The coauthors wish to acknowledge the contribution of the entire X-Culture team: Without the hard work the 141 instructors and thousands of students do every day, the X-Culture Project in general and this study in particular would not be possible. We also would like to acknowledge the support of our many corporate partners, including Gramedia, Lidaris, Innospark, and Caja de Burgos, whose involvement makes the project more meaningful and educational for our students.

Reverse Logistics was previously not an important driver of supply chain in European electronics industry to create differentiation and cost reduction, suggesting that it might not be managed strategically. However, because of transformed market with the enforcements of laws, the scarcity of resources, and the more powerful customers, many companies have adjusted their existing supply chain to adapt to reverse logistics, which resolves the issues related to reverse flows for complying with the law, satisfying customers, and recapturing value. Reverse logistics has today become a competitive necessity and has gained increased acceptance of profitable business strategy. This study uses structural equation modeling technique with Partial Least Squares to examine how firms adapt to reverse logistics and its influences on reverse logistics performance. Empirical results relying on responses from 102 firms in European electronics industry indicate that there has been increasing adaptability to reverse logistics through resource commitments, strategy formulation, liberalized returns policy, capabilities and performance of reverse logistics. Testing indirect effects of resource commitments on performance of reverse logistics through multiple mediator models suggests that formulating a proper strategy of reverse logistics is currently the most important adaptability influencing performance of reverse logistics.

The cluster concept has steadily increased its importance during the past years -both from practitioners' and researchers' point of view. Simultaneously, many corporate networks are established. Researchers from different areas (business management, economics social and geographical science) are trying to explain both phenomena. As a result of different disciplines' varying research objects, many definitions of clusters exist. Furthermore, the terms cluster and network are often not clearly distinguished. Some authors even merge the terms. Based on a profound literature review, this paper structures the manifold definitions, differentiating between clusters and networks and gives first practical insights on how to integrate the two concepts.

In der mir-Edition werden wichtige Ergebnisse der wissenschaftlichen Forschung

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