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Food sector supply chains have significant negative environmental impacts, including the expansion of global food commodity production, which is driving tropical deforestation – a major climate and biodiversity problem. Innovative supply chain monitoring services promise to address such impacts. Legislation also designates “forest-risk commodities”, demanding supply chain due diligence of their provenance. But such data alone does not produce change. This study investigates how theory in performance measurement and management (PMM) can combine with sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and decision theory (DT) via case study research that addresses paradoxes of simplicity and complexity.

Given existing relevant theory but the nascent nature of the topic, theory elaboration via abductive case study research is conducted. Data collection involves interviews and participatory design workshops with supply chain actors across two supply chains (coffee and soy), exploring the potential opportunities and challenges of new deforestation monitoring services for food supply chains.

Two archetypal food supply chain structures (short food supply chains with high transparency and direct links between farmer and consumer and complex food supply chains with highly disaggregated and opaque links) provide a dichotomy akin to the known/unknown, structured/unstructured contexts in DT, enabling novel theoretical elaboration of the performance alignment matrix model in PMM, resulting in implications for practice and a future research agenda.

The novel conceptual synthesis of PMM, SSCM and DT highlights the importance of context specificity in developing PMM tools for SSCM and the challenge of achieving the general solutions needed to ensure that PMM, paradoxically, is both flexible to client needs and capable of replicable application to deliver economies of scale. To advance understanding of these paradoxes to develop network-level PMM systems to address deforestation impacts of food supply chains and respond to legislation, a future research agenda is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the results of applying executive coaching (EC) as a management competency training and development strategy, setting up a comparison with other known training and development methods.

A dual sample is used. On the one hand, information is collected from a sample of 100 managers who participated as coachees in an EC process. On the other hand, the study provides the opinions of 236 HR managers as prescribers and promoters of company executive training and development actions.

The results suggest that EC is an effective management training and development method (MTDM). Furthermore, it is confirmed to be more effective than the rest of the techniques analysed in relation with sustained and observable management behaviour changes, whilst also providing advantages and drawbacks in its use.

Coaching seems to provide the most effective method for altering a selected number of concrete managerial behaviours, although its cost, length, and specificity limit its capacity to be used exclusively as a tool for continuous and generalised management training.

In addition to incorporating two different samples and points of view within the analysis, this work contributes evidence regarding behaviours addressed in EC processes – a feature that has received little analysis in the academic literature – and breaks new ground by comparing the results of this method with other MTDMs in terms of their degree of effectiveness in attaining observable and lasting behaviour changes.

Supply chain strategy is widely recognized as being a crucial component of a broader corporate strategy. However, the relationships between a firm’s strategic supply chain focus, the tactical orientation of its suppliers, and the firm’s performance, are less well understood. Much of what is known is also based on developed country contexts. The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine relationships between a buying firm’s supply chain strategy and operational dimensions of its suppliers in a developing country context.

A structural equation model is developed and tested using empirical data drawn from 296 organizations in India and Pakistan.

The results demonstrate a positive relationship between a firm’s strategic supply chain focus (lean and responsiveness) and key supplier practices (quality, cost effectiveness, delivery, and flexibility), which in turn have a positive impact on firm performance (operational, quality and market, and financial).

The study paper offers supply chain managers in developing markets with insights that can shape effective supplier selection and management and lead to positive performance outcomes.

The results provide insights into supply chain strategy, and empirically validate the importance of the alignment between strategy and the ability of suppliers to execute in a corresponding manner. It also offers evidence of the impact of the buyer-supplier interface in a developing market context.

IN YOUR rather emotional outburst on PLR (NLW 865) you made some serious errors of fact. PLR is not directed solely against public libraries. Section 5.12 of the Working Party Report states:

This chapter examines how public attitudes and judgments about tax fairness reflect distributive justice rules about proportionality/contributions, needs, and equality; fairness issues that influence voluntary tax compliance (Hofmann, Hoelzl, & Kirchler, 2008; Spicer & Lundstedt, 1976). Most public polls and some prior research indicate the general public considers progressive income tax rates as fairer than flat tax rates, a reflection of the Needs rule of distributive justice theory; our 1,138 participants respond similarly. However, two-thirds of our politically representative sample of the American public actually assign “fair shares” of income taxes consistently with fairness-as-proportionality above an exempt amount of income, consistent with the Contributions rule of Equity Theory. We argue experimental assignments of fair shares of income taxes can best be understood as a combination of the Needs rule, applied by exempting incomes below the poverty line from income taxation (via current standard deductions) and taxing incomes above this exempt amount at a single tax rate (i.e., a flat-rate tax) consistent with the Proportionality/Contributions rule. Viewed in combination, these two distributive justice rules explain the tax fairness judgments of 89% of our sample and indicate surprising general agreement about what constitutes a fair share of income taxes that should be paid by US citizens from the 5th percentile to the 95th percentile of the income distribution. The joint application of these fairness rules indicates how seemingly competing, partisan distributive justice concerns can inform our understanding of social attitudes about tax fairness across income classes.

The purpose of this paper is to question the usefulness of comparisons between theories on servant leadership and transformational leadership.

A review of scholarly works on these two theories is presented from the original works of Greenleaf, Burns and Bass to the current research.

Based on the four categories of construct clarity, two competing alternatives are identifiable in the scholarship of both servant and transformational leadership. There are thus 16 versions of each theory.

The literature review contains no new empirical data. The many versions available today of each theory do not make comparisons meaningful. The prevalence of several versions of theories on servant leadership and transformational leadership implies that they are no longer specific and useful theories.

Critical comments are presented on the usefulness of comparisons between servant leadership and transformational leadership. Thus, the value of these theories is also questioned.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mechanisms that explain the complexities Indonesian higher education (HE) academic leaders (ALs) experience in performing leadership roles. The research addresses the questions: How do Indonesian ALs perceive their roles in HE? What are the challenges facing Indonesian ALs in their roles in the Indonesian HE context? To what extent does gender impact how ALs act and are perceived?

In sum, 35 ALs from six Indonesian universities representing top executive positions were interviewed. Data were analysed thematically using a retroductive process followed by a series of on-site member-checking activities to establish credibility and authenticity of the findings.

The religious principles of amanah (the “altruistic calling” of their functions needing dedication, commitment, and passion) unique to the Indonesian cultural experience influence ALs views of leadership. ALs face role constraints due to resource limitations, experiencing a double bind, while harmonising differences due to ascribed social status and position.

Supportive structures effective for academic leadership practice must be created, further studies on male ALs’ roles in promoting the leadership ascent of female ALs and promoting work-life balance will improve ALs’ visibility and salience in steering institutional growth.

This is the first study to focus a critical lens on the complexities of context-based leadership practice as it is influenced by amanah. Layers of constraints confronting female ALs were documented due to exigencies of gender role expectations and resource limitations, yet they exhibited paternal navigational skills beyond the maternal and pastoral calling of their roles.