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We know how to structure violence. The military industrial complex and its auxiliary institutions, such as the private weapons and securities industries, are prime examples. When we use the Galtungian lens and add ecoviolence to Johan Galtung’s classic direct–structural–cultural violence triangle, we get a violence diamond, or perhaps more accurately, a web of violence (see Turpin & Kurtz, 1996). To what we often think of as violence (which is direct), we must add the institutions structured to harm individuals, groups, cultures, and the ecosphere itself. We could, however, build sustainable development with direct, structural, cultural, and ecological nonviolence. We already have institutions that structure nonviolence – or often both violence and nonviolence in contradictory simultaneous ways: families, faith and cultural institutions, and friendship networks. We also have numerous peaceful societies, economies, and cultures that provide models such as Bhutan’s Happiness and Well-being paradigm. Jennifer Turpin and I wrote about the Web of Violence in 1996, which we collectively weave from micro to macro levels of life, but we also need to attend to and weave a Web of Nonviolence. This chapter investigates how we can be more intentional and systematic in weaving a nonviolent web, following a three-step Gandhian process: research, analyse, and mobilise.

This study focuses on case studies to identify the antecedents to the effective use of business intelligence (BI). For decades, research has shown that post-adoption behaviour has a critical role in the success of technology adoption. Efforts have been drawn beyond intention and adoption point to the effective use of technology. In the case of BI adoption, its nature of discretional use adds complexity to the equation. Despite the statistical evidence provided, research has indicated the need for other approaches to shed light on the antecedents of BI’s effective use.

This study employs a systematic review approach to synthesise 20 years of related works from three major research databases. It focuses on qualitative and mixed-method research to identify new avenues in the related topic.

The findings provide the taxonomy of the antecedents. It identifies 40 antecedents grouped into 8 categories: technology, operational support, resources, governance, strategic, individual behaviour, environment and culture. It also highlights several organisation-specific and individual-specific antecedents, such as analytic leadership, business vision, collaborative working culture, organisational learning culture and user trust.

The study provides insight from interpretative case studies. It leverages the relevance of BI’s research to its practices. It offers new avenues in the BI post-adoption studies at the organisational and the individual level of analysis.

This paper focuses on managerial practices in the context of supply chain. It focuses on the innovation of monitoring and control practices and proposes a holistic approach to managing social sustainability in the supply chain, extending the point of view beyond the traditional boundaries of individual factories or their immediate suppliers.

The analysis is based on a systematic review of scientific literature on managerial practices in supply chains, with a specific focus on social sustainability. The primary goal is to identify essential measurement strategies and key indicator factors within this domain.

Our findings highlight that most of scientific literature focuses on qualitative approaches, though quantitative approaches are also used. Despite the extensive research, an under-investigated area is the use of hybrid models for measuring social sustainability in the supply chain.

This framework is designed to identify the main categories of measurement and relative indicators for assessing social sustainability in supply chains.

This research proposes an innovative and integrated framework, leveraging a hybrid approach that addresses the limitations observed in existing management practices. Additionally, it provides directions for future research.

Over the last 2 decades, supply chain sustainability research has become a highly dynamic and fruitful study area. This field has garnered significant attention due to its potential to reshape decision-making processes within supply chains. At the same time, the practical side of supply chain operations remains intensely competitive in today’s business landscape. Furthermore, the current academic research aims to outline effective strategies for achieving sustainability across supply chains, particularly in the manufacturing sector. In response to these challenges, this research has conducted an integrated multi-criteria decision-making approach to evaluate sustainable supply chain performance from the triple bottom line perspective, including financial, environmental, and social performance.

The initial stage involves selecting the crucial criteria (short-term and long-term) and alternatives for sustainable supply chain performance (SSCP) from experts and conducting an in-depth literature review. Initially, there were 17 criteria, but after a pilot test with co-authors and online discussions with experts, the number of criteria was subsequently reduced to 9. In the second phase, the Best-Worst Method (BWM) was applied to rank and prioritize the criteria. The third and final stage examined the causal relationship between the identified criteria, utilizing the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique.

