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The purpose of this paper is to identify the issues and challenges in humanitarian logistics and to develop a framework for effectively managing the humanitarian logistics in disaster relief supply chain operations in India.

This paper presents a framework to manage humanitarian logistics effectively in disaster management through qualitative analysis. First, the author examines the challenges facing the humanitarian logistics and supply chain through the reviews of the literature on various disasters. Then, the author presented a framework based on the best practices and initiatives taken worldwide in the preparedness and response stage of the humanitarian supply chain to manage and reduce the aftermath of any disaster in context to India.

A framework has been developed to manage humanitarian logistics in the disaster relief operation, which would improve the humanitarian supply chain in India and help to effectively manage natural disasters in the preparedness and response stage at the state and district levels.

The paper mainly emphasises on the preparedness and response stage of disaster supply chain management in Indian context.

None of the disaster incidents can be stopped from taking place, but the impact can be minimised by proper preparedness and effective response during the operations of humanitarian logistics. With this hope, the framework has been developed, which if implemented would help to plan and manage any disaster incident in an effective manner, which ultimately would save millions of lives and cost in terms of infrastructure, property, assets etc.

As natural disaster incidents are occurring frequently in Indian states, there is an urgent need for a framework to manage the logistics operations effectively and efficiently during any disaster relief operations. Limited literature is found on developing and presenting a framework focusing on the preparedness and response phase of disaster supply chain management in context to India. Hence, this paper is believed to be the first to fulfil this gap with main emphasis on the preparedness and response stage of disaster supply chain management in Indian scenario.

This paper aims at understanding the causes of low adoption of hybrid rice technology. The paper also assesses the impact of adoption of hybrids and modern varieties on crop yield, vis-à-vis the old or traditional varieties.

Using unit-level data from a large-scale survey of farm households (19,877 paddy cultivators), the authors applied multi-nomial regression method to understand the factors for adoption of hybrid rice and instrumental variable method of regression to estimate its impact.

The findings demonstrate that in India, hybrid rice is often grown on relatively poor soils, resulting in greater irrigation costs and for other inputs, such as fertilizers. Further, farmers' poor access to information on the traits of hybrid rice and the associated agronomic practices, as well as poor access to financial resources, hampers efforts to scale up its adoption. More importantly, the findings reveal that the relative yield advantage of hybrids over open-pollinated modern varieties is not large enough to incentivize the rapid adoption of hybrid rice technology.

Given the higher cost of hybrids than the inbred varieties, enhancing paddy cultivators' access to financial resources can accelerate the adoption of hybrid rice in India.

The study is based on unit level data from a large-scale, nationally representative survey of farm households, comprising a sample of 19,877 paddy cultivators, spread across states in India.

The main aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of caste-based social networks in the dissemination of technologies and innovations in the Indian agriculture.

Using the unit-level data from a large-scale farm survey, this paper constructs a multidimensional index of social networks encompassing households' castes and information sources within the administrative boundaries of a district and subsequently assesses its association with the adoption of modern seeds of staple food crops.

There is a strong effect of caste-based networks on the adoption of modern seeds of different crops, but the effect is linked to the stage of technological change, i.e. the network effect is stronger for the crop that has experienced late technological change. Further, the behavior of network members is found to have a bigger impact on the individuals' technology adoption decisions as compared to the characteristics of individuals in the network.

Given likely, increases in demand for diverse information and limited outreach of public extension systems, the findings suggest that in a socially heterogeneous society the caste-based social networks can serve as an important channel for the dissemination of information and innovations.

What is unique in this paper is that it constructs a multidimensional index of social networks embedding the farm households' castes and information sources within the administratively defined boundaries of a geographical region.

The humanitarian supply chain (HSC) area is rich with conceptual frameworks with a focus on the importance of information and digital technology (IDT) applications. These frameworks have a limited scope in investigating and prioritizing barriers to IDT adoption in HSCs. The present study thus identifies and prioritizes the barriers to IDT adoption in organizations involved in HSCs.

By using a literature review allied with expert discussions and a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (F-AHP), the study identifies and prioritizes a comprehensive set of barriers that organizations involved in HSCs may consider to improve IDT adoption.

