder and agency theories.

This empirical analysis draws on an international dataset comprising 43,803 observations from nine sectors across 41 countries. We employ a least squares dummy variable regression approach that accounts for country, industry and year effects to conduct the analysis.

The results reveal that engagement in aggressive CSR activities beyond the optimal level leads to the generation of a social reputation through CSR awarding. However, the influence of board characteristics on this relationship is significant. Specifically, the presence of a dedicated CSR committee encourages CSR awarding in the context of aggressive CSR engagement. Conversely, board independence constrains the relationship between aggressive CSR engagement and CSR awarding. Notably, board gender diversity does not have a discernible impact on this connection.

Our evidence provides valuable insights to help firms seeking to enhance their social reputation through CSR activities better allocate their resources and avoid unnecessary financial commitments.

This study advances the current understanding by exploring the relationship between aggressive CSR engagement and the recognition of CSR awards. Furthermore, it scrutinises the factors that dictate when such aggressive CSR engagement translates into enhanced social reputation, as evidenced by the attainment of CSR awards.

This paper aims to discuss the practical dilemmas of institutional change to tackle the climate crisis in a UK university, identifying key assumptions and issues that block meaningful change. The research was part of an initiative to define a theory of change (ToC) to meet the university’s institutional climate commitments.

The findings are based on interviews with members of an inter-disciplinary ToC working group, a staff–student climate coalition and student representatives at the university. Interviewees were purposively selected to gain insights into assumptions about the nature of the university and its role in tackling the climate crisis, which must be addressed for the university to effectively implement its climate plan.

This paper identified tensions between the university’s role as a public and commercial institution, a lack of clarity over decision-making processes and the difficulties in balancing (and being transparent about) actions with commitments to tackle the climate crisis. A democratic and flexible approach to change is essential to mitigate these issues, providing an opportunity to reflect on the diversity of the university community and openly debate goals and commitments.

In setting out the initial steps of a ToC in a UK university, this paper offers practical insights for higher education institutions looking to change practices. By highlighting assumptions at a particular institution, this paper also contributes a level of granularity to a growing field of research on efforts in higher education institutions to tackle the climate crisis.

This study aims to address the inherent uncertainties within closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) networks through the application of a multi-objective approach, specifically focusing on the optimization of integrated production and transportation processes. The primary purpose is to enhance decision-making in supply chain management by formulating a robust multi-objective model.

In dealing with uncertainty, this study uses Pythagorean fuzzy numbers (PFNs) to effectively represent and quantify uncertainties associated with various parameters within the CLSC network. The proposed model is solved using Pythagorean hesitant fuzzy programming, presenting a comprehensive and innovative methodology designed explicitly for handling uncertainties inherent in CLSC contexts.

The research findings highlight the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed framework for addressing uncertainties within CLSC networks. Through a comparative analysis with other established approaches, the model demonstrates its robustness, showcasing its potential to make informed and resilient decisions in supply chain management.

This study successfully addressed uncertainty in CLSC networks, providing logistics managers with a robust decision-making framework. Emphasizing the importance of PFNs and Pythagorean hesitant fuzzy programming, the research offered practical insights for optimizing transportation routes and resource allocation. Future research could explore dynamic factors in CLSCs, integrate real-time data and leverage emerging technologies for more agile and sustainable supply chain management.

This research contributes significantly to the field by introducing a novel and comprehensive methodology for managing uncertainty in CLSC networks. The adoption of PFNs and Pythagorean hesitant fuzzy programming offers an original and valuable approach to addressing uncertainties, providing practitioners and decision-makers with insights to make informed and resilient decisions in supply chain management.

This paper aims to present a novel adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) method based on the predefined performance barrier function for reusable launch vehicle under attitude constraints and mismatched disturbances.

A novel ASMC based on barrier function is adopted to deal with matched and mismatched disturbances. The upper bounds of the disturbances are not required to be known in advance. Meanwhile, a predefined performance function (PPF) with prescribed convergence time is used to adjust the boundary of the barrier function. The transient performance, including the overshoot, convergence rate and settling time, as well as the steady-state performance of the attitude tracking error are retained in the predetermined region under the barrier function and PPF. The stability of the proposed control method is analyzed via Lyapunov method.

