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The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the business environment and severely affected the morale and performance of the employees. Further, the Indian automobile industry witnessed major setbacks and drastically impacted sector in COVID-19. Talent agility is an emerging concept in the field of HRM that will foster innovations and productivity in the automobile industry. Thus, this study aims to explore the barriers to building in-house agile talents in the Indian automobile industry in the new normal.

The barriers of talent agility were identified through a literature review and validated through experts’ opinions. This study used a hybrid approach, which combines Interpretive Structural Modelling-Polarity (ISM-P) and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to develop a hierarchical structural model of the barriers, followed by classification into cause and effect groups.

The result of the multi-method approach identified that shortage of skills and competencies, lack of IT infrastructure, lack of ambidextrous leaders, lack of smart HRM technologies and practices, lack of attractive reward system/career management, poor advanced T&D, poor industry, institute interface and financial constraints are the critical barriers.

It can provide a strategic roadmap for automobile manufacturers to promote talent agility in the current wave of digitalization (Industry 4.0). This study can help the managers to address and overcome the barrier and hurdles in building talent agility.

This study is unique in that it addresses the contemporary issues related to talent agility in the context of the Indian automobile industry in the current rapidly changing environment. This study developed a holistic integrated ISM(P)-DEMATEL hierarchical framework on the barriers of talent agility indicating inner dependency weights, i.e., the strength of interrelationship between the barriers.

The present study aims to explore the barriers to Lean Six Sigma (LSS) implementation in the healthcare sector and develop the ranking of finalized barriers using the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach under a fuzzy environment.

The LSS barriers are identified through the literature review and validated by the expert's opinion and statistical analysis. A total of 124 experts were identified through the purposive sampling method for conducting this study. A questionnaire survey method is used to collect the data related to identified LSS barriers in the healthcare sector. The screened barriers are ranked through the Fuzzy DEMATEL approach.

In this study, a total of 21 barriers were identified with the help of a systematic literature review and screened 13 significant barriers by the expert opinions of healthcare personnel. The result reveals that “Lack of top management commitment and support, lack of awareness about LSS”, “resistance to culture change and inadequate resources emerges as the most critical barriers”. The prioritization of barriers facilitates the managers to make effective policies and guidelines for LSS implementation in healthcare organizations.

To avoid LSS implementation failure, the practitioners and researchers need to focus on LSS barriers as per suggested ranking more conventionally and make plans and adoption policies accordingly.

This study is unique in terms of investigation and empirical analysis of LSS implementation barriers in the healthcare sector in the Indian context. The outcomes of the present study will help the managers of healthcare organizations to make the strategies and policies for LSS implementation as per the recommended LSS barriers.

This study aims to improve the offshore wind farm (OWF) site selection evaluation index system and establishes a decision-making model for OWF site selection. It is expected to provide helpful references for the progress of offshore wind power.

Firstly, this paper establishes an evaluation criteria system for OWF site selection, considering six criteria (wind resource, environment, economic, technical, social and risk) and related subcriteria. Then, the Criteria Importance Though Intercrieria Correlation (CRITIC) method is introduced to figure out the weights of evaluation indexes. In addition, the cumulative prospect theory and technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (CPT-TOPSIS) method are employed to construct the OWF site selection decision-making model. Finally, taking the OWF site selection in China as an example, the effectiveness and robustness of the framework are verified by sensitivity analysis and comparative analysis.

This study establishes the OWF site selection evaluation system and constructs a decision-making model under the spherical fuzzy environment. A case of China is employed to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the model.

In this paper, a new decision-making model is proposed for the first time, considering the ambiguity and uncertainty of information and the risk attitudes of decision-makers (DMs) in the decision-making process.

The main aim of this study is to identify and prioritize the factors that influence the adoption of big data analytics (BDA) within the supply chain (SC) of the food industry in India.

The study is carried out in two distinct phases. In the first phase, barriers hindering BDA adoption in the Indian food industry are identified. Subsequently, the second phase rates/prioritizes these barriers using multicriteria methodologies such as the “analytical hierarchical process” (AHP) and the “fuzzy analytical hierarchical process” (FAHP). Fifteen barriers have been identified, collectively influencing the BDA adoption in the SC of the Indian food industry.

The findings suggest that the lack of data security, availability of skilled IT professionals, and uncertainty about return on investments (ROI) are the top three apprehensions of the consultants and managers regarding the BDA adoption in the Indian food industry SC.

This research has identified several reasons for the adoption of bigdata analytics in the supply chain management of foods in India. This study has also highlighted that big data analytics applications need specific skillsets, and there is a shortage of critical skills in this industry. Therefore, the technical skills of the employees need to be enhanced by their organizations. Also, utilizing similar services offered by other external agencies could help organizations potentially save time and resources for their in-house teams with a faster turnaround.

