Xinyu Hao

Operations management (OM) research remains fragmented in explaining how firms translate environmental, social, and governance (ESG)‐related pressures and commitments into operational practices through stakeholder engagement. To address this gap, this study systematically reviews 136 peer‐reviewed articles published between 2004 and 2024 and develops an integrative process‐oriented framework organized around three main domains: contextual drivers, salient stakeholders, and operational enactment activities. The synthesis identifies three key challenges in the translation process—prioritization, participation, and execution—and develops corresponding research directions centered on adaptive benchmarking, connectivity and integration, and materiality grounding. The framework clarifies how firms interpret contextual pressures with stakeholders and embed ESG commitments in organizational decisions and activities. The study thereby advances a more coherent understanding of how OM can connect strategic ESG commitments with substantive operational practices.

Joint control has been proposed to alleviate the negative spillover of the pandemic. The authority faces a decision dilemma on whether to undertake joint control, which is overlooked by the scientific community. This paper, aiming to clarify the decision-making mechanism under cost optimization, draws on the optimization theory to find the optimal strategies and start time under independent and joint scenarios with an improved infectious disease model. Besides, a simulation analysis, based on the survey in Ruili – a border area between Myanmar and China, is employed. The crucial findings highlight that (1) The control measures contribute to reducing the peak number or peak time of confirmed patients under optimal decision. (2) As the delay of start time, the epidemic control for both countries undergoes from validity to failure. (3) More cost-savings come with earlier joint control but with uneven distribution. Joint strategy mitigates the cost for the one with severe epidemics, but the effect is insignificant for the other. This study, concentrating on cost optimization, provides a novel insight into pandemic control. The results enrich the decision analysis in the context of pandemic joint governance while providing inter-regional control support for the decision-maker to tackle various epidemics.

The ongoing increase in waste and its mismanagement is jeopardizing urban sustainability. Although a polycentric approach has been introduced in the waste governance practice, measuring the polycentricity of urban waste governance remains challenging. This paper, therefore, adopts game theory to analyze urban waste governance from the perspective of governance agents, characterizing the polycentricity of waste governance by investigating the state of equilibrium of each agent's strategy. Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong are selected as target cities for comparative analysis. It is found that the active participation of formal recyclers, informal recyclers, and householders characterizes polycentric waste governance in Shanghai. However, in Tokyo, there is the active participation of only formal recyclers and householders and not informal recyclers. In Hong Kong, by comparison, householders and informal recyclers show active participation, but formal recyclers only provide a limited contribution to polycentric waste governance. Further discussion highlights that different governance patterns, socioeconomic factors, and policy formulation shape the distinctive polycentric governance characteristics of these cities. This paper provides a model basis for measuring and comparing the features of polycentric waste governance across different cities, thereby contributing to the knowledge aggregation regarding waste governance, as well as enlightening the pathways of waste governance practice.

Household waste utilization has been regarded as an important pathway to promote the circular economy paradigm and sustainable development for a long time. However, relevant enterprises are facing dilemmas in terms of the backward disposal methods for food waste, inadequate recycling of low-value recyclable waste and the lack of leading enterprises, resulting in unsustainable expansion of the industry. To address these problems, we investigated governmental departments and 20 household waste utilization enterprises in China. From the investigation, three typical enterprises, representing the advanced technology for food waste, the recycling mode of recyclable waste and the cultivation mode of leading enterprises, were selected for case studies. The results indicate that applying the technology of bioconversion by maggots could improve the utilization of food waste and adopting the “online and offline” dual-channel mode could benefit the recycling of low-value recyclable waste. Additionally, leading enterprises can be cultivated by franchise mode, which can drive the utilization of household waste in China effectively. The findings enrich the theory of household waste utilization in terms of disposal methods, recycling modes and enterprise operation. Practically, this research should enlighten decision-makers to improve household waste utilization. Furthermore, the research results could be generalized in other countries, thereby advancing the household waste management worldwide.