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This paper aims to explore effective supply chain principles, through the theory of transaction cost economics, as measures to improve current contingency pharmaceutical item shortfalls in the Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) Contingency Pharmaceutical Programme.

In this research, AFMS contingency pharmaceutical data was collected from various databases, including the Joint Medical Asset Repository, Medical Contingency Requirements Workflow and the Medical Requirements List. Through the methodology of cost-benefit analysis, alternative sourcing and fulfilment practices are evaluated.

The findings of this research indicate that the application of centralized purchasing principles, in an effort to leverage prime vendor contract fill rates for shortage items, can lead to 12%–17% increases in pharmaceutical material availability across the programme.

This research clearly shows that consolidating demand for shortage items across Active Duty War Reserve Material assemblages, though applications of centralized purchasing principles that leverage prime vendor contract fill rates, can lead to substantial increases in material availability at costs that justify the calculated benefits.

Medicine shortages have a detrimental impact on stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain (PSC). Existing studies suggest that building resilience strategies can mitigate the effects of these shortages. As such, this research aims to examine whether resilience strategies can reduce the impact of medicine shortages in the United Kingdom's (UK) PSC.

A sequential mixed-methods approach that involved qualitative and quantitative research enquiry was employed in this study. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 23 key UK PSC actors at the qualitative stage. During the quantitative phase, 106 respondents completed the survey questionnaires. The data were analysed using partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results revealed that reactive and proactive elements of resilience strategies helped tackle medicine shortages. Reactive strategies increased relational issues such as behavioural uncertainty, whilst proactive strategies mitigated them.

The findings suggest that PSC managers and decision-makers can benefit from adopting structural flexibility and proactive strategies, which are cost-effective measures to tackle medicine shortages. Also engaging in strategic alliances as a proactive strategy mitigates relational issues that may arise in a complex supply chain (SC).

This study is the first to provide empirical evidence of the impact of resilience strategies in mitigating medicine shortages in the UK's PSC.

The objective of this study is to mitigate the risks of a blood shortage. The authors designed two simulation studies to identify the superior methodology that can decrease the impact of a massive national donor shortage.

The simulation designs are triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first simulation examines the company’s choice of strategic partners (regionally and nationally), and the second inspects creating a national coordinated effort to organize a pooled blood inventory that would require blood centers to contribute a small percentage of their monthly donations to become a member.

The results indicate that both methods can significantly manage the risk of stockouts regardless of the availability of safety inventory in a blood center; however, although more effective in reducing the number of shortages per month, creating a national blood pool causes the shortages to be recognized earlier than desired.

The authors contribute to the literature by focusing on the potential risk of blood shortage because it directly impacts healthcare, hospitals’ costs and their ability to provide care. Though a handful of researchers have targeted the study of the blood supply chain, there is not any article that is similar to this study.

Like other European countries, Germany is facing regional physician shortages, which have several consequences on patient care. This study analyzes how hospitals perceive physician shortages and which strategies they adopt to address them. As a theoretical framework, the resource dependency theory is chosen.

The authors conducted 20 semi-structured expert interviews with human resource officers, human resource directors, and executive directors from hospitals in the northwest of Germany. Hospitals of different ownership types, of varying sizes and from rural and urban locations were included in the sample. The interviews were analyzed by using qualitative content analysis.

The interviewees reported that human resource departments in hospitals expand their recruiting activities and no longer rely on one single recruiting instrument. In addition, they try to adapt their retaining measures to physicians' needs and offer a broad range of employment benefits (e.g. childcare) to increase attractiveness. The study also reveals that interviewees from small and rural hospitals report more difficulties with attracting new staff and therefore focus on recruiting physicians from abroad.

Since the staffing situation in German hospitals will not change in the short term, the study provides suggestions for hospital managers and health policy decision-makers in dealing with physician shortages.

This study uses the resource dependency theory to explain hospitals' strategies for dealing with healthcare staff shortages for the first time.

Although the role of human capital in the hospitality sector is critical, the industry faces challenges in attracting workers with a poor industry image frequently mentioned regarding labor shortages. This research paper attempts to investigate the factors influencing labor shortages by presenting the perspectives of employees and employers.

Precisely 232 rural hospitality industry employees (n = 128) and employers (n = 104) in Northern Italy were surveyed using a written close-ended online survey and a quantitative research design as part of a convenience sampling approach. For hypotheses testing, Spearman's rho was used.

A relationship between the shortage of professional workers and a variety of factors was found, including professional, digital, social and green skills, industry-intrinsic characteristics and symbolic image attributes of the industry. The findings show that some factors are more important for employees, while others are more significant for employers.

This study demonstrates several practical implications for the hospitality sector by addressing the under-researched stakeholder group of existing hospitality employees, e.g. improving working conditions, reduction of manual operations through digital technologies, realistic career planning, employer branding, identification of skill deficiencies and provision of specialized trainings.

Most research on labor shortages in the hospitality industry has focused on the perspective of either employees or employers. This study compares both perspectives, including the industry image, to gain a realistic picture of the relevant factors for a rural tourism destination in Northern Italy.

