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The purpose of this paper is to examine the different challenges that confront supply chain finance (SCF) and to develop a hierarchical model that analyzes the complex relationship dynamics among them.

An extensive survey is carried out amongst Indian firms to ascertain the perceptions and experiences related to different SCF challenges. After obtaining an overview of the different SCF challenges, an Indian company with global operations was approached and after establishing relationships among the challenges, a hierarchical relationship structure was developed and MIMBI analysis (where MI=measure of influencing; MBI=measure of being influenced) was carried out that helped understand the relationship dynamics of SCF challenges and identify actions at both strategic and tactical levels.

The study reveals that lack of common vision among the supply chain (SC) partners is the most critical challenge confronting SCF. Unpredictable cash‐flows resulting from delays in financial transactions, due to lack of automation in the payment processes, along with lack of knowledge and training on SCF tools, also play significant roles. As organizations are tightly integrated through their SC, they should initiate collaborative approaches across the SC to reduce the total procure to payment cycle time and, in the process, improve overall financial stability of the SC.

This study is based on the findings from the Indian industry; future research may include a large‐scale survey and case studies across organizations located in different countries and operating under different environments.

Based on the study, firms can evaluate the dynamics of SCF challenges and redefine SC relationships and strategies to achieve desired cash flow in the SC.

The academic literature on financial supply chains is very limited. This paper appears to be the first formal attempt at analyzing the various challenges confronting SCF.

Business innovation should enable the achievement of goals across the entire organization. To compete well, business innovations become important and crucial and more so for software industries. With prevalent trends of big data, cloud and cyber security, there are exciting days ahead. Opportunities and innovations are being predicted and by iterations, they can be projected.

The ways in which businesses innovate and implement new ideas are changing. Historically, innovation has commonly been practiced using a “closed innovation” model, particularly with regard to new technology and research and development. It adopts disruptive technologies like big data, cloud computing, cyber securities, etc., and new models of engagements. It sectors business turnaround in sentiment and upbeat mood.

This paper has looked at the business innovation in Indian software industries’ success in the global information technology industry from a new perspective. India’s software services industry has helped develop a huge talent pool that can write the most complex software. Sales and distribution is no longer a problem because the internet allows you to serve a global market.

This paper, by adopting an analytical and descriptive research method, aims to explore and understand business innovation in software industries. The two studied cases reflect and help to discern how the firms are developing capabilities and reflect how they have evolved over a period, primarily through business and incremental innovations. The advantage of focusing on software products first is that unlike many other product categories, the upfront investments are much more manageable, and we already have the talent base and skills to get going.

Cloud users can access services at anytime from anywhere in the world. On average, Google now processes more than 40,000 searches every second, which is approximately 3.5 billion searches per day. The diverse and vast amounts of data are generated with the development of next-generation information technologies such as cryptocurrency, internet of things and big data. To execute such applications, it is needed to design an efficient scheduling algorithm that considers the quality of service parameters like utilization, makespan and response time. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a novel Efficient Static Task Allocation (ESTA) algorithm, which optimizes average utilization.

Cloud computing provides resources such as virtual machine, network, storage, etc. over the internet. Cloud computing follows the pay-per-use billing model. To achieve efficient task allocation, scheduling algorithm problems should be interacted and tackled through efficient task distribution on the resources. The methodology of ESTA algorithm is based on minimum completion time approach. ESTA intelligently maps the batch of independent tasks (cloudlets) on heterogeneous virtual machines and optimizes their utilization in infrastructure as a service cloud computing.

To evaluate the performance of ESTA, the simulation study is compared with Min-Min, load balancing strategy with migration cost, Longest job in the fastest resource-shortest job in the fastest resource, sufferage, minimum completion time (MCT), minimum execution time and opportunistic load balancing on account of makespan, utilization and response time.

The simulation result reveals that the ESTA algorithm consistently superior performs under varying of batch independent of cloudlets and the number of virtual machines’ test conditions.

Human resource management.

