Chris K. Y. Lo

• PhD
• Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

The relationship between sustainable operations and a firm's financial performance has been an ongoing focus of operations management scholars. Previous literature has extensively explored the impact of acting responsibly on financial performance. This article applies the behavioral theory of the firm and prospect theory to assess the much‐neglecte...

With soaring labor and logistics costs in developing countries, supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic triggered Western firms to “reshore” some of their offshore operations (performed in-house or outsourced) for certain strategically important products or production processes from foreign countries to their home countries. Although...

Multinational corporations have benefited tremendously from free trade in the past few decades. However, the dynamism of international relations, paired with the global recession, has rekindled the debate over frictionless trade. In this study, we examine how trade friction, created by tariff trade barriers, affects the operational performance of d...

Do firms suffer from negative long‐term business performance after being exposed for violating environmental regulations? We empirically examine this question using all 1542 environmental incidents committed by 418 public Chinese manufacturers listed on the Shanghai/Shenzhen Stock Exchange from 2004 to 2013. We use the Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM...

Vegetable fibers have attracted increasing attention from researchers and manufacturers in the textile and apparel industry for their renewable, biodegradable, and eco-friendly features. However, due to the scattered nature and rapid development, a review that adopts a holistic perspective and analyzes the knowledge evolution structure of the veget...

Despite an increasing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), there is a noticeable gap in empirical research concerning its implications, particularly within the manufacturing sector. In response, we scrutinize the impact of DEI commitment on publicly traded manufacturing corporations through the lens of signaling theory. We employ an...

Microplastic fibre (MPF) pollution is a pressing concern that demands urgent attention. These tiny synthetic textile fibres can be found in various ecosystems, including water and air, and pose significant environmental risks. Despite their size (less than 5 mm), they can harm aquatic and terrestrial organisms and human health. Studies have demonst...

Infection prevention and public health are a vital concern worldwide, especially during pandemics such as COVID-19 and seasonal influenza. Frequent manual disinfection and use of chemical spray coatings at public facilities are the typical measures taken to protect people from coronaviruses and other pathogens. However, limitations of human resourc...

Addressing fabric fading in the textile industry, this research investigates plasma treatments as a sustainable solution. The ambiguous relationship between plasma parameters such as air concentration, moisture content, and treatment duration with fading introduces uncertainty in the treatment process, necessitating optimization through precise pre...

This study used Bayesian Regulated Neural Networks (BRNN) with 10-fold cross-validation to accurately forecast fading effects of plasma treatment on cotton fabrics for a given set of parameters. By training six independent BRNN models, a reduction in model complexity and an enhancement in generalizability to unknown datasets were achieved. The inpu...

This paper employs the paradigm of an innovation ecosystem to stimulate fashion innovation. This study applies an integrative literature review on fashion innovation, innovation ecosystem and policy-driven innovation, proposes a theoretical framework – fashion innovation ecosystem and streams future research directions. The findings suggest the inn...

Advances in technology have brought accessibility to garment product fitting procedures with a virtual fitting environment and, in due course, improved the supply chain socially, economically, and environmentally. 3D body measurements, garment sizes, and ease allowance are the necessary factors to ensure end-user satisfaction in the apparel industr...

Through the development and usage of an agent-based model, this article investigates firms' adaptive strategies against disruptions in a supply chain network. Viewing supply chain networks as complex adaptive systems, we first construct and analyze a realworld supply chain network among 2,971 firms spanning 90 industry sectors. We then develop an a...

The existing literature review articles in composite materials research field target a particular resin material which cannot show the full picture of the research area. The traditional literature reviews are vulnerable to subjective opinion on selecting, reviewing and analyzing the related articles. In this systematic literature review, keywords w...

With the gradually increased awareness of sustainability development, external organizations, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs), and charity organizations, play an increasingly crucial role in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). The participation of external organizations not only helps the fir...

The survey was conducted with 1,498 consumers of different age groups and occupations, from late March to mid-April 2022. The findings reveal Hong Kong and Macau consumers’ perceptions of sustainable fashion and the SDGs. The survey also found the key factors affecting the purchase of fashion products and changes in fashion consumption patterns dur...

Scholars, the government, and the public expect that legal enforcement should be an effective means to prevent a firm's future safety violation behavior in daily productions. However, the literature provides limited insight into whether safety regulation enforcement is effective in helping firms reduce future safety violations. Therefore, this stud...

