In recent times, Supply chains are required to undergo the structural changes in order to adapt to the positive events such as Industry 4.0 and negative events such as natural and man-made disasters. Both positive and negative events tend to cause disruptions and affect business operations continuity. Supplier selection, being the critical and foremost activity must ensure that selected suppliers are capable of supporting the organizations against disruptions caused by these events. Hence, supplier selection and order allocation must be restructured considering the dynamics of Industry 4.0 and disaster events to ensure undisrupted flow of materials across supply chain. The paper proposes a multi stage hybrid model for integrated supplier segmentation, selection and order allocation considering risks and disruptions. The suppliers are then evaluated based on set of criteria suitable in Industry 4.0 environment using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and are further prioritized using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FAHP-TOPSIS). The risk associated with each supplier is computed. The paper also proposes a Mixed Integer Program (MIP) as to optimize multi-period, multi item order allocation to suppliers in such a way that overall cost and risk of disruption is simultaneously minimized. In event of any disruption either from supply or demand side, the multi-stage hybrid model tends to reduce its economic impact by allocating emergency orders, thus, ensuring business operations continuity. The proposed multi-stage hybrid model is illustrated using a case of an automobile company. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Religion is known for transforming human behaviour in many ways. This research investigates the influence of religiosity on two unrestrained buying constructs; impulsive and compulsive buying. The focus of this paper is on both intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity. The first study provides important insights into the differential impact of these two dimensions of religiosity on unrestrained buying constructs. The second study explores the underlying mechanism of the relationship between extrinsic religiosity and unrestrained buying behaviours. Results show a negative relationship of intrinsic religiosity and a positive relationship of extrinsic relationship with unrestrained buying constructs. We also found that this relationship for extrinsic religiosity is mediated by susceptibility to interpersonal influence and moderated by long-term orientation. This research explains the differential impact of religion on unrestrained buying behaviour. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

This paper investigated the role of information related, social and customer characteristics in public information adoption tendencies of online customers to result in herding in e-commerce. E-commerce platforms contains numerous online reviews about products which have the potential to influence customers. We applied structural equation modeling and a 2 × 2 scenario experiment to empirically verify the effect of a few factors in creating online herding. Two levels of cognitive complexity (simple, complex) and risk aversion (risk averse, risk taker) formed the 2 × 2 factorial design. The study's primary finding was that a person with simple cognitive structure and risk avoidance tendency may exhibit higher intention to adopt public information and engage in herding. Information specific attributes contributed maximum towards information adoption and herding. Among sociological variables, only reputation concern significantly predicted both information adoption and herding. Theoretically, the study offered a framework to explore herding intentions online and augmented the observations from the information adoption model. The quality of concise information from credible sources significantly instigates adoption of public information contained in online reviews. From the perspective of marketers, having a better understanding of herding behaviors and its mechanisms can enable the e-commerce platform to reduce herding’s erosion on the wisdom of the crowd by optimizing its information structures (i.e., public information, private information, etc.). © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.

This study tries to explore how social media had been used for public administration activities across the global by analysing the tweets tagged with “#government” and “#gov”. On the basis of the literature social media usage by public administration had been classified into five dimensions, namely information dissemination and broadcasting; open transparency; open participation; open collaboration; and ubiquitous engagement. The study collects 296,417 tweets (after cleaning, 174,204 tweets) tagged as “#government” and “#gov” as open government data (as data is available to everyone but managed by private organizations) and this study applies open government data activities and social media analytics to derive the insights. The article also explores how different usage of the social media is effecting sharing and liking of the tweets. The implications of these findings can be important to government of different countries. The article concludes by pointing that social media can be used by citizens for open participation which can subsequently facilitate information dissemination and ubiquitous engagement. © 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

