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Strategic flexibility (SF) has become increasingly important for firms because of the fast changes in the external environment. In line with the practical importance of SF, an emerging research field has developed around it that has attempted to understand the nature of SF and the key relationships. The aim of this study is to unveil the semantic structure of the recent literature on SF and to suggest new promising areas for future research.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review with a bibliographic analysis technique, which allows authors to identify the main recent streams in the literature, as well as offer reflections and suggestions for future research.

The authors uncover three main emerging areas in the research on SF, namely SF as a dynamic capability, the role of knowledge management for SF and the relationship between a firm SF and the external environment. The authors put forward three avenues for future research on SF: Avenue 1. SF, business model innovation (BMI) and other dynamic capabilities (DC), Avenue 2. Digital technologies and SF/organizational agility and Avenue 3. SF and sustainability. Articles included in the special issue entitled “A strategic perspective on flexibility, agility and adaptability in the digital era” contribute to Avenue 2, thus paving the way for filling some of the identified gaps regarding the relationship between SF and digitalization.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first literature review on SF that uses a bibliometric approach to draw conclusions on the findings in the literature. The review contributes to the theoretical understanding of SF by illustrating and explicating core topics that have persisted over time, as well as by presenting three main avenues for further developing authors’ knowledge around SF.

The safety and reliability of high-speed trains rely on the structural integrity of their components and the dynamic performance of the entire vehicle system. This paper aims to define and substantiate the assessment of the structural integrity and dynamical integrity of high-speed trains in both theory and practice. The key principles and approaches will be proposed, and their applications to high-speed trains in China will be presented.

First, the structural integrity and dynamical integrity of high-speed trains are defined, and their relationship is introduced. Then, the principles for assessing the structural integrity of structural and dynamical components are presented and practical examples of gearboxes and dampers are provided. Finally, the principles and approaches for assessing the dynamical integrity of high-speed trains are presented and a novel operational assessment method is further presented.

Vehicle system dynamics is the core of the proposed framework that provides the loads and vibrations on train components and the dynamic performance of the entire vehicle system. For assessing the structural integrity of structural components, an open-loop analysis considering both normal and abnormal vehicle conditions is needed. For assessing the structural integrity of dynamical components, a closed-loop analysis involving the influence of wear and degradation on vehicle system dynamics is needed. The analysis of vehicle system dynamics should follow the principles of complete objects, conditions and indices. Numerical, experimental and operational approaches should be combined to achieve effective assessments.

The practical applications demonstrate that assessing the structural integrity and dynamical integrity of high-speed trains can support better control of critical defects, better lifespan management of train components and better maintenance decision-making for high-speed trains.

This study applies the target similarity model to examine the effects of servant leadership on supervisor commitment and supervisor citizenship behavior. The mediating role of supervisory commitment is explored to determine the relationship between servant leadership and supervisor citizenship behavior. The difference in supervisor gender is examined in the linkage between servant leadership and supervisory commitment.

The data were collected through a survey of 478 salespeople in the retail industry. Structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques were used to verify the hypotheses of this study.

The findings showed significant support for the direct and indirect effects of servant leadership on supervisor commitment and supervisor citizenship behavior. Furthermore, the positive relationship between servant leadership and supervisory commitment was stronger among female supervisors than male supervisors.

Due to the scarcity of studies conducted on the linkages of servant leadership, supervisory commitment and supervisory citizenship behavior, this study theoretically and empirically contributes to the leadership literature as it is the first study to investigate these direct and indirect relationships. Similarly, this study examined gender differences in servant leadership to fill the gap in the research field.

This article provides deeper insights into the measurement of servant leadership within the Chinese culture. Servant leadership is viewed as a responsible leadership style that is beneficial to organizations by awaking, engaging and developing employees and working from a sense of service and stewardship for the world with a long-term perspective.

The paper consists of a survey study that examines the relationships between 5 servant leadership measures translated into Chinese and outcome measures using a sample of 463 participants.

The authors' results show that the five measures are very comparable. Although some differences exist, the combined conclusions from internal consistency, intercorrelations and correlations to outcome variables and factor analysis confirmed their overall commonality. A core group of 11 items is introduced as a potential scale to represent the underlying variance of all 55 items.