Based on BWM analysis results, the top three criteria in terms of prominence are: (1) return on investment (ROI), (2) product quality, and (3) manufacturing lead time. Out of the three alternatives, financial performance (FP) is the most crucial dimension for SSCP, followed by environmental performance (ENP) and social performance (SP). On the other hand, the DEMATEL approach showed that work health and safety (short-term criterion), asset utilization (long-term criterion), energy consumption (long-term criterion), waste disposal (long-term criterion), manufacturing lead time (short-term criterion), and on-time delivery (short-term criterion) are categorized within the cause group, while criteria such as return on investment (ROI) (long-term criterion), customer-service level (short-term criterion), and product quality (long-term criterion) fall into the effect group.

The proposed study has certain drawbacks that pave the way for future research directions. First, it is worth noting the need for a larger sample size to ensure the reliability of results, the potential inclusion of additional criteria to enhance the assessment of sustainability performance, and the consideration of a qualitative approach to gain deeper insights into the outcomes. In addition, fuzziness in qualitative subjective perception could be imperative when collecting data to ensure its reliability, as translating experts’ perceptions into exact numerical values can be challenging because human perceptions often carry elements of uncertainty or vagueness. Therefore, fuzzy integrated MCDM frameworks are better suited for future research to handle the uncertainties involved in human perceptions, making it a more appropriate approach for decision-making in scenarios where traditional MCDM methods may prove insufficient.

The proposed framework will enable decision-makers to gain deeper insights into how various decision criteria impact SSCP, thus providing a comprehensive evaluation of SSCP that considers multiple dimensions, such as financial, environmental, and social performance within the manufacturing sector.

The proposed study is the first empirical study to integrate both BWM and DEMATEL approaches to evaluate sustainable supply chain performance in the manufacturing context.

This chapter explains how and why the knowledge economy will increase the demand for knowledge engineering. It defines and traces the evolution of knowledge engineering. It identifies the two components of knowledge engineering – elicitation and representation. It discusses the increased importance of tacit knowledge, specifically know-what and know-how, for organizations and companies. The increased demand for knowledge engineering calls for increased number of knowledge engineers. Knowledge engineering will expand beyond its current homes in systems development and cognitive science. The MASK methodology is an important intermediary between formal knowledge engineering and the methods needed to develop natural language and conceptual modeling for the knowledge economy.

Entrepreneurship of universities has a critical role due to its important effects. However, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the methodology for evaluating university entrepreneurship. Evaluating university entrepreneurship provides valuable information to policymakers and governments. This research presents an evaluation methodology for assessing university entrepreneurship using a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach.

For this purpose, entrepreneurship data of 50 universities from Türkiye were used. The evaluation framework consists of 4 main criteria and 23 sub-criteria. The importance level was determined by weighting the main criterion and sub-criteria with the subjective Best-Worst Method (BWM) based on expert opinions and the objective CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method. The importance levels were determined by weighting the main and sub-criteria using the subjective BWM based on expert opinions and the objective CRITIC method. The final rankings were obtained by integrating the different ranking values obtained with the Borda function.

Findings revealed that the most important main criterion in the entrepreneurship of universities is economic and social contribution activities, and the most important sub-criterion is international patents. The proposed method ranked all universities according to entrepreneurship. Sensitivity and validation analyses proved that the method is robust, stable and consistent.

This study also provides a new perspective to policymakers and decision-makers in evaluating university entrepreneurship.

This study, which uses a hybrid approach of MCDM methods to evaluate the entrepreneurship of universities, can be adapted to different national and regional higher education systems, and this study provides guidance to researchers in this regard.

To evaluate the temperature-dependency of the Young’s and shear moduli of concrete after exposure to moderately elevated temperatures using the non-destructive impulse excitation technique (IET).

