Open Access

Although climate change-related risks affect all stakeholders along the supply chain, the potential impact on small and micro-sized suppliers is incredibly excessive. The corresponding toll of these climate risk threats on the mental health and well-being of owners of small and micro-sized suppliers can adversely affect their participation in sustainability efforts, ultimately impacting the firm's performance. This often overlooked dynamic forms the core of our research. We probe into two pivotal aspects: how industry dynamism and climate risk affect the mental health and well-being of owners of small and micro-sized suppliers and how, in turn, dictate involvement and, consequently, supply chain sustainability performance. This is further nuanced by the moderating role of the abusive behavior of buyers. Our study is built on resource dependency theory and the supporting empirical evidence is fortified by a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design. This study comprises three phases. In the first phase, our experiment examines the effect of industry dynamism and climate risk exposure on sustainable supply chain management performance. Hypotheses H1a and H1b are tested in the first phase. The second phase involves using a survey and structural equation modeling to test the comprehensiveness of the model. Here, the relationship between industry dynamism, climate risk exposure, mental health and well-being of owners of small and micro-sized supplier firms, supplier involvement and sustainable supply chain management (H2–H7) is tested in the second phase. In the third phase, we adopt a qualitative approach to verify and provide descriptive explanations of phase two findings. Our findings underscore the significance of small and micro-sized suppliers in sustainability, offering invaluable insights for both theoretical understanding and practical implementation. Our study highlights that buyers must allocate sufficient resources to support small and micro-sized supplier firms and collaborate closely to address climate change and its impacts. The key takeaway from this study is that buyer firms should consider SDG 3, which focuses on the good health and well-being of their employees and the mental health and well-being of owners of small and micro-sized suppliers in their upstream supply chain. This approach enhances sustainability performance in supply chains. This is one of the first studies that shows that industry dynamism and climate risk exposure can negatively impact small and micro-sized suppliers in the presence of a contextual element, i.e. abusive behavior of buyers, and ultimately, it negatively impacts sustainable supply chain performance dimensions.

In this article we show how fashion brands communicate with their follower on Instagram. We use a continuously update dataset of 68 brands, more than 300,000 posts and more than 40,000,000 comments. Starting with descriptive statistics, we uncover different behavior and success of the various brands. It turns out that there are patterns specific to luxury, mass-market and sportswear brands. Posting volume is extremely brand dependent as is the number of comments and the engagement of the community. Having understood the statistics, we turn to machine learning techniques to measure the response of the community via comments. Topic models help us understand the structure of their respective community and uncover insights regarding the response to campaigns. Having up-to-date content is essential for this kind of analysis, as the market is highly volatile. Furthermore, automatic data analysis is crucial to measure the success of campaigns and adjust them accordingly for maximum effect.

Good management requires proper measurement, yet little is known about anthropogenic climate effects of agriculture. To remedy this, a precise measurement of negative externalities is urgently needed. Therefore, the authors of this article describe the heterogeneity of results from previous studies on climate effects and – focusing on the agricultural sector – identify reasons for this phenomenon. The authors conduct a meta-regression analysis, based on 53 primary studies that cover the period between 1951 and 2015. All countries or country groups are included in the 1345 reported results on emitted amounts of CO2e and SO2e. Our findings confirm the well-known result that an increase in livestock quantities corresponds with a significant increase in emission levels. By integrating culture-related country data, the authors conclude that the level of “humane orientation” and the amounts of emissions follow opposite courses. Furthermore, studies conducted while the first author of this study was working for an NGO, report significantly higher emissions. Based on an adaptation of a meta-regression analysis to the field of environmental performance measurement, we are able to provide new insights about the influence of the change of individual drivers on the emission level. Examples of these insights include a one-third increase in cattle stock is associated with an increase in emissions of 29.45 t/km2. We also find that publications where the first author works for an NGO reported an emission level 87.04 t/km2 higher than other publications. These findings enable the identification of the main drivers of emissions, while helping to explain the heterogeneity of existing studies. Based on the findings of this study, companies can take reliable measures to reduce the external climate effects of their products.

Home visiting programs constitute an important policy to support vulnerable families with young children. One of their principal aims is to improve infant-parent relationships, so a key measure of their effectiveness is based on observational measures of parent-children interactions. In the present study we provide novel evidence on the effectiveness of home visiting programs in improving mother-child interactions within a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Pro Kind program. A major goal of the Pro Kind program is to promote child development by strengthening the intuitive parenting skills of mothers. On this basis, the following research question is addressed in this paper: What is the impact of the Pro Kind home visitation program on the quality of mother-child interaction?

AbstractThis study examines the immediate and intermediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of two high school graduation cohorts (2020 and 2021) and how changes in well-being affect students’ educational plans and outcomes. Our unique panel data on 3697 students from 214 schools in 8 German federal states contain prospective survey information on three dimensions of well-being: mental health problems, self-rated health, and life satisfaction. Data is collected several months before (fall 2019), shortly before and soon after (spring 2020) as well as several months after (fall/winter 2020/21) the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Applying difference-in-differences designs, random effect growth curve models, and linear regression models, we find that school closures had a positive immediate effect on students’ well-being. Over the course of the pandemic, however, well-being strongly declined, mainly among the 2021 graduation cohort. We show that a strong decline in mental health is associated with changes in educational and career plans and transition outcomes. As adverse life experiences in adolescence are likely to accumulate over the life course, this study is the first to exhibit potential long-lasting negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education and careers of young individuals.