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Health tourism is a relatively new branch of international tourism that has developed more rapidly than other tourism sectors in recent years. This study aimed to investigate the effect of government supports on health tourism development by considering the mediating role of internal and external infrastructures.

The study population consisted of all experts of two hospitals in Iran, which are frequently visited by foreign tourists (N = 151). A questionnaire, developed by combining standard and researcher-made questionnaires, was used to collect the data. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model was developed in SmartPLS 3 to test the hypotheses.

The main hypothesis test results indicated that government supports positively affect the development of health tourism. Internal and external infrastructures were also found to mediate the relationship between government supports and health tourism development. In addition, the sub-hypothesis test results showed that internal and external infrastructures are positively affected by government supports, which puts forth the development of health tourism. As the results explained, the most important aspects of internal infrastructures affected by government support were health service quality, cost of health services and applying advanced medical technologies, respectively. Also, different aspects of external infrastructures affected by government supports are as follows: economic, infrastructures and cultural factors.

This study is the first of its kind to examine the impact of both medical and non-medical factors on health tourism and signifies the crucial role of governments in the development of health tourism.

The purpose of this study is to measure the supply chain competitiveness of the e-commerce industry in Indonesia.

The study used a multi-criteria decision-making model based on the analytic hierarchy process. Four main criteria are used to measure the supply chain competitiveness, i.e. cost, differentiation, sustainability and infrastructure.

The findings of this study show that cost is the most important criterion with a degree of importance of 33.19%, followed by infrastructure of 29.40%, differentiation of 27.96% and sustainability of 9.45%. It shows that the internally controlled strategy contributes about 70% of supply chain competitiveness. The internal infrastructure criterion that consists of software and hardware contributes 65.92% to the whole infrastructure criterion. The internal infrastructure then contributes 19.38% to supply chain competitiveness. Therefore, the internally controlled strategies and internal infrastructure contribute up to 90.08% to the supply chain competitiveness of e-commerce in Indonesia. This result implies that to attain the supply chain competitiveness, the company must carry out strategies focusing on the performance such as cost, differentiation, sustainability as well as on the internal infrastructure such as software and hardware.

In this paper, the authors limited their study to the business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) players because these two platforms have been experiencing a very rapid growth. While e-commerce business can take many platforms besides B2B and B2C, the future research should include other platform such as consumer to consumer as well. Because the focus in this study is more the information and material flows, it will be of great interest if the future research covers the platform of mobile payment as well that guarantee the ease of cashflows within supply chains. Also, with the occurrence of the Covid-19 pandemic when this paper was written, in the near future, it is then of great interest to incorporate the pandemic context into the proposed model used in this study. The further study should analyze long-term changes happened as the result of pandemic such as behavioral changes of online shopping from customer side or shift in e-commerce supply chain infrastructure and inventory practice.

With this study, it is expected that it can be determined which criteria contribute the most to the supply chain competitiveness of the e-commerce industry in Indonesia that will be useful for industry player.

E-commerce development in Indonesia is still facing serious challenges. The multi-criteria decision making approach used in this research lays a foundation of how supply chain competitiveness is determined based on the judgment of experts coming from major companies within the supply chain.

Lean (TQM and JIT) and agile manufacturing (AM) are viewed as strategic capabilities that can help firms to meet diverse set of market demands. However, the question whether lean manufacturing and AM are complementary or competing capabilities is still open to discussion. This research proposes an integrated research framework that draws on complementary theory, theory of systems, and concept of fit to examine this question regarding these two strategic capabilities.

Data are collected from 248 apparel exporting firms, and the proposed model is evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Results show that lean manufacturing, AM, and supporting management and infrastructural practices have positive and complementary effects on firm's performance. Further, results depict that lean manufacturing and AM complementarity is a complete organizational synergistic phenomenon, and piecemeal implementation of these initiatives may lead to suboptimal or unsatisfactory results. Results also indicate that there is no significant direct (correlated and uncorrelated) relationship of management, infrastructure, lean manufacturing, and AM practices with firm's performance and support that lean manufacturing and AM are not competing paradigms.

