Stefan Gold

University of Kassel · Faculty of Economics and Management

Purpose The focus of the enquiry is on the research question of how stakeholder claims for transparency work as a means to support responsibility in the international supply chain. Design/methodology/approach This theoretical study analyses the relationship between stakeholder claims for corporate transparency and responsible business in the globa...

Recent research has increasingly emphasized the micro-foundations of knowledge transformation in multi-national enterprises (MNEs). Although the literature has provided ample evidence of the enablers of and barriers to the translation of practices, less is known about the activities and efforts of translators that lead to specific types of translat...

Subcontracting represents a popular business model in supply chains across industries. In the case of hidden subcontracting, subcontractors are beyond the visible horizon of the (focal) buying firm. Hence, buyers must rely on a cascading effect for diffusing practices such as compliance with labor standards through their supply networks. Motivated...

Although legitimacy theory provides strong arguments that environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and performance can help mitigate firm-specific (idiosyncratic) risks, this relationship has been repeatedly challenged by conceptual arguments, such as ‘transparency fallacy’ or ‘impression management’, and mixed empirical evidence. Ther...

While we have seen some encouraging examples of firms that try to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices into their supply chains, progress has been frustratingly slow. We argue that a key impediment today and a potential enabler tomorrow—and thus an important subject of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) research—is the...

Using sociotechnical systems (STS) theory, this article offers a critical perspective on how the interplay between social and technical systems in supply chains can be leveraged to gain valuable insights into addressing risks related to modern slavery. It elaborates on the complex recursive interactions among various elements of STS, shedding light...

This methods article concerns analysing data generated from running experiments on agent based models to study industries and organisations. It demonstrates that when researchers study virtual ecologies they can and should discard statistical controls in favour of experiment controls. In the first of two illustrations we show that we can detect an...

Purpose This study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) on social inclusion within upstream supply chains, targeting a notable literature gap in modern SCM discourse. By delving into this critical, yet underexamined, domain, this study spotlights the pressing need to incorporate social inclusion practices, particularly as global supply cha...

Das Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz (LkSG) ist in aller Munde. Während sich in Deutschland die Diskussion oft um überbordenden bürokratischen Aufwand und die Angst von Unternehmensvertretern vor Gesetzesverstößen dreht, wird das Gesetz international als wegweisend für Regulierung zur globalen Umsetzung von Menschenrechten und Nachhaltigkeit ge...

The Supply Chain: A System in Crisis highlights the multifaceted challenges facing modern supply chains. It examines the concept of a globalized economy, juxtaposing the promise of prosperity with the acute reality of worker exploitation and environmental harm. This thought-provoking book explores the interconnected relationships of supply chains w...

Supply chains have proven to be extremely powerful systems for generating responsiveness and efficiency in serving customers and consumers, while they promised to balance interregional inequality and foster human development around the globe. Despite selective successes of supply chains as economic powerhouses of wealth generation and consumer sati...

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has been gaining attention in operations and supply chain management (OSCM) research but is often narrowly framed and dominated by instrumental logic. We offer three lenses that potentially broaden the scope of this scholarship: justice, paradox, and dialectical. The justice logic frames DEI as primarily a mor...

Organizations across the globe are devising novel approaches to strive for carbon neutrality. Global institutions have manifested the critical need to develop reasonable strategies in every sector to mitigate the impending issues of excessive anthropogenic carbon emission and, in consequence, climate change. World‑leading econo- mies have initiated...

In the agri-food chain, while the impact of producers and consumers on sustainability has been well studied, food processing has been less explored. This position paper aims to discuss the potential of food processing to address all food and nutrition security (FNS) outcomes in order to achieve improved food system sustainability. First, FNS dimens...

In the current economic landscape, competition has shifted from individual companies to competition between supply chains. Supply chains serve as sources of value generation for multiple stakeholders, yet they can also contribute to harm inflicted upon vulnerable economic actors, consumers, society, and the environment. Business operations within s...

Purchasing is a crucial boundary-spanning function with significant operational, financial, and ethical implications for organizational success. Suppliers are key stakeholders, especially in the pursuit of sustainable and ethical business practice across (multi-tier) supply chains. Despite power imbalances, the interdependence between buyers and su...

Purpose – This study focuses on (re-)introducing computer simulation as a part of the research paradigm. Simulation is a widely applied research method in supply chain and operations management. However, leading journals, such as the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, have often been reluctant to accept simulation studie...

Despite the growth of supply chain sustainability (SCS) research, exactly how supply chain (SC) relationships lead to sustainability is not yet clearly understood. Although interest in investigating sustainability performance and practice in a broader manner is evident, little attention has been given to the microfoundations of SCS. To address this...

