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This research bridges disparate research on servitization, namely product–service systems (PSS) and integrated solutions (IS), to provide valuable insights for the progression of the field. It acts as a reconciliation of these research streams and offers a reconceptualised agenda incorporating recent research on platforms, ecosystems, modularity, risk and governance as key conceptual themes to synthesise and build theory.

This is a conceptual, theory development article focused on advancing thinking on servitization by identifying systematic and theoretically informed research themes. It also proposes future research opportunities to advance theoretical contributions and practical implications for servitization research.

By reviewing and synthesising extant PSS and IS research, this article identified five core themes – namely modularity, platforms, ecosystems, risks and governance. The importance of these five themes and their linkages to PSS and IS are examined and a theoretical framework with a future research agenda to advance servitization is proposed.

This paper considers the similarities and differences between PSS and IS in order to develop a theory and to reconcile formerly disparate research efforts by establishing linkages between core themes and identifying valuable synergies for scholars. The importance of the core themes and current gaps within and across these themes are shown, and a mid-range theory for servitization is positioned to bridge the servitization-related PSS and IS communities.

Inter-organisational governance is an important enabler for information processing, particularly in relationships undergoing digital transformation (DT) where partners depend on each other for information in decision-making. Based on information processing theory (IPT), the authors theoretically and empirically investigate how governance mechanisms address information asymmetry (uncertainty and equivocality) arising in capturing, sharing and interpreting information generated by digital technologies.

IPT is applied to four cases of public–private relationships in the Dutch infrastructure sector that aim to enhance the quantity and quality of information-based decision-making by implementing digital technologies. The investigated relationships are characterised by differing degrees and types of information uncertainty and equivocality. The authors build on rich data sets including archival data, observations, contract documents and interviews.

Addressing information uncertainty requires invoking contractual control and coordination. Contract clauses should be precise and incentive schemes functional in terms of information requirements. Information equivocality is best addressed by using relational governance. Identifying information requirements and reducing information uncertainty are a prerequisite for the transformation activities that organisations perform to reduce information equivocality.

The study offers insights into the roles of both governance mechanisms in managing information asymmetry in public–private relationships. The study uncovers key activities for gathering, sharing and transforming information when using digital technologies.

This study draws on IPT to study public–private relationships undergoing DT. The study links contractual control and coordination as well as relational governance mechanisms to information-processing activities that organisations deploy to reduce information uncertainty and equivocality.

Drawing on paradox theory and the category of the “performing-organizing” paradox, the study investigates the tensions firms experience in the context of organizing the processes involved in managing their indirect GHG emissions.

The authors develop hypotheses to explain why the paradox elements of supply chain transparency and supply chain coordination affect firms' ability to reduce their indirect supply chains GHG emissions. Using a two-stage method based on data from Refinitiv and CDP for 2002 to 2021, the authors test this study’s hypotheses through panel regression analyses.

While greater transparency experience with scope 3 emissions disclosure, GSCM practices and broader supply chain engagement are all associated with higher levels of scope 3 emissions levels, both long-term transparency experience and GSCM practices are also associated with relative reductions in scope 3 emissions over time.

Given growing pressures on firms to demonstrate both transparency and legitimacy regarding their scope 3 emissions, firms must understand the characteristics of this paradox as this has implications for how emissions performance is perceived and managed. This study's results suggested that firms need to take both a long-term perspective and effectively communicate the differences involved in reporting their emissions performance to avoid unwarranted criticism.

Filling a gap in sustainable OSCM studies by providing large-scale quantitative insights into the relationships between organizing and performing, the authors demonstrate that the processes involved in firms' efforts of measuring and managing their indirect scope 3 emissions are paradoxically affected by whether performance outcomes are specified as annual absolute levels of scope 3 emissions, or relative changes over time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine combinations of contract clauses in order to ascertain which combinations correlate to high operational performance (OP).

Two hypotheses were formulated from contracting theory and tested on data collected from 45 projects. Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis was used and validated with multiple regression and simulation.

