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Purpose – Empirical research provides evidence that green supply chain management (SCM) practices positively impact firm performance. Yet, questions remain regarding how firms configure their organizations and design green practices to achieve improved performance, especially in light of a constantly changing business environment. This research uses the resource-based and strategic choice theories to better understand the antecedent roles of two strategic orientations, supply chain orientation (SCO) and environmental orientation (EO), on both the implementation and outcomes of green SCM practices. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Survey responses from 367 supply chain managers are tested through structural equation modeling. Findings – Findings suggest that a combination of SCO and EO capabilities positively influence the implementation of green SCM practices, and positively impact firm performance. Results also suggest that the capability bundle of SCO, EO, and green SCM should be adaptable to the changing business environment. Originality/value – This research contributes through the combination of the resource-based theory, supported by strategic choice theory, to better understand how managers configure and re-configure valuable green-related capabilities to adapt to the constantly changing business environment.

Firms are increasingly under pressure from stakeholders to incorporate the triple‐bottom line of social, environmental and economic responsibility considerations into operations and supply chain management strategies. This research uses content analysis software that performed centering resonance analysis to examine corporate communication to stakeholders through corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. The intent is to determine how supply chain strategies factor in to the triple‐bottom line of 100 socially and environmentally responsible global companies. This research compares and contrasts the influential words in the CSR reports of firms from a range of industries, sizes and geographical regions. The content analysis revealed ten themes that provide a snapshot of how top global companies integrate and improve the triple‐bottom line in internal operations and external supply chains. Findings indicated that while institutional pressure is the major driving force behind strategy development for all of the industries studied, companies emphasize different facets of social, environmental and economic responsibility upstream and downstream in supply chains based on industry, size and geographic location. The analysis revealed unique insights regarding corporate communications that other methodologies would not find.

Purpose – Reshoring and insourcing decisions have been discussed in the popular press, yet coverage of these topics in the academic literature is limited. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it seeks to develop a more complete understanding of the underlying drivers of reshoring and insourcing decisions and their permutations. Second, it seeks to provide directions for future research to further analyze the link between drivers and outcomes of the reshoring and insourcing phenomena. Design/methodology/approach – This research follows a conceptual approach guided by transaction cost economics (TCE) and organizational buying behavior (OBB) theories. First, a theoretical framework of reshoring and insourcing decisions is developed. Next a comprehensive summary of reshoring and insourcing drivers is evaluated, yielding an in-depth discussion of future research directions (FRDs). Findings – The analysis demonstrates that the framework can be utilized to explain recent insourcing and reshoring changes of firms and to help dismantle the external and organizational challenges associated with reshoring and insourcing decision making. Research limitations/implications – Three FRDs are presented in the light of TCE and OBB. A fourth research direction highlights additional contextual factors outside the scope of these two theoretical lenses. These four research directions yield insightful implications for scholars and contribute to the emerging reshoring and insourcing literature. Practical implications – The full array of potential reshoring and insourcing permutations are structured to allow for an elaboration of their respective drivers. Moreover, enablers and obstacles in implementing the multitude of combined reshoring and insourcing decisions are highlighted and summarized as contextual variables. Originality/value – The concluding conceptual framework guides the evaluation of the reshoring and insourcing driver-outcome relationship across various value creation tasks and provides guidance to scholars and managers alike.

The topics of reshoring and insourcing have recently become more widely discussed among operations management and international business scholars and managers, as some firms are revoking their offshoring and outsourcing decisions. This research focuses on and clarifies the decision making processes related to the two distinct, yet closely related phenomena of reshoring and insourcing. It presents a conceptual framework of all theoretically possible reshoring and insourcing decisions, illustrated in its applicability by a review of the United States and German business press. Then four future research avenues are developed as part of an overall decision making framework together with an overview of specific research questions for this emergent field. Further research avenues include the need to differentiate between reshoring/insourcing as strategic direction or reaction to failure, studying organizational readiness in addition to decision drivers, improve coverage of the implementation stage and explore further contingency factors such as technological advancement as well as to focus on decision makers as the unit of analysis.

Purpose - Sustainable supply management (SSM) has attracted considerable attention from researchers in recent years concentrating on how firms develop and use SSM capabilities to meet stakeholder demands. Acquiring and sharing sustainability knowledge with suppliers have been identified as critical success factors of SSM. The purpose of this paper is to identify the mechanisms that allow firms to effectively acquire and share sustainability-related knowledge with suppliers and how these knowledge generation and desorption mechanisms support the evolution of firm SSM capabilities. Design/methodology/approach - To address the research purpose, four longitudinal case studies, two industry leaders in SSM and two industry followers, were conducted at multiple consecutive points in time between 2008 and 2013. Findings - The results indicate which mechanisms constitute a sustainability-related absorptive and desorptive capacity and how they support SSM. Thereby, this research explains which mechanisms support firms to acquire sustainability knowledge, assimilate and exploit it and also share it with their suppliers over time. Research limitations/implications - This research sheds light on the development and refinement of SSM capabilities by studying the explorative and exploitative learning cycles within focal buying firms taking place over time. Findings indicate a multiplicity in applying absorptive capacity- and desorptive capacity-related mechanisms yields an ambidextrous ability to simultaneously exploit existing knowledge through incremental SSM improvements and explore new SSM knowledge for more radical refinements of SSM capabilities. Practical implications - The results provide a blueprint for firms, especially for sustainability followers, seeking to develop effective SSM capabilities. Furthermore, the results explain which mechanisms support firms to acquire, assimilate and exploit sustainability knowledge and also to share it with their suppliers. Originality/value - SSM knowledge acquisition, assimilation, exploitation and sharing takes place over time in focal buying firms. This ongoing process helps explain how an SSM capability development and refinement is manifested in both leaders and followers.

