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1 – 10 of 94Aashish Garg, Pankaj Misra, Sanjay Gupta, Pooja Goel and Mohd Saleem
Spiritual tourism is becoming a significant growth area of the Indian travel market, with more Indians opting to go on pilgrimage to popular religious cities. There are many…
Abstract
Purpose
Spiritual tourism is becoming a significant growth area of the Indian travel market, with more Indians opting to go on pilgrimage to popular religious cities. There are many spiritual destinations where some of this life's essences can be sought to enjoy harmony and peace. The study aims to prioritize motivators driving the intentions of the tourists to visit the spiritual destination.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study applied the analytical hierarchical process, a multi-criteria decision-making technique, on the sample of visitors from all the six spiritual destinations to rank the motivational factors that drive the intentions of the tourist to visit a spiritual destination.
Findings
The study's results postulated that spiritual fulfillment motives and destination atmosphere are the top prioritized motivations, while destination attributes and secular motives emerged as the least prioritized.
Practical implications
The research study provides valuable insights to the spiritual tourism industry stakeholders to target the tourists' highly prioritized motivations to augment the visits to a particular spiritual destination.
Originality/value
Previous research has explored the motivations and modeled their relationships with tourists' satisfaction and intentions. But, the present study has applied a multi-criteria decision-making technique to add value to the existing knowledge base.
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Md Saharik Joy, Priyanka Jha, Pawan Kumar Yadav, Taruna Bansal, Pankaj Rawat and Shehnaz Begam
The presence of green spaces plays a vital role in promoting urban sustainability. Urban green parks (UGPs) help create sustainable cities while providing fundamental ecological…
Abstract
Purpose
The presence of green spaces plays a vital role in promoting urban sustainability. Urban green parks (UGPs) help create sustainable cities while providing fundamental ecological functions. However, rapid urbanization has destroyed crucial green areas in Ranchi City, endangering inhabitants’ health. This study aims to locate current UGPs and predict future UGP sites in Ranchi City, Jharkhand.
Design/methodology/approach
It uses geographic information system (GIS) and analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to evaluate potential UGP sites. It involves the active participation of urban communities to ensure that the UGPs are designed to meet dweller’s needs. The site suitability assessment is based on several parameters, including the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land use and land cover (LULC), population distribution, PM 2.5 levels and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. The integration of these factors enables an evaluation of potential UGP’s sites.
Findings
The findings of this research reveal that 54.39% of the evaluated areas are unsuitable, 15.55% are less suitable, 12.76% are moderately suitable, 11.52% are highly suitable and 5.78% are very highly suitable for UGPs site selection. These results emphasize that the middle and outer regions of Ranchi City are the most favorable locations for establishing UGPs. The NDVI is the most important element in UGP site appropriateness, followed by LULC, population distribution, PM 2.5 levels and the UHI effect.
Originality/value
This study improves the process of integrating AHP and GIS, and UGPs site selection maps help urban planners and decision-makers make better choices for Ranchi City’s sustainability and greenness.
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Juhi Raghuvanshi and Chandra Prakash Garg
The aim of this study is to identify and rank the factors of innovation capability (IC) in Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This study focuses on ascertaining…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to identify and rank the factors of innovation capability (IC) in Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). This study focuses on ascertaining the important factors that help in enhancing the IC with an emblematic focus on the MSME sector of India.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper proposes a multicriteria decision-making methodology, which is based on fuzzy analytic hierarchical process to prioritize the factors that enhance the IC of MSMEs. Finally, sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine the ranking stability.
Findings
Knowledge management is the most important enabler, followed by creativity and idea management and organizational culture.
Practical implications
Several organizations promote the strategic measures for enhancing the IC. To increase their capability to innovate, there is a need to identify, acknowledge and implement the drivers of IC into practice.
Originality/value
Prioritization done in the study facilitates the entrepreneurs to determine the most important factors that need crucial attention in dealing with sensitive issues of IC. Entrepreneurs can take several steps to implement the most important factors for enhancing the IC into practices for meeting the needs of the consumers, generating profits and enhancing the competitiveness.
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Robert Larsson and Martin Rudberg
This paper aims to study the effects of different weather conditions on typical concrete work tasks’ productivity. Weather is one important factor that has a negative impact on…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the effects of different weather conditions on typical concrete work tasks’ productivity. Weather is one important factor that has a negative impact on construction productivity. Knowledge about how weather affects construction works is therefore important for the construction industry, e.g. during planning and execution of construction projects.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire survey method is used involving means to perform pairwise comparisons of different weather factors according to the analytical hierarchical process (AHP). The survey also contains means to enable assessment of the loss in productivity for typical work tasks exposed to different weather types. The survey targets practitioners involved in Swedish concrete construction projects, and the results are compared with previous research findings.
Findings
The survey covers responses from 232 practitioners with long experience of concrete construction. The pairwise comparisons reveal that practitioners rank precipitation as the most important followed by wind and temperature. The loss in productivity varies significantly (from 0 to 100%) depending on the type of work and the type of weather factor considered. The results partly confirm findings reported in previous research but also reveal a more complex relationship between weather and productivity indicating several underlying influencing factors such as type of work, type of weather (e.g. rain or snow) and the intensity of each weather factor.
