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The purpose of this paper is to establish a link between marketing resources, procurement process coordination (PPC) and firm performance. To allow for greater understanding in the field of supply chain management, the present study looked into the coordination between the construction firms and their main building materials suppliers.

This study employed the quantitative method where stratified random sampling and self-administrated questionnaires were sent to respondents in the construction industry. The research framework was tested using structural equation modelling technique.

The empirical result revealed that marketing resources have positive and significant effects on PPC dimensions. It was also found that PPC (mainly joint operation planning and supplier relationship development dimensions) has significant positive relationship towards firm performance.

This study focused solely on the firms in the construction industry and data collection was on a single respondent basis.

The findings of this study underlines some implication and suggests that construction industry players adopt and emphasise such orientations in order to enhance their performance – operational and customer performance in particular.

This study employed a newly developed framework based on the existing theoretical arguments to empirically examine the link between marketing resources, PPC and firm performance and offers fresh insights on the effects of PPC in linking marketing resources and firm performance. Besides that, since there are very limited studies that have taken the initiative to specifically list down the activities involved in the PPC, mainly in the context of the construction industry, this study offers a significant contribution.

The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations for Indian hotel administrators for improving sustainability practices: environment, economic and social with respect to the supply chain members by analyzing performance dimensions and the importance attached to them.

Importance performance analysis is a tool to analyze the perception of top-level, middle-level and first-level managers in hotels. Questionnaire is developed to collect the hotel manager’s perceptions. The snowball sampling method is used for data collection.

The paper introduces specific sustainability practices, namely, environment, economic and social factors, at the interface of the tourism supply chain (TSC). This will allow the hotels to identify the importance and performance of various sustainability practices to achieve a long-term competitive advantage. The present work finds that the responding hotel managers have given highest importance to the sustainability practices within the organization and the hotel manager’s perception of sustainability practices in the TSC will vary with respect to the supply chain members.

The effort has been made to capture specific sustainability practices across the supply chain. The paper reinstates the fact that sustainability practices are not firm specific and should be practiced at the supply chain interface. The data for the study were taken from focal organizations perspective which is the hotels.

Results provide the hotel administrators to develop appropriate strategies to improve their practices and functions by analyzing their strengths and weakness regarding their tangible and intangible assets. The identified sustainability practice attributes can act as a benchmark and drive the hotel industry toward possible cost-saving conditions by prioritizing the allocation of the resources while taking care of overall performance.

Results will help the hotel administrators to identify the better sustainability practices which will reduce the negative effects and protect the Mother Nature.

The study included hotels/resorts from tourism locations: hill station, backwaters and coastal areas, specifically in the Indian context.

Recent research on construction project management (CPM) envisions addressing wider social good while delivering value to the funding organizations. It is complemented by a growing body of knowledge on social sustainability in construction projects. These two literature streams are currently scattered and there is a lack of holistic guidance on integrating social sustainability with CPM. The current study addresses this knowledge gap through a critical review of these two bodies of literature and thereby proposing a conceptual framework for socially sustainable CPM.

A conceptual modelling approach, involving sequential steps of knowledge acquisition, and knowledge abstraction and representation, has been used. Knowledge acquisition was based on a systematic search and short-listing of research articles and knowledge abstraction was performed through thematic analysis of the 81 shortlisted articles. The categories abstracted through thematic analysis were integrated and presented as the framework.

A framework for socially sustainable CPM, consisting of four social sustainability characteristics and six areas of social sustainability integration in CPM (SSI-CPM), has been proposed. It presents possibilities of integrating social concerns in CPM processes at various levels – ranging from permanent firms that provide resources to the temporary (project) organization that delivers value.

This study seeks to bridge the gap between theory and practice of realizing social good through construction projects. To this end, a conceptual framework has been proposed along with an agenda for future research encompassing social sustainability and CPM.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to transformative service research by drawing on self-determination, elicitation of emotions framework and feelings-as-information theories to explore how customer participation, task-related affective well-being, customer knowledge, task complexity and service outcomes relate with each other.

A synthesis of relevant literature on customer participation and customer well-being reveals a conceptual model with 11 testable propositions.