The study involved heating the concrete up to 225 °C and measuring the dynamic Young’s and shear moduli using the non-destructive technique of impulse excitation, which measures the natural vibration frequency from a mechanical impulse received by an acoustic sensor. The effects of temperature on the dynamic Young’s and shear moduli were analysed and the importance of the spatial variability of the measured values was also verified.

The study found that even moderately elevated temperatures (below 225 °C) resulted in a significant permanent reduction in the Young’s modulus of concrete (reduction in the range of 23%–36% for the maximum temperature considered in this research) as well as a modest and permanent reduction in the shear modulus of around 6%. It was also observed that spatial variability of the mechanical properties of concrete plays an important role in the measured values; higher dispersion of the results was found for the values of the Young’s and shear moduli of concrete measured along the height of the beam. The non-destructive test method used in this study was found to be extremely useful in the investigation of heat-related damage in concrete structures for its ease of use, low time consumption and accuracy. The results were consistent with the published literature.

This study provides important insights into the temperature-dependent behaviour of the dynamic Young’s and shear moduli of concrete and highlights the significance of proper consideration of the spatial variability of the measured values. The use of a non-destructive test method for continuous acoustic testing during heating and cooling proved to be effective, and the findings contribute to the fields of materials science and civil engineering in understanding the effects of elevated temperatures on concrete properties. The findings confirm that IET can be easily used to gather important information in the condition assessment and rehabilitation of concrete structures after a fire event. Further studies to foster the application of this technique to real structures are suggested.

Purpose: To systematically identify and critically analyse the challenges and opportunities for the development of internal controls in the insurance industry within the new technological revolution Industry 5.0.

Need for the study: Effective internal controls are essential for maintaining financial integrity, protecting policyholder interests and complying with regulatory requirements. Covering risk, the insurance industry helps to protect companies and households from financial losses resulting from adverse situations. Financial stability of these institutions is crucial for financial well-being of society, reinforced in the current period of technological revolution Industry 5.0.

Methodology: Detailed review of current literature and existing practices regarding traditional internal controls in the insurance industry including the framework analysis for further development related to a technological shift. We also use the impact analysis of Industry 5.0 characterised by the integration of novel technologies and cyber–physical systems that alters the landscape for internal controls.

Findings: The impact of Industry 5.0 on the insurance industry can be summarised in three areas: (1) changes in risk leading to changes in demand for insurance, (2) changes in internal processes and (3) changes in competition in the insurance industry. While insurance companies are complex institutions, developments in all these areas are closely linked to business success. We conclude that this technological shift could help insurers to reduce costs associated with previously manual and repetitive activities.

Practical implications: Adaptation of internal controls in insurance industry by technological innovations in Industry 5.0 could increase the transparency of financial integrity, following the increase in the protection of policyholders’ interests.

The authors mobilise stewardship theory, which delves into trust and collaboration dynamics, advocating for long-term gains through actions beneficial to the broader community. Used as a fundamental framework to conceptualise the model, stewardship theory enhances the understanding of the effect of purchasing social responsibility (PSR) practices to foster innovativeness and performance through the supply chain (SC). This study aims to examine the relationship between PSR, SC innovativeness (SC-INNO) and SC operational performance (SCOP). In addition, the moderating effect of sustainability labels on these relationships will be studied.

Based on survey data from 177 organisations analysed through partial least square structural equation modelling, the results suggest that PSR has a positive and significant effect on SC-INNO and SCOP. In addition, SC-INNO plays a partial mediation role since the direct effect between PSR and SCOP is validated. Furthermore, the moderating effects of holding a sustainability label and industry type about PSR and SCOP are supported.

The results indicate a significant positive influence of PSR on both SC-INNO and operational performance. SC-INNO is found to partially mediate the PSR–SCOP relationship. Moreover, sustainability labels and industry type significantly moderate the effects of PSR on SCOP.

The findings extend stewardship theory into the sustainable purchasing and supply management field by providing empirical support for PSR as a reflection of stewardship behaviours by fostering innovation and performance throughout the SC.

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.