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The Pacific Island countries are culturally diverse, politically challenging, extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural disaster impacts, and financially heavily dependent on aid flows. This chapter examines barriers and opportunities for Green growth (GG) to flourish in a country with a practically non-existent real economy and which is currently under the threat of disappearance under water. It draws on a visiting experience and lessons from the literature and tries to investigate the role of innovation and entrepreneurship as poles of re-birth and local creativity. More particularly, I here discuss why a least developed country such as Kiribati might be the perfect location for dynamics of GG to get born and how, Kiribati, a country under threat and fear, can be transformed into a lighthouse of entrepreneurship which can give boost to the implementation of one of the most advanced energy technologies in the world. I also discuss how, ultimately, a “least developed economy” can secure scientific lessons, which are highly significant for the international knowledge society.

In the era of the digital economy, organizations are under much pressure to justify their information technology (IT) spending on digital transformation. Some organizations have thus implemented IT chargeback, an IT governance (ITG) mechanism, to clarify and allocate IT costs among various business units. While practitioners have stressed the importance of IT chargeback, there has been little theoretical effort that investigates its strategic effects and boundary conditions.

Synthesizing the ITG literature and the resource-based view (RBV), the authors develop a research model to examine if IT chargeback affects IT–business strategic alignment and, in turn, organizational performance and how human IT resources strengthen the impacts of IT chargeback. The authors designed a survey to collect data from 103 firms and tested the model using partial least squares (PLS).

The authors found that IT chargeback promoted strategic alignment and then organizational performance only for firms with business-competent chief information officers (CIOs), rather than IT-competent business executives.

This study enriches the ITG literature by exploring the strategic value of an IT cost governance mechanism (i.e. IT chargeback). This study further proposes and validates a measure of IT chargeback. Drawing on the RBV, this study quantitatively investigates the strategic impacts and boundary contingencies of IT chargeback. This study also advances the CIO literature by identifying the strategic leading role, instead of the traditional supporting role, of CIOs in modern organizations.

The increasing global competition, worldwide economic and political uncertainities, and continuously changing dynamics in business environment require companies act differently and differentiate via smart strategies in order to have sustainable operations, growth, and profitability. Therefore, firms should be more agile, creative, and adaptive in planning and strategizing their mid- to long-term business objectives.

In that regard, for the last decade globally many firms across all industries seek opportunities to utilize benefits of digitalization. Lately, COVID-19 has also accelerated companies' efforts and investments in digital platforms.

Today, supply chain and procurement functions are expected to have a strategic role for organizations contributing to management decisions. The digital transformation in procurement is promising to enhance and lean the total workflow of operations. Data analytics, artificial intelligence, robotics, and other emerging digital technologies are all highly powerful tools supporting strategic supply and supplier management, providing predictability for demand planning as well as value-based negotiation power to buyers.

On the other hand, there are still challenges and conflicts throughout this transformation process. Level of technological maturity, infrastructure and investment decisions, expertise and competency of procurement professionals, cultural adaptation, and compliance of related stakeholders are some of the key barriers that are addressed with a unique model in this chapter.

Digital era offers a lot of advantages to firms to improve their procurement facilities and practices while it may still take time both for the technologies to fully evolve and also for companies to adapt and embrace digitalization on their benefit.

Purpose – Due to an absence of dialogue between sociology and the neurosciences, the scientific study of morality largely ignores cultural and structural influences. This chapter offers a synthetic approach integrating these separate disciplines to aid a more complete understanding of morality.

Design/methodology/approach – This chapter reviews morality's bonding (a sense of groupness and belonging) and bounding (reproducing and reinforcing group boundaries) qualities across disciplines, and proposes three provisional principles to systematize an interdisciplinary model of morality. We then offer a preliminary illustration of how this model might be operationalized with functional MRI data.

Findings – Our proposed principles (as exemplified by our illustrative example) suggest that the sociology-neurology gap in understanding the domain of morality might shrink through an engagement with the underlying neural mechanisms that encompass issues of empathy, racial attitudes, and identity as potential platforms opening up a more “social” neuroscience.

Research limitations/implications – This chapter provides a starting-point for further research incorporating biological mechanisms into sociological theories in the area of morality. The illustrative case study should be replicated in a larger sample and/or in additional studies with different social groups.

