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The Indian pharmaceutical industry has contributed significantly to global healthcare by securing superior-quality, inexpensive and reachable medicines worldwide. However, supply chain management (SCM) has been challenging due to constantly shifting requirements for short lifecycles of products, the convergence of industry and changeable realities on the ground. This study aims to identify, assess and prioritize the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of the pharmaceutical SCM environment in India.

The paper employs a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat (SWOT) analysis and recognizes strategies to utilize the advantages of the strengths and opportunities, rectify weaknesses and resolve threats.

A variety of strategies that could have a positive effect on the Indian pharmaceutical business are presented. Findings and suggested strategies can significantly advance knowledge, enhance understanding and contribute to the growth of a successful SCM for the Indian pharmaceutical sector.

This paper would act as a roadmap to greater comprehension of the market leaders and market leaders' operating climate. The findings from this study will offer academic scholars and business practitioners deeper insights into the environment of SCM.

Within food industry several changes and innovations are affecting the management of the entire supply chain (production, logistics, etc.). As strategy for the survival and competition, digitalization has assumed a crucial role during the pandemic emergence by causing the reconfiguration of traditional chains and business models. Framed in these premises, the research analyses how digital technologies have innovated the sub-chains of bakery products and pasta within food industry with reference to customers' interactions, delivery and marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic emergence.

Moving from a critical literature review about the perspectives of digital technologies within the tradition of food industry, action research has been adopted to analyze in deep a case study of the start-up “ArteBianca Delivery” located in South Italy. Through this method, researchers have been deeply involved within the start-up to face the challenge of transforming the marketing and customer care into digital ones due to the COVID-19 restriction.

Findings provide empirical evidence about the reconfiguration of the traditional business model of a family firm in the food sector into a digital one with the start-up “ArteBianca Delivery”. The marketing, delivery, e-commerce and customer care components of the business models have been supported and enhanced through the adoption of digital tools, such as mobile applications and social technologies useful both for users and for a more urgent digitization of company.

Implications for practice can be identified into the pattern of digital transformation implemented as well as in the opportunity of replication and contextualization of the results to other companies looking for setting up a digital strategy.

Elements of original contribution can be identified into: (1) the exploration of digital transformation in food family firms caused by the pandemic emergence, (2) the contextualization of the digital transformation to the sub-chains of bakery and pasta and (3) the geographical location of the case.

Competitively multipolar international system demands bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Joint innovation signals close partnerships. Regional proximity of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the European Union (EU) defines its research and development objectives. These objectives are additionally subjected to the USA’s geopolitical strategy in this geographical area. Hence, CEE’s limited resources require limited resources make international innovation cooperation. This paper aims to analyse whether and how CEE countries make international innovation cooperation decisions.

This paper used Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) database of total patent applications filed to the patent cooperation treaty (PCT) with co-applicants from abroad, where co-patents with at least one foreign inventor present a measure of international innovation partnership. A vector autoregression analysis and impulse response function were used to analyse international innovation partnership choices of eight CEE OECD countries for the period 1990–2018.

Innovation with the EU is of collaborative nature, commonly displaying complementary properties with the rest of the examined innovation partners, while co-patenting with the Russia and China act as substitutes or complements. Co-patenting with Russia is the most versatile, displaying both properties of collaboration and competition. Some countries exhibit complementarity in co-patenting activities with multiple partners. The significance levels of these relationships vary, indicating varying degrees of impact. Overall, these findings highlight the complex dynamics of co-patenting activities and the influence of different partners on countries’ collaborative innovation strategies.

In addition to significant relationships, insignificant relationships as well as those that could bring about greater synergy are flagged in the paper. Those relationships portray possible direction into which national funds could be channelled to incite cooperation between different sectors and countries, especially as innovation partnerships are not always successful and require a long time period to materialise.

By examining bilateral innovation partnerships, this study provides an insight into the strategic political and economic spheres of influence in the CEE region.

In today’s business world, adopting social commerce for day-to-day operations has increasingly become an important phenomenon. Several factors have been identified by previous researchers regarding the adoption of social commerce, but academic research is scarce on the relationship between the factors influencing social commerce adoption and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the post-COVID-19 situation. This study aims to identify the impact of technological, environmental and entrepreneurial factors on the adoption of social commerce by SMEs in Sri Lanka.

A quantitative study utilised the deductive approach and collected data through a field survey by distributing a five-point Likert scale questionnaire to conveniently selected respondents from Sri Lankan SMEs. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for the analysis of 384 responses.

The results revealed that technological factors [technology availability (TA) and cost-effectiveness (CE)], environmental factors [bandwagon effect (BE)] and entrepreneurial factors [attitude (AT), innovativeness (IN) and IT knowledge (IK)] have a significant impact on the social commerce adoption of SMEs in Sri Lanka. This study, as the first of its type, offers insightful information on the influence of variables on the adoption of social commerce after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Similar to any research, this study also has inherent limitations. Due to time and financial restrictions, the study’s convenience sampling method was adopted. The study’s possible limitation is its narrow focus, which could mean that it only examines a select few social media (SM) networks. The study’s conclusions might be less generalised since it focused on the western province of Sri Lanka. Future studies should take a cross-cultural strategy to explore the influence of social commerce adoption to improve the generalisability of research findings.

This study provides an in-depth assessment of critical factors, facilitating policymakers, owners, leaders and managers (decision-makers) to gain insight into the real influencing factors on social commerce adoption and the significance of SM. The study helps them comprehend how outstanding governance and knowledge of influencing factors can boost SME success in various ways. For example, research reveals that various factors have a major influence on social commerce adoption.

There has been limited research conducted on social commerce adoption after the COVID-19 pandemic period; thus, this study looked at the variables influencing it amongst SMEs in a South Asian developing country like Sri Lanka after the pandemic lasted for two years. By placing a strong emphasis on the role of entrepreneurial characteristics and the available technology within one single framework in the context of SMEs and their involvement with social commerce adoption, this study contributes to the past literature by emphasising the role of several significant factors in SMEs' adoption of social commerce. Whilst previous studies looked at multiple factors influencing the adoption of social commerce globally, this study focussed on how these factors have a significant impact on SMEs in Sri Lanka.

This study developed a multi-perspective framework combining technological, environmental and entrepreneurial factors influencing SMEs to adopt social commerce. The study provides a contribution to the literature on social commerce adoption from the perspective of SMEs in a developing country like Sri Lanka after COVID-19. Exclusively, it examines the impact of entrepreneur-related factors on social commerce adoption.