Purpose: Although the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize the importance of leaving no one behind, the opposite is happening for the world’s 89 million forcibly displaced people who are mostly left out of SDGs reporting and progress. A key reason for this poor outcome is that host country governments plan refugee camps as short-term s...

More than 50 million people in the world are estimated to be in a situation of modern slavery, the most extreme form of labour exploitation. Many of them are working in sectors such as mining and agriculture, which produce price-sensitive commodity products and where workers are particularly vulnerable. Against this challenge, we analyse a successf...

Predictions that 3D Printing will lead to an Additive Manufacturing revolution have been made for at least three decades. Although adoption of these technologies continues to increase, there is a disparity between companies and industries achieving success and those becoming disillusioned when the technologies fail to achieve unrealistic expectatio...

Teaching Case: Reports on the negative environmental and social effects of the garment industry and growing social awareness of sustainability are prompting two (fictional) companies, Raza and NowF, to consider adapting more elements of sustainability into their business strategies. Students will work in groups that represent either Raza or NowF t...

The labor market is at a severe crossroads with significant numbers of unemployed workers all while influential institutions and scholars have been warning for skilled worker shortages for decades. We answer how to achieve a fairer labor market, and how to implement public policy aiding these necessary mechanisms by adapting labor market scenarios...

The currently fossil-based production and highly linear use of polymer products generates significant amounts of CO2 emissions and irretrievably wastes resources. To address these challenges, effective and competitive technologies are required to enhance the circularity of carbon use. In this study economic and environmental effects of the use of C...

The International Journal for Research in Vocational Education and Training (IJRVET) is a double blind peer-reviewed journal for VET-related research. All articles published in 2021 are included in this book. IJRVET is the official journal of VETNET (founded in 1996), the European Research Network in Vocational Education and Training (umbrella or...

The digital transformation of supply chains is happening at the same time as environmental and social impacts are leading to a radical rethink of the very nature of supply chains, how they are designed, and how they are managed. We examine the intersection of digital transformation and sustainability in the supply chain and consider whether they ar...

In this special issue, we call for rigorous research that borrows from various disciplines and presents relevant and original work related to the disruption of illicit markets using OR and analytics approaches. This can be rendered in various forms, such as a new way of framing the issue via problematization, design approaches and constraint induce...

This article shows how the ethical framing of the contemporary issue of modern slavery has evolved in UK construction, a sector in which there is a high risk of labor exploitation. It also examines how these framing dynamics have inhibited the emergence of a common framework of action to deal with the issue. We draw on both framing theory and the l...

Global sourcing largely occurs from so-called emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs). In these contexts, substantial leverage effects for sustainability in supply chains (SCs) can be expected by reducing adverse impacts on society and minimising related risks. For this ethical end, an adequate understanding of the respective sourcing con...

The circular economy concept has been promoted as a response to increasing resource scarcity and as a driver of the transition towards a more sustainable economic system. The predominant focus of most circular economy-related approaches is, however, within the environmental and economic dimension, whereas social aspects, such as labour practices, h...

The circular economy concept has been promoted as a response to increasing resource scarcity and as a driver of the transition towards a more sustainable economic system. The predominant focus of most circular economy-related approaches is, however, within the environmental and economic dimension, whereas social aspects, such as labour practices, h...

Labour exploitation in the agrifood sector must be addressed for sustainability. Data-driven methodologies can identify risk hotspots and facilitate development of mitigation strategies.

Context: Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has attracted increasing interest in recent years due to its potential to address productivity and equity challenges, such as better employment prospects, as outlined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite the potential of such programmes, the enrolment rat...

Despite increasing interest in modern slavery, the absence of frameworks of action to deal with this issue has received little scholarly attention. To address this gap, we draw insights from framing theory, adopt an issue-based approach to institutional fields, and trace longitudinally the framing work performed by actors in the UK construction sec...

This is a foreword to a book authored by Thomas Chesney, a British-Irish computational social scientist at the University of Nottingham where he studies the behaviour of networked individuals, particularly in the context of modern slavery. This book illustrates the potential for computer simulation in the study of modern slavery and worker abuse,...

R ecent estimates suggest that more than 40 million people worldwide are in situations of modern slavery and other forms of labor exploitation. UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 addresses this problem and urges stakeholders to take effective measures to end all forms of labor exploitation by 2030. Labor exploitation is often a direct consequence...