Sustainability is a growing concern for manufacturing companies, as they are major contributors to pollution and consume a substantial portion of the world's natural resources. Sustainable manufacturing can reduce waste, conserve energy and increase resource efficiency. However, one of the main challenges facing manufacturing organisations to put sustainability into practice is the lack of understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships between critical indicators of sustainable manufacturing. To overcome this challenge, a novel, rigorous and integrated framework, composed of four quantitative methods, is proposed to analyse critical indicators of sustainable manufacturing. The analysis is based on responses from both academic and industry experts. These four methods including DEMATEL (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory), the MMDE (maximum mean de-entropy) algorithm, ISM (interpretive structural modelling) and SEM (structural equation modelling) are uniquely integrated to present statistically validated relationships between critical indicators using information on varying degrees of relationship between them. The final cause-and-effect models for the respondent groups (i.e., researchers and industry experts) are further validated through gathering the viewpoints of a researcher and an industry practitioner for its robustness. The novelty of our research lies in: (1) proposing a novel and integrated rigorous quantitative framework combined with qualitative research method; (2) applying the proposed framework to analyse contextual relationships between critical indicators of implementing sustainability, in the manufacturing sector as a whole, which to the best of authors' knowledge is the first of its kind; and (3) comparing and contrasting results of researchers and industry practitioners' groups along with a check of their validation and robustness. © 2020 by the authors.

Incorporation of smart devices within the older framework has brought along significant challenges. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the barriers faced during the implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) within the manufacturing sector. In addition, the authors aim to obtain a hierarchical structure, which will help the policymakers to identify the most crucial barriers enabling them to make an informed decision. With the help of databases like Scopus, Web of Science, etc. a comprehensive list of 22 barriers was initially obtained. This list was further narrowed down to 10 critical barriers. The first step of the analysis involved the application of Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique, which quantifies the influence of the barriers amongst one another. Maximum Mean De-Entropy (MMDE) technique is then used to obtain a scientific threshold value, which is later used in the Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) technique from which a hierarchical structure of the barriers is obtained. The results of this study are expected to highlight the most crucial barriers wherein the researchers and practitioners can focus their strategic efforts. This will facilitate the addressal of implicit issues while implementing IoT Techniques in the manufacturing industry. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Both academics and industry are focusing heavily on building and nurturing consumer–brand relationships. Despite this interest, till now the role of traditional marketing constructs have been explored in developing such relationships. This study presents and tests a unique framework of consumer–brand relationship from experiential and identification perspective. Moreover, this study uncovers the differences in the ways consumers develop and maintain consumer–brand relationships for both product and service brands. Primary data were collected through field surveys, resulting in 321 usable responses. Results reveal that the various dimensions of brand experience have a different influence on the two components of consumer–brand relationship (two-way communications and emotional exchange) across product and service brand categories. Brand identification emerged as a significant predictor of consumer–brand relationship. Furthermore, the extent of the mediating effect of brand identification between various dimensions of brand experience and consumer–brand relationship differs across product and service brands considerably. The study presents several implications for both academicians and practitioners. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Camel is considered as an indispensable part of desert eco-framework across the globe. Apart from helping in transport, it is also used for its milk. Camel's milk is used worldwide because of its salty taste. However, it has many beneficial effects such as cure for autism and helps to control diabetes, allergy, and also prevents liver cirrhosis. Objective of this study is to analyze the ways to make people purchase and consume camel milk. In the last few years, awareness about nutritional and medicinal benefits of camel milk has rapidly increased. Consequently, the demand of the product has also increased. Objective of this article is to analyze the consumers’ willingness to buy camel milk before and after knowing its health benefits. It also explores the linkage between lifestyle diseases and consumer’s willingness to buy. We analyzed data in two stages. Initially, we did qualitative analysis with twitter text mining to understand customer’s sentiments about camel milk. Later, primary data was collected through structured questionnaire from a sample of 120 respondents by convenience sampling for quantitative analysis. There is a significant increase in the proportion of people willing to buy camel milk and once they were aware of the benefits, people are willing to buy more after knowing the benefits. People exposed to lifestyle diseases are more willing to buy camel milk. Hence, support of market-based awareness campaigns to stimulate demand for quality camel milk among consumers can be realized through information dissemination and awareness campaign. © 2018, © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This study conceptualizes and tests a framework to understand consumers’ intention to use environment-friendly ethical transportation medium. It primarily uses ethical decision-making model and extends it under the purview of self-consistency theory. Based on the survey of 158 respondents and analysis of the framework using structural equation modeling and process macro, this study establishes the mediating role of moral judgement, self-accountability and perceived consumer effectiveness in forming moral intention to use ethical transportation medium. It is one of the first studies to provide insights on consumers’ intention to use environment-friendly ethical transportation medium using the ethical decision-making process. It also contributes to the literature on ethical decision-making in view of additional factors like self-accountability and perceived consumer effectiveness. The overall findings suggest new perspectives on consumers’ ethical decision-making process in the context of choice of transportation medium. The study provides some valuable guidance to the service providers and policymakers dealing with environment-friendly ethical transportation mediums. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Destination brand engagement (DBE) has emerged as a valuable construct for developing and maintaining enduring relationships with consumers. This study investigates the relationships among DBE, destination brand experience, and visitor outcomes by supplementing the existing research in two ways: first, it explores how destination brand experience (sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral) affects DBE in a specific tourist destination. Second, the role of DBE in developing destination brand advocacy and destination revisit intentions has also been examined. Some important implications are suggested for both service providers and practitioners of the tourism industry. © 2020, © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how servant leaders play an essential role in employee work role performance by assessing the mediating role of knowledge sharing and psychological empowerment. Design/methodology/approach: Data was collected from a sample of 583 employees working in a public sector organization in India. Structural equation modeling has been used to test the proposed model. Findings: The results contribute to new knowledge that servant leadership has a positive link to work role performance. Findings demonstrate that this relationship was partially mediated by knowledge sharing and psychological empowerment. Knowledge sharing has a positive and significant effect on psychological empowerment. Theoretical and practical implications are provided. Originality/value: By identifying servant leadership as a determinant of knowledge-sharing behavior and psychological empowerment, this paper significantly supplements current research on the process through which leadership influences individual behavior and motivation toward work performance. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Mobile applications, commonly called ‘apps’, have become all-pervading nowadays, reducing considerably manual Labor and the time required to complete a transaction. However, despite this convenience, their acceptance and adoption across the social spectrum is low. The authors proposed and tested a model consisting of various antecedents of trust related to (i) the consumer (his/her previous experience and propensity to adopt); (ii) apps (their perceived usefulness, ease of use, and quality); (iii) finally, the organization itself (its reputation and offline presence). Data from 567 respondents using such apps were gathered and examined through structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques. The results confirmed that all the above antecedents (except the consumers’ propensity to adopt) significantly affect their trust toward retail apps. There is also a direct and significant influence of perceived trust and risk predicting the consumer’s attitude, and intention toward mobile retail apps. Based on the understanding and insights culled from this study, retail organizations (having their respective apps), their associate service providers, and policy makers at large, would be able to form relevant strategies and policies, which in turn would enhance the adoption of mobile apps in India. © 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

