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Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), this paper aims to analyse the relevance of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies and participation in global value chains (GVC) and the effects of the complementarity between both in the adoption of circular economy (CE) actions by small and medium-sized enterprises (SME).

This paper analysed a large-scale international sample by employing logistic and linear regression models to test the research hypotheses on the effects of I4.0 technologies, GVC participation, and the interaction on CE actions (recycling or reusing materials, reducing the consumption and impact of natural resources, saving energy and/or switching to sustainable energy sources, developing sustainable products or services).

The evidence suggests that I4.0 technologies already represent important resources for CE adoption and SME participating in GVC display a greater likelihood of adopting CE actions. From the perspective of resource complementarity, by interacting the two factors viewed as resources in this article, results may report that adopting I4.0 technologies and simultaneously participating in GVC may turn out detrimental to SME undertaking CE actions, specifically as regards recycling and reusing materials, saving energy or switching to sustainable energy sources and in cases of widely adopting CE practices.

The paper returns novel insights into the adoption of CE practices by presenting evidence that I4.0 technologies and participation in GVC may be successful means for SME seeking to implement CE actions but must be combined carefully. This paper also provides theoretical and practical implications for SME managers, firms participating in GVCs and policy makers, and shedding light on new research avenues.

One of the crucial elements of addressing global climate challenges through urban tourism is the continuing existence of urban forests. The reasoning is that the ecological attraction of urban forests can impact visitors’ intention to conduct pro-environmental behavior, including low-carbon actions. Thus, more visitors to urban forests will positively affect enhancing the quality of the urban environment. However, the extent to which ecological attraction can influence pro-environmental behavior warrants further investigation due to the complexity of psychosocial factors that impact behavioral intention. The main objective of this research is to examine the effects of the ecological attractiveness of urban forests on the pro-environmental behavior of visitors by exploring motivation, ecological experience, perceived value and knowledge as mediators. Moreover, whether the nature of the urban forest and facilities attract visitors simultaneously is also studied.

Data were collected from 615 respondents who visited three urban forests in Bandung, the second-most populous city in Indonesia, by five-point Likert questionnaires. As an analytical tool, SEM PLS was applied to establish the effect of the ecological performance of the urban forest on the increase in environmentally conscious behavior among urban forest visitors.

The findings demonstrate that the attractiveness of an urban forest affects the growth of environmentally responsible behaviors. Nonetheless, the attractiveness of urban forests is dictated more by their infrastructure than their ecological function. On the contrary, the visitors’ knowledge level can improve their motivation, environmental experience and perceived environmental value. These findings show the significance of developing educational programs with an emphasis on the experience of the visitors so that their ecological performance can contribute to improved low-carbon behavior. In conclusion, this work contributes to the management of sustainable urban tourism.

This work also has some limitations. First, the medium R-square on intention behavior to low-carbon action suggests investigating other influential factors to produce a more robust conscious behavior. Mkono and Hughes (2020) mention that many complex factors that cause positive intention do not necessarily lead to environmental action. Thus, many psychosocial variables need to be explored in different models. Second, the convenient sampling used here does not represent the whole population, making generalization difficult. Thus, further work needs to apply more rigorous sampling techniques to validate the findings. Further investigations may also need to be conducted in other urban forests in another Asian country with a similar and different social context for benchmarking, as this study found that the type of attractive urban forest design is a more dense forest, which differs from other studies based in Europe. Exploring more influencing behavioral factors of pro-environmental action in the model is also suggested. Thus, we could contribute more to support recreational activities in urban forests.

As an implication for planning an urban forest to increase its recreational function, the authors illustrate the importance of producing educational programs. Although the improved knowledge of visitors has been shown to strengthen their commitment to perform pro-environmental actions, the mediating role of motivation, experience and perceived value reveals that some activities are required to achieve visitor motivation to actual behavior. Consequently, designing an urban forest requires not only the enhancement of eco-attractions and artificial elements for the convenience of visitors but also the development of an environmental education program that can improve visitors’ environmental experience and perception of ecological value. The designed educational program may use an experiential education approach incorporating objective knowledge of Earth’s current state. The urban forest education program must encourage visitors’ connection and participation with nature. Moreover, knowledge and information about Earth’s environmental quality can increase visitors’ perceived value, ensuring that their activities in the urban forest contribute to improved health, environmental quality and social environment. Thus, with well-managed and provided education, they are encouraged to adopt low-carbon action because it complements their contribution to a better quality environment.

