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This paper seeks to create a novel management model for digital libraries which can effectively respond to the challenges and culture posed by Google or other search engines.

The paper attempts to construct an advanced management model for a digital library which can have the advantages of Google, other search engines and libraries, yet avoid their inherent weakness. For that, the paper investigates and analyzes the advantages and weaknesses of Google and digital libraries at home and abroad, and makes reference to the theory of supply chain management (SCM) to construct a new management model for a digital library.

A supply chain for the digital library is constructed and a supply chain architecture for digital libraries, their components and the running situations of content services flow, information flow and funds flow in supply chain, is proposed. The components are described in detail. Then three kinds of service models are constructed and their service processes are analyzed.

The paper is one of the research findings of the National Key Technology R&D Program of China during the 11th Five‐Year Plan Period (No. 2006BAH02A12): Digital Content Supporting Technology Platform and will be applied to Chinese digital libraries construction.

The supply chain management model for a digital library which is blessed with the advantages of Google and libraries but without their weaknesses is studied and presented for the first time. The model can provide a well‐suited, highly efficient and one‐stop‐shop information and knowledge service for users.

Digital transformation misalignment refers to disparities in digital transformation levels between suppliers and buyers across the production and operation process. It has negatively affected supply chain stability. However, the existing research concerning the economic consequences has not been adequately addressed. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate whether such digital transformation misalignment increases supplier financial risk and to identify the factors influencing this relationship.

This paper examines binary combinations of suppliers and buyers listed on China’s A-share market between 2011 and 2021. This group constitutes a sample to empirically test the influence of digital transformation misalignment on the supplier’s financial risk, as well as the moderating effect of the geographical and organizational distances.

The paper’s findings demonstrate that digital transformation misalignment has indeed a significant increase in the supplier’s financial risk. Moreover, the impact is more intense when the geographical or organizational distance between the supplier and the buyer is relatively large.

The existing literature rarely explores the potential risks arising from digital transformation misalignment between supply chain partners. Therefore, this paper fills a notable gap as it is the first to study the impact of digital transformation misalignment on the supplier’s financial risk and the specific applied mechanisms. The contribution significantly improves the field of corporate digital transformation, particularly, within the context of supply chain management.

Food sustainability is a world-acknowledged issue that requires urgent integrated solutions at multi-levels. This study aims to explore how food firms can improve their sustainability performance through digital traceability practices, considering the mediating effect of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and the moderating effect of supply chain learning (SCL) for the food supply chain therein.

Hierarchical regression with a moderated mediation model is used to test the proposed hypotheses with a sample of 359 food firms from four provinces in China.

Digital traceability has a significant positive impact on the three pillars of sustainability performances among food firms. SOI (product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation) mediates the relationship between digital traceability and sustainability performance. SCL plays moderating roles in the linkage between digital traceability and both product and process innovation, respectively.

This paper contributes as one of the first studies to develop digital traceability practices and their sustainability-related improvements for Chinese food firms; it extends studies on supply chain traceability to a typical emerging market. This finding can support food sustainability practice in terms of where and how to invest in sustainability innovation and how to improve economic, environmental and social performance.

Using social network theory (SNT), this study empirically examines the impact of digital supply chain announcements disclosing corporate social responsibility (CSR) information on stock market value.

Based on 172 digital supply chain announcements disclosing CSR information from Chinese A-share listed companies, this study uses event study method to test the hypotheses.

First, digital supply chain announcements disclosing CSR information generate positive and significant market reactions, which is timely. Second, strategic CSR and value-based CSR disclosed in digital supply chain announcements have a more positive impact on stock market, however there is no significant difference when the CSR orientation is either towards internal or external stakeholders. Third, in terms of digital supply chain network characteristics, announcements reflecting higher relationship embeddedness and higher digital breadth and depth lead to more positive increases of stock value.

First, the authors consider the value of CSR information in digital supply chain announcements, using an event study approach to fill the gap in the related area. This study is the first examination of the joint impact of digital supply chain and CSR on market reactions. Second, compared to the previous studies on the single dimension of digital supply chain technology application, the authors innovatively consider supply chain network relationship and network structure based on social network theory and integrate several factors that may affect the market reaction. This study improves the understanding of the mechanism between digital supply chain announcements disclosing CSR information and stock market, and informs future research.