Postgraduate and graduate management programs.

Watson and Lilly (W&L) Berhad is the subsidiary of Wanger Group of Company, established in 1822 by Wanger Watson Group, and engages with transportation and logistics, communication and media, and electricity storage activities. The company provides freight forwarding by air, sea, and land, warehousing and distribution, industrial logistics, and stevedoring and port services. The case is all about the issues related to operations and human resource management in W&L Berhad, company in Malaysia. The company management observed that there has been an increasing trend on the number of mis-shipment. The investigation report was too worrisome to the Managing Director. The mis-shipment recorded in September 2011 was 5.91 per cent and by the end of first quarter in November 2012, the mis-shipment increased to 6.71 per cent. On the second quarter starting from December 2012, the mis-shipment continues to increase to 6.99 per cent and by February 2013, the mis-shipment was at 7.56 per cent. An independent consultancy was assigned to analyze the root causes of the issues. The agency found that the business having high operating cost due to operational inefficiency, documentation issues and human resource issues. The case study proposed several solutions to enhance the manpower efficiency, operational effectiveness, and achieving customer's satisfaction.

Learning the nature of business: to explain the nature of freight and forward business and the base of W&L Berhad, Malaysia. Nature of business operation issues: the case can be used to examine the issues of business operations due to mis-shipment in freight and forward companies. Nature of manpower issues: the case can be used to examine the issues of manpower in correlation with a mis-shipment of freight and forward companies. Integrating business and operational issues with customer delight and business loss. Strategic intervention: instructor can explore varied strategic interventions that curb the operational and manpower issues that may lead to business growth and development in freight and forward companies, achieving customer's satisfaction.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The service denial threats are regularly regarded as tools for effortlessly triggering online-based services offline. Moreover, the present occurrences reveal that these threats are being constantly employed for masking other vulnerable threats like disseminating malware, information losses, wire scams and mining bitcoins (Sujithra et al., 2018; Boujnouni and Jedra, 2018). In some cases, service denials have been employed to cyberheist financial firms which sums around $100,000. Documentation from Neustar accounts that is about 70 percent of the financial sector are aware of the threat, and therefore, incidents result in few losses, more than 35 percent of service denial attempts are identified as malware soon after the threat is sent out (Divyavani and Dileep Kumar Reddy, 2018). Intensive packet analysis (IPA) explores the packet headers from Layers 2 to 4 along with the application information layer from Layers 5 to 7 for locating and evading vulnerable network-related threats. The networked systems could be simply contained by low potent service denial operations in case the supplies of the systems are minimized by the safety modules. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The initial feature will be resolved using the IPDME by locating the standard precise header delimiters such as carriage return line feed equally locating the header names. For the designed IPDME, the time difficulties in locating the initial position of the header field within a packet with static time expenses of four cycles. For buffering packets, the framework functions at the speed of cables. Soon after locating the header position, the value of the field is mined linearly from the position. Mining all the field values consequentially resolves the forthcoming restrictions which could be increased by estimating various information bytes per cycle and omitting non-required information packets. In this way, the exploration space is minimized from the packet length to the length of the header. Because of the minimized mining time, the buffered packets could be operated at an increasing time.

Based on the assessments of IPDME against broadly employed SIP application layer function tools it discloses hardware offloading of IPDME it could minimize the loads on the essential system supplies of about 25 percent. The IPDME reveals that the acceleration of 22X– 75X as evaluated against PJSIP parser and SNORT SIP pre-processor. One IPDME portrays an acceleration of 4X–6X during 12 occurrences of SNORT parsers executing on 12 processors. The IPDME accomplishes 3X superior to 200 parallel occurrences of GPU speeded up processors. Additionally, the IPDME has very minimal latencies with 12X–1,010X minimal than GPUs. IPDME accomplishes minimal energy trails of nearly 0.75 W using two engines and for 15 engines it is 3.6 W, which is 22.5X–100X less as evaluated to the graphic-based GPU speeding up.