The theoretical contribution of this research is generated through the role of urban forest attractiveness in the intention to conduct low-carbon action, which influences solutions to existing urban environmental problems. This work exhibits that both ecological attractiveness and attractiveness of artificial elements in urban forests can attract visitors and subsequently boost their outdoor recreation motivation, ecological experience and perceived value and then turn them to boost their intention to conduct low-carbon action. The physical characteristics of a site are behavioral stimuli that can increase a person’s motivation, experience and perception of the value of the environment, thereby increasing their intention to engage in low-carbon actions. This environment behavioral construction is fundamental in understanding that urban forests offer ecological benefits and influence the social quality of urban communities. Nevertheless, without visitor activity, urban forests are merely physical entities that become increasingly demanding to maintain. Due to this, an urban forest that is socially active and has an influence on promoting environmentally conscious behavior is needed, and its presence is becoming ever more crucial. This work shows the significance of integrating psychosocial approaches into managing tourism in urban forests.

This paper explores the relationship between earnings management and firms' value through the moderating effect of the missing elements – corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and state ownership in Russian companies. The main argument of the paper is that CSR disclosure can be used as a mitigating mechanism to weaken the negative relationship between earnings manipulation and market value. Additionally test whether state ownership is an important moderating factor in this relationship are conducted as state has always played an important role in the emerging Russian market.

The hypotheses are tested on panel data for 223 publicly listed Russian firms for the period 2012–2018. A number of robustness tests are used to check the obtained results for consistency. Following previous research GMM method is employed to address endogeneity concerns.

Supported by stakeholder theory, it is observed that firms that disclosed more CSR information experience a weaker negative relationship between earnings management and market value because investors and other stakeholders positively evaluate a positive CSR image. This negative effect of earnings management on market value is even weaker for state-owned companies as market participants appreciate involvement of state-owned companies in CSR activities and place greater expectations on these firms to be responsible without clear understanding whether these actions are “window dressing” for this type of companies or not.

The study results provide new insights into the relation between earnings management, firm's value, CSR disclosure and state ownership in emerging-market firms. The paper highlight the importance of considering country-specific factors, such as state ownership, while analysing the market reaction on CSR disclosure and earnings management since the institutional peculiarities may help to explain differences in the obtained results.

This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.

The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.

The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.

The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.

The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into how management accountants can become relevant business partners out of respect for existing locally developed accounts of economic performance for decision-making.

The paper is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with local business actors, in this case, families from seven financially successful Danish dairy farms. The casework and the analysis have been informed by pragmatic constructivism.

The local business actors do not use the official accounting system for ongoing cost-management-related decision-making. Instead, they use several epistemic methods that include locally developed decision models, experiences, rules of thumb and intuition. The farmers use these vernacular accountings to compensate for the cost management illusion that the formal accounting system tends to create. What the study suggests is that when management accountants engage as business partners, they are likely to enter a space where accounting is already present.

This paper argues that local business actors practice epistemic methods where they develop and use vernacular accountings to support their managerial practice, also in the absence of a professional management accountant. These vernacular accountings may lead the local actors into an illusion because the vernacular accountings do not necessarily have an inherent economic logic and theoretical reliability. The role of the management accountant in such a setting is hence to understand, support and advance local epistemic methods. Becoming a business partner requires a combination of management accounting analytical skills and a sense of empathy and sensitivity regarding what is already at play and how this can become an object of discussion without violating the values of the other.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee requires management plans for world heritage site (WHS) nominations including the evidence of involvement of all stakeholders. Many studies report different engagement methods to ensure the participation of the local communities in these plans. However, this study aims to assess and gauge the community-held knowledge transfer and the quality of their contribution to heritage management plans by proposing an interdisciplinary method.

The method had been developed to scrutinise community-held knowledge transfer in WHS management plans, combining the domains of knowledge representation with qualitative social research.

