Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how social sustainability is considered in the study of supply chain management, thereby identifying key areas for future researchers to develop. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review of 109 studies is conducted. The papers have been analysed with a particular focus on their definition of social sustainability, research methods used, the central themes covered and the evolution of the debate including theories and the main findings. Findings Findings show that, first, researchers have thus far focused on principles for managing social change, developing measures for performance, identifying drivers and barriers, with few studies considering the social practices, particularly at the micro level and in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises. Second, findings also reveal that there is less consideration of the suppliers’, as opposed to the buyers’, perspective. Research limitations/implications This review focuses only on social sustainability within supply chain management, without considering the economic and environmental dimensions. Practical implications This review provides the key themes and areas for managers/practitioners to consider when implementing social sustainability in supply chains. It also provides insights into under-researched areas together with the need for future researchers to move beyond frameworks and develop more tools and instruments for measuring social performance in practice. Originality/value This paper is one of the few studies that consider the social dimension of sustainability exclusively within the context of supply chains, providing insights and implications for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to critique the adequacy of efforts to capture the complexities of customer experience (CE) in a business-to-business (B2B) context using input-output measures. The paper introduces a strategic customer experience management framework to capture the complexity of B2B service interactions and discusses the value of outcomesbased measurement. Design/Methodology/ApproachThis is a theoretical paper that reviews extant literature related to B2B customer experience and asks fresh questions regarding B2B customer experience at a more strategic network level. FindingsThe paper offers a reconceptualisation of B2B customer experience, proposes a strategic customer experience management framework, and outlines a future research agenda. Research Limitations/ImplicationsThis paper is conceptual and seeks to raise questions surrounding the under-examined area of B2B customer experience. It offers a framework that is propositional in nature and will thus benefit from further empirical interrogation. Practical ImplicationsExisting measures of customer experience are problematic when applied in a B2B (services) context. Rather than adopting input-and output-based measures, widely used in a businessto-consumer (B2C) context, a B2B context requires a more strategic approach to capturing and managing customer experience. Focusing on strategically important issues should generate opportunities for value co-creation and are more likely to involve outcomes-based measures. Social ImplicationsImproving understanding of customer experience in a B2B context should allow organisations to design better services and consequently enhance the experiences of their employees, their customers and other connected actors. This paper critiques the current approach to measuring customer experience in a B2B context, drawing on contemporary ideas of value-in-use, outcomes-based measures, and 'big data' to offer potential solutions to the measurement problems identified. Originality/Value

This paper describes a study analysing the front-end of the design process for primary healthcare facilities in the UK. A case study approach was used to gain a detailed understanding of the clients' activities at the front-end of the design process. The research identified the process undertaken to define new requirements, the difficulties faced by the various parties involved and the impact these had at the frontend. The findings have implications for managing requirements with novice construction clients. Keywords: built environment for healthcare, front-end design activity, requirements capture Corresponding author:Patricia Tzortzopoulos e-mail: p.tzortzopoulos@salford.ac.uk Tel: + 44 (0) 161 2954284 Fax: +44 (0) 161 2954587 2 The management of the design process has been a topic of study for over 40 years. There have been successive theories postulated with regards to effectively managing the process (see, for instance, Oakley, 1990; Cross, 1994; Gorb, 1994;Cooper and Press, 1995; Mozota, 2003). The relationships between the client and the designer and the effectiveness of briefing have been identified within such theories as one of the main contributing factors for good design (Cooper and Jones, 1995;Barrett and Stanley, 1999). Furthermore, it is recognised that at least 80% of the costs is determined at the front-end of the process, at the briefing and design stage (Bruce and Cooper, 2000). This is especially the case in construction (CRISP, 2001).There is currently a large programme of public building underway for the primary healthcare sector in the UK (DoH, 1998). The ethos of this programme is to deliver health and social care jointly so that people can have better, easier access to services through buildings which should also help regenerate deprived urban areas. It is recognised that the design of primary healthcare buildings is essential for the improvement of the services delivered to the community (Gesler et al., 2004). This has created an opportunity to take a fresh approach to the buildings that house healthcare provision, as well as an opportunity to consider the impact that the physical environment has on patients and on healthcare staff.Primary Care Trusts are now responsible for redesigning primary healthcare services and are 'the clients' of the new facilities being produced. As such, they are responsible for a number of activities, including identifying stakeholders, capturing requirements and briefing designers. However, Primary Care Trusts are newly formed organisations, and have no previous experience or skills in design and construction. They therefore provide an opportunity to examine the process of establishing requirements and briefing in a new context by inexperienced people working within new organisational structures. We use the terms 'novice/inexperienced client' to define this scenario.The main objective of this research is to better understand how novice construction clients actually develop design requirements at the front-end and how the circumstances in which t...

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The ongoing skills crisis in the UK construction industry has constrained the productive capacity of the industry. Past research and skills policies have largely failed to develop an understanding of the realities of the skills crisis at the grassroots level. Solutions offered by researchers and policy makers have previously had little demonstrable impact in addressing skills concerns. Much of these policies seems disconnected from the realities experienced by employers and by those working in the industry. A critical perspective on resolving the skills crisis is offered. A set of mutually reinforcing research and policy initiatives are proposed, including the need for researchers and policy makers to move away from the conventionally national approach in addressing the skills problem and to engage in genuine, joined-up thinking that meets the needs of local regions. Furthermore, employers and employees are called to be reflective practitioners in their participation of the skills development agenda. Adopting these recommendations could overcome many shortcomings in research and policy that have hitherto done little to combat the construction skills crisis.Skills shortages, critical perspective, bottom-up approach, labour market, research,

PurposeTo establish the differences between the perceptions of white‐collar managers and blue‐collar workers with respect to the factors that affect construction labour productivity, and to show that integrating the differences could lead to productivity improvements.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey administered to a purposive sample of 400 project managers and a convenience sample of 152 construction workers, eliciting current trends of their perceptions towards 59 factors that were extracted from an extensive literature review and exploratory study. This was followed by the identification of good practice examples from site observations across two project sites.FindingsThe study found distinct differences between the two groups, with white‐collar managers being more concerned with resource planning issues and the blue‐collar workers placing more value on the utilisation of resources. Furthermore, the site observations demonstrated that integrating these differences through employee involvement could lead to productivity improvements.Originality/valueThe study should extend previous productivity research, which had hitherto focussed on shorter‐term work content and work environment factors from a managerial perspective, with relatively lesser focus on the perspective of the general workforce.

Organisational learning has been widely acknowledged as holding the key for companies to survive and prosper and has, in recent years, gained currency in construction management research. Much research centred upon the study of organisational learning as a process, as well as the view and understanding of companies as learning organisations. However, non-construction management researchers have recently begun to recognise the incoherence of the concepts presented in the literature and identified a lack of a solid theoretical and empirical foundation. To further exacerbate the challenge of embracing organisational learning in construction, the industry is largely project based, thus increasing the difficulties for organisational learning to occur. This review paper suggests that past research into organisational learning had also mainly concentrated on an intra-organisational perspective and where construction is specifically concerned, on project partnering.However, we regard such a focus to be myopic as a means of exploring organisational learning at the construction project level. As such, a number of research challenges are recommended including the need to examine organisational learning beyond project partnering; an emphasis on the interorganisational dynamics involved in both the process and outcomes of organisational learning and the investigation of construction projects as learning networks. 198 words)

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