The conceptual model shows that task-related affective well-being mediates the link between customer participation and service outcomes. Moreover, customer knowledge and task complexity moderate these links.

An empirically testable conceptual model models the roles of task-related affective well-being, customer knowledge and task complexity in the process by which customer participation influences service outcomes.

Service managers can use the model to design services based on the effects of different types of customer participation on task-related affective well-being.

This paper is one of the first to study the mediating role of task-related affective well-being in the relationship between customer participation and service outcomes. It does so by revealing the differential impact various types of participation have on service outcomes and the moderating role of customer knowledge and task complexity.

In complex business environment of today, organizations are trying to be flexible and agile for meeting dynamic demands of customers in terms of product variety, cost cutting and decreasing product life cycle. The main purpose of this paper is to identify different attributes of flexibility and to propose an approach for evaluating flexibility index of a supply chain.

Total 33 factors are identified from the literature and further clustered into six major groups. They are top management commitment, organizational factors, mutual understanding, flow of information, relationship and decision-making and responsiveness. On the basis of these factors, an index has been developed by using graph theory matrix approach to evaluate the flexibility intensity of the supply chain for the firm in consideration.

The proposed approach has been illustrated in context to an Indian automobile organization, and value of the flexibility index has been evaluated. Framework proposed will help the supply chain managers to evaluate the flexibility index of their respective organizations.

As values taken for different flexibility sub-factors are based on inputs given by managers of case organization, chances of bias may be there. Therefore, a study may be validated with more case studies to validate the proposed framework. Based on the flexibility index, organizations can find their strong and weak areas for strategy development.

A firm can also compare the flexibility index of its own supply chain with other’s supply chain or with the best in the industry for benchmarking purpose. Benchmarking of flexibility will help organizations in developing strategies to compete in dynamic market scenario.

Supply chain management is one of the most important areas for competitiveness and growth of industries. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and other developing countries face problems in coordinating their supply chain due to lack of resources and improper directions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for improving the coordination in supply chain and development of an index for coordination.

The interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach has been employed to develop the structural relationship among different factors of coordination and responsiveness in supply chain to take strategic decisions. This framework is also used to evaluate coordination index for an organization. It has been further illustrated with the help of a case study.

In total, 32 enablers for coordination in a supply chain have been identified based on literature review. These are further grouped into six categories such as top management commitment, organizational factors, mutual understanding, flow of information, relationship and decision making and responsiveness. It is observed that all of these factors have strong mutual linkage and top management commitment is a major driver for improving the coordination among these factors.

As ISM methodology is based on experts' opinion, this framework needs further validation with empirical data and detailed case studies.

This paper has explored major factors for coordination in supply chain. It will be of great value for SMEs in developing their strategies for coordination in supply chain. The coordination index evaluated in this paper will also help them in benchmarking their performance in terms of different attributes of supply chain.

Past research recommends integration of social sustainability (SS) considerations in construction project feasibility study for benefitting a larger group of project stakeholders. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to this effect, especially from the developing economies. The purpose of this study is to address this knowledge gap through a SS-centric analysis of feasibility study reports using a stakeholder salience perspective.

Feasibility study reports for 61 projects were obtained from various government organizations in India. The SS considerations were identified in the reports using a combination of quantitative and qualitative assessments. The former was based on content analysis and the latter was conducted using “VOSviewer” text analysis software.

SS considerations related to occupational health and safety, workers' employment practices and proactive involvement of communities and end-users were found to be inadequately addressed in the reports. Based on occurrences of the SS considerations, project-affected community was found to be the most salient stakeholder, followed by the end-users and the construction workers. Statistical analysis revealed significant relationship between the SS considerations and the type of project as well as the type of project delivery system.

