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The purpose of this study is to develop and validate the business streamlining (BS) model proposed in 2017.

This study/paper develops and validates the qualitatively generated BS model, a conceptual model of service sourcing relationships, by testing it quantitatively. A survey was sent to chief exective officers, chief purchasing officers or facility managers in 764 private or public companies in Sweden with an annual turnover exceeding € 10m. The categories were tested and analyzed by means of factor analysis.

The BS model for managing service sourcing processes was confirmed to be significant overall, meaning that it is applicable irrespective of service sourcing context. The efficiency pursuing (EP) was found to have an interlinking role that calls for a revision of the BS model. Furthermore, the four categories tended to load pairwise.

Although this cross-sectional study confirms the relevance of the BS model for managing service-sourcing processes, further studies should examine both the relative significance of its categories in different service-sourcing contexts and why the four main categories tend to pair.

The results support that the model is flexible and adaptable to a wide range of service-sourcing circumstances. Irrespective of the relative complexity of facility management (FM) sourcing processes, the categories can be adapted to fit the service sourcing context. Thus, it can be used as a tool to analyze and facilitate strategic decision-making.

The paper validates that the BS model can represent the dynamics of different service-sourcing processes, regardless of the complexity of the context.

The construction industry is shifting towards becoming more circular by reducing waste, reusing building materials and embracing regenerative solutions for energy generation and biodiversity conservation. Thus, construction professionals must perform diversified services to achieve a circular built environment (CBE). Implementing resource planning and waste management in CBE has already posed challenges to the quantity surveying profession; thus, quantity surveyors (QSs) should be equipped with new roles and competencies to tackle challenges in achieving a CBE. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the functions and competencies of QSs at the design and building material sourcing stages in achieving a CBE according to 3R principles.

The research apprehended a qualitative approach, including two expert interview rounds adhering to the Delphi technique with 14 and 11 experts per each round. Manual content analysis was incorporated to analyse the collected data.

The research findings revealed the important roles and competencies of QSs in achieving a CBE. In addition, essential functions and competencies were categorised according to the 3R principles (reduce, reuse, recycle) to successfully implement CBE during the Design and Building Material Sourcing stages. According to the 3R principles of CBE, cost control, cost planning, feasibility studies, measurement and quantification, risk management, value engineering and innovations and technologies were well-received by most interviewees as essential roles of QSs during the Design and Building Material Sourcing stages. Further, basic/mandatory competencies (personal, interpersonal, professional practice and business skills), economic analysis, BIM management, cost management and risk management are highly regarded by experts for QS as important competencies to achieve CBE.

With new construction trends, QSs must enhance their conventional roles and competencies and search for new skills and competencies. Those skills and competencies could be linked to the CE concept, either directly or indirectly. Since QS holds a prominent place in sustainable construction in CBE, adapting to changes in the construction industry such as CBE is timely for QSs. Further, there is a shortage of literature regarding QSs' roles and competencies in achieving a CBE; thus, this study will contribute by identifying new avenues for QSs in achieving a CBE in the practice and the research.

The aim of this paper is to enhance understanding of the use of sourcing teams (STs) by organisations in their procurement and supply chain management. The paper achieves this by exploring, within the context of the supply chain directorate of a global aerospace manufacturing company (GAMC), both the relationship between sourcing teamwork effectiveness (TE) and sourcing task-work effectiveness (TA) and the relationship between individual team member knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) and TE.

The authors develop a theoretical model positing positive links between both KSAs and TE and TE and TA. The model is empirically validated using partial least squares structural equation modelling in a survey of 108 ST members from a GAMC.

The authors identify that, within GAMC, four of five KSAs drive TE and further discover the direct effects of TE on improved TA. Additionally, the authors observe within GAMC the indirect effects of KSAs on TA cascading through TE.

Limitations include the use of a single firm and self-report measures for data collection. In spite of this, the paper has numerous research implications. Previous research on STs has combined factors related to TE and TA. In this paper, TE and TA were disaggregated, and the relationships between them were explored. The relationships were found to be positive within GAMC, a finding that strengthens the evidence base supporting the use of STs by organisations in their procurement and supply chain management. In addition, the paper also strengthened the evidence base regarding the importance of KSAs to TE, which complements existing research highlighting the importance of team-level factors and individual technical attributes.