Originality/value
This paper presents new data about how 232 practitioners assess the effects of weather on construction productivity involving novel means to perform objective rankings such as the AHP methodology.
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Jyotdeep Singh, Parnika Tyagi, Girish Kumar and Saurabh Agrawal
The objective of the study is to develop a methodology to strategically rank store locations using criteria such as population, store site characteristics, economic…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of the study is to develop a methodology to strategically rank store locations using criteria such as population, store site characteristics, economic considerations, competition and so on to select the most optimal retail convenience store location.
Design/methodology/approach
A case of National Capital Region, India, for a 24-h convenience store was considered for the study and the major criteria that affect the performance of a convenience store are identified, such as population characteristics, economic criteria, competition, consumer accessibility, store size, total cost, site attractiveness and security. Fuzzy AHP is utilized to find the weightage for each criteria and a combination of fuzzy TOPSIS and grey relational analysis (GRA) is applied to rank the alternative using these criteria weight. Further, results obtained are compared with results from fuzzy TOPSIS and fuzzy VIKOR methods. Sensitivity analysis is also performed for ensuring the robustness of the framework.
Findings
It is observed that outcomes do not change under various settling coefficient values, demonstrating that the methodology is very robust. The developed framework will be quite useful to diverse retailers looking to expand and generate substantial profits.
Research limitations/implications
A large sample size of number of locations encourages generalization of results. Strategic ranking of the selected locations is carried out on a few selected criteria. The study was limited by the designated geographical area.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the few available articles on convenience store selection using combination of fuzzy AHP, fuzzy TOPSIS and GRA for a developing country.
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Md. Nazmul Haque, Kaniz Fatema and Md. Ashikur Rahman Joy
Crop suitability analysis is vital for identifying a piece of land’s potential for sustainable crop production and aids in the formulation of an effective agricultural management…
Abstract
Purpose
Crop suitability analysis is vital for identifying a piece of land’s potential for sustainable crop production and aids in the formulation of an effective agricultural management plan. This study aims to conduct crop suitability analysis of prominent Kharif (rice and maize) and Rabi (potato and wheat) crops in Sirajganj district, a flood-prone area of Bangladesh, and recommend a suitable cropping pattern to mitigate the detrimental effects of flooding.
Design/methodology/approach
Various factors such as soil drainage, soil depth, soil moisture, soil texture, soil permeability, soil pH, erosion hazard, nutrient status and flooding risk were considered for this study. For all four crops, the weights of each factor were determined using the analytical hierarchy process approach, and the scores of each subfactor were assigned on the basis of favorable circumstances of crop cultivation. Using the weighted overlay analysis in the ArcGIS 10.3 environment, the crop suitability maps were generated and were divided into four suitable classes. Geographic information system integration of crop suitability for all the crops determined the suitable cropping pattern of the study area in Kharif and Rabi seasons.
Findings
A vast portion of the study area covering 64.80% of the total land is suitable for cultivating either rice or maize in Kharif season followed by either potato or wheat in Rabi season. Other suitable cropping pattern for Kharif and Rabi seasons found in the study area are rice-wheat, rice-wheat/potato, rice/maize-wheat and rice/maize-potato, which covers a little portion of the study area.
Originality/value
This research validates the suitable location of crop cultivation on the basis of flooding occurrences in the locality.
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Measurement of the innovation process performance is critical for both managers and researchers. However, existing performance frameworks (PFs) neglect performance indicators…
Abstract
Purpose
Measurement of the innovation process performance is critical for both managers and researchers. However, existing performance frameworks (PFs) neglect performance indicators (PIs) and dimensions relevant to the current innovation landscape in companies as well as lack support in the definition of action plans. Thus, this paper aims to introduce a new and updated PF for measuring innovation performance and defining improvement actions.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposed PF is developed from literature and action-oriented case studies in two European manufacturing companies. First, the literature review enabled the synthesis of framework elements into a “conceptual” PF capable of illustrating the current state of knowledge in the field. Then, this PF was applied in the case studies that enriched the conceptual form with empirical insights, resulting in a new and updated PF.
Findings
The review enabled the systematisation of nine dimensions and 259 PIs that were fragmented throughout the literature. In turn, empirical insights from the case studies gave rise to an actionable procedure for providing a comprehensive diagnosis of the company's situation considering the new trends as well as defining improvement actions. Although the results from the two cases cannot be generalised, the findings encourage broader applicability.
Originality/value
The novelty of this research resides on the fact that the PF consolidates elements from the literature but combined with empirical insights in a new actionable way that supports managers in performance measurement and provides researchers with an extensive systematisation of dimensions and PIs.