Corporate action to tackle climate change is affected by multifaceted tensions, which are insufficiently investigated. It therefore remains unclear how tensions become salient and how they are responded to when a new strategy is introduced. We propose that translation theory can inform paradox theory and explore this conceptualization using a quali...

Businesses are increasingly exposed to dynamic market conditions due to changing legislation, societal values, and consumer preferences. While society and stakeholders hold companies accountable for respecting principles of sustainable development in their business conduct, it is essential to understand how individual, organizational, and supply ch...

Although in affluent countries a large part of the population enjoys high standards of living including various aspects such as education, health system, working conditions, and consumption, there is a bottom tier of people that have been left behind. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations distinctly require states, business...

In many industrial countries, demographic changes towards an aging society go hand in hand with the need for ergonomic workplaces. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink workplace designs and work processes, particularly in industrial professions, such as logistics. As logistics activities are still characterized by a high amount of manual effort, t...

Purpose: This Impact Pathways paper aims to provide a timely and structured discussion of real-world problems at Marks & Spencer and in retail in general, evoked through the current COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: The article presents collaborative research based on more than five hours of interviews and several iterative paper wri...

This paper investigates how food supply chains introduce sustainability standards (i.e. organic and/or Fair Trade labels). We combined the concepts of power and dependence with types of governance mechanisms to analyse for-profit and cooperative organisations. We explored nuances of how lead organisations are spreading sustainability standards. Fou...

Call for papers for a special issue in Production and Operations Management, Submission deadline October 2021, "Modern Slavery in Supply Chains: A Socio-Technical Perspective"

The United Kingdom's Modern Slavery Act exposed companies to a new ethical challenge in their supply chains. An estimated 40.3 million people worldwide are in modern slavery, working in a range of supply chains, including construction and facilities management. In this article, we show how the UK construction and facilities management sector respon...

Purpose - We introduce the key concepts, issues and theoretical foundations of this special issue on "The hidden side of sustainable operations and supply chain management (OSCM): Unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions". We explore these issues within this context, and how they may hinder our transition to more sustainable practices. Desi...

Call for papers for a special issue in International Journal of Production Economics, Submission deadline April 2021 "Rethinking operations and supply chain management in light of the 3D Printing revolution"

Recent estimates suggest that there are currently more than 40 million people worldwide in modern slavery and other forms of labor exploitation. UN Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 addresses this problem and urges stakeholders to take effective measures to end all forms of labor exploitation by 2030. Presently, there are no risk assessment tools av...

The Africa edition comes second in the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) book series that discusses the BOP markets around the globe, following the Asia edition and preceding the South America & the Caribbean and Affluent Countries editions. The BOP Africa edition is important in a number of ways. First, the World Bank and the Sustainable Development Goals...

In 2003, Germany introduced a bottle deposit system, with the aim to decrease single-use containers as well as related environmental burdens. Although the deposit system realized many benefits, its introduction also led to the phenomenon of people collecting containers for gaining the deposit as extra income. With increasing societal inequality, th...

“Modern slavery,” a term used to describe severe forms of labor exploitation, is beginning to spark growing interest within business and society research. As a novel phenomenon, it offers potential for innovative theoretical and empirical pathways to a range of business and management research questions. And yet, development into what we might call...

This paper reflects on the implications of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on modern slavery risks in supply chains. We first reason that the global supply and demand shock resulting from COVID-19 exacerbates workers’ vulnerability to modern slavery. Then, we discuss challenges firms face to detect, prevent, and mitigate increasing modern slave...

Internal and external drivers push companies into actively embracing sustainable business conduct. Until recently, both researchers and practitioners assumed that corporate sustainability goals could be aligned with commercial success. Recent research has cast serious doubts on the usefulness of this unidimensional business-case thinking, and has r...

The Innovation and Sustainability in Base of the Pyramid Markets series comprises four volumes, covering theoretical perspectives, themes, and various aspects of interest across four key geographical regions where Base of the Pyramid (BOP) markets are located – Latin America, Asia, Africa, and affluent countries. This book focuses on the BOP market...

Social business orchestrators (SBO) help social businesses of various sizes to tackle major societal issues by filling gaps in knowledge and resources. However, research has overlooked these types of collaboration. Situated within a bottom of the pyramid (BoP) context in Bangladesh, the current study sheds light on the process of value creation for...

Supplier selection is critical for sustainability management in global supply chains. In this chapter, the authors present a content analysis based literature review for global sustainable supplier selection. The supplier selection is investigated along four dimensions, namely economic, environmental, social, and global. The results of the study yi...