The present study will provide vital information to companies regarding roadblocks in BDA adoption in the Indian food industry SC and motivate academicians to explore this area further.

Blockchain technology (BT) is creating a new standard for all business operations. It can assist businesses in handling the complexity of circular digital supply chain (DCM) management. Despite this optimistic view, several barriers hinder its implementation. In this regard, this study contributes to Industry 4.0, circular economy (CE), the viability with a critical emphasis on its potential ramifications and influence on the future agenda while using BT technology in the supply chain (SC). In addition, the research reduces the knowledge gap by investigating and ranking the key barriers to the deployment of BT in viable circular digital supply chains (VCDSCs) and studies their interdependencies and causal relationships. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The barriers to BT adoption in the VCDSC are identified through a thorough literature review and considering viability performance. These barriers are then classified using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is then employed to examine the cause/effect, correlation, and connection among the 14 barriers selected barriers from the AHP classification to estimate each barrier's overall degree of impact over the others.

This paper identifies and analyzes the BT adoption barriers in the VCDSC as well as examines how the key barriers interact. As a result, according to the AHP/DEMATEL method, the most prominent influencing barriers to the BT implementation in the VCDSC are “Data transparency,” “Market competition,” “Missing infrastructure,” “Lack of standardization,” “Complex protocol,” “Lack of industry involvement,” “Financial constraints,” “Missing infrastructure,” “Data transparency” and “Interoperability.” The outcomes offer a potential path for identifying important barriers as well as insight into the implementation of BT in the SC while integrating different capabilities such as viability, sustainability and CE principles.

Managers and researchers will benefit from this research by gaining an understanding of the challenges that must be prioritized and examined for BT to be implemented successfully in the VCDSC.

The use and implementation of blockchain-enabled VCDSC continue to face challenges despite an increase in relevant practice and research. Despite the benefits of BT, managers struggle to apply such technology in the context of their company. In this respect, this paper uses an integrated AHP–DEMATEL for categorizing the BT barriers as well as the interrelationship between them. In this respect, this paper presents the BT barriers studied are those related to the use of BT in the SC while integrating different paradigms such as viability, digitalization and CE. While many studies look at the barriers to BT adoption; none of them has ever included the viable capability, which means the ability to “react agilely to positive changes, be resilient to absorb negative events and re-cover after disruptions and survive at long-term periods.” The study concludes with insightful comments based on the findings and suggestions for eradicating those obstacles and their associated effects.

There are significantly fewer women than men in managerial positions, mainly project management. This problem is noticeable in the construction and engineering sectors, traditionally male-dominated industries with leadership much dependent on masculine qualities. This study examines the obstacles to the career progression of professional female project managers (PFPMs) in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Twenty potential obstacles to women's career progression in the construction industry were identified from a comprehensive review of the literature. A questionnaire was prepared and administered among eighty project managers who work in large construction firms in Ghana. Data obtained were analysed using one sample t-test, Kendall's concordance test, Chi-square test and exploratory factor analysis.

The findings suggest the significance of all the twenty factors as potential obstacles to the career progression of PFPMs. The exploratory factor analysis identified five underlying grouped obstacles: “leadership and human capital related issues”, “issues related to discrimination of all forms”, “career aspiration and planning issues”, “female related role conflicts”, and “recruitment and selection issues”.

The subjective nature of the views of the respondents could influence the evaluation of the obstacles. With this study only exploring the dimensions underlying the significant obstacles, future studies could examine the interrelationships between the various obstacles and move on to determine their impacts on the career progression of professional female PMs as well.

Having an in-depth understanding of these obstacles, stakeholders and other industry practitioners in Ghana could make informed decisions on measures to put in place to address some of these critical issues to raise the standard of professional female PMs in the construction industry. Policymakers and gender advocates in Ghana could also take up some of the critical obstacles identified and provide suitable strategies to educate and create the needed awareness of the industry on those obstacles. Practically, the findings from this study can be valuable for informing decision-making at different management levels in the construction industry.

With country-specific (Ghana) obstacles identified, the findings significantly contribute to the literature on the career advancement of females in the construction sector.

This article surveys why libraries are vulnerable to social engineering attacks and how to manage risks of human-caused cyber threats on organizational level; investigates Estonian library staff awareness of information security and shares recommendations concerning focus areas that should be given more attention in the future.

The data used in this paper is based on an overview of relevant literature highlighting the theoretical points and giving the reasons why human factor is considered the weakest link in information security and cyber security and studying how to mitigate the related risks in the organisation. To perform the survey, a web questionnaire was designed which included 63 sentences and was developed based on the knowledge-attitude-behaviour (KAB) model supported by Kruger and Kearney and Human Aspects of Information Security Questionnaire (HAIS-Q) designed by Parsons et al.

