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At its peak, the COVID-19 pandemic has created disruption to food supply chains in the UK and for the entire world. Although societal changes created some resilience within the supply chains, high volatility in demand creates supply, logistics and distribution issues. This is reflected in the economic instability of businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In this paper, the authors explore factors behind this initial disruption in the supply chains and offer suggestions to businesses based on the established practices and theories.

The authors use mixed methods research. First, the authors conducted an exploratory study by collecting data from published online sources. Then, the authors analysed possible scenarios from the available information using regression. The authors then conducted two interviews with UK retail sector representatives. These scenarios have been compared and contrasted to provide decision-making points to businesses and supply chain players to tackle current and any future potential disruptions.

The findings from the current exploratory study inform the volatility of supply chains. The authors suggested some possible responses from businesses, during and after the pandemic.

The regression model provides a decision-making approach to help supply chain businesses during the pandemic outbreak. Once a complete data set of COVID-19 is available, the authors can create a resilience model that can help businesses and supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between operations capability, productivity, and business performance in the context of environmental dynamism.

A proposed conceptual framework grounded in the resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capability view (DCV) is analyzed using archival data from 193 automakers in the UK.

The results show that operations capability, as an important dynamic capability, has a significant positive effect on productivity, which in turn leads to improved business performance. The results also suggest that productivity fully mediates the relationship between operations capability and business performance, and that environmental dynamism significantly moderates the relationship between operations capability and productivity.

The research findings provide practical insights that will help managers develop operations capability to gain greater productivity and business performance in a dynamic environment.

Addressing the two important issues of moderation (i.e. environmental dynamism) and mediation (i.e. productivity), this study makes important contributions to the field of operations management by applying the RBV and DCV.

The manufacturing industry sector is one of the dynamic and important productive sectors of the economy. Hence, efforts have been made in the literature to assess the performance of this sector in many countries. In this paper, the business excellence of 19 industrial groups in the manufacturing industrial sector of the Sultanate of Oman is evaluated using data envelopment analysis. Using data for the year 2001, three of the 19 industrial groups, namely refined petro‐products (ISIC code 23), office, accounting/computer machinery (ISIC code 30) and medical precision/optical instruments (ISIC code 33), have been assessed to be operating at the highest level of business excellence. Patterns of efficiency changes in these industrial groups over the time period 1997‐2001 are studied using the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) approach. The average MPI over this period has declined for the entire manufacturing industry, and technology change contributed significantly to this decline in spite of a slight improvement in the technical efficiency change. The industrial group chemicals/chemical products (ISIC code 24) have shown poor performance in terms of technical efficiency and technology change during this period. Hence, it is important to study the technology management practices of this industrial group further, and if necessary to provide further investment to improve technologies.

In this paper, the authors aim to examine the impact of resource capabilities on customer loyalty of UK hotels. Understanding this impact will help organisations to improve customer satisfaction in order to obtain improved customer loyalty.

The authors use a relatively innovative data source, namely online ratings. They measure resource capabilities of a firm using customer ratings in terms of various operational criteria. Similarly, customer loyalty is measured using guests ' ratings on their intention to use the same service (stay again in the same hotel) and their intention to recommend the service to friends. The authors employ structural equation modelling to test research hypotheses.

The authors ' results indicate that there is a significant positive influence of resource capabilities on customer loyalty. They further find that the significant influence of resource capabilities on customer loyalty does not differ across hotels with various star ratings.

The authors looked at the online guest ratings available on a particular website, but it is only one of the many websites offering online hotel reservations, and not all customers that made hotel reservations using this e-booking facility would be inclined to leave feedback after their stay in the hotel. This limitation can be partially overcome by pooling similar data from a number of online hotel booking sites.

The most important managerial implication is that good resource capabilities of firms translate well into customer loyalty. Thus, managers should ensure good performance in terms of various hotel attributes – cleanliness, quality of room, facilities, and customer service – and also ensure that customers perceive good value for their money while staying in the hotel.

The authors applied structural modelling framework to verify the resource capability – performance link in the context of hotels. They used a relatively novel data source – online guest ratings of hotels – to understand the relationships between resource capabilities and customer loyalty.

This paper seeks to propose a methodology to integrate the total cost of ownership (TCO) and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approaches for selecting appropriate suppliers for a firm.