This research is based on cross-sectional data from one industry. Future research should collect data from diverse sectors in different countries.

This study provides a key insight for manufacturing managers that piecemeal implementation of lean manufacturing and AM does not yield optimal outcomes. In addition, study suggests that lean manufacturing and AM complementarity builds on strong foundation of strategic management and internal and external infrastructure. Therefore, managers should focus on development of skilled and empowered human resources, technological advancements, and learning and virtually integrated organizations for effective implementation of lean manufacturing and AM.

Proposed framework is one of the first, if not the first, that seeks to resolve the question: whether lean manufacturing and AM are complementary or competing capabilities. Complementary effects of lean manufacturing and AM along with management, internal infrastructure, and common external infrastructure practices have positive impact on performance. This study also segregated infrastructure practices into internal and common external infrastructure practices.

The study aims to overview the different types of internal-led cyber fraud that have gained mainstream attention in recent major-value fraud events involving prominent Indian banks. The authors attempted to identify and classify cyber frauds and its drivers and correlate them for optimal mitigation planning.

The methodology opted for the identification and classification is through a detailed literature review and focus group discussion with risk and vigilance officers and cyber cell experts. The authors assessed the future of cyber fraud in the Indian banking business through the machine learning–based k-nearest neighbor (K-NN) approach and prioritized and predicted the future of cyber fraud. The predicted future revealing dominance of a few specific cyber frauds will help to get an appropriate fraud prevention model, using an associated parties centric (victim and offender) root-cause approach. The study uses correlation analysis and maps frauds with their respective drivers to determine the resource specific effective mitigation plan.

Finally, the paper concludes with a conceptual framework for preventing internal-led cyber fraud within the scope of the study. A cyber fraud mitigation ecosystem will be helpful for policymakers and fraud investigation officers to create a more robust environment for banks through timely and quick detection of cyber frauds and prevention of them.

Additionally, the study supports the Reserve Bank of India and the Government of India's launched cyber security initiates and schemes which ensure protection for the banking ecosystem i.e. RBI direct scheme, integrated ombudsman scheme, cyber swachhta kendra (botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre), National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) and Security Monitoring Centre (SMC).

Structured and effective internal-led plans for cyber fraud mitigation proposed in this study will conserve banks, employees, regulatory authorities, customers and economic resources, save bank authorities’ and policymakers’ time and money, and conserve resources. Additionally, this will enhance the reputation of the Indian banking industry and extend its lifespan.

The innovative insider-led cyber fraud mitigation approach quickly identifies cyber fraud, prioritizes it, identifies its prominent root causes, map frauds with respective root causes and then suggests strategies to ensure a cost-effective and time-saving bank ecosystem.

The purpose of this paper is to identify major challenges that Asia-Pacific policy makers face in drawing up international logistics policies, and to seek possible solutions to the problems.

Case study method: the paper includes seven case studies that attempt to address various types of logistics challenges. The paper introduces both intra- and extra-regional examples of the ways in which those challenges have been overcome in particular contexts through concerted action by government and the private sector.

There are a lot of interesting experiences of overcoming logistics challenges, both inside and outside the Asia-Pacific region. Good practice experiences can be replicated by other countries in the region.

While there have been a lot of discussions on logistics policy reforms, this paper is one of the first attempts that clearly link challenges with concrete case experiences where those are overcome. The paper discusses very practical issues in an analytically sound manner, using case method.

The purpose of this paper is to find alignment concerns (e.g. requirements, restrictions and issues) and addressing them into the design and development of domain-specific information systems (ISs) supporting product manufacturing.

The approach is based on two metamodels of the Strategic Alignment Model that formalise its underlying concepts. The metamodels are used to build specific alignment models that define the elements to be aligned and the corresponding alignment sequences. The models and alignment sequences are intended to guide the design and development of an “aligned” domain-specific IS. An industrial case study for the manufacturing industry shows the feasibility of this approach.

