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This paper aims to shed light on the relevant benefits that collaborations with external innovation drivers can offer to companies in traditional sectors to embark on a twofold path oriented toward both a sustainable horizon and digital transformation (DT) goals.

This work describes the outcomes of the METROPOLIS project, financed by the Economic Development Ministry (MISE), to support small and medium enterprises in the DT process. The project involves the collaboration between the University of Naples Federico II and Palescandolo Lavorazioni Siderurgiche (PLS), an enterprise in the shipbuilding sector.

The project’s results highlight the complexity of the required interventions and show that DT is necessary but not sufficient condition to improve performance. Therefore, it is crucial to implement an appropriate decision support system based on advanced methodologies that can efficiently handle the system’s complexity, managing objectives oriented on efficiency and sustainability. Hence, the authors developed an original optimization approach to combine the need to ensure good production performances with sustainability-oriented objectives.

This study emphasizes the complex path necessary to radically transform companies’ processes across digital and sustainable paradigms through a real project experience. In particular, it demonstrates that efficiency and sustainability objectives may conflict, and multicriteria approaches may help overcome this. Hence, it may provide insights for stakeholders and researchers involved in DT and green transition processes.

The waste crisis in Australia exacerbates in the household sector, urging local councils and retailers/manufacturers to improve consumers’ recycling shopping behaviour – the most relevant touchpoint to the whole recycling process. In retail stores, packaging recyclability is communicated by either the central route (symbols/signs) or the peripheral route (packaging colours/materials); however, how the effects are differentiated and how the central route can be emphasised for a long-term attitudinal change are unclear. The research investigates these issues by applying the elaboration likelihood model (ELM).

A total sample of 420 respondents were recruited across Australia and managed online by Qualtrics. The data were analysed by using structural equation modelling with AMOS 29 software.

Both routes of processing are significant as per the model. Furthermore, the perceived argument quality of recyclable packaging signs mediates the effect of recycling consideration on consumers’ semiotic knowledge, enhancing attitudinal change via central processing. Recycling considerations display negative effects on recycling shopping behaviour.

This research theoretically contributes by extending the ELM with the newly proposed concepts of semiotic knowledge and symbols’ argument quality, further explaining consumers’ processing of information on packaging recyclability. From a practical perspective, the research provides valuable contributions for both policymakers and retailers by showing how central processing can be emphasised for a more sustainable attitudinal change to enhance recycling shopping behaviour.

Small and medium-sized contractors are critical to micro and macroeconomic performance. These contractors in South Africa have long been confronted with the problem of business failure because of a plethora of factors, including poor productivity. The purpose of this study is to investigate salient issues undermining the productivity of small and medium-sized contractors in South Africa. This study proposes alternative possibilities to engender productivity improvement.

Qualitative data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 15 contractors in Gauteng Province, South Africa. The research data were analysed using content and causal layered analyses.

Challenges to contractors’ productivity were associated with inadequately skilled workers, management competence and political factors. Skills development, construction business and political factors were dominant stakeholders’ perceptions. Metaphors for construction labour productivity are presented and reconstructed as alternative directions for productivity improvement.

Contractors lose a substantial amount of South African Rand to poor productivity. Alternative directions provided in this study can be leveraged to increase profitability in construction organizations, enhance the social well-being of South Africans and ultimately improve the contribution of contractors to the South African economy.

The causal layered analysis (CLA) applied in this study is novel to construction labour productivity research. The four connected layers of CLA, which make a greater depth of inquiry possible, were explored to investigate labour productivity in construction organizations.