A New Era of Strategic Investment Decision-Making Practices in UK Companies: Towards Sustainable Supply Chains and Circular Economy

Abstract

Emerging global governance issues include economic, social and environmental problems. The COVID-19 pandemic and policies such as EU Green Deal and Brexit have led to great concerns about supply chains. Proactive strategies, adaptation and resilience are issues of significant importance for companies regarding seizing opportunities for business transformation. The evolution of crises associated with supply chains has been complex and resulted in widespread problems. Companies have enormous opportunities to revisit their business model and their strategic investment decision-making practices to play an active role in society. Industry 4.0 mechanisms, including big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced analytics, have brought unprecedented standards of ethics, governance, accounting, and accountability to the new era of supply chains. Successful strategic investment decision-making practices require a proper understanding of stakeholders’ interests and expectations. Such understanding enables organizations to achieve effective planning and control of organizational and policy resources and successful value creation. Business model transformation towards a circular economy enables companies to achieve potential objectives, including increasing production efficiency, productivity, and quality, supplementing operational flexibility, contributing to safety issues and operational sustainability, and amalgamating the production system with stakeholders. The increasing concern about supply chain issues has raised a call for boardrooms to revisit their strategies toward sustainable supply chains. This paper aims to shed light on the contextual factors surrounding the new era of strategic investment decision-making practices in UK companies towards green sustainable supply chains and sustainable performance maximization. The methodology underlying this study is based on a qualitative paradigm. The study utilizes secondary data, mainly the recent studies related to current issues in governance surrounding business model transformation. The conceptualization underpinning this study is rooted mainly in stakeholder theory and resource-based perspective. The results of this study articulate the wider stockholders’ concern, and the debates underpinning this study have managerial and theoretical implications, including regulatory bodies, standard setters, decision-makers, and other stakeholders.