The findings from GAMC suggest that executives/managers should take an individual as well as a team-level perspective when developing STs and should consider KSAs as well as technical knowledge when judging individuals’ suitability for inclusion within an ST. There are established KSA tests in the literature that could be used by managers for this task. The findings also inform executives/managers that TE matters for TA and needs attention and investment, especially where sourcing tasks concern high-value areas and/or critical incidents within supply chains.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to explore the relationship between TE and TA. Establishing that this relationship is a positive one provides critically important evidence regarding the efficacy of STs, which are widely used within procurement and supply chain management. It is also a rare study looking at TE from the perspective of individual team member KSAs, with further positive relationships revealed. Both findings enhance what is a very limited literature on a widely used practice within procurement and supply chain management.

Based on the organizational learning theory, this study regards market orientation as market-based learning and seeks to advance insight into how proactive and responsive market orientations affect two kinds of open innovation strategies, sourcing and selling. A firm’s information and communication technology (ICT) capability is considered an essential moderator in these relationships.

This study adopted a quantitative design and used the questionnaire survey method to collect data. The authors finally collected data on samples in China. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that proactive and responsive market orientations act as antecedents of open innovation, showing linear and curvilinear relationships between them. Specifically, responsive market orientation positively affects selling, and proactive market orientation positively affects sourcing. Responsive market orientation has an inverted U-shaped relationship with sourcing, and proactive market orientation has a U-shaped relationship with selling. In addition, ICT capability strengthens the positive effects of market orientation on open innovation and weakens the negative effects.

Drawing on organizational learning theory, this study provides a novel perspective to explain the complex mechanism between market orientation and open innovation. This study also explores the moderating role of ICT capability in this process, which advances research on how to select open innovation strategies under different conditions.

This study aims to identify how Brazilian followers of an X/Twitter profile engage in theory-building processes leading up to the January 8, 2023 riots in Brasília, the Brazilian capital. This paper seeks to understand how cognitive and sociocultural processes weave together to weaponize collective knowledge construction that, in isolation, could be seen as virtuous but, in specific contexts, might lead to radicalization.

This study uses qualitative content analysis of comments on ambiguous X/Twitter posts published by a conspiratorial profile associated with former President Jair Bolsonaro. Content was published in the three weeks that preceded the coup d’état attempt by Bolsonaro supporters on January 8, 2023.

Findings point to users’ resorting to intuitive knowledge to support sensemaking processes in their search for subliminal meanings in tweets. That includes, for example, attempts to crack binary code-encrypted messages. This study also identified practices of cross-media sourcing, where users collect evidence from alternative social media channels to interpret messages containing verbal and visual information. Finally, this study found that religious symbols are often instrumentalized and become a lens through which followers organize information to integrate with their existing knowledge and assumptions.

With this work, the authors build on existing scholarship on epistemologies used by conspiratorial and radicalized groups as they engage in systematic sensemaking and often refer to religion to interpret messages that motivate extreme political position-taking. This study addresses a similar phenomenon as it unfolds in an understudied geographical context (Brazil) and seeks to demonstrate how individuals engage in collective sensemaking practices. The authors hope that their findings inform educators as they explore the affordances of social media to foster positive collective learning experiences in reasoning supported by social media.

The originality of this study is twofold. First, this study uses an analytical lens that draws on the learning sciences and cognitive science for inquiry of radicalization happening around social media. The authors understand that social media lend themselves particularly interesting to the analysis, as they are settings where notions of mastery blur, and individuals engage in conversations on complex, controversial topics. With that engagement, they demonstrate willingness to reason collectively. Second, this study investigates how those phenomena unfold in an understudied context, responding to calls for more diversity in research in the learning sciences as well as in media studies.

This was an explorative study, the purpose of which was to understand how Chinese flexitarians were motivated to reduce their animal-based food consumption and specifically to explore why and what was behind these changes. Further, this study provides insights into how a transition towards a more plant-based diet might occur.

This study conducted 30 in-depth online interviews with Chinese flexitarians from two major Chinese cities. Interview transcripts were analysed through the lens of the Food Choice Process Model.

Participants adopted flexitarian diets due to health (n = 22), sustainability (n = 5) or ethical (n = 3) concerns. Many participants stated that they still enjoyed animal-sourced foods, were uncomfortable talking about their dietary transition and needed more social support. Consequently, most participants were unlikely to progress to vegetarian or vegan diets. While there are some commonalities between these findings and the results of similar studies with Western consumers, the many culturally and context-specific results revealed herein make an important contribution to the sustainability literature.

This is the first study exploring Chinese consumers’ flexitarianism experiences. These findings can be used by the food industry and interested business actors to improve communication and promotional strategies that encourage consumers to make healthier and more sustainable food choices.

