Sustainability is no longer being questioned as a passing trend, but has been recognized as innovation’s new frontier. However, the complexity of environmental issues requires that firms collaborate with a wide range of external parties as they can supply environmental knowledge and competencies outside a firm’s main domain. This study proposes and tests a model suggesting that inter-organizational collaborations positively affect environmental performance, analyzing the behaviours of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies. The dependent variables are different types of companies’ environmental performance, as reported in the U.S. 500 Newsweek’s 2010 Green Ranking. Data for the independent variables (collaborations undertaken with several types of actor and concerning environmental issues) have been collected through the content analysis of companies’ environmental/sustainability reports and/or their website section devoted to environmental sustainability. Collected data have been analyzed through regression analysis. Results show that inter-organizational collaborations with actors both within (suppliers and customers) and outside the supply chain (government agencies and NGOs) are beneficial for a company’s overall environmental performance, the management of its environmental footprint, and a company’s environmental reputation.

The benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR) affect the entire supply chains a firm participates in. However, not every firm is in a position to force the implementation of CSR in its supply chains as some, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), lack the necessary power. Chain directors can implement it acting as a principal, whereas the other chain members can act as agents. In the principal-agent framework, two main problems occur due to information asymmetry: adverse selection and moral hazard. This paper examines how a code of conduct (i.e. Social Accountability 8000) can help address the principal-agent problem, for SMEs, between chain directors and partners. The research method involves four case studies on CSR practices as implemented by Italian and Dutch SMEs within their supply chains.

Environmental sustainability has become one of the key issues for strategy, marketing, and innovation. In particular, significant attention is being paid by companies, customers, media, and regulators to development and consumption of green products. It is argued that through the efficient use of resources, low carbon impacts, and risks to the environment, green products can be essential to help society toward the environmental sustainability targets. The number of green product introductions is rapidly increasing, as demonstrated by the growing number of companies obtaining eco-labels or third party certifications for their environmentally friendly products. Hundreds of companies representing most of the industries, such as Intel, SC Johnson, Clorox, Wal-Mart, and Hewlett–Packard, have recently introduced new green products, underlining the need to develop products that create both economic and environmental values for the firm and customers. A review of the literature shows that academic research on green product development has grown in interest. However, to date, only a few empirical studies have addressed the challenge of integrating environmental issues into new product development (NPD). Previous empirical works have mainly focused on a set of activities for the green product development process at the project level. After years of paying no or marginal attention to environmental sustainability issues, most of the companies now generally realize that it would require knowledge and competencies to develop green products on a regular basis. These knowledge and competencies can be varied, such as R&D, environmental know-how, clean technology/manufacturing process, building knowledge on measuring environmental performance of products, etc., that may be developed internally or can be integrated through external networks. Adopting a resource-based view of the firm, this article aims at (1) investigating the role of capabilities useful for companies to integrate knowledge and competencies from outside of the firm on green product development in terms of both manufacturing process and product design and (2) understanding whether green product development opens new product, market, and technology opportunities, as well as leads to better financial performance of NPD programs. To this end, a survey was conducted in two Italian manufacturing industries in which environmental issues are becoming increasingly important, namely textiles and upholstered furniture. A questionnaire was sent to 700 firms, and 102 useable questionnaires were returned. Results show that (1) companies engage in developing external integrative capabilities through the creation of collaborative networks with actors along the supply chain, the acquisition of technical know-how, and the creation of external knowledge links with actors outside the supply chain; (2) external knowledge links play a key role in the integration of environmental sustainability issues into the manufactur

Purpose – The authors aim to investigate the concept of open innovation, identify different open innovation practices which help describe the continuum between closed and open innovation, and propose a framework that suggests an association between innovation contexts and practices. Design/methodology/approach – The authors first identify the variables to describe innovation contexts and practices. Such variables are developed based on the literature and on a previous paper by the same authors in 2011. Then, they establish an association between contexts and practices, and test it through cases drawn from the existing literature. Findings – The paper proposes a detailed assessment of open innovation practices and suggests the association between each of them and diverse innovation contexts. A few case examples drawn from the literature prove coherent with the theoretical framework underlying the proposed association. Practical implications – The authors’ results (and specifically the framework) enhance the organizations’ awareness of the open innovation concept and the possible practices to implement it, as well as supporting managers to better select open innovation practices in different contexts. Originality/value – This paper discusses the concept of open innovation practices to enhance the comprehension of the open innovation concept. Also, to the authors’ knowledge, the proposed association between context and practices is original in that there are no similar theoretical frameworks that help organizations selecting innovation practices.

Knowledge Supply Chains (KSCs) are the networks that provide knowledge supplies so nourishing one or more business processes carried out by a firm. KSCs are particularly crucial for innovation development processes. The need to recur to open KSCs during the accomplishment of such processes is indeed emphasized by the recent literature on open innovation (Kirschbaum, 2005; Chesbrough, 2006; Gassman, 2006; Van de Vrande et al., 2009). However, as scholars adopt different definitions of openness and stress different practices, it is not clear what open really means (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). Research is called for to further classify the different practices and, above all, to measure the impact of open vs. closed innovation so as to support companies in the identification of the right balance (Enkel et al., 2009). In the paper a methodology to map and analyze KSCs arising during an innovation development process is proposed. The methodology is described with specific reference to New Product Development (NPD) which is widely common as well as strategic in many firms. The methodology supports the characterization of the knowledge supplies (also in terms of the adopted collaboration approach) and the assessment of their criticality within the NPD process. Hence, it (1) contributes to make the concept of openness clearer and (2) provide companies with a clear picture of the process and its criticalities.