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Purpose: Retail organizations that consider a service ecosystems view of sustainability focused on transformation have the potential to contribute to the wellbeing of individuals, business and society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the transformative nature of sustainable retail fashion organizations and their impact on wellbeing within a sustainable retail service ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative in-depth case study research design was implemented using four sustainable fashion brands. Data were collected from multiple sources including secondary data from company websites and publicly available reports and interviews with founders and/or high-ranking managers within the organization. Findings: Three overarching themes critical to transformation in sustainable retail service ecosystems were identified: (1) embedded core purpose or ethos, (2) relevance of fit and (3) breadth and depth of message. Corresponding wellbeing elements were found within the three themes – community and society wellbeing, environmental wellbeing, business strategy wellbeing, consumer wellbeing, leadership wellbeing, employee wellbeing, stakeholder and value chain wellbeing and brand wellbeing. Research limitations/implications: Future research offers an important opportunity to further explore the relationships between sustainability, TSR and wellbeing in other service contexts. Originality/value: The paper contributes to transformative service research literature by conceptualizing a sustainable retail service wellbeing ecosystem framework.

Purpose: The healthcare sector is experiencing a major paradigm shift toward a people-centered approach. The key issue with transitioning to a people-centered approach is a lack of understanding of the ever-increasing role of technology in blended human-technology healthcare interactions and the impacts on healthcare actors' well-being. The purpose of the paper is to identify the key mechanisms and influencing factors through which blended service realities affect engaged actors' well-being in a healthcare context. Design/methodology/approach: This conceptual paper takes a human-centric perspective and a value co-creation lens and uses theory synthesis and adaptation to investigate blended human-technology service realities in healthcare services. Findings: The authors conceptualize three blended human-technology service realities – human-dominant, balanced and technology-dominant – and identify two key mechanisms – shared control and emotional-social and cognitive complexity – and three influencing factors – meaningful human-technology experiences, agency and DART (dialogue, access, risk, transparency) – that affect the well-being outcome of engaged actors in these blended human-technology service realities. Practical implications: Managerially, the framework provides a useful tool for the design and management of blended human-technology realities. The paper explains how healthcare services should pay attention to management and interventions of different services realities and their impact on engaged actors. Blended human-technology reality examples – telehealth, virtual reality (VR) and service robots in healthcare – are used to support and contextualize the study’s conceptual work. A future research agenda is provided. Originality/value: This study contributes to service literature by developing a new conceptual framework that underpins the mechanisms and factors that influence the relationships between blended human-technology service realities and engaged actors' well-being.

Purpose: Consumer experiences of healthcare services are challenging for researchers to study because of the complex, intangible and temporal nature of service provision. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel longitudinal three-phase research protocol, which combines iterative interviewing with visual techniques. This approach is utilised to study consumer service experiences, dimensions of consumer value and consumer value co-creation in a transformational service setting: complementary and alternative medicine healthcare. Design/methodology/approach: This research employed a three-phase qualitative longitudinal research protocol, which incorporated: an initial in-depth interview, implementation of the visual elicitation technique Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique and a final interview to gain participant feedback on the analysis of data collected in the first two phases. Findings: Four key benefits derived from using the three-phase protocol are reported: confirmation and elaboration of consumer value themes, emergence of underreported themes, evidence of transformation and refinement of themes, ensuring dependability of data and subsequent theory development. Originality/value: The study provides evidence that a longitudinal multi-method approach using in-depth interviews and visual methods is a powerful tool that service researchers should consider, particularly for transformative service research settings with sensitive contexts, such as healthcare, and when studying difficult to articulate concepts, such as consumer value and value co-creation.

Engineered particles adsorb biomolecules (e.g., proteins) when introduced in a biological medium to form a layer called a “corona”. Coronas, in particular the protein corona, play an important role in determining the surface properties of particles and their targeting abilities. This study examines the influence of protein coronas on the targeting ability of layer-by-layer (LbL)-assembled polymer capsules and core–shell particles functionalized with monoclonal antibodies. Upon exposure of humanized A33 monoclonal antibody (huA33 mAb)-functionalized poly(methacrylic acid) (PMA) capsules or huA33 mAb-PMA particles to human serum, a total of 83 or 65 proteins were identified in the protein coronas, respectively. Human serum of varying concentrations altered the composition of the protein corona. The antibody-driven specific cell membrane binding was qualitatively and quantitatively assessed by flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy in both the absence and presence of a protein corona. The findings show that although different protein coronas formed in human serum (at different concentrations), the targeting ability of both the huA33 mAb-functionalized PMA capsules and particles toward human colon cancer cells was retained, demonstrating no significant difference compared with capsules and particles in the absence of protein coronas: ∼70% and ∼90% A33-expressing cells were targeted by the huA33 mAb-PMA capsules and particles, respectively, in a mixed cell population. This result demonstrates that the formation of protein coronas did not significantly influence the targeting ability of antibody-functionalized LbL-polymer carriers, indicating that the surface functionality of engineered particles in the presence of protein coronas can be preserved.