Supply chain security (SCS) incidents increasingly cause financial losses to manufacturing facilities and logistics service providers. Thus, supply chain security certification can have implications for production economics, particularly for importing firms who rely on a smooth logistics flow across country borders. However, it largely remains unkn...

This study reviewed 155 journal articles to examine how artificial intelligence techniques are being applied in textile coloration and related fields. Distribution of the reviewed articles was assessed in terms of the type of journals, year of publication, methods, and research background. Based on the citation network analysis method, an objective...

Many firms believe that the way to cope with environmental violations by their contract manufacturers is through greenwashing initiatives which they hope will protect them from collateral damage. Chris Lo, Christopher Tang, Paul Zhou, Andy Yeung, and Di Fan disagree, arguing that turning a blind eye to polluters in their supply chains can cause maj...

Receptivity towards textile-based fiber optic sensors that are used to monitor physical health is increasing as they have good flexibility, are light in weight, provide wear comfort, have electromagnetic immunity, and are electrically safe. Their superior performance has facilitated their use for obtaining close to body measurements. However, there...

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have benefited tremendously from free trade in the past few decades in the form of cost reductions, resource advantages, and market expansion. However, the dynamism of international relations and a global recession have rekindled the debate over frictionless trade. In this study, we examine how trade friction, crea...

With institutional pressures from various stakeholders concerned with climate change and efficient energy use in firms' operations, it has formed the belief that energy efficiency is crucial part for sustainable operations and firm competitiveness. While an increasing number of firms have adopted energy-efficient systems (EES), a limited understand...

Given that there are increasing concerns regarding the ethical issues and sustainability of fashion products, fashion retailers are communicating their sustainable efforts on social media on a larger scale. Through analyzing 12,744 tweets from six fashion brands, we find that the tweets about sustainability positively affect consumer engagement on...

Collaborative consumption (CC) relies on both co-consumption and co-production models. To better understand this phenomenon, we analyzed 123 CC research articles from both co-consumption and co-production sides, and identified four relevant research domains using a citation network analysis. We found that the scope of the studies was expanding from...

Ensuring food quality and safety in a fiercely competitive market is one of the most important tasks of a food company. An emerging conflict in operations management and production economics has arisen from the varied interpretations of the roles and effects of safety management systems. Although most studies have confirmed that Hazard Analysis and...

Health, safety, and environmental (HSE) issues are an emerging concern in sustainable supply chain management. Global brands sourcing from high-risk suppliers in emerging markets affect not only brand reputation but also production schedules and product quality. Based on 198 safety and 458 environmental incidents among 318 manufacturing firms in Ch...

Managing safety has become increasingly important in global operations. Surprisingly, the literature provides limited clues on what influences future accident hazards after the happening of a recent minor operational incident (MOI) in an organization. We examine the impacts of internal context (direct MOI experience) and external context (indirect...

Information Systems (IS) play an important role in improving the efficiency of firms’ operations and supply chains, which links to sustainability. Therefore, this study conducted a systematic literature network analysis to review 132 articles that discuss current trends in the IS discipline. Based on a citation network analysis, this study discover...

There are many nonsurgical treatment options from adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) to control the progression of the spinal curvature. However, the existing studies are so diverse and diffuse that it is challenging to find potential trends for further studies without a more comprehensive review in place for reference purposes. Thus, the object...

Based on an analysis of 253 related papers drawn from the Web of Science database, this study examines holistic sustainability research in liner shipping management literature using a citation network analysis (CNA) approach followed by a qualitative analysis of findings. We identify four major research domains, namely shipping performance, port se...

This study provides an overview of corporate ethical responsibility (CER) studies and discusses potential future research directions. We use citations analysis in this study, because it is an efficient method for identifying and visualizing intellectual bases in a given field. Then, it presents a conceptual model that summarizes the key relationshi...

Integrating resource-based view and opportunity-motivation-ability framework, we theorize that social commerce represents firms' opportunity to access valuable social media resources and gain a competitive advantage. We further argue that product uncertainty and firm reputation indicate firms' motivation and ability, respectively, to use the social...

The adoption of radio-frequency identification (RFID) can improve the efficiency of firms. However, RFID may also affect the risk and uncertainty in the operations of a firm. Although several studies have examined the effects of RFID on firm performance, the effects of mandated RFID on firm risk and the influence of top management team (TMT) charac...

Despite the growth of ISO 14001 a lot is still unknown about the impact of environmental management systems on firms’ operating performance with much of the academic literature focusing on the financial, market and environmental benefits of ISO 14001. The research in this paper employs the practice-based view along with the event study methodology...