IPDME assures that the system pools are not fatigued on Layer 7 mining by transmitting straightforwardly based on network intrusions without branching into the operating systems. IPDME averts the latencies because of the memory accesses by sidestepping the operating system which essentially permits the scheme to function at wired speed. Based on the safety perception, IPDME ultimately enhances the performance of the safety systems employing them. The increased bandwidth of the IPDME assures that the IPA’s could function at their utmost bandwidth. The service time for the threat independent traffic is enhanced because of minimization over the comprehensive latencies over the path among the network intrusions and the related applications.

Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management, Organizational Change Management.

Postgraduate and undergraduate students.

Restoran Minang Plus is a self-styled family-owned and managed restaurant featuring a gamut of Malaysian Negeri Sembilan and Indonesian Padang dishes. The eatery establishment has sailed the food industry waters successfully since 2004 and currently has five branches. However, there are certain imperatives they have to institute to integrate their entrepreneurial challenges with organizational change management. The nature of the forces in the competitive restaurant landscape requires a continuous rethinking of current strategic actions, organizational change, communication systems, motivation, asset deployment and strategic flexibility to respond quickly to changing conditions and thereby develop and maintain a competitive advantage. The question is how do they integrate this organizational change management to their entrepreneurial challenges with a view to achieve and maintain competitive advantage?

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: understanding managing diversity by looking at the different categories of diversity, that is, generic characteristics and learned characteristics that influence work attitudes; explaining how fostering learning and reinforcement can help in increasing job satisfaction; describing the basic motivational needs of the employees and how it can help in increasing job performance; understanding how an entrepreneurial firm can maximize its firm performance through effective change management; and understanding the importance of strategic management in an entrepreneurial firm.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Tourism researchers proposed that service quality dimensions of tourist destinations can contribute in developing a favorable or unfavorable image among travelers which affect visitors’ loyalty or disloyalty as well as destination image. However, such claims are seldom evaluated into in avitourism locations, which are a niche tourism, but fast growing. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between service quality, visitor satisfaction and destination image and destination loyalty among avian tourists.

Following a positivist research philosophy with a quantitative, cross-sectional descriptive study design, the study addressed five direct and two indirect relationships in the model. The research followed expectation dis-confirmation theory of Gartner to test the theoretical model. Following purposive sampling, a sample of 384 international avitourists was collected from five avitourism locations of Malaysia. The study applied SmartPLS SEM to analyze the data.

The results show that the service quality provided by the park management has a positive impact on visitor satisfaction, destination image and destination loyalty. The study also shows partial mediation effect of visitor satisfaction on destination image and destination loyalty among avitourists. The study extends practical, policy and theoretical implications to the stakeholders of avitourism.

The study limits the possibility for generalization of the findings into five avitourism sites located in three states of Malaysia. Hence, the scope of the study needs to be augmented with samples from more regions to meet the expected generalization. Add to the point, this study lacks qualitative data observations to get an in-depth understanding of the issues pertaining to visitor’s expectations on serviced quality, satisfaction, destination image and loyalty. Hence, it is suggested that more qualitative research interventions need to be made with the tools of in-depth interviews, content analysis and with the method of focus group discussions and Delphi applications.

This study provides the park management a clearer understanding on service quality critical factors in enhancing the satisfaction of avian tourists and building a better avitourism destination image and destination loyalty. The avitourism park management may look into the services for these niche tourists, as these resources are directly linked to nature-based tourism with its diverse requirements to keep visitors satisfied. Park authorities require a sound understanding and skills in managing the biodiversity of the natural resources, birds and animals, to match their services with tourists’ expectations.

Biodiversity is important in supporting vital ecosystem services (ES) for human as well as animals. The study has its social implications in generating a greater number of employment opportunity for people surrounding the area of avian destinations preserving the biodiverse area. The people in the surroundings area of avitourism locations will get better employment opportunity as guides and nature trail experts, if the avian tourism develops in its real principle.