The agricultural supply chain is susceptible to disruptive geopolitical events. Therefore, agri-food firms must devise robust resilience strategies to hasten recovery and mitigate global food security effects. Hence, the central aim of this paper is to investigate how supply chains could leverage digital technologies to design resilience strategies to manage uncertainty stemming from the external environment disrupted by a geopolitical event. The context of the study is the African agri-food supply chain during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The authors employ strategic contingency and dynamic capabilities theory arguments to explore the scenario and conditions under which African agri-food firms could leverage digital technologies to formulate contingency strategies and devise mitigation countermeasures. Then, the authors used a multi-case-study analysis of 14 African firms of different sizes and tiers within three main agri-food sectors (i.e. livestock farming, food-crop and fisheries-aquaculture) to explore, interpret and present data and their findings.

Downstream firms (wholesalers and retailers) of the African agri-food supply chain are found to extensively use digital seizing and transforming capabilities to formulate worst-case assumptions amid geopolitical disruption, followed by proactive mitigation actions. These capabilities are mainly supported by advanced technologies such as blockchain and additive manufacturing. On the other hand, smaller upstream partners (SMEs, cooperatives and smallholders) are found to leverage less advanced technologies, such as mobile apps and cloud-based data analytics, to develop sensing capabilities necessary to formulate a “wait-and-see” strategy, allowing them to reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty and take mainly reactive mitigation strategies. Finally, the authors integrate their findings into a conceptual framework that advances the research agenda on managing supply chain uncertainty in vulnerable areas.

This study is the first that sought to understand the contextual conditions (supply chain characteristics and firm characteristics) under which companies in the African agri-food supply chain could leverage digital technologies to manage uncertainty. The study advances contingency and dynamic capability theories by providing a new way of interacting in one specific context. In practice, this study assists managers in developing suitable strategies to manage uncertainty during geopolitical disruptions.

The Agri-Food supply chain (AFSC) conventionally suffers from multifaceted transparency, integration, traceability, product quality, and many more. Recently, various digital technologies have emerged, which reflect the potential to address the majority of such concerns. This chapter is an effort toward developing a vision for the future of the agri-food supply chain through digitalization. The technologies prominently covered in the chapter are the internet of things (IoT), blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). Different challenges the agri-food supply chain participants perceived in implementing digital technologies were identified through literature review and primary survey. The significant challenges are trained workforce, funds availability, and clarity on economic gains from digitalisation. In conclusion, few strategies toward the implementation of digital technologies in agri-food supply chains are discussed.

The implementation of digital technologies shifts the way firms manage their supply chains with the objective of obtaining closer relationships with their partners. The main improvement is that each partner can access others’ information in real time. This gives rise to the concept of digital supply chain where interconnectedness is the link. Applying digital technologies has reported innumerable benefits, and despite the fact that only a few firms make full use of them, they have become a very promising future trend.

This study aims to review the literature on supply chain and digital technologies in relation to the different benefits that each of these technologies provides in the different stages of the supply chain. Eventually, this will provide a guide to determine and select those technologies that best suit the needs of a firm according to their characteristics within the supply chain.

This paper breaks through the limitations of the research on bullwhip effect in the traditional supply chain, extends the research perspective to digital supply chain and discusses the weakening effect of digital supply chain on bullwhip effect by comparing the overall performance of the two.

This paper starts with the weakening mechanism of supply chain digitization on bullwhip effect, builds bullwhip effect models of traditional supply chain and digital supply chain, respectively, simulates the influence of supply chain digitization transformation on bullwhip effect by using Matlab software and analyzes the causes of bullwhip effect in supply chain led by T company and the digitization process.

Firstly, digitization can reduce bullwhip effect in multi-level supply chain by reducing information feedback deviation. Second, digital transformation is conducive to improving the overall performance of the supply chain. Third, government incentives can promote the digital transformation of supply chain and inhibit bullwhip effect.