In contrast to conventional adaptive back-stepping methods, the proposed method is comparatively simple and effective which does not need to disassemble the control system into multiple first-order systems. The proposed barrier function based on PPF can adjust not only the switching gain in an adaptive way but also the convergence time and steady-state error. And the efficiency of the proposed method is illustrated by conducting numerical simulations.

A novel barrier function based ASMC method is proposed to fit in the amplitude of the mismatched and matched disturbances. The transient and steady-state performance of attitude tracking error can be selected as prior control parameters.

This paper aims to examine the relationships between motives, skepticism and brands evaluations in the LGBT-friendly branding hotels context.

An online survey is created and 278 LGBT participants are recruited through a consumer panels firm. The research model is tested through structural equation modeling.

Values-, stakeholder- and strategic-driven motives are negatively related to skepticism, while egoistic-driven motive is positively related to skepticism. Also, sexual orientation openness moderates the relationship between stakeholder-driven motives and skepticism. Finally, skepticism is negatively related to brands evaluations.

The research findings are limited to the LGBT-friendly hotels. However, this research contributes to the CSR and LGBT consumer research by examining the relationships between the four motives and skepticism considering LGBT customers’ sexual orientation openness level.

Hotels should devote greater efforts to communicating that their LGBT-friendly branding efforts are genuine by acknowledging both the social benefits and the business interests.

As more and more hotels promote themselves as LGBT-friendly brands, a key challenge is reducing skepticism by appropriately conveying their motives. This research sheds light on this critical issue.

Although existent research on LGBT-friendliness has established its importance; there is a lack of understanding as to how customers perceive LGBT-friendly branding hotels. This research examines the four motives of hotels presenting themselves as being LGBT-friendly and their relationships to skepticism.

This study aims to understand client food preferences and how pantry offerings can be optimized by those preferences.

This study develops and administers customized surveys to study three food pantries within the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwestern North Carolina network. This study then categorizes food items by client preferences, identifies the key predictors of those preferences and obtains preference scores by fitting the data to a predictive model. The preference scores are subsequently used in an optimization model that suggests an ideal mix of food items to stock based upon client preferences and the item and weight limits imposed by the pantry.

This study found that food pantry clients prefer fresh and frozen foods over shelf-friendly options and that gender, age and religion were the primary predictors. The optimization model incorporates these preferences, yielding an optimal stocking strategy for the pantry.

This research is based on a specific food bank network, and therefore, the client preferences may not be generalizable to other food banks. However, the framework and corresponding optimization model is generalizable to other food aid supply chains.

This study provides insights for food pantry managers to make informed decisions about stocking the pantry shelves based on the client’s preferences.

An emerging topic within the humanitarian food aid community is better matching of food availability with food that is desired in a way that minimizes food waste. This is achieved by providing more choice to food pantry users. This work shows how pantries can incorporate client preferences in inventory stocking decisions.

This study contributes to the literature on food pantry operations by providing a novel decision support system for pantry managers to aid in stocking their shelves according to client preferences.

Today’s world is struggling with the hardship of climate change that has drastically disturbed human life, wildlife and the earth’s biological system. This study aims to show how implementing climate change mitigation strategies and environmental protection measures can ensure sustainable development through collaborative efforts between governmental authorities and the nation’s populace.

An extensive literature review of studies is conducted from across the world concentrating on holistic, sustainable development, enabling a showcase of various conferences, action plans initiated and resolutions passed. VOSviewer software is used to quantify the results of bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis. A total of 260 research studies released between 1993 and 2022 on the Scopus platform are quantified in terms of topmost publications, collaborations among authors, citations index and year-wise publication. The search string has keywords including “climate change,” “sustainable development” and “environment protection.”

The study results revealed a steep increase in research publications in the last three years, from 2017 to 2021, which serves as the basis of the emergence of high-impact articles. The most cited document in this context throws light on assessing vulnerability to climatic risk and building adaptive capacity. It also draws attention to voluntary carbon markets’ rationale while condemning emission trading systems for climate change due to structural flaws, negative consequences and questionable emission-cutting effectiveness. Low energy demand, zero energy buildings and shared socioeconomic pathways should be implemented as strategies for sustainable development.