Social sustainability is a growing concern for supply chain management, but questionable practices endure due to insufficient stakeholder pressure on the market leading firms. Meanwhile small, socially oriented firms may have the will but lack the means to change dominant practices when entering a market. In this context 3D printing may offer a sol...

In today’s business, it is largely acknowledged that sustainability has to be considered in managerial decision making and corporate strategy development. However, many firms still face substantial opera-tional and organizational challenges when striving for a transformation toward sustainability, especially when expanding their efforts toward thei...

30th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

Civil society increasingly holds focal companies accountable for ensuring socially and environmentally sustainable production standards among their supply base. These standards entail increased levels of complexity to be addressed by appropriately designed tools, such as the Voting Analytic Hierarchy Process (VAHP) proposed by Liu and Hai (2005). T...

Special issue call for papers from International Journal of Operations & Production Management: The hidden side of sustainable operations and supply chain management: Unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions Submission due date: 31 May 2019 Reviewer first report: 31 July 2019 Revised paper submission: 31 October 2019 Reviewer second reports...

Using an agent-based model we explore the model of slavery in modern business developed by Crane (2013). Taking the Spanish agricultural sector---specifically the area of Campo de Dalías in Almería where much of Europe's vegetables are grown---as a case, we find that labour exploitation flourishes in communities of like-minded companies that do not...

The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of financial key performance indicators (KPIs)—namely customer accounts receivable flow time and credit limit allowed by financial partners—on the financial sustainability of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) during business growth trajectories from an operations management perspective....

In the face of natural disasters, companies attempt to maintain the sustainability of their business by implementing an appropriate set of organisational practices. Based on the practice-based view of strategic management, this paper aims to identify intra- and interorganisational supply chain practices that help focal companies in the cashew nut s...

The agricultural sector is a main source of income for many smallholder farmers in developing countries. In Kerala, the sector faces various challenges linked to land, labour and capital scarcity. This paper explores efficiency levels of farms and identifies measures that increase farm efficiency in a rural region in Kerala. By means of data envelo...

Business concepts at the BOP aim at creating value with and for the poor and hence represent one promising way of creating opportunities for uplifting and integrating marginalized people. Asia has seen tremendous economic growth and increased social well-being in many parts; still there is a substantial part of the population who suffer from povert...

The circular economy requires companies to rethink their supply chains and business models. Several frameworks found in the academic and practitioner literature propose circular economy business models (CEBMs) to redefine how companies create value while adhering to circular economy principles. A review of these frameworks shows that some models ar...

Although retail investors' interest in sustainable investment is constantly increasing, German credit unions and co-operative banks offer few sustainable financial products. The purpose of the study is to explore the current gap between supply and demand of sustainable financial investments in German retail banking from a financial advisor's point...

Politico-economic deregulation, new communication technologies, and cheap transport have pushed companies to increasingly outsource business activities to geographically distant countries. Such outsourcing has often resulted in complex supply chain configurations. Because social and environmental regulations in those countries are often weak or poo...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to map and analyse the literature from 1989 to 2016 on humanitarian supply chain management responding to refugees. This literature review systematically assesses existing literature, thereby highlighting gaps, challenges, and directions for future research. Design/methodology/approach – We apply a structured...

Although corporations have been often accused of exacerbating social and environmental conditions in developing world regions where they operate, there are companies that sincerely engage in community development initiatives and aim for the delivery of public goods in poor regions. Still there is disquiet on how these companies go about undertaking...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development of manufacturing capabilities in Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, top management’s competitive priorities, plants’ manufacturing strategies, and plants’ manufacturing performances are compared between old and new European Union member states. Internationally collected data are co...

Despite the growing popularity of supply chain management (SCM) both among managers and scholars, the efficiency of implementation of SCM has been barely assessed in an analytic way. The purpose of this study is to shift the attention of SCM scholars towards an in-depth investigation of SCM efficiency by reporting procedure and outcomes of one poss...

Supply chains and business models are of general importance for any company. Due to these concepts’ overarching and interlinking nature, they are of particular importance for companies engaging in sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability management. These companies look over the rim of their organizations’ boundaries—motivating research and...

Sustainable supply chain management has developed at an exponential rate into a distinct research field, but its progress towards sustainability is rather modest, and a coherent theoretical foundation for guiding companies towards a stronger integration of sustainability into their operations and supply chains is still missing. This article outline...

Innovation has been widely acknowledged as a key mechanism for addressing sustainable development concerns. However, less attention has focused on downstream commercialization challenges such as achieving increasingly complex and stringent regulatory approval. Such challenges may hinder the development of more sustainable technologies, especially t...