Although the study considers the heterogeneous subject -- the government's incentive effect on digital transformation and information sharing – it does not include the influence of the end node in the supply chain, that is the consumer. In addition, this paper only analyzes and discusses the bullwhip effect on the amplification of demand, without considering the situation that the market contraction will lead to the reduction of demand.

This paper considers the distortion degree and delay degree of information feedback, carries out quantitative analysis of bullwhip effect, builds the bullwhip effect model of traditional supply chain and digital supply chain, uses Matlab software to analyze the difference of the influence of supply chain digital transformation on bullwhip effect suppression and puts forward the corresponding control strategy.

The research shows that digital transformation can reduce the bullwhip effect in multi-layer supply chain by reducing the information feedback deviation, which is conducive to improving the overall supply chain performance, and government support can accelerate the digital transformation of supply chain to a certain extent.

First, break through the limitations of traditional supply chain research, expand the research perspective to digital supply chain and discuss the weakening effect of digital supply chain on bullwhip effect by comparing the overall performance of the two. Second, quantify the bullwhip effect through information feedback bias and provide an analysis method for the weakening of the bullwhip effect. Third, the driving role of the government in the digital transformation of the supply chain is considered in the study, so that the model is more close to the actual situation of enterprise operation.

The purpose of this study is to examine various data sources to identify trends and themes in humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM) in the digital age.

In this study, various data sources such as published literature and social media content from Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and forums are used to identify trending topics and themes on HSCM using topic modelling.

The study examined 33 published literature and more than 94,000 documents, including tweets and expert opinions, and identified eight themes related to HSCM in the digital age namely “Digital technology enabled global partnerships”, “Digital tech enabled sustainability”, “Digital tech enabled risk reduction for climate changes and uncertainties”, “Digital tech enabled preparedness, response and resilience”, “Digital tech enabled health system enhancement”, “Digital tech enabled food system enhancement”, “Digital tech enabled ethical process and systems” and “Digital tech enabled humanitarian logistics”. The study also proposed a framework of drivers, processes and impacts for each theme and directions for future research.

Previous research has predominantly relied on published literature to identify emerging themes and trends on a particular topic. This study is unique because it examines the ability of social media sources such as blogs, websites, forums and published literature to reveal evolving patterns and trends in HSCM in the digital age.

The purpose of studying digitization transformation of the supply chain is to understand how digital technologies and processes are changing the way supply chains operate and to identify the opportunities and challenges associated with this transformation. Studying digitization transformation of the supply chain is important because it can help global businesses in identifying the best practices in supply chain management (SCM) systems and enhance supply chain performance. Hence, this research study is contributing in revealing the outcomes of digital inclusiveness in overall SCM for the growth of retail and e-commerce based platforms.

This research is using both descriptive and explanatory research designs to provide a comprehensive understanding of the problems in SCM. Descriptive research provides a detailed description of the characteristics of the population under study, while explanatory research identifies the causal relationships between the variables. Descriptive research has helped us to develop hypotheses about the relationships between variables that can be tested using explanatory research. Explanatory research has been used to validate the findings of descriptive research. By using both descriptive and explanatory research designs, our research design has increased the generalizability of our findings.

According to this study, businesses intend to change their supply chain strategies after the wake of competitive era to make them more robust, sustainable and collaborative with suppliers, customers and stakeholders by investing more in SCM technology like Blockchain, AI, analytics, robotic process automation and data control centers. This study evaluates the impact of digitization on supply chain systems. This includes assessing the benefits of digitization and identifying the factors that contribute to successful implementation. This research is studying the role of data analytics in SCM and how it can be leveraged to improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase transparency.

The study highlights the importance of adopting digitization in supply chain systems to improve supply chain robustness, sustainability and collaboration with stakeholders. This study's emphasis on data analytics in SCM presents an opportunity for businesses to gain insights into their supply chain systems and make data-driven decisions. This can enhance efficiency, reduce costs and improve overall supply chain performance. The study's focus on SCM technology and data analytics may overlook other factors that contribute to successful SCM, such as organizational culture, human resources and supply chain governance.

This study will complement to the existing body of information, management theory and practice and will benefit all. The research work is original and can be implemented worldwide to promote digitization in SCM for smooth transactions in the entire chain of wholesalers, retail distributors and customers.