This study provides a significant opportunity to construct a valuable addition to mitigate climate change. Also, it shows a positive and significant correlation between mitigation and adaptation policies by analyzing publication efforts worldwide considering local climate risks and national adaptation mandates.

The originality of this study lies in its comprehensive approach, combining literature review, bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis to provide insights into current research trends, challenges and potential strategies for addressing climate change and promoting sustainable development. The study’s emphasis on the correlation between mitigation and adaptation policies adds practical significance to its findings.

This study aims to explore how sustainable business models (SBM) can be developed within agri-innovation systems (AIS) and emphasize an integration of the two with a systemic understanding for reducing food loss and value loss in postharvest agri-food supply chain.

This study conducted longitudinal qualitative research in a developing country with food loss challenges in the postharvest supply chain. This study collected data through multiple rounds of fieldwork, interviews and focus groups over four years. Thematic analysis and “sensemaking” were used for inductive data analysis to generate rich contextual knowledge by drawing upon the lived realities of the agri-food supply chain actors.

First, this study finds that the value losses are varied in the supply chain, encompassing production value, intrinsic value, extrinsic value, market value, institutional value and future food value. This happens through two cumulative effects including multiplier losses, where losses in one model cascade into others, amplifying their impact and stacking losses, where the absence of data stacks or infrastructure pools hampers the realisation of food value. Thereafter, this study proposes four strategies for moving from the loss-incurring current business model to a networked SBM for mitigating losses. This emphasises the need to redefine ownership as stewardship, enable formal and informal beneficiary identification, strengthen value addition and build capacities for empowering communities to benefit from networked SBM with AIS initiatives. Finally, this study puts forth ten propositions for future research in aligning AIS with networked SBM.

This study contributes to understanding the interplay between AIS and SBM; emphasising the integration of the two to effectively address food loss challenges in the early stages of agri-food supply chains. The identified strategies and research propositions provide implications for researchers and practitioners seeking to accelerate sustainable practices for reducing food loss and waste in agri-food supply chains.

The objective of this paper is to further the understanding of netnography as a research method for supply chain academics. Netnography is a method for gathering and gaining insight from industry-specific online communities. We prescribe that viewing netnography through the lens of the supply chain will permit researchers to explore, discover, understand, describe or report concepts or phenomena that have previously been studied via survey research or quantitative modeling.

To introduce netnography to supply chain research, we propose a framework to guide how netnography can be adopted and used. Definitions and directions are provided, highlighting some of the practices within netnographic research.

Netnography provides the researcher with another avenue to pursue answers to research questions, either alone or in conjunction with the dominant methods of survey research and quantitative modeling. It provides another tool in the researchers’ toolbox to engage practitioners in the field.

The development of netnography as a research method is associated with Robert Kozinets. He developed the method to study online communities in consumer behavior. We justify why this method can be applied to supply chain research, how to collect data and provide research examples of its use. This technique has room to grow as a supply chain research method.

Many countries have a significant vaccination hesitancy rate regardless of vaccine prosperity. This study aims to identify factors restricting hesitancy and fostering vaccination intention and uptake against coronavirus in Vietnam.

The study has proposed an extended COM-B model based on the Theoretical Domains Framework to explore critical factors influencing vaccination intention and uptake in Vietnam. A database was collected from 1,015 suitable respondents who had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, and ten hypotheses were tested by the partial least squares structural equation model.

The findings showed that six factors, including knowledge, experience, resource, social influence, belief and reinforcement, have either direct or indirect positive effects on COVID-19 vaccine uptake behavior. The output also indicated that personal experience positively affects vaccination intention and uptake.

This study contributes to understanding COVID-19 vaccine uptake behavior by identifying several direct and indirect factors of the extended COM-B model that include “knowledge” and “reinforcement” in shaping behavior change. The study adds to the literature on COVID-19 vaccine uptake behavior and could help achieve higher vaccination rates, ultimately leading to better control of the pandemic.