Practical implications – This chapter is a useful source of information for sociologists seeking to find out more about the intersection of neuroscience and sociology as well as the neural dynamics of morality.

Originality/value – This chapter presents an introduction to an integrative approach recognizing our biological capacities for a socially constructed morality and the interaction between society and the mind. It includes one of the first sociologically oriented fMRI studies, offering avenues for new ways to bridge research disciplines.

This study aims to investigate how the supply chain (SC) experts from the UK manufacturing organisations (MO) interpret the drivers and barriers to adopting Industry 4.0 technologies from a technological, organisational and environmental (TOE) point of view. Furthermore, this study evaluates how adoption drivers and barriers influence innovative practices that support Industry 4.0 adoption.

A qualitative narrative inquiry strategy, involving nine semi-structured interviews with leading SC experts including group executives, global directors and vice presidents was adopted.

The people factor across the SC is found critical for successful Industry 4.0 adoption. It was also found that the firm size is an insignificant factor; rather, Industry 4.0 readiness in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is driven by flexibility and agility, while larger organisations are driven by resource availability and scalability. Evidently, the culture and attitude of the MO tend to facilitate or hinder the Industry 4.0 adoption, therefore, innovative practices in building an expert team, establishing a systematic change management process, actively involving suppliers in the adoption process and continuously monitoring the adoption process were introduced.

By addressing the relationships between the drivers, barriers and innovative practices from a business perspective, a detailed Industry 4.0 adoption framework for the UK Manufacturing Supply Chains (MSC) was developed as a unique theoretical and practical contribution. This study also highlights the lessons learnt from applying Industry 4.0 in the UK context. The findings can also be informed in applying Industry 4.0 technologies in emerging market contexts.

In this article, the authors try to determine why and under what conditions consumers intend to buy green and what the consequences are. Relying on theories of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the authors offer that the green purchase intention (GPI) is impressed by environmental and personality components. Provide statements about the determinants and key implications of such market identification.

This study aims to investigate how information technology (IT) integration and relational ties between a firm and its supplier influence its innovation performance and how such relationships are moderated by relationship duration and institutional distance between the firm and its supplier.

Based on 153 matched-pair surveys of firms in China, the authors used regression analyses to test their hypotheses.

The authors find that IT integration and relational ties with the supplier significantly improve the firm’s innovation performance. Further, the authors find that relationship duration negatively moderates the impact of relational ties on innovation performance. Institutional distance negatively moderates the impact of IT integration, yet positively moderates the impact of relational ties on innovation performance.

This study provides a more nuanced insight into relational and institutional boundary conditions under which IT integration and relational ties affect innovation performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of data-driven capabilities on supply chain integration (SCI) and competitive performance of firms in the food and beverages (F & B) industry in Pakistan.

The authors adopt the structural equation modeling approach to test the proposed hypotheses using AMOS 23. Survey data were collected from 240 firms in the F & B industry in Pakistan.

The results revealed that SCI (i.e. internal integration (II) and external integration (EI)) significantly mediates the effect of data-driven capabilities (i.e. flexible information technology resources and data assimilation) on a firm’s competitive performance. In addition to the direct effects, II also has an indirect effect on competitive performance through EI.

The study has several implications for managers in the context of big data application in food supply chain management (FSCM) in a developing country context. The study posits that firms can achieve excellence in performance by governing data-driven supply chain operations. The study also has implications for distributors and importers in the F & B industry. The cloud-based sharing of data can improve the operational performance of channel members while reducing their overall cost of operations. In practice, food franchises largely get the advantage of shared resources of their suppliers in managing orders, payments, inventory and after-sales services.

The study is novel and deepens the understanding about the use of big data in FSCM keeping in view the industry trends and stakeholder’s priorities in a developing country context.

The changing role of the manager has been a growing area of both academic and popular literature over recent years. In addition, the interest of the popular press has made terms like “grey suit” and “fat cat” common terminology. Management roles and managerial authority within today’s organisations have seen many changes. This has led to frustration and anxiety for managers as they have watched their role change. In the NHS, like other sectors, managers have become a target for organisational redundancies and have experienced increased responsibility, closer monitoring of performance and heightened job insecurity. This paper aims to offer a contribution to the empirical data on managers by investigating one group of NHS managers’ own perceptions of how others see their role. The findings suggest that NHS managers are very aware of the largely negative perceptions that surround them but accept this as an integral part of their role.