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Voice role identification and the psychosocial voice barriers represented by implicit voice theories (IVTs) affect lean team members' prosocial voice behavior and thereby lean team performance. This paper investigates how role definition and IVTs influence individual lean team-members' prosocial voice behavior during lean implementation.

This research was conducted in four case readymade garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh following a mixed-method research approach dominated by a qualitative research methodology. Under the mixed-method design, this research followed multiple research strategies, including intervention-based action research and case studies.

The findings suggest that voice role perception affects the voice behavior of the individual lean team members. The findings also demonstrate that voice role definition significantly influences individually held implicit voice beliefs in lean teams.

This research was conducted in four sewing lines in four RMG factories in Bangladesh. There is a need for a cross-sector and cross-country large-scale study that follows the quantitative research methods in different contexts.

This research contributes to the operations management literature, especially in lean manufacturing, by presenting the difficulties of mobilizing employee voice in lean problem-solving teams. This work provides new knowledge to managers to address challenges and opportunities to ensure decent work and to improve productivity.

This research raises a key issue of employee voice and its influence on lean performance which addresses two critical areas of employee voice behavior in lean teams: team-members' voice role perception and implicit voice beliefs that influence their voice behavior in the workplace, thereby influencing team performance.

Supply chain management (SCM) is at a critical juncture, requiring (constant) re-evaluation of how it can contribute to research addressing grand challenges and sustainability without losing focus on rigor and theoretical contributions. Many of these are related to suppliers in the Global South. Recently, leading scholars and journals have addressed how supply chain research should experiment with new or less common methods to maintain “rigor” but have ignored conducting SCM research in the Global South. This viewpoint contributes to closing this gap.

The study is a viewpoint and thus aims to stimulate new thoughts among readers but not to provide in-depth empirical documentation for the suggestions proposed. The methodological insights are based on research conducted over a decade to address sustainability challenges in supplier development in the Global South. We draw on supplier development projects in the garment industry in Bangladesh, the tanning industry in Sawar, Bangladesh, the coffee (flower) industry in Uganda, the garment industry in Myanmar and the plastic (waste) industry in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This viewpoint complements recent scholars’ calls for methodological experimentation. These calls do not explicitly address the specificities of grand challenges related to supply chain activities in the Global South. We propose using ethnographic intervention research to study grand challenges and suppliers in the Global South. Four central insights justify our findings.

Grand challenges constitute an urgent global challenge. Most SCM literature focuses on supply chains in the Global North. This is a problematic omission because the consequences of, for example, climate change are expected to be experienced most severely in the Global South. Global supply chains are central to the challenges experienced by the Global South. Interventions can limit these negative effects. SCM scholars have not focused on the methodological implications of working with suppliers in the Global South. Therefore, the impact of interventions on grand challenges does not realize their potential. The methodological recommendations proposed in this study can help interventions in the Global South. These findings are limited; they are based post-mortem on the authors’ projects.

The focus on intervention research is useful to ensure that researchers engage in real-life transformative activities. This study also provides new methodological tools that researchers and companies can use to design better interventions.

This study illustrates how grand challenges are wicked problems and why they need a specific methodological approach. Thereby, this study ensures that SCM can contribute to solving these grand challenges. This helps eliminate (social) sustainability problems caused by suppliers in the Global South.

This viewpoint adds new insights concerning the need to align methods with the problem and suppliers in the Global South. It focuses on ethnographic interventionist research and how this approach can reignite research on suppliers’ sustainability challenges in the Global South. New ethnographic methods represent a fundamental break in participatory observation studies in ethnography and an alternative to the dominant approaches used in SCM. The viewpoint is the first to illustrate how ethnographic interventionist methods can be used in SCM.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of university-driven knowledge transfer initiatives in enhancing the capabilities and performance of local suppliers in the garment industry. By focusing on the impact of UDIs in Myanmar, this research aims to provide empirical evidence on how these initiatives can foster supplier development and performance improvement through targeted capability enhancement strategies.

