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In spite of the wide experience already developed in the field of internal logistics using radio frequency, many companies are wary of its implantation due to the fact that the benefits of this technology are not easily quantifiable in most cases. Develops a detailed discounted payback analysis of the cash flows associated with the implementation of radio frequency, presenting a table with the needed payback periods depending on the size of the warehouse.

In the current highly competitive market, most organizations are moving away from reactive and compliance-based to proactive environmental management. This proactive approach to environmental management calls for taking a strategic approach to adoption of green practices beyond an organization’s internal borders. In this respect, incorporating green practices into a firm’s supply chain has attracted interest of operations management scholar and practitioners. The influence of external pressures on the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices has been established in the literature. This research posits that the adoption of GSCM practices is also driven by a firm’s internal strategic factors including its key resources and competitive strategy. It also suggests that these direct effects are further mediated by the green strategies (GSs) adopted in companies. Theoretically, these relationships are supported by combining the institutional theory with the natural resource-based view. A structural equation modeling is applied to formulate and analyze the relationships and the mediating effect using a survey data collected from 139 ISO14001-certified manufacturers in Malaysia. The results verified the mediating effect of GS adoption on the relationship between internal and external strategic factors, and GSCM practices. This research has made an original contribution to knowledge by bridging the fields of strategic environmental management and GSCM.

This paper addresses the extent to which culture is affecting the adoption of global human resource management (HRM) practices by Spanish organizations. One of our main objectives was to offer a thorough review of the recent empirical evidence regarding HRM practices in Spanish organizations. Another goal was to discuss these findings in light of the Spanish culture in order to identify possible cultural barriers to the adoption of global HRM practices. Our results suggest that Spanish organizations are slowly adopting global practices; however, many traditional practices remain. We suggest that the cultural variables of low future orientation, high power distance, and low institutional collectivism may exert continuing pressures that will hinder the adoption of certain global HRM practices.

The number of Japanese corporations established in Spain increased remarkably during the 1980s, as a result of the political stability that Spain had reached, low salaries, the growing markets, the standard of living, and Spain’s joining of the EEC. In this work, we study the degree of implementation of typical Japanese organisational methods in the Spanish subsidiaries, based on the opinions of 57 Japanese presidents and directors in these Spanish branches. We discuss not only the level of assimilation of Japanese business culture, but also the opinion of these executives concerning economic and business activity in Spain.

The purpose of the paper is to develop a conceptual framework for improving the effectiveness of risk management in supply networks following a critical literature review.

A critical review of 91 scholarly journal articles published between 2000 and 2018 supports the development of an integrated conceptual framework.

The findings emphasize that supply chain integration (SCI) can have both a positive and negative impact on the effectiveness of risk management in supply networks. It is possible to have a positive effect when SCI can be used to develop competencies in joint risk planning within the organization and with wider supply network members and, in turn, to develop collaborative risk management capabilities. Supply network characteristics can influence whether and the extent to which SCI has a positive or negative impact on risk management effectiveness.

The conceptual framework can be used to empirically assess the role of SCI for effective risk management. Dynamic evaluation of the effectiveness of risk management and potential redesign of the supply network by considering other contingent factors are some future research avenues.

There is a need for developing specific competencies in risk planning within organizations and joint risk planning with supply network members which, in turn, can help develop collaborative risk management capabilities to improve the effectiveness of risk management in supply networks. Network characteristics will influence whether and the extent to which SCI results in the effectiveness of risk management.

Moving beyond recent (systematic) reviews on supply chain risk management, this study develops a novel conceptual framework interlinking SCI and the effectiveness of risk management while considering network characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to present the research carried out on the development of a conceptual framework termed as the reverse collaboration framework (RCF) to provide supply chain (SC) visibility and information sharing to practitioners in a reverse logistics (RL) operations.

The research methodology used in this research is a combination of concept mapping, and the extension of the work of other researchers (deductive approach) to develop a RCF that connects tools, techniques, systems and RL processes.

This research shows that by integrating tools, systems, tools and techniques with RL processes by means of the RCF will increase performance and productivity of a RL operations. This is demonstrated by applying the RCF to a consumer electronics business that proves that the time taken for the end to end RL operations is reduced by 20%.

The RCF has been demonstrated with the data from a consumer electronics organisation. Literature points out that there are many different mathematical models for RL across a number of industries. Thus, at this stage, it is not clear if the RCF developed in this research will work in other industries, such as the newspaper, plastic bottles and online retailers industry where product returns are high. This research work can be extended in developing an IT solution by future researchers that can be linked to the main ERP system of an organisation.

SC managers can use the RCF in the extended form of an IT solution to manage the RL operations of their organisations.

There is a lack of research in the space of reverse collaboration in the broader field of SC management. This paper has fulfilled that gap.

Extreme events undermine progress toward social sustainability and require an immediate response from the private sector. The authors propose a two-dimensional framework (response time and the scope of activities to the various stakeholders) to benchmark firms’ effectiveness in mitigating the threats to social sustainability post-disaster. This framework allows establishing a taxonomy of corporate emergency responses. Within such a framework, the authors group 218 corporate actions from 111 companies operating in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic into four corporate relief strategies: symbolic, selective, reactive, and supportive. The authors show how companies can use this framework as a guide to foster social sustainability in times of shock in an efficient way. Also, stakeholders can use this framework as a reference to distinguish corporate initiatives aiming to propel community resilience from corporate “covidwashing.”

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existence of differences in the implementation of environmental practices between companies that possess some form of certified environmental management system (ISO 14001 or EMS) and those that do not have any such system. This study also investigates whether companies with a certified EMS are also making additional environmental demands on their suppliers.

An empirical study utilizing survey data from automotive supplier organizations was completed. A total of 157 in‐person interviews were conducted with managers of Spanish companies which are automotive supplier organizations. Logistic regressions and non‐parametric tests are used to evaluate hypotheses.

A positive relation was found to exist between the possession of certified EMS, specifically ISO 14001 and eco‐management and audit scheme, and the environmental demands that these organizations impose on their suppliers. This finding implies that environmental concern spreads upstream in the supply chain. The environmental demands on suppliers increase with customer organization size, but the degree of internationalization, measured by the rates of imports and exports, does not show a significant relationship to these pressures.

The study is limited to a single (important) industrial sector and cannot be directly extrapolated to other industries.

There is a paucity of research that relates the adoption of certified EMS by companies to the adoption and implementation of environmental practices in their own organizations and in supply chain partners. This is the first such study to be completed for the automotive industry.

In industrial installations, the Taguchi methodology has come to play an important role in recent years in the achievement of improvements in quality objectives. This article presents the experiences and results obtained in the installations of a hospital laundry, where the aim was to minimize operating costs while guaranteeing standards of disinfection and the quality of the wash. Owing to the multiple quality objectives that this type of problem presents, it was necessary to define a hierarchy of criteria to optimize. Thanks to the application of these techniques, an improvement was achieved in the bacteriological quality offered at the same time as reducing operating costs, thus demonstrating the importance of the use of this methodology in the solution of quality operating problems.