Empirical evidence shows that investments in sustainable supply chain management can improve economic‐based performance. Thus, based on standard economic theory, rational business decision makers should and will implement sustainable supply chain management practices. However, through inductive research methods, we uncovered an intriguing theme that runs counter to both the existing empirical evidence and such economic‐based assumptions. We find that managers operating in firms without exemplary sustainable supply chain management practices face immense hurdles in developing a business case for implementing sustainability initiatives. Despite the lack of such practices—and in tension with the prevailing empirical evidence and theory—the firms within which these managers operate were performing well on economic‐based performance metrics. Departing from the neoclassical economic theory of the firm, we apply the Behavioral Theory of the Firm's theoretical assumptions to findings which suggest four segments of managers in non‐exemplary firms who vary based primarily on how they perceive strategic vulnerability, evaluate choices, and utilize sustainability knowledge.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to extend the stream of thought regarding the concept of demand and supply integration (DSI) within the domain of environmental responsibility and green marketing.Design methodology approach - Conceptual application of theory to strategic-level concepts is used to develop propositions representing a theoretical approach to the integration of green marketing and green supply chain management (SCM).Findings - Based on stakeholder theory, the authors propose that greater value will be perceived by customer stakeholders when the firm is able to successfully manage and coordinate demand (marketing) and supply (SCM) functions, ensuring that customer stakeholders receive what they are promised in regard to environmental products and services. For this relationship to offer competitive advantage and higher firm performance, the authors contend that it is necessary to better understand how customer stakeholders perceive firms' environmental initiatives, and to investigate if the degree to which a firm's demand and supply functions are integrated influences these perceptions.Research limitations implications - Scholars will benefit from ideas and questions put forth in this paper as it suggests specific avenues to pursue empirically in order to understand stakeholder perceptions of a firm's environmental responsibility activities.Practical implications - Managers will benefit from the results of this paper by better understanding the benefits of DSI in creating marketing campaigns for environmental products and services that stakeholders perceive as legitimate.Originality value - The authors introduce the concept of DSI to the green marketing and green SCM literature and position DSI within the broader rubric of environmental commitment in the firm.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to formulate an exhaustive list of the issues, gaps, and barriers at each level of the agri-food value chain in North Carolina (NC), and second, to identify the issues of greatest importance to its members. Design/methodology/approach – This research employed the Delphi technique in two stages of input. The first round of input was designed to create a comprehensive list of issues for each of nine “stages” of the agri-food value chain. In round two, the issues were prioritized. Findings – The top ten responses of each stage were aggregated into themes that represent the most critical issues identified by respondents: connectedness within the value chain, access to markets and marketing, affordability/availability of food and food distribution, farm profitability, societal awareness, and education about healthy, local food, and supporting institutions. Originality/value – The findings could be used by practitioners to inspire innovation in food-related products, programs, processes, organization, and marketing. The findings can help farmers, institutions, food distributors, policy makers, and other members of the agri-food value chain to make decisions about food distribution and access in NC and in other states facing similar issues and circumstances. The findings of this research also have further reaching implications, such as the connectivity of members along the agri-food value chain, the impact of a strong agri-food value chain on agritourism and the potential value of state marketing initiatives.

[...]an important task salespeople face is convincing prospects that a certain product or service is suited, above all others, to the needs of the buying firm. [...]researchers have focused intently on sales-related constructs like influence, customer loyalty, and trust. High levels of customer intrinsic motivation further enhance this effect. [...]managers will be best served by training salespeople to develop customer loyalty and trust, but also to be aware of why customers are motivated to spend time with them.

Purpose – Sustainable supply management (SSM) has attracted considerable attention from researchers in recent years concentrating on how firms develop and use SSM capabilities to meet stakeholder demands. Acquiring and sharing sustainability knowledge with suppliers have been identified as critical success factors of SSM. The purpose of this paper is to identify the mechanisms that allow firms to effectively acquire and share sustainability-related knowledge with suppliers and how these knowledge generation and desorption mechanisms support the evolution of firm SSM capabilities. Design/methodology/approach – To address the research purpose, four longitudinal case studies, two industry leaders in SSM and two industry followers, were conducted at multiple consecutive points in time between 2008 and 2013. Findings – The results indicate which mechanisms constitute a sustainability-related absorptive and desorptive capacity and how they support SSM. Thereby, this research explains which mechanisms support firms to acquire sustainability knowledge, assimilate and exploit it and also share it with their suppliers over time. Research limitations/implications – This research sheds light on the development and refinement of SSM capabilities by studying the explorative and exploitative learning cycles within focal buying firms taking place over time. Findings indicate a multiplicity in applying absorptive capacity- and desorptive capacity-related mechanisms yields an ambidextrous ability to simultaneously exploit existing knowledge through incremental SSM improvements and explore new SSM knowledge for more radical refinements of SSM capabilities. Practical implications – The results provide a blueprint for firms, especially for sustainability followers, seeking to develop effective SSM capabilities. Furthermore, the results explain which mechanisms support firms to acquire, assimilate and exploit sustainability knowledge and also to share it with their suppliers. Originality/value – SSM knowledge acquisition, assimilation, exploitation and sharing takes place over time in focal buying firms. This ongoing process helps explain how an SSM capability development and refinement is manifested in both leaders and followers.