This study contributes to better understanding of integrating SS considerations in feasibility study of construction projects. Its results provide useful inputs to decision-makers for orienting construction projects, right from the early phases, towards benefitting the disadvantaged and weaker stakeholders irrespective of their salience attributes. In developing economies, such interventions may improve quality of lives of a large number of project stakeholders and also cultivate a positive societal image of the construction industry as a respectful, ethical and employee friendly industry.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe a decision support tool based on various types of contracts in a two‐level supply chain. A supply chain (SC) consists of disparate but interdependent members, dependent on each other to manage various resources (inventory, money and information). The conflicting objectives between these members may cause uncertainties in supply and demand, which can be managed by adopting coordination with the help of contracts (such as buyback, revenue sharing and quantity flexibility). Design/methodology/approach: A decision support tool for SC coordination using contracts (DSTSCCC) has been developed to explore the applicability of contracts and to compare different types of contracts in various situations. The DSTSCC is comprised of an analytical module, which is an extension of the classical newsboy problem and a simulation module. Findings: DSTSCCC helps in determining decision variables for different scenarios of contracts in the best interest of all SC members as well as whole SC. Practical implications: DSTSCCC is a simple‐to‐use and easy‐to‐implement decision making tool which helps in taking decisions prior to the actual start of SC activities. The prior decisions may help to handle future exceptions. SC members may jointly select the most profitable contract to share risks and rewards. Originality/value: DSTSCCC comprised of analytical module and simulation module presents an Integrative framework which cannot be dealt in isolation. The output of analytical module becomes input for simulation to quantify performance measures. The improvement in performance measures after satisfying the objectives of all SC members helps in realizing coordination in SC.

Today, most of the manufacturing systems are changing very fast in terms of the adoption of new technologies. New technologies being implemented are Internet of Things, cyber physical systems, cloud computing, Big Data analytics and information and communication technologies. Most of the organizations in the value chain are implementing these technologies at the individual level rather than across the whole supply chain. It makes the supply chain less coordinated and causes suboptimal utilization of resources. For efficient and optimal use of modern technologies, supply chains should be highly coordinated. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate an approach for determining the index to quantify coordination in the supply chain.

From the literature review, total 32 factors have been identified. These factors are further clubbed into six clusters for evaluation of the coordination index. The graph theoretic approach has been used for evaluating the coordination index of a supply chain of an Indian organization.

This study has illustrated a comprehensive approach to quantify coordination of a supply chains for effective benchmarking of the supply chain performance in the Industry 4.0 era. Presently, it is observed that top management is giving more focus on organizational issues such as lean organization structure, organization culture and responsiveness factors for improving coordination in the supply chain rather than on Industry 4.0 technologies.

This framework can also be used for comparison, ranking and analysis of coordination issues in different supply chains in the era of Industry 4.0. Organizations can use this approach for benchmarking purpose also to improve different supply chain processes for meeting dynamic market requirements.

The purpose of this research is to determine the convenience of using a contract model as an integration mechanism for decision-making in a decentralized supply chain of small agricultural producers in a developing country, taking as hypothesis coordinated chain achieves better management. The analysis is based on information obtained by direct inquiry to 99 small producers in the region, about planning, production, marketing and distribution in the chain, supplemented with secondary information sources.

As a methodology an analysis of maturity in the chain based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration is done, whose evaluation is later analyzed as a fuzzy logic model, with the support of the fuzzy logic of the MATLAB toolbox, to study the convenience of the use of the contract against the other mechanisms, and to establish an approximation to the level of readiness of the chain toward integration.

Results obtained show that the small farmer supply chain studied, from a maturity perspective, has a strong disposition for the use of contracts as an integration mechanism.

The supply chain for small producers presents a high dispersion, little consolidated offer capacity and lack of coordination. Limitations in terms of information and criteria unification are a challenge for future research. Results have socioeconomic implications for small producers and can serve as a guide to formulate policies by the governments in Latin American countries.

As practical implications, it can be stated that the use of supply contracts is a real mechanism that can be implemented in this type of chain, to break the mistrust between the echelons and improve the supply chain performance. This research will allow to establish support programs from local governments for the sustainability and improving income of small producers. In addition, contracts will allow to formalize the linkage of small producers to a sustainable commercial network.

Small agricultural producers in developing countries live in unfavorable conditions, with socioeconomic limitations. This work offers an alternative for their productive activity development that will allow them access to marketing chains in a safe way and improve their living conditions.

Previous studies related to the maturity toward the chain integration and fuzzy logic as a hybrid methodology, were not found in the literature, and less even applied to a chain of small agricultural products.