The hypotheses were tested to determine whether combinations of classical, relational, and/or associational contract clauses correlate to high OP. The results show that whereas high OP correlates to combinations of relational and associational contract clauses, classical and relational clauses should not be combined.

Directions are proposed to guide future research in order to produce a more nuanced testing of contractual complementarity.

The managerial implications of the findings include a more thorough understanding of the use of contract clauses and of which clauses managers should combine to achieve high OP.

This study contributes to the theory of contractual incompleteness and complementarity, specifically in the context of project contracting. The analysis produced two theoretical implications: first, that better performing contracts are created when combining relational and associational contract clauses; and second, that in projects, relational and classical contract clauses are not complementary with regards to realizing high OP.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between organizational ambidexterity, the ability of companies to explore new and to exploit existing processes simultaneously, and manufacturing performance as represented by the sand cone model. Moreover, the paper analyses the impact of stable and dynamic environments on this relationship.

A set of research questions are tested using structural equation modeling on a sample of 231 Spanish manufacturing companies.

Results illustrate a significant relationship between ambidexterity as the basis and enabler for manufacturing performance improvements, building on the sand cone model and its dimensions of quality, delivery, cost, and flexibility. This relationship is further emphasized when companies work in a dynamic environment.

The study contributes to practice by investigating the important and yet under-explored relationships of ambidexterity, the sand cone model, performance, and a company’s wider market environment. Findings suggest a positive relationship between the sand cone model and ambidexterity capability.

This study adds to the limited theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationships between ambidexterity, the sand cone model, environmental dynamism, and performance. It also contributes through a set of empirical data derived from Spanish manufacturing companies.

Geopolitical disruptions significantly impact the management of temporary healthcare supply chains (HSCs). Common across geopolitical disruptions is the interruption to the flow of supplies, calling for organizations to reconfigure their existing supply chains or set up temporary ones. We theoretically and empirically investigate how temporary HSCs are designed to ensure a resilient flow of vital healthcare products during a geopolitical disruption.

We investigated two different temporary HSCs – potable water and blood products – that experienced geopolitical disruptions. We purposefully sampled HSCs in deployed medical care where healthcare providers operate in resource-austere, politically volatile environments and timing and access to specialist expertise, medical equipment and medicines are critical. We built on rich datasets, including archival data, 12 expert workshops and 41 interviews.

The nature of temporary HSCs (e.g. urgency of demand and time-limited need) and product characteristics (e.g. perishability and strict storage conditions) lead to complexity in designing resilience for temporary HSCs. In contrast to permanent supply chains, temporary HSCs have limited flexibility and redundancy. Collaboration and agility are predominant strategies for enhancing resilience for temporary HSCs.

The study uncovers an urgent need for radical changes in how managers and policymakers responsible for HSC address resilience. During geopolitical disruptions, managers and policymakers need to review healthcare regulations across nations and prioritize by activating high levels of information- and knowledge-sharing between nations.

This study addresses an underresearched area of investigation by theoretically combining and empirically investigating the supply chain strategies employed by organizations to build up resilience in temporary HSCs.

The purpose of this paper is to apply self-determination theory (SDT) to green supply chain management (GSCM) and explore how green supplier selection (GSS) drives GSCM performance and how realisation of improved GSCM performance is contingent upon SDT mechanisms of autonomy, competence and relatedness.

This study draws on 18 semi-structured interviews and secondary data from a Germany-based first-tier aircraft interior manufacturer and its six key suppliers. The focal company was selected because it is recognised as having achieved high GSCM standards in the aerospace industry.

The study draws out the importance of GSS, distinguishing between new and legacy suppliers, and offers significant insights into how suppliers’ motivation and downstream GSCM criteria can be internalised in second-tier suppliers to drive GSCM performance.

GSS should be considered not only for new suppliers but also at an ongoing basis for legacy suppliers. Focal companies must realise the importance of motivating supply chain partners to realise GSCM practices and need to first build-up autonomy before focussing on competence and relatedness sub-dimensions.

