institutional innovation from the bottom up?

A sustainable economy fulfills societal needs in a fundamentally different way to the current economic system. Improvements to the efficiency of existing technologies or practices appear insufficient for achieving sustainable development within the planetary boundaries. Disruptive, systemic and transformational changes appear necessary in order to replace existing technologies and practices to establish a sustainable economy. Such innovations often start out in niches; however, the scaling up and the ultimate replacement of current socio-technical systems requires governance to allow for the coordination of actors, the reorganization of socio-technical systems and the mobilization and allocation of resources. As governmental institutions are part of the current (non-sustainable) systems and thereby fail to provide coherent, integrated and transformative governance, we explore whether institutional innovation from non-state actors can step in to provide governance of transformation processes. Based on explorative qualitative case studies of networks in the food sector, city planning and reporting tools, we analyze the potential of bottom-up institutional innovations to coordinate actors in transformation processes

Logistics Social Responsibility and Dynamic Capabilities: Conceptualization and Empirical Analysis

Zugleich: Dissertation, Universität Kassel, 201

Consumer Preferences for Local Food: Testing an Extended Norm Taxonomy

Consumer attitudes toward consuming and buying locally produced food are well studied. By contrast, the topic of consumer preferences for local food, with a special emphasis on the role of norms, still lacks empirical evidence. To study the influence of norms and morals on the intention to buy local food products, a quantitative study (N = 327) focusing on external social and internalized moral norms was conducted using the constructs of the theory of planned behavior in combination with an extended norm taxonomy and the perceived consumer effectiveness measure. The norm constructs consisted of two different personal norms, integrated and introjected, and two social norms, descriptive and injunctive. In a factor analysis, two factors for social norms but only one for personal norms were obtained. Multiple regressions explained 50 percent of the variance in intentions and 29 percent of the variance in past behavior. Norm constructs were proven important in the model, as personal norms had the largest effect among all constructs on intentions, and descriptive norms strongly influenced past behavior. An additional mediation analysis showed that personal norms were internalized social injunctive norms and that intentions mediated the relationship between all constructs. The implications of the findings and recommendations for future research are given accordingly

Motivating Factors for Implementing Apparel Certification Schemes—A Sustainable Supply Chain Management Perspective

The motivations for clothing companies to implement dedicated certification schemes as sustainability practices has received limited attention in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research so far. Therefore, it is important to understand how different rationales for the implementation of certification schemes have developed in the past because they considerably influence the overall success of sustainability management efforts. This paper picks up on this gap and presents the results of an in-depth comparative case study drawing on interviews conducted with five managers of three companies from the clothing sector in 2018 and abductive content analysis. By applying such a qualitative approach, this study explores motivations and benefits as well as elaborates on the implementation of certification schemes in apparel supply chains. It outlines that certification in the clothing sector is driven by strategic factors, marketing considerations, and information considering sustainability aspects. The study also shows that certification schemes may strengthen the marketing and competitive position of clothing companies as well as sustainability awareness in textile and apparel supply chains in general. Finally, a framework conceptualized from the findings of the interviews presents relevant SSCM practices in the clothing industry. Therefore, the present study contributes to theory building in SSCM by confirming and extending previous research on the implementation of certification schemes for sustainability, as well as to practice by examining reasons to apply certification schemes and potential performance outcomes

Logistics Business Transformation for Sustainability: Assessing the Role of the Lead Sustainability Service Provider (6PL)

Societal, economic and ecological prosperity will be highly affected in the next decades due to socio-demographic developments and climate change. The design of more sustainable logistics business types can address such challenges to build more resilient supply chains. Therefore, the discussion with regard to transformational potentials of logistics businesses provides valuable information to shape business strategies according to future sustainability requirements. Within the framework of this paper, a mixed-methods approach has been applied to explore and analyze drivers and barriers for sustainability transformations of logistics service providers (LSPs) and to evaluate related business strategies with optimization and simulation methods in a concrete regional context. So far, LSPs’ main obstacles are competitive pressure, focal firm orientation, and dependence on other supply chain members, while supply chain collaboration and integration, as well as the integration of sharing economy solutions and new digital technologies, have been identified as promising for sustainability transitions. Accordingly, this paper suggests a roadmap for the logistics sector while defining retention strategies such as growth, replication, mimicry, and mergence to meet future societal and environmental requirements. By doing so, this study contributes to theory by constructing the Lead Sustainability Service Provider (6PL) business model (arche)type and its role in societal transitions

Dynamic Capabilities Theory

Organizations face continuous challenges associated with disturbing familiar practices by replacing them with new ones (Fallon-Byrne and Harney, 2017). Thus, the emergence of dynamic capabilities theory is considered an important step in framing and conceptualizing organizational change processes by building upon concepts such as organizational learning and knowledge management (Easterby-Smith et al., 2009). Introduced in the seminal paper by Teece et al. (1997), the body of literature on dynamic capabilities has grown rapidly in the last two decades, leading to an intensively studied and complex management theory (Barreto, 2010), also conceptualized and applied in supply chain management (SCM) research today. Furthermore, dynamic capabilities theory has been extended for various industry contexts, such as the automotive, food and logistics industries (for example, Beske et al., 2014; Land et al., 2015; Gruchmann and Seuring, 2018)

4PL Digital Business Models in Sea Freight Logistics: The Case of FreightHub

For years, the freight forwarding industry has been facing high levels of global competition. Accelerating this development, new and digital competitors are entering the market, striving to make freight logistics even faster, cheaper, and more predictable. Digitalization processes change traditional logistics businesses, leading to more efficient, flexible, and de-centrally organized logistics services. Sea freight operations, in particular, have the potential to better fulfill customer-specific requirements in competitive and complex environments by integrating digital technologies. Therefore, it is essential to understand how automating informational processes, such as freight brokering, affect business models in the logistics service industry. The present study qualitatively analyzed the case of FreightHub, a fourth-party logistics (4PL) sea freight agency, and compared its business model with traditional third-party logistics (3PL) business models. Applying a digital business model conceptualization, the present paper presents an extended framework for digital sea freight business models. In this line, the study contributes to theory and practice by refining business model research in the maritime transportation context, and providing managerial implications about the opportunities and threats of a digital transition in this industry