E-commerce has witnessed a steady growth with advances in digital technologies. However, one of the challenges faced by online retail is its inability to provide customers with the opportunity to “touch-and-feel” a product before purchasing, thereby resulting in a higher rate of product returns. To address this, online retailers, nowadays, are adopting various omnichannel configurations. Using a stylized model, we study three such omnichannel configurations: selling the product online, establishing a showroom while selling the product online (‘Experience-in-Store-and-Buy-Online (ESBO)’), and selling the product through both a brick-and-mortar (B&M) store and the online channel while allowing in-store product returns (‘Buy-Online-and-Return-In-Store (BORS)’). Based on product attributes such as product standardization and valuation we recommend optimal omnichannel strategies. Our results show that depending on whether a premium product is highly personalized or standardized, opening an additional showroom or a B&M store becomes optimal for the retailer. In contrast, for a low-valued, highly personalized product, the retailer prefers opening an exclusive showroom. Otherwise, for a low-valued, standardized product, the retailer opens an additional B&M store or continues to operate only online based on the product return rate and valuation. If the unit cost of transporting the returned products from customers is low, the retailer prefers to sell the product online only. Moreover, if the hassle cost of online purchase is too high, the strategy of in-store return becomes uneconomic. We also analyze the impact of customers’ exchanging returned items at the B&M store and their product fitness heterogeneity on the retailer's optimal omnichannel strategy. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

This study investigated the mediating effect of mentoring on the relationship between the Five Factor Model (FFM) Personality traits and occupational commitment (OC). The study used cross-sectional survey-based research design. Data were collected from 362 managers of public and private sector organizations located in North India. The results indicated that psychosocial mentoring acts as a partial mediator for facilitating the linkage between all the FFM traits and OC. Contrary to this, career mentoring was found to partially mediate the link between only conscientiousness-OC, agreeableness-OC and emotional stability-OC. No mediating effect of career mentoring was found for personality factors of openness and extraversion. HRD practitioners are encouraged to implement train-for-trainers’ sessions for raising awareness among senior managers/mentors about the importance of psychosocial mentoring functions. This study is unique, because it is among the few to appropriately capture the mediating role of mentoring functions vis a vis the personality and OC relationship. Further, it also enriches the existing body of research on workplace mentoring and careers, especially in the South-Asian context. © 2020, © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Organisations like UNDP, UNEP, CES and many more along with Fortune 500 companies have been sharing support towards the circular economy in order to bring focus towards long term sustainability. The purpose of this study is to explore the collective intelligence towards circular economy which may help in obtaining greater support from different stakeholders. For this objective, three research questions had been explored by analysing Twitter discussions on circular economy through content and network analysis. The insights reveal that users are discussing about all the three elements of circular economy, i.e., economic benefits, environment impacts and resource scarcity. The polarity of sentiments surrounding these elements of circular economy is also established and explained. Insights also indicate that artificial intelligence is strongly being perceived as a solution for resource optimisation, remanufacturing, re-generation of by-products and many more towards achieving circular economy objectives. © 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