This study validates how the five instruments are grounded in the core aspects of servant leadership described by Robert Greenleaf, the service aspect of choosing to become a leader and the importance for a leader to give attention to the followers' personal growth, meaningful work and well-being.

This paper is supposed to provide a critical review of current research progress on thermal management in grinding of superalloys, and future directions and challenges. By understanding the current progress and identifying the developing directions, thermal management can be achieved in the grinding of superalloys to significantly improve the grinding quality and efficiency.

The relevant literature is collected from Web of Science, Scopus, CNKI, Google scholar, etc. A total of 185 literature is analyzed, and the findings in the literature are systematically summarized. In this case, the current development and future trends of thermal management in grinding of superalloys can be concluded.

The recent developments in grinding superalloys, demands, challenges and solutions are analyzed. The theoretical basis of thermal management in grinding, the grinding heat partition analysis, is also summarized. The novel methods and technologies for thermal management are developed and reviewed, i.e. new grinding technologies and parameter optimization, super abrasive grinding wheel technologies, improved lubrication, highly efficient coolant delivery and enhanced heat transfer by passive thermal devices. Finally, the future trends and challenges are identified.

Superalloys have excellent physical and mechanical properties, e.g. high thermal stability, and good high-temperature strength. The superalloys have been broadly applied in the aerospace, energy and automobile industries. Grinding is one of the most important precision machining technologies for superalloy parts. Owing to the mechanical and physical properties of superalloys, during grinding processes, forces are large and a massive heat is generated. Consequently, the improvement of grinding quality and efficiency is limited. It is important to conduct thermal management in the grinding of superalloys to decrease grinding forces and heat generation. The grinding heat is also dissipated in time by enhanced heat transfer methods. Therefore, it is necessary and valuable to holistically review the current situation of thermal management in grinding of superalloys and also provide the development trends and challenges.

This study analyzes the performance implications of adopting blockchain to support supply chain business processes. The technology holds as many promises as implementation challenges, so interest in its impact on operational performance has grown steadily over the last few years.

Drawing on transaction cost economics and the contingency theory, we built a set of hypotheses. These were tested through a long-term event study and an ordinary least squares regression involving 130 adopters listed in North America.

Compared with the control sample, adopters displayed significant abnormal performance in terms of labor productivity, operating cycle and profitability, whereas sales appeared unaffected. Firms in regulated settings and closer to the end customer showed more positive effects. Neither industry-level competition nor the early involvement of a project partner emerged as relevant contextual factors.

This research presents the first extensive analysis of operational performance based on objective measures. In contrast to previous studies and theoretical predictions, the results indicate that blockchain adoption is not associated with sales improvement. This can be explained considering that secure data storage and sharing do not guarantee the factual credibility of recorded data, which needs to be proved to customers in alternative ways. Conversely, improvements in other operational performance dimensions confirm that blockchain can support inter-organizational transactions more efficiently. The results are relevant in times when, following hype, there are signs of disengagement with the technology.

This study investigates the effect of asset specificity, inter-firm ecosystem and firm adaptability on supply chain integration. The study also investigates the mediation effect of firm adaptability on the relationship between asset specificity and supply chain integration and inter-firm ecosystem and supply chain integration.

This research applied a quantitative research methodology to investigate the interdependencies between study variables. A disproportionate stratified simple random sampling technique was used to select the firms that participated in the study. As a result, 103 food processing firms were selected from a total population of 345 firms located in Kampala district.

The findings reveal that the direct relationship between asset specificity and supply chain integration and inter-firm ecosystem and supply chain integration was found positive but insignificant. Both asset specificity and inter-firm ecosystem are associated positively with firm adaptability. A partial mediation was established between asset specificity and SCI while a full mediation effect was found in inter-firm ecosystem and SCI.

The study used perceptual measures to obtain responses on the various constructs investigated and how these constructs relate. To avoid biasing the results, key suppliers and customers were not involved due to multi-level relationships that they maintain with various firms.

This study contributes to existing studies by applying two theories. First, the study applies the Transaction Cost Theory to study the effect of asset specificity on supply chain integration. Secondly, the Complexity Adaptive System Theory was applied to examine the influence of firm adaptability and inter-firm ecosystem on supply chain integration. Few studies have focused on the effect of inter-firm ecosystem in the supply chain; yet, SCI involves network of various player making supply chains complex This study is among the few studies that have focused on adaptability in the food processing sector in a developing country like Uganda.