ABSTRACT This paper draws on a survey and interview data, collected from a group of 180 donors who made monetary gifts to an Australian higher education institution, to better understand what drives individuals and organisations to donate to Indigenous initiatives. The analysis helped to identify five types of donors: the Advocate and Prescriptive donors, the supporter types who donate to Australian Indigenous initiatives and the Constrained, Reserved and Opposing donors, non‐supporter types who withhold from donating to such initiatives. The results show a wide range of motivations, varied attitudes and multiple perceived barriers to donating to Australian Indigenous initiatives. The study reveals that while some donors do engage and reflect on issues around the role of philanthropy in achieving positive outcomes for Indigenous people, others' motivations and barriers to donating confirm the concerns of scholars who have shown how philanthropy can maintain inequality and colonial practices. This paper also provides practical implications for developing a reflexive approach to philanthropy that supports Indigenous initiatives.

We explore and develop an integrated model to enhance understanding and evaluation of the economic and environmental sustainability performance of alternative agricultural cropping production systems. More specifically, our developed Environmentally Sustainable Residual Income Decomposition Modelling (ESRIDM) integrates accounting decomposition analysis, Water and Economic Sustainability Performance Measurement (WESM), system thinking, modular thinking, Environmentally Sustainable Residual Income (ESRI) theory, into a holistic modelling system influenced by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) approaches. The ESRIDM is theorised and applied in the context of nitrogen management in Australian Cotton production through a detailed case study and comparative analysis of three nitrogen fertiliser options. We find the ESRIDM is able to: (i) provide an overall assessment of the economic and environmental sustainability performance of each scenario modelled; (ii) increase the transparency of the production system to enable the identification of key issues which influence the likely suitability of each scenario; (iii) enable an analysis of probable outcomes under various alternatives; (iv) evaluate the feasibility of regulatory option modelled. While this paper offers a novel perspective to a specific context, ESRIDM is designed to be adapted to a variety of contexts with a view to contributing to the evolution of more sustainable systems of production more generally.

Despite the benefits of modularisation and highly interconnected global value chains, recent natural disasters have provided evidence that global supply chains can be quite vulnerable to interruptions. Risks in supply chains leading to interruption are not limited to natural disasters and can include fires and financial ruin. Highly interconnected industries are highly reliant on inter-industry imports of ‘technologies,’ averaging 33.8% of their value-add being sourced from technology industries. Some of these supply chain risks can be managed by diversifying the supply chain to multiple competing suppliers. One strategy is to use new innovations in manufacturing methods to completely skip part of the supply chain, and source commodities and raw materials to 3D print into modules as GE did, simultaneous to investing in the manufacturers of the 3D printers.

Recent advancements in technology such as the internet of things, 3D printing and blockchain will undoubtedly have a disruptive impact on the business models of many organisations. By examining the megatrends in emerging technologies, this chapter will examine the implications these recent advancements in technologies may have on the management practices within organisations. More specifically, this chapter will consider how these changing management practices may affect the management of global value chains (GVCs). The implications for managers and organisations in developing capabilities to support these changing management practices is fundamentally important for competitively positioning the organisation and contributing effectively within GVCs, and so a discussion on the implication for managers and management practices ensues. The conclusions in this chapter suggest that megatrends in GVCs are critically dependent on emerging technologies, which in turn require appropriate capabilities within an organisation, reflected in the management practices of the firm.

Over the past decades, there has been a megatrend regarding the international diffusion of value chain activities, such as sourcing, design, production, distribution and marketing. This leads to a notion of global value chains (GVCs), in which all the value chain activities are distributed globally. GVCs have altered the nature of specialisation and production in many sectors regarding the selection of best practices and producers; reduction of costs; availability of raw materials; and improvement in quality, of both input and output, across the global chain. Although such huge benefits and opportunities can be achieved, the associated risks are also increased due to the complexity and involvement of too many entities in the GVC network. This, especially, matters in food and agricultural value chains, which are facing a number of challenges, such as high trade barriers, strict government regulations, changing climate conditions, and fluctuations in supply and demand, as well as high risks associated with food security and safety. Underpinning this megatrend and its associated risks, managing global food value chain risks using advanced technologies is becoming important for GVC transformation. Considered as one of the most disruptive technologies of recent times, the impact of blockchain ought to be crucial to managing risks in the global food value chain. In order to make full use of blockchain, the technology is usually integrated with other innovative and emerging technologies, such as the internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics. This combination is driving a revolution in which firms are strengthening their GVCs through mitigating risks, consequently creating the safety and complete integrity of the value chains. This study is, therefore, among the few to identify the potential risks associated with GVCs and explore the significant roles of blockchain and its allied technologies in mitigating the identified global food value chain risks. This chapter explores the risks in the global food value chain (GFVC), and provides a brief review of blockchain before analysing its main characteristics and impacts on value chains. It discusses how blockchain and its allied technologies contribute to risk management in the GFVC. Supply risks arise as a result of the inability of an entity to supply the product due to capacity constraints, inability of the supplier to meet the quality requirements stated by the buyers of local and export markets and government regulations, failure in supply of the stated quantity on time. Social risk focuses on the impacts of human action on GFVC performance and outcome. Integration of blockchain and allied technologies could benefit the risk management of GFVCs, through improving transparency and visibility, information sharing, demand and supply balancing, and quick response to changes across the value chain.