Previous research has established a link between the debt component of capital structure and managers making risky decisions. Literature in finance and strategy has explored the role of debt and concluded that increases in debt focus managerial decision making on short‐term financial goals, suggesting that increases in debt might also lead to manag...

This chapter highlights the importance of exploring sustainability issues for luxury brands, and then it summarizes the key highlights of each chapter of this book (i.e., chapter 2 to 10). We start by addressing the question “Is sustainability an attainable goal for luxury brands?”. Through the discussion of the tensions between the luxury brand tr...

Today’s consumers are increasingly concerned with social and environmental issues, leading to more conscientious consumption decisions and practices. As the core consumers’ characteristics are vastly different between luxury and mass fashion brands, it is expected that consumers’ social media responses would be highly varied as well. Therefore, thi...

In recent years, many fashion brands and retailers have been under pressure to achieve environment-friendly production and operations. To reduce carbon footprints, retailers are seeking ways to adopt energy efficiency technologies (EETs), to have better control of energy consumption through technology improvement or substitution. The application of...

This study reviewed 155 journal articles that examined the adverse effects of textile dyes on human health. The distribution of these articles was investigated in terms of journal type, year of publication, methodologies and research contexts. Based on the use of citation network analysis, an objective approach for identifying clusters of articles...

Corporate label change (CLC) is a common way to establish a firm's new corporate identity to drive revenue nowadays, but its merits are controversial. We investigate the impacts of CLC, being a signal of corporate identity change, on firm's long-term labor productivity. We find that CLC negatively affects long-term labor productivity. We also find...

We examine firms listed on the Shanghai/Shenzhen Stock Exchange to investigate stock market reactions to 294 Chinese manufacturing firms involved in 618 environmental incidents between 2006 and 2013. Through our event studies, we find empirical evidence of a significantly negative stock market reaction to announcements of environmental incidents. O...

We explore longitudinally how the institutionalization of quality management standards would lead to paradoxical performance implications. Specifically, we examine the organizational consequences of ISO 9000 adoption when the standard was increasingly institutionalized in the manufacturing industry in the early years. Based on hierarchical linear m...

This article investigates strategic responses of inland ports to institutional forces pressuring their adoption of sustainability practices. We postulate that even though inland port operators strive for economic viability, there are growing pressures from various stakeholders for continuous enhancement of their environmental and social sustainabil...

Comfort is now a hot topic in textile and clothing field. While textile materials are improving against our comfort feeling in various aspects, a lot of technologies were introduced for manufacturing comfort textile. The technologies may produce negative effect to the environment. Also, “eco-friendly” always draws much attention by the public and m...

Recent years have seen a significant increase in stakeholder pressure on firms to be not only economically sustainable but also from an environmental and social perspective. Besides operational changes in practices and products companies have reacted toward this increased pressure from a strategic perspective through structural changes of their top...

Operations management scholars have long debated the right level of slack resources required to optimize a production system. Recent research suggests that the right level of operational slack, typically in the form of inventory, is very little but not none. However, this conclusion was reached without considering the role of slack resources in occ...

Even though sustainability in maritime transport is increasingly emphasized by researchers and practitioners, social sustainability in this context remains underexplored. Based on neo-institutional theory, we formulate three propositions to conjecture how coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphic pressures affect the social sustainability discours...

People are paying increasing attention to environmental protection and prefer products to be manufactured and consumed in an environmentally friendly way. These are the main trends likely to persist in the near future. In the past two decades, academic research on environmentally friendly coloration has proliferated significantly. In this study, th...

The effects of process variables on regenerable antimicrobial finishing of cotton fabric with nitrogen plasma treatment were investigated. Cotton fabric was treated with a mixture of nitrogen and helium plasma, and it was chlorinated with sodium hypochlorite to impart antimicrobial properties. An orthogonal array testing strategy (OATS) was used in...

Supply chain contracts, such as the markdown money policy (MMP), are commonly adopted in the fashion industry. In this paper, we explore how fashion companies can use MMP to enhance economic sustainability from the cross-cultural perspective. We conduct case studies on two fashion firms (suppliers), one from China and one from U.S.A., that are adop...

Disruptive information technology (IT) innovations not only present opportunities, but also cause uncertain impacts on firm risk that affects the equity financing cost of a firm. This paper used longitudinal data from 146 U.S. listed firms that adopted radio frequency identification (RFID), a disruptive technology that enables supply chain process...

