The scope of firm responsibility for supply chain activities has expanded in recent years, and European firms are under particular regulatory pressure to take this responsibility seriously. The strategic importance of SSCM in the European context has also intensified given that in July 2024, the European Union’s Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence (EU CSDDD) entered into force (European Commission, 2024). The aim of this Directive is to foster sustainable and responsible corporate behaviour in companies’ operations and across their global value chains and ensure that companies identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe. Sustainability Supply Chain Management (SSCM) entails, addressing the challenges of sustainability risks, opportunities and trade-offs from a business and value-chain perspective by bringing upstream (input) and downstream partners (output) into the boundary of investigation and management. Identifying emerging supply chain risks and opportunities requires sense making about how changes to the external environment could interact with supply chains. Managerial frameworks that visualize the activities of a firm and the interactions with the external environment have been paramount in aiding managers in this task. In this research, we consider how value, as an evolving management construct, can better motivate sustainable supply chain management. We offer a visualization of relevant interlinkages and a mapping framework to assist in carrying out this task. We offer examples of how sustainable supply chain management can create shared value. Moving forward SSCM in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world requires an inside-out and outside-in view and an evolving conceptualization of value.

Across the Netherlands, regional innovation ecosystems are emerging where diverse organizations collaborate on the local production, processing, and application of biobased construction materials. This study explored the stakeholders and roles present within these ecosystems, and how these regional innovation ecosystems can create value for all stakeholders. As part of two qualitative case studies we conducted two focus group discussions. Our preliminary findings indicate seven roles within regional innovation ecosystems and show how the potential of biobased construction as a driving force for regional development, creating social, ecological, and economic value. Realizing this potential requires new forms of interorganizational collaboration rooted in shared values.

Food waste and food insecurity are key wicked problems of urban food systems. The paper explores how innovation principles of circular ecosystem can describe the innovation brought to the cross-sector partnership governing food recovery and redistribution in Milan. Focusing on the "Neighbourhood Hubs against Food Waste" (NHFW), a cross-sector partnership aimed at addressing food insecurity and minimizing waste, the study investigates how collaboration, experimentation, and platformization have innovated food recovery and redistribution activities and their governance. The results demonstrate how Milan's circular ecosystem has adapted to external shocks, improved coordination among actors, and leveraged digital platforms to optimize surplus food recovery and distribution. This research contributes to the literature on innovation in circular ecosystems and highlights the potential of collaborative ecosystems to address food insecurity and food waste in urban areas.

Purpose: This study examines how the institutionalization of supply chain sustainability risks (SCSRs) is influenced by the risk work of various actors.

Method: We employ discourse analysis to examine how various actor groups in the German automotive industry—including regulators, service providers, industry alliances, and advocacy groups—frame sustainability risks and the tactics they use to influence the understanding of supply chain sustainability risks (SCSRs) at our focal case company, BMW.

Findings: In our preliminary analysis of BMW, we find an overall expansion in the understanding of SCSRs over time, significantly influenced by NGO accusations and regulatory changes. Initially framed as purchasing and compliance risks to the company, sustainability issues have been recognized as broader social and environmental impacts on people and the planet since the introduction of mandatory due diligence regulations. We identify distinct framing tactics of SCSRs employed by actors: Service providers frame risk assessment as an information processing challenge and highlight the potential financial penalties resulting from regulatory non-compliance. NGOs invoke emotional narratives to drive corporate accountability. Industry alliances advocate for standardized practices to streamline compliance efforts among companies.

Originality: We offer a phenomenon-driven contribution wherein new light is shed on SCSRs by leveraging the novel research methodology of discourse analysis. Several researchers have developed quantitative methods to identify SCSRs based on the severity and likelihood of social and environmental impacts (Giannakis & Papadopoulos, 2016). By examining the risk work of different actors (Hardy & Maguire, 2020), we shed light on the divergent constructions of SCSRs intending to broaden the existing conceptualization of SCSRs beyond probabilistic, quantitative terms.

The UK’s transition to a circular economy (CE) contributes to the UK’s ambition to be world leaders in responsible environmental stewardship. The devolved administrations have proposed several policies; however, doubts have been raised about the effectiveness of traditional public policy in achieving the normative goals of the CE and its break with business-as-usual. More research is needed to develop policies relating to more sustainable product manufacture and more preferable CE imperatives such as ‘Refuse’, ‘Rethink’ and ‘Reduce’ which are applicable to business design stages.

The agri-food sector has the advantage of being able to directly “regenerate nature”, the principle of the CE to which the literature and policy appears to pay the least attention. The sector faces limited growth potential due to the constraints of consumer intake capacity and can accommodate only minor direct innovation. Furthermore, food production is already being negatively impacted by the effects of climate change; increasing the factors to consider in pursuing sustainability. However, opportunities for improvement lie in enhancing efficiency. Circularity in agriculture encompasses such considerations of resource efficiency, sustainability, and regeneration.

Combining these opportunities for research, this study explores the bi-directional links between macro-level factors (national policies) and micro-level dynamics (organisational change). The study is underpinned by institutional theory, which postulates that organisations are not self-contained entities but are instead shaped by social expectations from relevant parties as well as shared beliefs, structures, and conventions. Within this framing, the project seeks to understand the formation and content of relevant policies, as well as how organisations adapt to external pressures such as these policies, shifting societal norms, innovation and other factors.

Data collection is from multiple sources; review of national policy documents and semi-structured interviews with policy makers, subject experts and stakeholders in the agri-food sector who are impacted by the identified policies. Thematic and content analyses will reveal the patterns and pressures driving governance of the transition and the organisational changes in response to these pressures. Insights from this study would contribute to the understanding of how and why organisations take up strategies geared towards the common good and how governance of such transitions is and could be designed.