This study utilizes a combination of surveys and an experimental design to evaluate the impact of university-driven supplier development interventions (UDIs) based on Lean principles in Myanmar’s garment industry. Nine garment suppliers were assessed before and after the UDI program. The research employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the direct, indirect and mediating effects of UDIs on supplier performance, focusing on the role of supplier capability enhancement as a mediating factor.

The study found that the UDI program significantly improved supplier capabilities, which in turn led to enhanced performance. The analysis revealed partial mediation, indicating that while UDIs directly impact supplier performance, their effect is significantly amplified through the enhancement of supplier capabilities. These findings highlight the critical role of targeted capability development in achieving substantial performance improvements among local suppliers.

This research contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of university-driven supplier development initiatives in a developing country context. It validates the indirect role of UDIs in boosting supplier performance via capability enhancement, emphasizing the importance of industry-specific and capability-focused development strategies. The findings underscore the value of structured knowledge transfer programs in supporting local suppliers, offering practical insights for policymakers and educational institutions aiming to enhance industrial performance through strategic interventions.

Top management commitment (TMC) and prosocial voice behaviour in Lean teams are vital for the successful Lean implementation. This study aims to investigate how TMC influences Lean team members’ prosocial voice behaviour and how such changed voice behaviour affects the outcome of Lean implementations.

The authors have used a qualitative research methodology to examine six dimensions of TMC (communication, involvement, support, empowerment, encouragement and monitoring) in two ready-made garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh. Operational performance was measured by efficiency, quality, value stream mapping, single-minute exchange dies and 5S scores. Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) was assessed by acceptable head and back positions, machine safety, use of masks and housekeeping.

The findings reveal that TMC influences Lean team members' voice behaviour positively and, thereby, company's performance. Six dimensions of TMC are all critical for mobilizing prosocial voice, which then improves productivity, OHS and enhancing employee capacity and job satisfaction.

This research involved two sewing lines in two RMG factories in Bangladesh. Cross-sector and large-scale international quantitative research is also needed.

This research shows how TMC and Lean problem-solving teams can mobilize employee voice.

Employee voice is a central issue in the implementation of Lean. To the best of the author’s knowledge, for the first time, the authors show how the six dimensions of TMC influence Lean team members’ voice behaviour in the workplace and thereby how prosocial voice affects team performance.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for analyzing home and host country determinants and outcomes of emerging multinationals (EMNCs).

The paper applies a conceptual approach combined with analyses of statistics and secondary material.

The paper identifies changing trends and features of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from emerging economies and identifies in particular differences between outflows from Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC).

The paper puts forward a framework for analyzing determinants and outcomes of structures and strategies of multinational companies from emerging economies and surveys contemporary trends and features of outward FDI from these economies.

The purpose of this research is to highlight the significance of advancing research methodologies in logistics, operations and supply chain management. It seeks to expand the scope of research questions and explore areas previously constrained by traditional methodological approaches, thereby enhancing the exploration of complex, real-world business issues.

This commentary introduces and discusses the special issue on “Advances in Research Methodologies for Logistics and Supply Chain Management,” exploring methodological innovations, diversity and their potential to address complex business and disciplinary challenges. The commentary assesses a broad spectrum of methodologies, ranging from traditional qualitative and quantitative approaches to overlooked methods such as qualitative comparative analysis, netnography, design science, Bayesian networks, machine learning and repertory grid technique. This diverse methodological approach enables a comprehensive examination of emerging and ongoing challenges in the supply chain. In the final summary section, we highlight additional areas of research method innovation not covered in this special issue, offering a broader perspective on future directions for methodological advancements in SCM research.

The findings suggest that integrating less explored methodologies from various disciplines encourages a richer, multi-level analysis of the supply chain management landscape. This integration facilitates a deeper understanding of emerging challenges, such as geopolitical issues, global supply chain disruptions and the integration of new technologies. Additionally, the exploration of ‘white space' in research methodologies indicates significant potential for discovering new insights that bridge practical problems with theoretical contributions.

The value of this methodological diversity extends beyond academic enrichment. It catalyzes the generation of innovative insights crucial for business practitioners, policymakers, consultants and academics. By adopting varied research designs and methodologies, the research note can offer a broader spectrum of analytical perspectives, crucial for uncovering nuanced insights into complex, cross-cultural and relationship-based dynamics in supply chain research.

