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Delivery of safe products while meeting customer demand is a critical marketing requirement for logistics. To meet this requirement, this paper aims to develop a decision‐making model for distribution strategies in cold chain network with the real‐time flow and quality information of perishable foods.

This paper first presents a real‐time monitoring solution for cold chain distribution by integrating radio frequency identification (RFiD), sensor, and wireless communication technologies. With the enhanced visibility of product flow and quality information, a multi‐stage planning model is developed to determine optimal distribution plans so that the overall cost of the entire cold chain network is minimized.

The proposed distribution‐planning model can capture the dynamics of logistics due to frequent update of product quality information during distribution. Therefore, the distribution decision will be adjusted at sequential stages to optimally preserve the product value and meet demand. The proposed solution and model can ensure an effective cold chain logistics and thus meet the marketing requirement.

The current planning model cannot quantitatively capture all benefits, such as the social impact, due to the implementation of RFiD and other technologies.

The proposed solution to achieve complete visibility of the cold chain is innovative and addresses the urgent requirements for cold chain logistics from marketing perspective. For the first time, the economic benefits of real‐time information on product quality can be quantitatively evaluated by the multi‐stage planning model and this has been verified by a numerical case study.

This paper studies a concept for protecting vulnerable population groups during pandemics using direct home deliveries of essential supplies, from a distribution logistics perspective. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate feasible and resource-efficient home delivery strategies, including collaboration between retailers and logistics service providers based on a practical application.

A food home delivery concept in urban areas during pandemics is mathematically modeled. All seniors living in a district of Berlin, Germany, represent the vulnerable population supplied by a grocery distribution center. A capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) is developed in combination with a k-means clustering algorithm. To manage this large-scale problem efficiently, mixed-integer programming (MIP) is used. The impact of collaboration and additional delivery scenarios is examined with a sensitivity analysis.

Roughly 45 medically vulnerable persons can be served by one delivery vehicle in the baseline scenario. Operational measures allow a drastic decrease in required resources by reducing service quality. In this way, home delivery for the vulnerable population of Berlin can be achieved. This requires collaboration between grocery and parcel services and public authorities as well as overcoming accompanying challenges.

Developing a home delivery concept for providing essential goods to urban vulnerable groups during pandemics creates a special value. Setting a large-scale CVRP with variable fleet size in combination with a clustering algorithm contributes to the originality.

Outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has created the catastrophic situation, it has crippled all the economic activities and seized off the operations of food supply chain (FSC). Disrupted FSC escalated the societal concerns related to food safety and security. The purpose of this study is to consolidate various issues, exploring the perspectives associated with the agricultural practices, food industries and society concerns related with the FSC performance system dynamics amid of COVID-19 pandemic.

To structure this work, a detailed research literature insight focussing on the key findings associated with the past disease outbreaks like influenza, avian flu, Ebola, bird flu, SARS, foot and mouth disease and ongoing phase of COVID-19, encompassing the perspective related with various agricultural and concerned supply chain practices is clustered. Furthermore, issues having relevancy with the notion of this work, sourced from platforms of print and electronic media have been incorporated to ground the reality associated with the impacts, for better visualisation of the perspectives.

This study outlays the key findings which are relevant with the past pandemic outbreaks from the core of the research literature. It details the impact of the current COVID-19 scenario on the various FSC operations, focussing on dimensions allied with the industry, economic and society concerns. For the same, to mitigate the effects, relief measures focussing on the short- and long-term perspectives have been incorporated. Steps ramped up by the Government of India (GOI) to safeguard masses from the threat of food security, accelerate pace of the FSC operations and upscale operating capacities of the industries and agriculture practices have incorporated.

Presented work is persuaded amid of the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions hence it outlays the theoretical perspectives only. But, these perspectives portray the ongoing scenario's impacts, extending its implication to the people coming from the industry and academia background. This study can felicitate the government bodies to make them familiar with the various impacts which indented the FSCs, food industries and added woes to the society concerns.