This paper suggests an interesting way of combining the objective and subjective information provided by the results of the TCO and AHP approaches through the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA).

Three different versions of DEA models have been used to illustrate the integration of TCO and AHP.

The integration of DEA with TCO and AHP can be extended to more complex situations, including assessment of risk behaviour of suppliers and including fuzzy concepts.

The proposed integrated model could be used for supplier selection, which involves several quantitative and qualitative factors.

To the best of the author's knowledge, the proposed integrated DEA‐TCO‐AHP model is the first of its kind to be applied for the supplier selection problem.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an initial analysis of the roles of functional capabilities in adopting environmental management practices (EMP) and improving environmental performance from an organizational capability perspective.

By combing survey data and archival data from 121 UK-based manufacturing firms, this study explores the relationships among functional capabilities (marketing and operations), EMP and environmental performance.

The results show that marketing and operations capabilities significantly affect EMP, which in turn leads to improved environmental performance. More specifically, this study finds that EMP fully mediates the relationship between marketing capability and environmental performance.

The results of this study provide guidance for managers considering how to develop environmental capability in order to improve environmental performance.

This study addresses a demonstrable gap in the existing literature that few empirical studies have explored the potential effects of functional capabilities on implementing EMP.

This paper seeks to explore the performance of UK hotels, in terms of various service attributes, and whether it influences customers' intention to stay again.

Data are used from online customer ratings of 664 hotels in the UK for the purpose. The approach is based on an interesting use of statistical regression reported in the literature that attempted to classify different cues in hotels as critical, satisfier, dissatisfier, etc. In this study, six prominent attributes are considered, namely: customer service, cleanliness, room quality, value for money, quality of food, and family friendliness, rated by guests, based on their experiences of staying in hotels.

The findings reveal that “Value for money” is a critical attribute, while “Customer service”, “Room quality” and “Quality of food” are dissatisfiers. Business guests, and guests of independent hotels, exhibit similar behavior, but for leisure guests, and guests of chain hotels, “Value for money” is a dissatisfier.

“Value for money” is a critical attribute, in that good performance, in terms of this attribute, is critical for positively influencing guests' intention to stay again; however, failures in terms of this attribute cannot be compensated by improving service in terms of other attributes. There are three dissatisfier attributes (“Customer service”, “Room quality”, and “Quality of food”), implying that an inadequate performance in terms of these attributes could significantly adversely impact guests' intention to stay again.

This study would appear to be the first to use the extensive data available on the internet on guest ratings of hotels.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance of banks in countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Performances of 55 banks operating in countries of the GCC are examined in this study using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and Malmquist productivity index (MPI). When DEA is used, the bank(s) that registered the highest efficiency is used as benchmark and the performance of other banks are evaluated relative to this benchmark. Two outputs and four inputs are employed for the performance measurement. MPI is used to analyze the patterns of efficiency change over the period 2000‐2004.

DEA efficiencies are calculated for the year 2004. Results show that only 15 of the 55 banks are rated as efficient under constant returns to scale (CRS) assumption, and all the GCC countries have at least one efficient bank. The analysis using MPI has shown that banks in four of the six GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) registered productivity improvements during 2000‐2004. The selected banks in Bahrain have shown the highest productivity improvements during this period, while the selected banks in Qatar have registered the highest reductions in productivity during this period. Interestingly, all the countries seem to have registered reductions in productivity in terms of technology change.

More banks could not be considered in this study due to non‐availability of consistent data. Since performance of banks in more than one country have been compared, we have used a common unit of monetary measurement.

This study is first to study the performance of banks in the Middle East, with the exception of a study of selected banks in Kuwait.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of the business environment on operations strategy encompassed by competitive priorities in China's retail sector.

This is a case study of a multinational retailer to understand how the company develops appropriate operations strategies to survive in the competitive and dynamic Chinese business environment.

The study identifies that companies intending to expand their businesses in emerging markets face many challenges in the new business environment, and that various dimensions of the business environment (e.g. business cost, competitive hostility, and environmental dynamism) affect the development of retail operations strategy. The strategy of flexibility is particularly important for international companies to survive in an increasingly dynamic and competitive environment. Foreign retailers need to be flexible and agile, adapting to the Chinese market environment in many ways in order to succeed.

This study seems to be the first in investigating the effects of the business environment on international operations strategy in the service (retail) sector, especially in the Chinese context.