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Manuel Rossetti, Juliana Bright, Andrew Freeman, Anna Lee and Anthony Parrish
This paper is motivated by the need to assess the risk profiles associated with the substantial number of items within military supply chains. The scale of supply chain management…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is motivated by the need to assess the risk profiles associated with the substantial number of items within military supply chains. The scale of supply chain management processes creates difficulties in both the complexity of the analysis and in performing risk assessments that are based on the manual (human analyst) assessment methods. Thus, analysts require methods that can be automated and that can incorporate on-going operational data on a regular basis.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach taken to address the identification of supply chain risk within an operational setting is based on aspects of multiobjective decision analysis (MODA). The approach constructs a risk and importance index for supply chain elements based on operational data. These indices are commensurate in value, leading to interpretable measures for decision-making.
Findings
Risk and importance indices were developed for the analysis of items within an example supply chain. Using the data on items, individual MODA models were formed and demonstrated using a prototype tool.
Originality/value
To better prepare risk mitigation strategies, analysts require the ability to identify potential sources of risk, especially in times of disruption such as natural disasters.
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Nizar Hassoun Nedjar, Yassine Djebbar and Lakhdar Djemili
This study aims to develop a decision support tool to improve planning for the rehabilitation of water distribution networks (WDN) using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to develop a decision support tool to improve planning for the rehabilitation of water distribution networks (WDN) using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method and the urgency level score.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper the AHP method was used to outclass the indicators having a strong influence on the deterioration of the pipes and the score of the level of urgency is calculated to establish the rehabilitation program (short, medium and long term). The proposed model was tested for the case of the city of Souk-Ahras in Algeria.
Findings
Based on the judgments of twenty-four experts, the relative weights of the three physical, operational and environmental criteria of the pipeline were calculated and found to be equal to 35.40%, 55.60% and 9.00%, respectively. The two indicators, number of failures and pressure, were found to have the highest overall weights. The results of this article can be used to improve decision-making in WDN rehabilitation planning in Algeria.
Research limitations/implications
The main objective of water companies is to provide citizens with good quality drinking water in sufficient quantity. However, over time, WDN age, degrade and deteriorate. This degradation leads to a drop in the performance through the degradation of water quality and an increase in loss rates. WDN rehabilitation is one of the most widely adopted solutions to address these drawbacks.
Originality/value
Application of a hybrid method (AHP- Level of Emergency) for the planning of the rehabilitation of WDN in Algeria.
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Onyeka John Chukwuka, Jun Ren, Jin Wang and Dimitrios Paraskevadakis
Unforeseen events can disrupt the operational process and negatively impact emergency resources optimization and its supply chain. A limited number of studies have addressed risk…
Abstract
Purpose
Unforeseen events can disrupt the operational process and negatively impact emergency resources optimization and its supply chain. A limited number of studies have addressed risk management issues in the context of emergency supply chains, and this existing research lacks inbuilt and practical techniques that can significantly affect the reliability of risk management outcomes. Therefore, this paper aims to identify and practically analyze the specific risk factors that can most likely disrupt the normal functioning of the emergency supply chain in disaster relief operations.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper has used a three-step process to investigate and evaluate risk factors associated with the emergency supply chain. First, the study conducts a comprehensive literature review to identify the risk factors. Second, the research develops a questionnaire survey to validate and classify the identified risk factors. At the end of this step, the study develops a hierarchical structure. Finally, the research investigates the weighted priority of the validated risk factors using the fuzzy-analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) methodology. Experts were required to provide subjective judgments.
Findings
This paper identified and validated 28 specific risk factors prevalent in emergency supply chains. Based on their contextual meanings, the research classified these risk factors into two main categories: internal and external risk factors; four subcategories: demand, supply, infrastructural and environmental risk factors; and 11 risk types: forecast, inventory, procurement, supplier, quality, transportation, warehousing, systems, disruption, social and political risk factors. The most significant risk factors include war and terrorism, the absence of legislative rules that can influence and support disaster relief operations, the impact of cascading disasters, limited quality of relief supplies and sanctions and constraints that can hinder stakeholder collaboration. Therefore, emergency supply chain managers should adopt appropriate strategies to mitigate these risk factors.
Research limitations/implications
This study will contribute to the general knowledge of risk management in emergency supply chains. The identified risk factors and structural hierarchy taxonomic diagram will provide a comprehensive risk database for emergency supply chains.
Practical implications
The research findings will provide comprehensive and systemic support for respective practitioners and policymakers to obtain a firm understanding of the different risk categories and specific risk factors that can impede the effective functioning of the emergency supply chain during immediate disaster relief operations. Therefore, this will inform the need for the improvement of practices in critical aspects of the emergency supply chain through the selection of logistics and supply chain strategies that can ensure the robustness and resilience of the system.
Originality/value
This research uses empirical data to identify, categorize and validate risk factors in emergency supply chains. This study contributes to the theory of supply chain risk management. The study also adopts the fuzzy-AHP technique to evaluate and prioritize these risk factors to inform practitioners and policymakers of the most significant risk factors. Furthermore, this study serves as the first phase of managing risk in emergency supply chains since it motivates future studies to empirically identify, evaluate and select effective strategies that can eliminate or minimize the effects of these risk factors.
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