The study investigates five main barriers (strategic, organizational, technological, financial and human) interlocked with 25 sub-barriers impacting the level of IDT adoption in organizations involved in HSCs. The findings indicate that strategic barriers (SBs) are of greatest importance, followed by organizational, technological, financial and human barriers. The findings indicate the difference in ranking barriers influencing the adoption of IDTs in HSCs compared to the commercial supply chain.

Although a three-step method adopted for this study is rigorous in terms of the way this research is conducted, it is essential to report that prioritization is based on the subjective opinions of the experts.

The findings aim to assist policymakers and practitioners in developing effective strategies to improve IDT adoption in organizations engaged in HSCs. Moreover, the prioritization of barriers provides a systematic way to overcome any barriers to improve HSC performance.

This study is first of its kind that investigates and prioritizes the barriers to IDT adoption in HSCs.

The digital direct-to-consumer (D2C) approach has seen widespread adoption across many industries, but its application to regional food products has been slower. This study aims to identify and rank the most significant challenges to the widespread use of digital D2C for regional food products.

A multi-criteria decision-making method called a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was used to determine the order in which these obstacles were evaluated. Thirty-five barriers were identified and categorized into six categories named technological, operational, sociocultural, financial, market and institutional and regulatory barriers.

Market barriers ranked as the top barrier, and the technological barrier ranked the least significant amongst the main barrier categories for the adoption of digital D2C model for the regional food products. Lack of consumer awareness ranked number one globally, and lack of government subsidies ranked the least amongst the thirty-five identified barriers. Operational barriers came out to be second most significant barrier followed by institutional and regulatory barrier, sociocultural barrier, financial barrier and technological barrier.

The findings of this research were derived through a numerical examination of data gathered from the Indian setting. It follows that the technological, sociocultural, financial, market, operational and institutional constraints, among others, outlined here are all unique to India. Because of the unique nature of the Indian setting, the results of this study can only be used there and not elsewhere. It is possible that future research will broaden the aims of this one and refine its methodology. Digital D2C adoption for regional food products may be prioritized and ranked using quantitative and qualitative data sources like ANP and TOPSIS. It is possible that similar studies may be conducted in nations which have a different set of operational, technological, sociocultural market and financial and regulatory barriers. Conceptual framework can be formed by integrating TAM and TPB to understand the buying behavior of regional food products via digital D2C.

This research is the first to identify challenges to the widespread use of the digital D2C model for regional food products. Policymakers and other interested parties can use this information to better understand the difficulties of expanding the distribution of regional food products beyond their immediate regions.

This study explores a seller’s perspective in business relationships to validate whether the findings reported in previous studies based on buyer business relationships apply to seller business relationships. The purpose of this study is to test whether satisfaction functions as a connector between positive antecedents (trust and commitment) and negative postcedents (opportunism and conflict) in a business-to-business (B2B) relationship, based on a seller perspective.

A descriptive research design was applied and data was collected from Norwegian companies from the database of LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator. Respondents (Sales or Marketing Managers/Directors or Key Account Managers) were asked to identify one main business customer with whom they had interacted in the past year. A total of 213 responses could be used for data analysis. In addition, the measurement and structural models were assessed.

Trust was established as a positive alter ego of opportunism and opportunism as a negative alter ego of trust. The commitment was also determined to be a positive alter ego of conflict, with conflict being a negative alter ego of commitment. Furthermore, it was proven that alter egos are not opposites, but facets of antecedents and postcedents in relation to a connector, satisfaction.

The tested model endorses the hypothesised relationships between trust, commitment, satisfaction, opportunism and conflict in Norwegian B2B relationships. Satisfaction is linked to its two antecedents and its outcomes and the hypothesised relationship between opportunism and conflict is also endorsed from a seller’s perspective in B2B relationships.

The findings can assist the B2B industry to understand how trust and commitment foster satisfaction, how satisfaction influences opportunism and conflict, and how opportunism relates to conflict in a seller-business relationship.

No previous study has focussed on relationship marketing in B2B relationships from a seller’s perspective to establish whether satisfaction functions as a connector between trust and commitment and opportunism and conflict.