The present paper is an attempt to explore the emerging stem cell innovation system in India. It is contended that the social capital in terms of linkages of various sorts can no longer be ignored to strengthen the innovation system and that the coevolution of technology and institutions is yet to emerge. It seems that given the nature of complex technologies involved, there is a greater need felt for R&D and training collaboration and hence linkages of various types are taking place. For shaping futures for a balanced growth of this sector, the institutions in India will have to be geared towards greater coordination, promotion of greater knowledge flows at national as well international levels. This paper also analyses the strengths and barriers in the development of rapidly growing stem cell research in India along with future challenges.

Nowadays, under climate change contexts, natural disasters are becoming stronger in intensity and probability. The impacts of natural disasters on people and the environment are also getting worse. The purpose of this study was conducted to provide a method of assessing disaster risks, in particular, floods for human life in Mid Central Vietnam.

The pre-disaster assessment method was used based on the analysis of hazard factors (Hazard-H), exposure to hazards (Exposure-E) and vulnerability (Vulnerability-V).

Flood disaster risks in the area are assessed and displayed on spatial maps. The districts in coastal plains of Quang Ngai and Thua Thien Hue provinces have the highest levels of risk. These assessments will play an important role in supporting flood prevention and mitigation in the region.

According to the authors, this is the first study assessing the flood risk in Vietnam on the pre-disaster perspective. The assessment provides a plain point of view on natural disaster impacts that supporting disaster prevention services.

This paper aims to depart from the national innovation system (NIS) arguments that countries' institutional arrangements and performance result from various complementary factors that generate innovative activities and products within economies.

To further explore these dimensions, the main objective of this paper is to address the determinants of global heterogeneity in the innovation outcomes of the nations. Thus, the research employs descriptive data analysis and multivariate regression models, using data from the Global Innovation Index (GII) to analyze innovation systems cross-regionally concerning institutional arrangements and performance. Since 2013, the GII, has annually measured and ranked the innovation inputs and outputs of more than a hundred countries based on a comprehensive and sophisticated approach and a multidimensional perspective.

The author found the empirical results remarkably interesting in many respects. The different indexes of innovation inputs affect the country's performance level, but not all show a statistically significant impact on innovation outputs. Institutions and infrastructure indexes do not affect the innovative performance of the economies. The main determinants of innovation performance worldwide are business sophistication, human capital & research (HC&R) and market sophistication. In short, the research presents an original contribution, mainly because it explores different views on NIS disparities worldwide, using complementary methodological strategies and based on comprehensive data on innovative inputs and outputs in the countries.

The findings add new evidence-based knowledge on the determinants of innovation performance in different realities, such as political, economic and administrative. These realities formulate innovation policies and implement them worldwide.

This case was developed from interviews the author held with Nathan Baumeister, the protagonist in the case and Towny CEO; Hannah Franzen, a Towny marketing employee discussed in the case; and Mallory Franzen, Hannah’s sister-in-law and the company representative for Boomn, the digital marketing agency discussed in the case. In addition, secondary research on the USA retail industry was performed by the author. The case was class-tested four times by the author, with Hannah Franzen and Mallory Franzen initially visiting as case protagonists. This resulted in the case of refinements based on student discussion.

Towny: A new business model for a mobile economy shares the context and issues surrounding CEO Nathan Baumeister in the spring of 2018 at Towny, a unique business helping local businesses connect with their consumers over mobile devices. The company began going to market based on the vision of its owner and Nathan’s boss, Don Shafer. It had quickly approached local business clients and consumers in five key markets. The purpose of the case is to allow students the opportunity to discuss key new venture creation concepts and scenarios such as customer value proposition, competitive advantage and digital marketing.

This case was developed to be used in an undergraduate course in entrepreneurship. The particular course, new venture finance: the entrepreneur’s perspective, teaches the general subject of entrepreneurial finance through financial models such as free cash flow and valuation, case discussions with entrepreneurs visiting as facilitators and protagonists and business concept planning and forecasting. This case helps train students on how to incorporate online marketing costs into their business concept plans. Relevant courses and topics also include small business management and entrepreneurial financial management.