India is the second largest populated nation of the world, and outspread of the COVID-19 has capsized the FSCs and raised the various instances, making population vulnerable to the threats of food insecurity. This study encompasses effect of the FSC disruption by incorporating its effect on the food industries practices, societal issues and extending possible relief measures to restructure the FSC dynamics. As of now, study focussing on the Indian FSC concerns, detailing of impacts due to pandemic outbreak, relief measures to sail out of the hard times are not available.

Agri-food firms face many challenges when assessing and managing their performance. The purpose of this research is to determine important factors for an integrated agri-food supply chain performance measurement system.

This research uses the Peruvian kiwicha supply chain as a meaningful context to examine critical factors affecting agri-food supply chain performance. The research uses interpretative structural modelling (ISM) with fuzzy MICMAC methods to suggest a hierarchical performance measurement model.

The resulting kiwicha supply chain performance management model provides insights for managers and academic theory regarding managing competing priorities within the agri-food supply chain.

The model developed in this research has been validated by cooperative kiwicha associations based in Puno, Peru, and further refined by experts. Moreover, the results obtained through ISM and fuzzy MICMAC methods could help decision-makers from any agri-food supply chain focus on achieving high operational performance by integrating key performance measurement factors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the key risk components (probability and consequence) and their respective thresholds affecting agri-food supply chain operations in Ghana. In addition, it seeks to understand the relationship between the major risk sources and to fathom the risk/disruption impact on agri-food supply chain performance in Ghana.

Cross-sectional survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The risks threshold associated with agri-food supply chain were categorized using the risk matrix scale and classification described in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (Project Management Institute, 2013). Next, the Pearson correlation was used to understand the relationship between the various risks and agri-food chain performance. Lastly, to investigate how firms’ supply chain operations have been affected by risks/disruptions, an ordinary least square regression model was employed to quantify the impact of some major risk sources on agri-food chain performance in Ghana.

The results in this paper show variations in risks’ probability, impact and threshold in agri-food supply chain. While risk sources such as periodic change in interest/exchange rate policies and volatility in customer demand are high-rated risks, uncertain land policies/tenure and poor quality control are low rated risks in the operations of the chain. The performance of the agri-food chain significantly but negatively correlates with all the major risks studied. Whereas demand, supply, weather, logistics/infrastructure and financial risk sources significantly undermined the chain’s performance, risks emerging from biological/environmental, management/operational, policy/regulations and political-related issues insignificantly affect the performance of agri-food supply chain in Ghana.

This research is an area biased. However, some insightful managerial implications can be drawn from this paper to manage agri-food chain operations in a similar unstable environment. The result implies that risks are inevitable in agri-food chain but they differ in terms of menace to the chain’s operation. Therefore, to manage agri-food supply chain risks effectively, managers should periodically identify, quantify and categorize risk sources before making risk response decisions. In addition, the results show that risks account for about half of the overall agri-food chain performance in Ghana. This infers that managers/practitioners could improve the performance of the agri-food chain if limited resources are allocated to plan and effectively respond to major risks sources (such as demand, supply, finance, weather and logistical/ infrastructural services-related risks) undermining the performance of the chain.

This research contributes to the agri-food chain risk literature and provides managers/practitioners with empirical evidence of risk thresholds and their corresponding major impact on agri-food chain’s performance. Since risks explained about half of agri-food chain performance in Ghana, this research would prompt decision makers to improve on their risk assessment and responds (e.g. by employing efficient demand, supply and weather forecasting systems, logistic/infrastructure services, hedge to finance, etc.) to improve the chain’s performance.

This paper shows the accounting, accountability and calculative practices associated with emergency food allocations by the City of Turin through a program to feed the vulnerable during COVID-19.

This is a single case study framed by Foucault's governmentality concept. The data was collected through interviews with key institutional actors and triangulated against decrees, circulars, ordinances and other publicly available documents.

The accounting tools of governmentality are always incomplete. Sometimes unique situations and crises help us to revise and improve the tools we have. Other times, they demand entirely new tools.

