Sustainable people, process and organization management in emerging markets

Sustainability as a concept is too broad and attempts to assimilate environmental, human, social and politico-economic dilemmas into a coherent analysis of the twenty-first century world (Scully-Russ, 2012). Needless to say, the human factor in the sustainability agenda has received overwhelming attention in recent years (Pfeffer, 2010; Speth, 2010) and, as a result, signifies an increased recognition of the human and social consequences of global economic development (Scully-Russ, 2012). The key to sustainable management of people, process and product in emerging markets is not an easy task and organizations always have to develop a sustainable architecture to leverage the best out of “mind-share” and “market-share” philosophy.

Such kind of HR policies and systems create an organizational climate wherein caring about employees’ concerns, fostering employee engagement, involvement and retention at workplace become normal but extremely powerful rituals played by the persons in the leadership roles. Several studies indicate about emotional competencies (Bozionelos and Singh, 2017; Pradhan et al., 2017; Singh, 2009), employee engagement (Al Mehrzi and Singh, 2016), and leadership role in change management (Al-Ali et al., 2017), wherein helping employees in enhancing their skills to manage knowledge at workplace (AlShaima et al., 2016) for helping organizations to improve upon their innovation performance (Al Matrooshi et al., 2016; El-Kassar and Singh, 2018). Emerging markets is the only destination for firms across different industries around the world to have their bases especially when they are actively practicing pro-market reforms (Gaur et al., 2014; Popli et al., 2016, 2017; Singh et al., 2017) to enhance firms capabilities (Hwang and Gaur, 2009) for superior firm innovation performance (Lee et al., 2017). This special issue on “Sustainable people, process and organization management in emerging economies” hopes to advance knowledge in the field of emerging markets to meet current and future challenges to run enterprises sustainably.

The first paper titled “Integrated dynamic vendor selection and order allocation problem for time dependent and scholastic data” is a contemporary one. The paper presents deep insights toward managerial implications and theoretical contributions as well.

The next paper titled “Sustainability strategies in the Indian leather industry: an empirical analysis” is contextualized in the Indian context. It deals with the key strategies that, if adopted, help the Indian cement industry to become sustainable as well as to beat the threats, if any, in the business environment.

The third paper titled “Quality measurement of Indian commercial hospitals: using a SERVAQUAL framework” is relevant to the present-day context in the healthcare sector. The authors present adequate theoretical and practical implications of the findings of the study.

The fourth paper titled “Board independence and managerial authority” is contextualized on the premise of linkages between the independence of board and authority given to managerial employees to assess and respond effectively to make organization resilient. The paper has sound theoretical contributions and managerial implications.

The succeeding paper is titled as “Associations between organizational factors, TQM and competitive advantage: evidence from emerging economy.” TQM is the key to make organization sound and agile in the context of emerging economy that has been well addressed in this paper.

The sixth paper titled “The adoption of balanced scorecard: an exploration of its antecedents and consequences” is situated in the Indian context. The BSC helps in assessing the health of any organization, and it has been presented and discussed at length in this paper.

The next paper titled “Project risk analysis based on project characteristics” is completely contextualized in an emerging economy. The paper deals with project risk analysis and presents practical solutions and theoretical contributions well.

The eighth paper titled “Determinants of sustainability of micro enterprises: an empirical analysis” is contextualized in the Indian context. The paper shows how to effectively sustain micro enterprises to make them viable and contribute to the growth of economy.

The special issue moves on to the next paper titled “Supply chain performance measures and metrics: a bibliometric study” which is an excellent piece of work. The paper is thought provoking and has sound theoretical contributions to offer.

The subsequent paper titled “Work disengagement among SME workers: evidence from India” deals with key practical strategies to keep employees engaged in SMEs. It has key implications for SMEs in India to practice to create workplace excellence.

The 11th paper titled “Modeling the drivers for sustainable agri-food waste management” is situated in the Indian context. The paper draws upon the key facts that operate in practice but are largely neglected to leverage them for waste management.

The next paper is titled as “Does board demographic diversity influence firm performance? Evidence from Indian knowledge-intensive firms.” The board demographic diversity has been debated for its impact on firm’s performance and this paper adds well to this discourse. It has nicely presented the theoretical and practical implications.

The 13th paper titled “Sustainability assessment in manufacturing organizations (Part II) – development of assessment models” is contemporary in nature. It offers theoretical insights as well as practical implications for assessing sustainability in the manufacturing setup.

The penultimate paper titled “Public sector R&D and relative efficiency measurement of global comparators working on similar research streams” is a contemporary one. This paper has argued well about the key practical challenges and offered relevant solutions as well.

The last paper titled “Innovative sustainable methodology for managing in-house software development in SMEs” is situated in the Middle Eastern context. The paper discusses about practical implications and theoretical contributions in the domain of software development in SMEs.

I hope that the readers – academics, practitioners, policy-makers and the likes – will like this special issue.