Local knowledge transferred into WHS management plans is poor. The proposed method gauged three levels of community knowledge transfer to WHS. The method enables results to be quantified and the process to be reproducible. The method can be used to quality control the design of WHS management plans. The method can be used to inform evaluation protocols to be developed by UNESCO.

The proposed method can be used to inform evaluation protocols to be developed by ICOMOS and IUCN, which safeguard holistic aspects of heritage in WHS management plans.

The method provides reproducible, quantifiable results from clear premises. Despite being applied to a case study in Turkey, it can be adjusted to any context as WHS management plans tend to follow a standard format. It, therefore, provides a tool to quality control the design of these plans.

This paper examines the ways in which Chinese university middle managers evaluate subordinate performance in response to the Chinese Double First-Class University Plan, a national project that ranks the performance of universities. In exploring compromise arrangements, the hybridised valuing activity of middle managers is found to be shaped by emergent and extant macro-foundations.

The qualitative data from 49 semi-structured interviews at five Chinese public universities were conducted. Drawing on macro-foundational studies and the sociology of worth (SW) theory, the analysis helps to identify socially shared patterns of actions and outcomes.

The findings elucidate the interplay between diverse economic, social, political and institutional values and the compromise-making by middle managers. The authors find that contextual factors restrict Chinese academic middle managers' autonomy, preventing workable compromise. Through the selective adoption of international and local management practices, compromise has evolved into a private differential treaty at the operational level.

A nuanced explanation reveals how the macro-foundations of Chinese society influence middle managers who engage with accounting when facilitating compromise. This study helps outsiders better understand the complex convergence and divergence of performance evaluative practices in Chinese universities against the backdrop of global market-based forces and the moral dimensions of organisational life. The findings have wider implications for the Chinese government in navigating institutional steps and developing supportive policies to enable middle managers to advance productive but also sustainable compromise.

To address the absence of Lean in transportation logistics in the digital era, this study aims to investigate the application of Lean transportation (LT) tools to reduce waste and facilitate the digital transformation of dedicated road transportation in the offshore industry.

The study adopts action research with a multimethod approach, including a scoping review, focus groups (FG) and participant observation. The research is conducted within the offshore supply chain of a major oil and gas company.

Implementing LT’s continuous improvement tools, particularly value stream mapping (VSM), reduces offshore transportation waste and provides empirical evidence about the intersection of Lean and digital technologies. Applying techniques drawn from organisational learning theory (OLT), stakeholders involved in VSM mapping and FGs engage in problem-solving and develop action plans, driving digital transformation. Waste reduction in loading and unloading stages leads to control actions, automation and process improvements, significantly reducing downtime. This results in an annual monetary gain of US$1.3m. The study also identifies waste related to human effort and underutilised digital resources.

This study contributes to theory and practice by using action research and LT techniques in a real intervention case. From the lens of OLT, it highlights the potential of LT tools for digital transformation and demonstrates the convergence of waste reduction through Lean and Industry 4.0 technologies in the offshore supply chain. Practical outputs, including a benchmarking questionnaire and a plan-do-check-act cycle, are provided for other companies in the same industry segment.

This paper explores the orchestration of digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

The study applies the activity theory to explorative multiple case studies. Observations of innovation activities in five business cases take place at two large international organisations.

The results underline five logics of action that drive digital innovation: (1) digital transformation, (2) technology translation, (3) catalyst agents, (4) digital thread and (5) empowerment. Further, the case study organisations highlight the importance of developing a sustainable culture capable of continuously adopting new technologies, processes and infrastructure that will allow the management of digital innovations.

The study empirically shows the motivations and challenges in orchestrating digital innovation in Industry 4.0 organisations.

This study aims to analyze the alignment between sustainable performance and sustainability planning in higher education, proposing a strategic map that integrates planning with the implementation of performance actions and sustainable performance on campuses.

The literature review development addresses sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs). Data collection took place in two ways, documentary, through the analysis of documents and through an open interview, guided by a script with 13 questions. For data interpretation, the content analysis technique was applied.

To achieve the objective of this work, this study proposed a sustainable performance strategic map for better management of the university’s green strategies, based on three dimensions: internal processes, educational and sustainable performance.

This study’s main contribution was to propose a sustainable performance strategic map as a strategic management system aimed at HEIs to accelerate the promotion of sustainability in these organizations.