The research results show that the information security awareness of library employees is at a good level; however, awareness in two focus areas needs special attention and should be improved. The output of this study is the mapping of seven focus areas of information security policy in libraries based on the HAIS-Q framework and the KAB model.

The cyber awareness of library employees has not been studied in the world using HAIS-Q and KAB model, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no research has been previously carried out in the Estonian library context into cyber security awareness.

This paper explores how sustainability consciousness varies among undergraduate students at a higher education institution in the Republic of Korea. Based on the analyses of survey data, this paper aims to understand the present state and future prospect of education for sustainable development, specifically within higher education in the Republic of Korea.

This study involves analyzing 254 complete responses from undergraduate students at Seoul National University using confirmatory factor analysis. Subsequently, it explores how five variables (gender, grade year, type of college, prior exposure to sustainable development and prior exposure to education for sustainable development) influence the level of sustainability consciousness among these undergraduates.

The goodness-of-fit indices of the adapted sustainability consciousness questionnaire indicate a good fit. The analysis reveals a notable gender-based disparity in sustainability consciousness, with female students exhibiting higher levels than their male counterparts. Additionally, academic progression also affects sustainability consciousness; students in their first and second years show greater awareness compared to those in their third year. Furthermore, the academic discipline of respondents plays a role, as evidenced by students from the College of Education displaying higher sustainability consciousness than those from other colleges.

This research distinguishes itself from prior studies in two key dimensions. First, it offers an analysis of the sustainability consciousness among South Korean undergraduate students, with a particular focus on those who have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, this study endeavors to establish the validity of sustainability consciousness as a psychological construct, expanding the understanding of its implications and relevance in the context of higher education.

The adoption of social procurement, the emerging practice of using a firm's spending power to generate social value, requires buying firms to navigate conflicts of institutional logics. Adopting an institutional work perspective, this study aims to investigate how buying firms change their existing procurement institutions to adopt and advance social procurement.

The authors conducted an in-depth case study of a social procurement initiative in the UK. This case study comprised of 16 buying firms that were actively participating in the social procurement initiative at the time of data collection (2020–2021). The data were largely captured through a set of 41 semi-structured interviews.

Four types of institutional work were observed: reducing institutional conflicts, crossing institutional boundaries, legitimising institutional change and spreading the new institutional logic. These different types of institutional work appeared in a sequential way.

This study contributes to various strands of literature investigating the role of procurement in generating value and benefits within societies, adopting an institutional lens to investigate the buying firms' purposeful actions to change procurement institutions. Secondly, this study complements the existing literature investigating the conflicts of institutional logics by illustrating the ways firms address such institutional conflicts when adopting and advancing social procurement. Finally, this work contributes to the recently emerging research on institutional work that examines the creation and establishment of new institutions by considering the existing procurement institutions in the examination of institutional work.

This study is an analysis that aims to understand the rationale behind the concept of value creation contained in the integrated reporting (IR) framework. As such, the authors examined the quality of the disclosures made in integrated reports by measuring the level to which the six capitals (6Cs) have been integrated into disclosures on value creation.

The IR framework’s value creation model focuses on six content elements and three guiding principles. Hence, the present analysis combines content analysis with quantitative measures in the form of a bespoke Integrated Disclosure Index. The index measures the level of integration found in the disclosures instead of the mere presence or absence of mentioned capitals, content elements and guiding principles in isolation. The present sample comprised the 2016 integrated/sustainability reports for 184 listed companies sourced from the Integrated Reporting Examples Database.

The 6Cs are well disclosed in form but only partially disclosed in substance. Further, overall levels of integration between the capitals, the content elements and the guiding principles are higher than average. Disclosures on materiality, business models and stakeholder relationships are somewhat lacking, as are the related medium- and long-term disclosures on outlook.

The paper contributes to the academic debate on IR by building a case for holistically assessing the substance of integrated reports. Considering that the IR value creation model can underpin and align with the 17 UN sustainable development goals, the authors show how the fundamental concept of the 6Cs sustaining value creation is understood and implemented differently across the various elements and principles of the IR framework.

This research also provides guidance for overcoming some of the practical hurdles associated with assessing the quality of reports because the authors provide tools for spotlighting the substance of disclosures over their form.

This paper delves into the substance of integrated reports by assessing how well the 6Cs have been integrated into disclosures on the content elements and guiding principles of the IR framework. In contrast to previous IR research that has mainly analysed capital, elements and principles in isolation, the authors develop an index assessing the integration of these three fundamental concepts of IR.