Blockchain is proving to be a game changer in supply chain management; with expectations, it may change the competitive landscape within the global business arena. In a complex supply chain network, blockchain has the potential to address numerous disruptions such as inefficient transactions, fraud, pilferage, lack of trust, poor information sharing and verifiability, all of which lead to inferior supply chain performance. However, there are many impediments hindering the widespread adoption of blockchain in global supply chains. While studies on blockchain technology have gained popularity, the focus on blockchain adoption challenges in the global supply chain is lacking. Considering this gap in the literature, this study aims to identify and prioritise blockchain adoption challenges in the global supply chain through an extensive literature review. We use our findings here to develop a conceptual model. After which, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to prioritise challenges using expert opinion. Theoretical and managerial significance are then discussed.

Governments worldwide are increasingly focused on promoting innovation activity to generate much needed economic growth. Innovation precincts are seen as providing the strategic opportunity to leapfrog economies and deliver a future competitive advantage. However, there are limited insights into how innovation activity in precincts takes place. In particular, the factors that enable successful innovation precincts, how they are measured and how their locations influence improved economic outcomes. This paper presents an analysis of the important enablers of innovation precincts, with a focus on measuring the relative importance of these enablers and their contribution to innovation and economic outcomes. A novel mixed-methods approach involving the use of a ‘double-blind doubled-scoring’ methodology and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) are applied to score and determine the relative importance of enablers of innovation precincts.

The emerging megatrends in healthcare and continuing digital transformation of the healthcare sector worldwide has opened up new opportunities to improve healthcare delivery as well as financial, organisational and health outcomes from many perspectives. In the context of global supply chains, the convergence of supply chain technologies, data analytics and availability of vast amounts of digital data from devices and software tools have made possible both the adaptation of people–process–technology strategies to new healthcare delivery requirements, but have also accelerated operational efficiencies in care delivery and improved access to quality healthcare and actionable data. Integrating and streamlining healthcare supply chains with internet of things (IoT) devices and sensors and leveraging the resulting data for advanced analytics at the point of decision making has the potential to provide healthcare professionals with actionable insights for planning and strategic decision-making, for both operational improvements and better care delivery. This chapter draws on an illustrative example from healthcare delivery to highlight some opportunities with analytics in patient safety initiatives and implications for healthcare supply chains.

There is a strong conceptual link between the structure of global value chains (GVCs) and innovativeness. However, evidence of the link has largely been limited to the study of GVCs in industries that are purported to be innovative, and the studies have largely been at the level of an individual firm or product. This sampling bias and level of analysis creates a lack of an objective measure of innovativeness, which would enable generalisation to other firms in a given industry and with which to perform inter-industry comparison. This chapter extends the typology of global value architectures (GVAs) by Wixted and Bliemel to use the same trade data to quantify the structures of 22 industry complexes via a measure of significant sourcing pathways per economy (SPE). The SPE results are used to rank the industries according to their level of interconnectedness and then reveal how this measure of trade complex structure correlates to well-established innovation measures based on R&D intensity, alliancing and modularity. These correlations suggest that measures of trade in GVCs are complementary to these innovativeness measures. The chapter propose that these innovativeness measures can be replaced by SPE measures, as they are more objective, replicable and thus reliable measures of innovativeness which also explicitly accounts for the dispersion of innovation across regions, thereby representing the aggregate structure of all GVCs of a given industry. This chapter extends the typology of global value architectures (GVAs) to use the same trade data to quantify the structures of 22 industry complexes via a measure of significant sourcing pathways per economy (SPE). The SPE results are used to rank the industries according to their level of interconnectedness and then reveal how this measure of trade complex structure correlates to well-established innovation measures based on research and development intensity, alliancing and modularity. Economy’s transaction intensity or SPE value is also directly analogous to the average in-degree centrality measure used in social network analysis. The chapter explores how a structural measure of industry complexes relates to measures of innovation. An important concept in innovation systems research is its emphasis on the separability of components and activities within a system or region. The separability or modularity of components and sub-components that are sourced via GVCs is a core attribute of many modern globally distributed value chains.

We focus on the pedagogical merit of introducing and assessing Thresholds Concepts (TCs) in the curriculum with a view to (inter alia) regain public confidence and trust in the legitimacy of business education and qualifications – especially since the 2007–2010 global recession. While the education literature foregrounds the role of higher education in preparing graduates for responsible practice, we claim there has been insufficient attention to the potential that TCs hold for renewed focus on knowledge and capabilities of graduates through the vehicle of assessment. The implications are profound. In this paper, we examine a case of how the application, and assessments in particular, of TCs in a first year quantitative business subject has impacted positively on student performance in that subject as well as in subsequent subjects of which those courses depend.

Firms today are striving to adopt innovations to ensure their survival, value creation and success. Innovation is increasingly seen as an outcome of a collaborative process, involving various stakeholders both within and outside the firms, in supply chain relationships. Collaborative arrangements are gaining traction and the focus of innovation is shifting from firms to their supply chain networks. This leads to the notion of supply chain innovation, which has been widely accepted as an important ingredient for improving the organisational and supply chain performance of firms. Inefficient practices such as improper crop selection, involvement of too many intermediaries, flood irrigation, over-fertilization and food waste necessitate innovative practices that will improve the sustainability of the food supply chain. In this regard, there is a need to investigate how collaboration among food supply chain entities leads to innovative practices and how these innovative practices in turn improve the sustainability of the food supply chain. This study aims to address this gap using the case of the Indian Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs). Further, using the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model, the supply chain of FPO is divided into five levels - plan, source, make, deliver and return and the case is analysed across these levels. The findings show that the formation of FPO through collaboration facilitates many innovative practices that result in several economic, environmental and social benefits to the FPO.