This study aims to demonstrate the importance of organizational networks in organizational performance is relatively rich; less understood are processes in organizational networking that entrepreneurs and organizations use in making sense of rapidly changing contexts for organizational performance.

This study conducts an exploratory organizational-level narrative analysis into firms’ experiences in two major emerging markets (EMs), namely, Russia and India – to identify organizational networking processes in the midst of institutional upheavals. The study is based on in-depth case studies of firms in EMs sourced from interview data from senior management and consolidated with secondary data.

The authors find that initially firms rely on informal networks (including blat/svyazi and jaan-pehchaan/jan-pehchan) and later formal (in the form of bureaucratic followed by proprietary) networks to make sense of the changes and uncertainties in turbulent environments. The authors also demonstrate the cyclical nature of strategic sensemaking in the process of developing organizational networks for performance.

The study has a number of theoretical and practical contributions. First, it extends the well-established business networking construct to a more inclusive organizational networking construct. Second, it demonstrates that sensemaking is dependent on interorganizational networking from the outset and throughout the growth of an organization in turbulent markets – from informal to formal bureaucratic and proprietary networks. Finally, this study is unique in documenting the entire process of sensemaking from scanning to performance as well as successfully demonstrating the cyclical nature of sensemaking.

Contradictory sustainability priorities and perspectives among supply chain actors in greening transportation can be challenging. Several of these contradictions can be described as paradoxes (i.e. interests that are logical in themselves, but become irrational when perceived together). The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of paradoxical tensions hampering the greening of transportation in transport buyer–supplier dyads.

A case study method targeting greening transportation in two transport buyer–supplier dyads was applied, followed by an analysis with a point-of-departure in paradox theory.

Tensions related to performing, belonging, learning and organizing paradoxes in greening transportation were identified. These tensions arise as a consequence of actions, perspectives and other tensions, within three identified loci in individual companies and in dyads.

By identifying examples of tensions through the lens of paradoxes in a particular setting, this study provides an increased understanding of why the transition toward green transportation goes slow, despite the high ambitions of involved actors. The suggested framework provides a novel contribution to the literature that further increases the understanding of tensions, by providing additional insights into where tensions arise and how actions, perspectives and tensions in one place of a locus spectrum can disseminate along that spectrum.

This study is original because it applies paradox theory and the four categories of performing, belonging, learning and organizing within the field of greening transportation, and in particular as a lens to study interactions between different actors.

This study aims to examine decision factors for global sourcing, differentiated into transcontinental and continental sourcing to obtain insight into locational aspects of sourcing decisions and global trends. This study analyzed various country perceptions to reveal their influence on sourcing decisions. The country of origin (COO) theory explains why certain country perceptions and images influence purchasing experts in their selection of suppliers.

This study used a two-study approach. In Study 1, the authors conducted discrete choice card experiments with 71 purchasing experts located in Europe and the USA to examine the importance of essential decision factors for global sourcing. Given the clear evidence that location is a factor in sourcing decisions, in Study 2 the authors investigated purchasers’ perceptions and images of countries, adding country ranking experiments on various perceived characteristics such as quality, price and technology.

Study 1 provides evidence that the purchasers’ personal relationship with the supplier plays a decisive role in the supplier selection process. While product quality and location impact sourcing decisions, the attraction of the buying company and cultural barriers are less significant. Interestingly, however, these factors seem as important as price to respondents. This implies that a strong relationship with suppliers and good quality products are essential aspects of a reliable and robust supply chain in the post-COVID-19 era. Examining the locational aspect in detail, Study 2 linked the choice card experiments with country ranking experiments. In this study, the authors found that purchasing experts consider that transcontinental countries such as Japan and China offer significant advantages in terms of price and technology. China has enhanced its quality, which is recognizable in the country ranking experiments. Therefore, decisions on global sourcing are not just based on such high-impact factors as price and availability; country perceptions are also influential. Additionally, the significance of the locational aspect could be linked to certain country images of transcontinental suppliers, as the COO theory describes.

The new approach divides global sourcing into transcontinental and European sourcing to evaluate special decision factors and link these factors to the locational aspect of sourcing decisions. To deepen the clear evidence for the locational aspect and investigate the possible influence of country perceptions, the authors applied the COO theory. This approach enabled authors to show the strong influence of country perception on purchasing departments, which is represented by the locational effect. Hence, the success of transcontinental countries relies not only on factors such as their availability but also on the purchasers’ positive perceptions of these countries in terms of technology and price.