The purpose of this paper is to help optimize sustainment logistics for US Army brigade combat teams, which may face challenges in transporting their assigned assets.

This paper develops a simulation framework with an integrated integer programming optimization model. The integer-programming model optimizes sustainment outcomes of supported battalions on a daily basis, whereas the simulation framework analyzes risk associated with shortfalls that may arise over the entire duration of a conflict.

This work presents a scenario reflecting the steady resupply of an infantry brigade combat team during combat operations and presents an in-depth risk analysis for possible fleet compositions.

The risk curves obtained allow decision-makers and commanders to optimize vehicle fleet design in advance of a conflict.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of supply capacity constraint, water delivery loss and fairness concern on the operational decisions/efficiency of the IBWT supply chain under the random precipitation.

Two game-theoretic decision models for the IBWT supply chain coordination considering water delivery loss without/with fairness concern under the supply capacity constraint and random precipitation are developed, analyzed and compared. On this basis, the corresponding numerical analyses are conducted and compared to derive the corresponding management insights and policy implications.

The research results indicate that the two-part tariff contract could effectively coordinate the IBWT supply chain and achieve operational performance improvement; the binding supply capacity constraint makes the water capacity to be allocated among IBWT distributors in accordance with fair shortage allocation rule and reduces the profit (or utility) of the IBWT supply chain and its members; the existence of fairness concern reduces the utility of the IBWT supply chain and its members; a lower precipitation utilization factor in the case with non-binding capacity constraint is beneficial for improving the profit/utility of the IBWT supply chain while a higher precipitation utilization factor in the case with binding capacity constraint is beneficial for improving the profit/utility of the IBWT supply chain; and reducing the water delivery loss rate, the mainline transfer cost, the branch-line transfer cost, the holding cost and the shortage cost and setting a higher retail price are beneficial for improving the profit/utility of the IBWT supply chain.

Two innovative coordination decision models under random precipitation are developed, analyzed and compared through game-theoretic approaches to investigate the impact of supply capacity constraint, water delivery loss and fairness concern on the operational decisions/efficiency of the IBWT supply chain, which have enhanced the optimization decision theory for the operations management of IBWT projects and provided a better decision support for the IBWT stakeholders to make better operations strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to design a contract to coordinate the biomass molding fuel supply chain consisting of a supplier with uncertain supply and a producer with cyclical demand as well as improve the profit of this supply chain.

In this paper, the supply chain model was build and all the variables and assumptions are set. Stackelberg game model was used to analyze and solve the problem. Furthermore, the authors give numerical examples and result analysis on the basis of data coming from field study and online information about a real biomass fuel supply chain.

The wholesale price with shortage penalty contract the authors proposed can coordinate the supply chain. And as the dominator of the supply chain, the producer can realize the redistribution of profits within the supply chain by determine the contract parameters.

This one-to-one supply chain is a basic of complex supply chain system. Multi-to-one, one-to-multi and multi-to-multi supply chain can be studied in the future.

The results obtained in this paper can be used as a reference for enterprises in biomass energy supply chain to make contracts and realize the long-term co-operations among supply chain members.

This study aims to examine the role of hunger, environmental, economic, landfill and water shortage concerns as significant dimensions of consumer social awareness marketing in socially responsible plate food consumption.

To carry out their purpose, the authors validate the hypothesized model empirically through data from 1,536 households using structural equation modeling (SEM). In particular, the construct measures of the structural model have been tested by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The outcome the authors came up with is coherent with the hypothesized model, and it proves a positive relationship of the five dimensions identified on consumer awareness. Moreover, the study results show the crucial role of landfill and water shortage concerns in measuring consumer awareness.

These findings may be of interest to practitioners, academics and policymakers for socially responsible food consumption guidance and training for planning consumer awareness programs. More in detail, this study offers the indication that the dimensions of the social consumer awareness construct are differing from commercial consumer awareness.

Even though several previous studies have addressed the concept of consumer awareness concerning product and service purchase decisions, this is one of the first research studies on consumer awareness as a multidimensional construct in social marketing studies domain.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a disastrous impact on a substantial number of Filipino seafarers. The government agencies played a crucial role in helping the seafarers. This paper aims to explore the challenges that the Filipino seafarers faced amid the pandemic and initially evaluate the Philippine government’s countermeasures.

This paper reviewed academic literature and secondary data to identify and analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on seafarers. To identify the full range of policies and measures that have been adopted by the Philippines’ government amid the pandemic to mitigate the impact on seafarers, an extensive survey of various sources was conducted. Furthermore, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) survey was conducted from seafarers' perspective to analyze the priority of these government initiatives.

This study identifies four key challenges for seafarers during the pandemic: crew change crisis, healthcare shortages, certification and the derived problems including financial and mental health issues. Notably, mental health problems are prevalent but receive limited government attention. Despite the government’s efforts to assist seafarers, the AHP survey identifies crew change assistance as the most crucial issue, possibly impacting all others.

This paper recognizes the significant information regarding aid in recovery management and provides much-needed assistance to seafarers during the pandemic and similar crisis situations. It bridges the research gaps and contributes knowledge to the government, stakeholders and various entities such as shipping companies, ship management firms and seafarers' manning agencies.