Avitourism is a niche tourism. The expectations of the visitors of avitourism locations are entirely varied in comparison with general tourism. Very less studies focused into expectations of the visitors linking human factor of service quality, emotional intelligence, visitor satisfaction, etc. like dimensions that will contribute into dynamic destination image and destination loyalty among avitourists. With the support of quantitative research tools, representative sampling and theoretical selection, the study findings are original in their form, ensuring external validity further to generalize into other birdwatching locations across the countries. The study observations are highly valuable to all stakeholders of avitourism.

The tourism sector’s fragility lends significance to mental health and wellbeing, especially amongst workers in the hotel and tourism sectors. However, stakeholders’ subjective wellbeing and mental health in these sectors due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic remain under-researched, especially for destinations with unique selling propositions (USPs). Thus, this study investigates the effects of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic on various stakeholders in Kerala, India. In particular, the authors assess the mental health and welfare of those involved in the tourism sector with an eye on how the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the field’s psychological and technical developments.

This study employs an ethnographic approach to understanding the idiosyncratic experiences of stakeholders using in-depth interviews (n = 68), focus group interviews (n = 3) and participant observation for 14 months. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

The findings reveal the shifting perceptions in the tourism sector’s workforce by detailing various societal, technical and physical transformations, especially amongst the younger generations. The resultant psychological mapping generates a framework of the emotional perspectives of stakeholders during each stage of the pandemic. This study also highlights the urgency of crisis-management training for the workforce.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all spheres of global business, resulting in unprecedented challenges in both personal and professional life. The sector’s fragility lends significance to mental health and wellbeing, especially amongst workers in the hotel and tourism sectors. However, the subjective wellbeing and mental health of stakeholders in these sectors due to the COVID-19 pandemic remain under-researched, especially for the developing destinations with USPs.

This study aims to examine the impacts of the forced shift to online/hybrid learning on international students’ perceptions and behaviour. It aims to understand the direction of future university marketing changes to address this vital and urgent concern.

This study deployed an explorative qualitative design and data collected through interviews (n, 20) with prospective international students.

The study identified four main themes: mode of class operation, that is, the balance between online/offline/hybrid modes of course delivery; enhanced level of flexibility in terms of both visa regulations and financial aid; strategic use of social media and virtual tools to connect with and impress the international student community; and evidence of digitalization and experiential learning.

This study has many theoretical and managerial implications. As international students perceive COVID-19 as an under-researched theme in the higher education market, the study’s outcome helps understand the grey areas of expectation versus reality in higher education marketing.

This research offers a new perspective from the demand side on higher education marketing strategies amid COVID-19.

The purpose of this study was to introduce three-dimensional printing (3DP) of functionally graded sandwich foams (FGSFs). This work was continued by predicting the mechanical buckling and free vibration behavior of 3DP FGSFs using experimental and numerical analyses.

Initially, hollow glass microballoon-reinforced high-density polyethylene-based polymer composite foams were developed, and these materials were extruded into their respective filaments. These filaments are used as feedstock materials in fused filament fabrication based 3DP for the development of FGSFs. Scanning electron microscopy analysis was performed on the freeze-dried samples to observe filler sustainability. Furthermore, the density, critical buckling load (P_cr), natural frequency (f_n) and damping factor of FGSFs were evaluated. The critical buckling load (P_cr) of the FGSFs was estimated using the double-tangent method and modified Budiansky criteria.

The density of FGSFs decreased with increasing filler percentage. The mechanical buckling load increased with the filler percentage. The natural frequency corresponding to the first mode of the FGSFs exhibited a decreasing trend with an increasing load in the pre-buckling regime and an increase in post-buckled zone, whereas the damping factor exhibited the opposite trend.

The current research work is valuable for the area of 3D printing by developing the functionally graded foam based sandwich beams. Furthermore, it intended to present the buckling behavior of 3D printed FGSFs, variation of frequency and damping factor corresponding to first three modes with increase in load.