This research focuses on suggesting an optimized model for selecting best employees using advanced multi-criteria decision making method to a supply chain firm, who is planning to start a new cold chain business vertical.

Study has been conducted in a supply chain firm in North India, who wants to expand its business with the help of efficient team members. In total 38 applicants were considered for the study, as selected by the firm after initial screening from pool of talent. AHP-LP and TOPSIS-LP integrated approach were applied separately for evaluation and implementation of personnel selection model. Further, both the approaches were compared to find the best fit and optimized model.

As per the findings, both AHP and TOPSIS can be used to select the best candidate among the alternatives available. TOPSIS was found easier to implement as it involves ranking of applicants with respect to each skills required for respective job profile only once, whereas AHP involves pair-wise comparison among candidates with respect to each skills required for respective job profile and normalization of each comparison, resulting in the formation of number of comparison matrices. However, AHP is more reliable as it considers consistency check for each level of pair-wise comparison. Hence, there is a chance to avoid or revise the human judgment error. Integrated ranking and optimization approach minimizes the cost by suggesting the relevant positions to be filed to make an efficient team.

Group of interviewers are involved in the decision-making process, hence there are chances of biasness in ranking method which can influence the group decision. Research is limited to a particular geography of North India therefore needs to be tested for other regions also in order to generalize. The research will help the third party logistics (3PL) and other related firms in efficient team selection.

The researcher focuses on formalizing a method for potential candidate selection by considering the constraints of the organization. It has been observed that limited researches have been done on the application of AHP-LP or TOPSIS-LP integrated approach for selection process. Hence, this research proposes two integrated ranking-optimization method and suggests the best fit by comparing both the approaches.

This study aims to discover the key performance indicators (KPIs) of the agricultural cold supply chain (ACSC) and analyze their consequences on the performance of ACSC within the bounds of Indian topography.

The KPIs have been explored based on the literature review both in global and Indian context and domain expert's opinions. The interdependency characteristics and cause–effect relationship among the KPIs have been analyzed using a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (f-DEMATEL) approach.

The findings extracted from the empirical assessment of the problem find strong compliance with the notions of theoretical model assessment. The results highlight that the cost of product waste and operating and performance costs are the two most important performance indicators of an Indian ACSC. Furthermore, governmental policies and regulations and the effectiveness of cold chain (CC) equipment also have a high degree of influencing characteristics on ACSC performance.

To connect the study with practicalities, the assessment of the KPIs is allied with real-time practices by clustering the beliefs of Indian professionals. Therefore, the decision-making behavior of the experts might be influenced by geographical constraints. However, the key findings provide advantages to the ACSC players, a bright hope for future food security and a significant profit for farmers.

The presented paper encompasses various aspects of the ACSC, including theoretical and empirical perspectives exercised to contemplate the system dynamics, which inculcates the essence of the associated practicalities. Thus, this study has various practical contributions relevant to managerial and societal perspectives.

The objective of the present study is to identify and analyze a set of critical success factors (CSFs) for ice-cream industry [cold chain management (CCM)] that helps in increasing the efficacy, quality, performance and growth of the supply chain organization.

A questionnaire survey with companies in ice-cream sector and a panel study with experts were conducted to identify and validate CSFs and their associated sub-factors. Eight CSFs identified from the cold chain domain vetted for the ice-cream industry and then prioritized by using one of the most well-known decision-making frameworks, Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory. The general verdicts of the modelling and its application to the real-world case have been tested through an ice-cream company supply chain.

The result shows that the significant CSFs accountable for the growth of the ice-cream industry are the infrastructure and capacity building, consistent product improvement and operational efficiencies of the value chain. Subsequently, it was identified that the use of IT and related technologies and improved processes for operations also play a considerable role in the performance of ice-cream industry.

The study successfully outlines the effective CCM practices for critical issues. The proposed methodology and factor modelling case demonstration might be useful in analyzing the logistic chains of products such as fruits, drugs and meat.

The meritorious identification of critical areas and executing mitigation plans bring notable benefits to the firms such as improved operational efficiencies, improved time to market performance and product innovation, which bring additional benefits to the producers.