The value of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is critical for the clothing and textiles supply chain, because the fashion business is characterized by a wide assortment of seasonal items with short life-cycles, high levels of impulse-purchasing and complicated distribution and logistics operations. This study aims to test whether th...

Today, manufacturing firms encounter pressure from multiple stakeholders to manage occupational health and safety issues properly, systematically and transparently. While manufacturing firms commonly use internally developed Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, there is growing pressure to adopt externally certified system such as OHS...

The development of innovative technology products is both costly and risky, and their economic value is highly uncertain. Based on a sample of 312 innovative technology products introduced between 1987 and 2006 in the U.S. and a long-horizon event study with control firms, we study the impact of innovative technology products on the long-term finan...

Several studies have examined the value of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, but few have evaluated its effect on operating performance. The actual benefits of RFID adoption remain controversial among academics and practitioners. The present study provides empirical evidence of the impact of RFID adoption on operating performance. P...

a b s t r a c t This study investigates the importance of contextual factors on the efficacy of ISO 9000 adoption. We explore the role of various contextual factors at the firm-level (i.e., technology intensity, labor produc-tivity, and labor intensity) and industry-level (i.e., industry efficiency level, industry competitiveness, industry sales gr...

a b s t r a c t This study investigates the importance of contextual factors on the efficacy of ISO 9000 adoption. We explore the role of various contextual factors at the firm-level (i.e., technology intensity, labor produc-tivity, and labor intensity) and industry-level (i.e., industry efficiency level, industry competitiveness, industry sales gr...

Motivated by the popular markdown money policy (MMP) in the textiles and clothing (TC) industry, in this paper, we explore how this policy performs in a two-stage TC/fashion supply chain with an upstream risk-averse manufacturer (supplier) and a downstream risk-neutral retailer. Specifically, we investigate both the optimal decisions of the risk-av...

Motivated by the popular markdown money policy (MMP) in the textiles and clothing (TC) industry, in this paper, we explore how this policy performs in a two-stage TC/fashion supply chain with an upstream risk-averse manufacturer (supplier) and a downstream risk-neutral retailer. Specifically, we investigate both the optimal decisions of the risk-av...

Consumers and stakeholders have rising concerns over product quality and environmental issues, and therefore, quality and environmental management have become important topics for today's fashion products manufacturers. This chapter presents some empirical evidence of the adoption of quality management systems (QMS) and environmental management sys...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of voluntary Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS) certification (i.e. OHSAS 18001) on fashion and textiles‐related companies’ financial performance. Design/methodology/approach – From all US‐listed fashion and textiles‐related companies, 44 companies that obtaine...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between ethical fashion and consumer purchase behavior (their willingness to pay a premium for ethical fashion), with the focus on consumers’ concerns and beliefs about, and knowledge of, ethical fashion. Design/methodology/approach A self‐completion questionnaire was administered to...

With rising environmental concerns from consumers and stakeholder groups, environmental management has become an important responsibility for today's fashion and textiles manufacturers. The production of fashion and textiles related products often requires high levels of energy and water consumption, and emits large quantities of pollutants to the...

Consumers and stakeholders have rising concerns over product quality and environmental issues, and therefore, quality and environmental management have become important topics for today's fashion products manufacturers. This chapter presents some empirical evidence of the adoption of quality management systems (QMS) and environmental management sys...

Although institutional theorists maintain that the widespread diffusion of ISO 9000 is the result of institutional forces, they have neglected the potential gains to top management in the perpetuation of the standard. Based on a long-horizon event study with control firms to detect long-term abnormal financial gains, we investigate the impact of IS...

We examine the relationships between number of business certifications and financial performance and senior executive compensation in Chinese manufacturing companies. The results show that the number of certifications obtained by a firm is significantly correlated with the compensation of the firm’s senior management, but not with the firm’s financ...

Although institutional theorists maintain that the widespread diffusion of ISO 9000 is the result of institutional forces, they have neglected the potential gains to top management in the perpetuation of the standard. Based on a longhorizon event study with control firms to detect long-term abnormal financial gains, we investigate the impact of ISO...

ISO 9000 is the most popular and widely adopted meta-standard for quality and operational improvements in manufacturing supply chains. However, few studies have quantitatively examined its impact on supply chain efficiency. In this paper we measure the material and cash flow efficiency of ISO 9000 certified firms in terms of inventory days and acco...