The role of reusability cannot be neglected in the software component selection since it determines the worth of a component for its potential (re)use. The reusability is a qualitative feature and it is arduous to measure it directly. Typically, it is assessed subjectively without paying much heed to the involvement of befitting stakeholders and the use of a quantitative approach. We aim to quantify the reusability of a software component based on its quality through multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) solution to rank alternatives. To do this, the quality preferences of stakeholders about the reuse of components are determined. The reusability is quantified using a hybrid fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and quality metrics approach. In this approach, the weights of both FAHP and quality metrics are integrated to get the final ranking. FAHP-Metrics approach is applied to payment gateway (software) components, and the ranking of given components is obtained based on their reusability value. Finally, the comparative analysis of our results with respect to other recent studies reveals that the Spearman rank correlation result is highly significant and acceptable, and the obtained weights have a good association with other studies. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Building on the Theory of Constraints (TOC) in the service context and drawing on internal and external service profit chain literature, we explore the role of throughput orientation at the manager-employee-customer triad level. Controlling for archival performance data at the branch level of banks, in a sample of 136 triads of managers-frontline employees-customers at 37 branches from a bank in a northern state in India, we find that throughput orientation is positively associated with external service profit chain; and this association is further strengthened under stronger internal service profit chain. By integrating a service-operations based perspective of service employees at a triadic level, we demonstrate the importance of throughput orientation in service profit chains. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Drawing on previous literature suggesting that cross-functional integration is highly desirable in the operations management domain, we analyze the effects of strategic orientation (entrepreneurial and market orientations) on operational ambidexterity (exploration and exploitation) for improving business performance. Specifically, grounded in Resource Advantage Theory, we examine the effects of strategic orientation on the operational ambidexterity-performance link using data from 204 SMEs located in northern India. We first find that explorative and exploitative operational activities and their levels (average) have significant impacts on firms’ business performance. We also find that entrepreneurial- and market-oriented Indian SMEs place a greater emphasis on explorative operational activities; however, the impact of market orientation on exploitative operational activities is insignificant while that of entrepreneurial orientation on exploitative operational activities is highly significant. Despite insufficient resources to frequently undertake new projects, SMEs explore new opportunities to make profits, and also optimally utilize their existing resources and capabilities. Thus, the operations function of SMEs can ensure ambidexterity by focusing equally on existing resources and exploring new ones to seize market opportunities. We suggest that future research should investigate the relationships between operational ambidexterity and other orientations (e.g., technology, and learning), performance measures (e.g., customer satisfaction and loyalty), and contexts (e.g., large scale and non-for-profit companies). © 2019 Elsevier B.V.

Paris climate deal has strengthened the claims of adopting sustainable manufacturing and development practises. The manufacturing sector of any country often gets the important consideration in their country’s macroeconomic and social policies especially in the context of developing countries. Though it provides economic growth and development but environmental hazards and damages, caused due to manufacturing operations or associated operations cannot be overturned and moreover, in the past, they were ignored at large. The need of an hour is to explore and develop sustainable as well as green manufacturing operation that doesn’t have or very little negative impact on the environment and on the same time it doesn’t push the cost factor which might impact the profitability of the organization. Biomachining makes the use of metabolism activities of microorganisms for removing superfluous metal from the workpiece and could be considered as a potential player to replace traditional manufacturing operation especially turning operation which is not at all environmentally friendly operation. In this paper, efforts have been made to explore the usefulness of Aspergillus niger and Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans for biomachining of En-19 alloy steel in the reflection of SMRR, recorded for 8 consecutive days to confirm the scope of its application. Both the trials have been carried out at room temperature. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.