The authors make a significant contribution to the GSCM literature by conducting a study of first-tier-second-tier relationships, thus moving beyond the buyer-supplier relationships investigated in extant studies. The results theoretically and empirically draw out key factors in GSS and supplier motivation in engaging with GSCM practices, thus driving GSCM performance.

This paper aims to investigate governance in service triads, specifically studying significant steering and connecting coordination failures, to reveal typically hidden characteristics and consequences.

This study focuses on coordination functions and activities between a buyer (a government department), a customer (a military service) and two service providers. Rich data on these normally confidential service ties are drawn from an official report into the causes of a fatal accident involving a UK reconnaissance aircraft and specifically from the evidence presented regarding the earlier development of its complex safety case. The authors also analysed a range of additional secondary data sources.

The authors examine the sources, drivers and manifestation of coordination failures. The authors uncover a series of coordination failures driven from the bridge position, revealing that while bounded rationality and opportunism influenced steering coordination failures, connecting coordination failures were associated with knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices.

Organisations and governments delivering complex projects and knowledge-intensive professional services should guard against outsourcing the “coordination” activity to a third party, thereby relinquishing the bridge position. Handing over the bridge position to an integrator would leave the client vulnerable to coordination dysfunctions such as bounded rationality, opportunism, knowledge asymmetry, dyadic inertia and unethical practices.

The study links the previously separate research streams of service triads and inter-organizational coordination. While extant research pays attention to mainly positive control functions, this study focuses on all three actors in two (failed) service triads – and highlights the impact of coordination activities and failures.

Project-based supply networks are an emerging form of organizing used to meet a buying organization's operational and innovation goals. Knowledge sharing among suppliers in the network plays a key role in successful project delivery but is challenging to achieve in practice. The authors draw on self-determination theory (SDT) to examine the interactive effect of incentive provisions (penalties and bonuses) and network governance (lead or shared) on knowledge sharing motivation by individual boundary-spanners within project-based supply networks.

A scenario-based behavioral experiment of 217 professionals within the UK using the online platform, Prolific, was conducted. A Hayes Macro PROCESS model was used to analyze the data. The authors pilot-tested the scenario with project management experts, senior managers, and directors.

The findings highlighted that the effectiveness of incentive provisions on knowledge sharing may be dependent on the mode of network governance. Where suppliers have shared responsibility for managing the network (shared governance), bonuses were more effective than penalties in motivating knowledge sharing through support of boundary-spanners’ autonomy needs. However, where the buying organization has transferred responsibility for managing the network to an external third-party organization (lead governance), the authors found no significant difference between the effectiveness of penalty versus bonus provisions in motivating knowledge sharing.

Prior research in operations and supply chain management (OSCM) has shown the positive effect of incentive provisions on knowledge sharing motivation, but largely overlooked the effectiveness of such incentives when nested within broader governance mechanisms used in projects and their networks. Moreover, while scholars have started to highlight the importance of governance mechanisms in knowledge sharing at the dyadic level, the authors know very little about the impact of network governance.

International Journal of Operations and Production Management (IJOPM)'s Impact Pathway (IP) section has been launched in 2020 to host short contributions grounded in current managerial practices and/or policy development, challenging established operations and supply chain management (OSCM) knowledge and highlighting innovative and relevant research directions. This commentary reflects on the achievements of the section, delineates the key features of IP papers and stimulates further development.

This commentary provides a brief overview of the IJOPM's IP section, taking stock of the contributions that have been published so far, analysing their topics, methodologies, insights and impact.

The 19 contributions published over the last three years have dealt with a variety of emerging topics, ranging from the COVID-19 response to additive manufacturing, leveraging on key evidence from managerial practice that challenges consolidated knowledge and theory, providing clear research directions as well as managerial and/or policy guidelines.

The commentary reflects on the importance of phenomenon-driven research that seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice, thus increasing the impact and reach of OSCM research. This is a call for contributions from scholars, business leaders and policymakers to develop further impact-oriented research.