Accounting needs both things to count and a context to count them. In the case of food assistance, what is counted is people. In Turin's case, many people had never been counted – either because there was no need or because they were unaccounted for by choice. Now, the government was accountable for the welfare of both. Thus, new classification systems emerged, as did organisational and accounting solutions.

Although the accounting-for-disasters literature is diverse, studies too often favour the macro social, economic and political issues surrounding crises, neglecting the micro issues associated with governmentality and calculative practices.

The case will offer insight to the students regarding the idea generation and development of a viable sustainable venture. It will promote the understanding of students regarding SDGs and how SMEs can contribute towards their attainment. They will learn to develop the action plan for a green business venture and understand how each of the business activity in each phase of value chain contributes towards environmental, economic and social sustainability.

Rana Waseem, a young business graduate started a small ecopreneurial venture to offer sustainable food from raw material till disposal in developing nation context named as Dhuaan ‘n’ Dukhaan (D ‘n’ D) in Sargodha, Pakistan. He had an aim to create a model of business that not only supports the local economy in terms of offering decent employment but also promotes a food business that generates nutritional self-sufficiency as per the triple bottom line concept. This case gives an exploratory insight into the actual sustainable operations that have survived eight months successfully and on the path of growth without profit being the sole aim. D ‘n’ D has benefited the lives of people in Sargodha by offering job opportunities, a decent wage, healthy food at affordable rates, reduction in diseases, reducing food wastage and efficient resource usage with a positive impact on the environment.

The case is suitable for undergraduate and post graduate students studying entrepreneurship and small business management.

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

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

The purpose of this paper is to develop an existing collaborative research methodology process (Sabri, 2018), contextualise it for application in humanitarian supply chains and test it empirically.

Building on collaborative research methodology and humanitarian supply chain literature, the Sabri’s (2018) collaborative research methodology process is further developed to comprise eight phases of collaborative research contextualised for the humanitarian supply chain domain. The process is applied in a collaborative research case of academia–practitioner knowledge co-creation in a humanitarian supply chain setting, focussing on environmental sustainability improvement. The collaborative case analysis suggests a number of refinements to the elements of the process. This study undertook two cycles of academia–practitioner collaborative research.

In testing the process, a noticeable improvement in the collaboration among different humanitarian stakeholders was observed, leading to improved stakeholder management. The implementation improved the sustainability awareness and social inclusion of the affected population. Rurality, remoteness, security issues and resistance of field staff against change were among the main challenges for supply chain researchers to engage in collaborative research in the humanitarian domain.

The paper addresses the rigour‒relevance‒reflectiveness debate in the humanitarian supply chain domain. A collaborative research methodology process derived from action research is further developed using humanitarian literature, and then it is applied in a humanitarian logistics case focussed on environmental sustainability. The present collaborative research process facilitates engaged scholarship among the humanitarian stakeholders, as the researchers’ roles move from observatory to participatory knowledge broker.

Procuring relief products and services is a challenging process for humanitarian organizations (HOs), yet it accounts for approximately 65% of relief operations’ costs (Moshtari et al., 2021). This paper aims to examine how procurement internal controls, materials and purchasing procedure standardization influence information integration and procurement performance.

In this study, partial least square structural equation models and multigroup analysis were used to analyze data collected from 170 HOs.

Procurement internal controls and material and purchasing procedure standardization fully mediate between information integration and procurement performance.

The study focuses only on HOs. Since humanitarian procurement projects take place over a period of several years, it is difficult to capture the long-term effects of information integration, procurement internal controls, material and purchasing procedure standardization and procurement performance. In this regard, a longitudinal study could be undertaken, provided that the required resources are available.

Procurement managers should implement information integration practices within acceptable procurement internal controls and standardize material and purchasing procedures to boost procurement performance.

By integrating information through procurement internal controls and standardizing material and purchasing procedures, procurement performance in a humanitarian setting can be systematically optimized.