The instantiation of the alignment models components with information about the specific-domain IS project enabled us to deal with current and future concerns into the design of ISs aligned with the manufacturing strategy and infrastructures.

IS alignment is generally tackled at a strategic level, in this paper the operational and tactical levels are also addressed.

This paper seeks to investigate the role of information systems integration in Irish small and medium‐sized enterprises operating in the manufacturing sector.

Research was conducted through a review of literature and subsequent primary research involving qualitative (semi‐structured interviews) and quantitative (questionnaires) research strategies.

The paper reveals the sophistication of internal IT infrastructure within Irish manufacturing SMEs and whether the IT systems are integrated with one another, and, if so, how well that integration is done. Moreover, the owner‐managers' and senior managers' attitude to IS integration issues is explored, including the reasons that prompt them to integrate IT systems within their businesses, their expectations of IS integration, the challenges they recognise when integrating the systems and their criteria regarding IS integration.

The research focuses on manufacturing SMEs operating in Ireland; other sectors are not investigated.

The paper helps the owner‐managers and senior managers to understand the issues of IS integration and points towards possible solutions to the problem of disparate IT systems.

The negative impact of disparate systems and the benefits of integrating them in an SMEs environment have not been thoroughly examined to date.

Reports the findings and conclusions of a study of five small businesses in the hotel and catering sector which had adopted national vocational qualifications (NVQs). Using an open system model, a comparative case study design and a range of data sources and methods of data collection within each organization, traces the preconditions, processes, outcomes and problems/issues associated with NVQ adoption and implementation. In a small business context, this is shown more likely to be successful where there is an existing training culture and infrastructure; where on‐the‐job training is positive, supportive and monitored; and where there is a senior management NVQ “champion” and an enthusiastic cadre of in‐house trainers and potential assessors. Shows that NVQs give a sharper focus to training activity, improve candidates’ perceived job satisfaction, morale and career prospects; enhance work flexibility and performance; and have a perceived, if hard‐to‐measure payoff in terms of business performance.

Little empirical research has been conducted on competitive intelligence (CI). This paper aims to contribute to the quantitative strand of the CI literature by exploring and validating the theoretical constructs of the CI process.

Data from 601 questionnaires filled out by South African and Flemish exporters were subjected to exploratory factor analysis and construct equivalence analysis between the sub‐samples.

The results showed that the CI process consists of three constructs, while the context in which CI takes place consists of four constructs. This agrees to some extent with the literature. When verifying the constructs for both cultures it was found that all but one CI context construct can be viewed as equivalent in both groups. Bias analysis identified one item in the questionnaire that was biased. Via regression analysis it was also indicated that the context in which CI takes place influences the CI process to a large extent. The research identified size as an important influencing factor in a business' CI process.

Businesses involved in CI should take note that an improvement in their formal infrastructure, employee involvement and internal information processes could enhance their CI capability.

This paper contributes towards the formalising of the constructs of competitive intelligence.

This paper aims to deal with different experts’ perceptions of entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) from central to non-central regions to evaluate if there was any evolution (or involution), comparing the results with those of a previous similar study on Chile from 2013, and it follows to replicate and improve our knowledge of the entrepreneurial opportunities.

One of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys, the National Experts’ Survey, was applied to a sample of N = 1,555 key informants in Chile at 11 regions. The author used non-parametric statistics to compare the differences between centrally and non-centrally located experts.

The results indicate an evolution of the Chilean entrepreneurial ecosystem in an effort to homologate the entrepreneurial opportunities at non-central regions since the last study published in 2013. The financial support and physical infrastructure conditions were perceived to be more favorable in central regions, whereas the general government policies and entrepreneurial education at primary and secondary levels were perceived to be more favorable in non-central regions.

This research aims to contribute to filling the gap from the regional EEs’ perspective in emerging economies by comparing the results of the study on Chile with data from the previous government (2007–2009) providing an updated study of it (2015–2018) using the entrepreneurial framework conditions. It is relevant because the government established the “StartUp Chile” program that positioned the country as an innovation hub in Latin America since 2010.