Studies of spherical nanoengineered drug delivery systems have suggested that particle size and mechanical properties are key determinants of in vivobehavior; however, for more complex structures, detailed analysis of correlations between in vitrocharacterization and in vivodisposition is lacking. Anisotropic materials in particular bear unknowns in terms of size tolerances for in vivoclearance and the impact of shape and rigidity. Herein, we employed cylindrical polymer brushes (CPBs) to answer questions related to the impact of size, length and rigidity on the in vivobehavior of PEGylated anisotropic structures, in particular their pharmacokinetics and biodistribution. The modular grafting assembly of CPBs allowed for the systematic tailoring of parameters such as aspect ratio or rigidity while keeping the overall chemical composition the same. CPBs with altered length were produced from polyinitiator backbones with different degrees of polymerization. The side chain grafts consisted of a random copolymer of poly[(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate] (PEGMA) and poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA), and rendered the CPBs water-soluble. The epoxy groups of PGMA were subsequently reacted with propargylamine to introduce alkyne groups, which in turn were used to attach radiolabels viacopper(I)-catalyzed alkyne–azide cycloaddition (CuAAC). Radiolabeling allowed the pharmacokinetics of intravenously injected CPBs to be followed as well as their deposition into major organs post dosing to rats. To alter the rigidity of the CPBs, core–shell-structured CPBs with polycaprolactone (PCL) as a water-insoluble and crystalline core and PEGMA-co-PGMA as the hydrophilic shell were synthesized. This modular buildup of CPBs allowed their shape and rigidity to be altered, which in turn could be used to influence the in vivocirculation behavior of these anisotropic polymer particles. Increasing the aspect ratio or altering the rigidity of the CPBs led to reduced exposure, higher clearance rates, and increased mononuclear phagocytic system (MPS) organ deposition.

We report a versatile approach for controlling the intracellular degradation of polymer capsules by tailoring the degree of cross-linking in the capsules. Poly(2-diisopropylaminoethyl methacrylate) capsules were assembled by the layer-by-layer technique and covalently stabilized with a redox-responsive bisazide cross-linker using click chemistry. The degree of cross-linking, determined using radiation scintillation counting, was tuned from 65% to 98% by adjusting the amount of cross-linker used to stabilize the polymer films. Transmission electron microscopy and fluorescence microscopy studies showed that the pH responsiveness of the capsules was maintained, regardless of the degree of cross-linking. Atomic force microscopy measurements on planar surfaces revealed that increasing the degree of cross-linking decreased the film roughness (from 8.7 to 1.7 nm), hence forming smoother films; however the film thicknesses were not significantly altered. Cellular studies showed that the rate of intracellular degradation of the capsules could be controlled between 0 and 6 h by altering the degree of cross-linking in the polymer capsules. These studies also demonstrated that the cellular degradation of highly cross-linked capsules (>90%) was significantly retarded compared to degradation in simulated cellular conditions. This suggests that the naturally occurring cellular reducing environment is rapidly depleted, and there is a significant delay before the cells can replenish the reducing environment. The modular and versatile nature of this approach lends itself to application to a wide range of polymer carriers and thus offers significant potential for the design of polymer-based systems for drug and gene delivery.

Understanding the interactions between drug carriers and cells is of importance to enhance the delivery of therapeutics. The release of therapeutics into different intracellular environments, such as the lysosomes or the cell cytoplasm, will impact their pharmacological activity. Herein, we investigate the intracellular fate of layer-by-layer (LbL)-assembled, submicrometer-sized polymer hydrogel capsules in a human colon cancer derived cell line, LIM1899. The cellular uptake of the disulfide-stabilized poly(methacrylic acid) (PMASH) capsules by colon cancer cells is a time-dependent process. Confocal laser scanning microscopy and transmission electron microscopy reveal that the internalized capsules are deformed in membrane-enclosed compartments, which further mature to late endosomes or lysosomes. We further demonstrate the utility of these redox-responsive PMASHcapsules for the delivery of doxorubicin (DOX) to colon cancer cells. The DOX-loaded PMASHcapsules demonstrate a 5000-fold enhanced cytotoxicity in cell viability studies compared to free DOX.