This paper aims to develop a tool for measuring the clients’ maturity in smart maintenance supply networks. The assessment tool is developed and validated for corporate facilities management organizations using case studies and expert consultation. Based on application of the assessment tool in five cases, conclusions are presented about the levels of maturity found and the strengths and limitations of the assessment tool itself. Also, implications for further research are proposed.
MULTIFILE
In service design projects, collaboration between design consultant and service provider can be problematic. The nature of these projects requires a high level of shared understanding and commitment, which providers may not be used to. We studied designer-provider collaboration in multiple real-life cases, in order to uncover determinants for successful collaboration. The case studies involved six service innovation projects, performed by Dutch design agencies. Independent researchers closely monitored the projects. Additional interviews with designers and providers gave insights in how both parties experienced their collaboration in the innovation projects. During data analysis, a coding scheme was created inductively. The scheme supported us in formulating 12 themes for designer-provider collaboration, amongst them four contextual determinants of shared understanding and stakeholder commitment in SD-projects. The insights from this study were then grounded in literature. Knowledge gaps were identified on themes about agreements of responsibilities, the open-endedness of an SD-process, an opportunitysearching approach, and organizational change that is required for the successful implementation of innovative service concepts.
Strengthening sustainability in global supply chains requires producers, buyers, and nonprofit organizations to collaborate in transformative cross-sector partnerships (CSPs). However, the role played by nature in such partnerships has been left largely unattended in literature on CSPs. This article shows how strategizing nature helps CSPs reach their transformative potential. Strategizing nature entails the progressive revealing and reconciling of temporal tensions between “plants, profits, and people.” We show how a CSP took a parallel approach—recognizing the divergent temporalities of plants, people, and profits as interlaced and mutually determined—toward realizing their objective of implementing living wages in a sub-Saharan African country’s the tea industry, simultaneously driven by the revitalization of tea plantations. The promise of better quality tea leaves allowed partners to take a “leap of faith” and to tackle pressing issues before the market would follow. Our findings thus show the potential of CSPs in driving regenerative organizing.
Denim Democracy from the Alliance for Responsible Denim (ARD) is an interactive exhibition that celebrates the journey and learning of ARD members, educates visitors about sustainable denim and highlights how companies collaborate together to achieve results. Through sight, sound and tactile sensations, the visitor experiences and fully engages sustainable denim production. The exhibition launches in October 2018 in Amsterdam and travels to key venues and locations in the Netherlands until April 2019. As consumers, we love denim but the denim industry, like other sub-sectors in the textile, apparel and footwear industries, faces many complex sustainability challenges and has been criticized for its polluting and hazardous production practices. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project brought leading denim brands, suppliers and stakeholders together to collectively address these issues and take initial steps towards improving the ecological sustainability impact of denim production. Sustainability challenges are considered very complex and economically undesirable for individual companies to address alone. In denim, small and medium sized denim firms face specific challenges, such as lower economies of scale and lower buying power to affect change in practices. There is great benefit in combining denim companies' resources and knowledge so that collective experimentation and learning can lift the sustainability standards of the industry and lead to the development of common standards and benchmarks on a scale that matters. If meaningful, transformative industrial change is to be made, then it calls for collaboration between denim industry stakeholders that goes beyond supplier-buyer relations and includes horizontal value chain collaboration of competing large and small denim brands. However collaboration between organizations, and especially between competitors, is highly complex and prone to failure. The research behind the Alliance for Responsible Denim project asked a central research question: how do competitors effectively collaborate together to create common, industry standards on resource use and benchmarks for improved ecological sustainability? To answer this question, we used a mixed-method, action research approach. The Alliance for Responsible Denim project mobilized and facilitated denim brands to collectively identify ways to reduce the use of water and chemicals in denim production and then aided them to implement these practices individually in their respective firms.
De Nederlandse dienstenexport neemt al jaren toe en is daarmee een belangrijke pijler voor de Nederlandse economie. De productiviteit van de Nederlandse dienstenexport zou toe kunnen nemen als deze structureler van aard zou zijn. Helaas is maar 29% van de dienstenexporteurs in staat structureel op een internationale markt stand te houden (Internationaliseringsmonitor CBS, 2019). Het ontbreken van een fysiek product maakt het lastig vertrouwen en daarmee een duurzame relatie te creëren. De COVID19-pandemie heeft ervoor gezorgd dat het zo belangrijke fysieke contact vrijwel niet meer mogelijk is met als gevolg een sterke toename van digitalisering van deze processen. Dit heeft grote impact gehad op het internationaal opererende mkb in de dienstensector. Uit zowel (diepte)interviews als een survey is gebleken dat deze digitalisering de grootste impact heeft op het creëren van vertrouwen en daarmee het op kunnen bouwen van een structurele relatie. Zeker gezien het feit dat men in een internationale setting te maken heeft met verschillende culturen. Zowel de geïnterviewden als 91% van de respondenten van onze survey geven aan dat deze digitalisering van blijvende aard is. De bedrijven zullen hierop moeten acteren. Generieke modellen ten aanzien van het internationaliseren van diensten en relatiemanagement zijn vanuit de wetenschap gegeven maar in het bijzonder is er voor mkb-ondernemingen geen model en/of KSF/KPI-tool beschikbaar die praktische hulp kan bieden bij het, vanuit een digitale setting, toetreden tot een internationale markt en structureel op deze markt te blijven opereren. Dit project moet leiden tot kennis en inzicht rondom de toegenomen digitalisering van het dienstverlenend mkb en de wijze waarop relatiemanagement hierin vorm krijgt in een internationale setting. Het eindproduct van het onderzoek is een toolbox die het mkb met internationale aspiraties inzicht en handvatten geeft in het proces en de samenstelling van een samenhangende strategie bij de internationalisering van diensten.
