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Supply chain finance (SCF) has become a vital ingredient that fosters growth and provides flexibility to the global supply chain. Thus, it becomes essential to understand the factors that contribute to the success of the supply chain finance ecosystem (SCFE). This study aims to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for the development of an efficient and effective SCFE. Based on their characteristics, the study intends to classify the factors into constructs and further establish a hierarchical relationship among the CSFs.

The study is based on empirical data collected from 221 respondents based on administered questionnaires. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is carried out on 16 selected factors (out of 21 proposed factors) based on the feedback of the experts and the factors were classified into four constructs. The total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) model was developed by identifying and finalizing CSFs of the SCFE. The model developed a hierarchical relationship between the various factors.

The study identified significant CSFs for the efficient and effective SCF ecosystem. Four constructs were developed by analyzing CSFs using the EFA. The finalized 16 CSFs modeled through the TISM and further hierarchical relationship established between the CSFs concludes that governmental policies and sectoral growth are the strongest driving forces and financial attractiveness is the weakest driving force. Based on the CSFs and the constructs identified, it was found that for the success of the SCF ecosystem, the existence of an economic ecosystem provides a facilitating framework for the overall development of the SCFE. Also, the trustworthiness among the partners fosters better relationships and results in financial feasibility and offers business opportunities for all the stakeholders.

This study will help the SCF partners across the globe understand the CSFs that ensure development of mutually beneficial SCF ecosystems and provide flexibility to the supply chain partners. The CSFs would provide insights to the policymakers and the financial intermediaries for providing a conducive environment for the development of a better SCF ecosystem. Also, the buyers and sellers would understand the CSFs that would develop better relationships among them and ultimately help in development of business across the globe.

The study identifies the CSFs for the SCF ecosystem. The study ascertains the significant factors and classifies them into clusters using EFA. Unlike the literature available, the paper develops the hierarchical relationship between the CSFs and develops a model for an efficient and effective SCF ecosystem.

This paper aims to identify and model barriers to internationalising automotive small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from emerging market perspectives using the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach.

In this paper, 13 critical barriers are identified through an exhaustive literature review and the Delphi method. The ISM tool is then used to establish interrelationships among the identified barriers to expose and discuss the key barriers having high-driving power.

It was found that barriers such as trade agreements and export documentation, exchange rates and material inadequacies were relatively less challenging than the other barriers. At the next level, there are barriers such as supply chain, high international quality standards, legal barriers, skilled labour marketing capacity and information and logistics and infrastructure. Finally, barriers such as government policies, entrepreneurial orientation and technology and finance availability posed the most significant challenge for the internationalisation of Indian SMEs. These barriers warrants immediate and considerable attention.

This study developed a model based on experts’ opinions, which may be biased and influence the final model as proposed in this study. This research will help the owners/managers of the SMEs and policymakers identify and understand the significance and relevance of automotive sector barriers while strategizing.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time an attempt has been made to apply ISM methodology to explore the interdependencies among the critical barriers of internationalisation for SMEs of Indian automotive industries. This study will guide the owner–managers management practices to overcome ineffective practices and move towards successful internationalisation.

Sustainability is a major challenge for India’s (Bharat’s) coal mining industry. The government has prioritized sustainable growth in the coal mining industry. It is putting forth multifaceted economic, environmental and social efforts to accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research aims to identify the factors for sustainable improvements in coal mining operations. Secondly, this study examines the intensity of causal relations among the factors. Thirdly, this study examines whether causal relations exist among the factors to be considered for sustainable improvement in coal mining operations. Lastly, the study aims to understand how the factors ensure sustainable improvement in coal mining operations.

An integrated three-phase methodology was applied to identify the critical factors related to coal mining and explore the contextual relationships among the identified factors. Fifteen critical factors were selected based on the Delphi technique. Subsequently, the fifteen factors were analyzed to determine the contextual and causal relationships using the total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) and DEMATEL methods.

The study identified “Extraction of Coal and Overburden” as the leading factor for sustainable improvement in coal mining operations, because it directly or indirectly influences the overall mining operation, environmental impact and resource utilization. Hence, strict control measures are necessary in “Extraction of Coal and Overburden” to ensure sustainable coal mining. Conversely, “Health Impact” is the lagging factor as it has very low or no impact on the system. Therefore, it requires fewer control mechanisms. Nevertheless, control measures for the remaining factors must be decided on a priority basis.

The proposed structural model can serve as a framework for enhancing sustainability in India’s (Bharat’s) coal mining operations. This framework can also be applied to other developing nations with similar sustainability concerns, providing valuable guidance for sustainable operations.

The current study highlights the significance of logical links and dependencies between several parameters essential to coal mining sustainability. Furthermore, it leads to the development of a well-defined control sequence that identifies the causal linkages between numerous components needed to achieve real progress towards sustainability.

This study aims to identify the factors influencing agile readiness in start-ups. Start-ups are being confronted with increased competition, customer demands, technological innovations and changes in the market environment. Adopting agile readiness for sustainable operations is a profitable and dependable way to improve the competition and reduce the number of failures of start-ups. The start-ups may investigate “how” after understanding the “whys.” The answers to these questions will be crucial to develop a strategy and a plan for luring clients, users, investors and partners. Therefore, this study will help in answering these crucial questions by using Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM), whose main aim is to answer the key question of “what,” “how” and “why.” Using the “Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM)” technique, this research tries to “describe,” “analyze” and “categorize” the agile readiness for sustainable operations enablers in start-ups.

Expert feedback and literature reviews from various start-ups led to the discovery of 10 enablers. In this study, the TISM technique was used to examine the inter-relationships between the enablers. The agile readiness for sustainable operations enablers was ranked and classified using the “Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC)” technique. They were divided into four different categories: “autonomous,” “independent,” “linkage” and “dependent enablers.”

The results show that executive-level aid is the key agile readiness factor for sustainable operations. The next priority has been capability, experienced and skilled employees, market knowledge and environment agility. Leadership and clear vision have been given further priority. The next important is flexibility. The last and the least priority is given to receptive and strategic agility. This directional flow assists management in attaining adaptable sustainability, leading to continued growth in this dynamic environment.

The study focuses primarily on the agile readiness for sustainable operations of start-ups. This study offers a recommended list of crucial elements for start-ups, which may aid in creating guidelines for implementing agility for sustainable operations. This study provides academics with a TISM model that illustrates how start-ups can be ready to implement agility for sustainable operations. Future researchers could add more agility readiness variables to this study and validate this model across different start-ups.

Before implementing agile readiness for sustainable operations in start-ups, this study will aid managers and practitioners in the start-up business in understanding the relationships of enablers and identifying important readiness enablers.

The current study analyzes the agile readiness for sustainable operations in Start-ups. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first endeavor to use the “TISM approach” to examine the interrelationships across agile readiness for sustainable operations characteristics in start-ups.

In developing countries such as India, start-ups play an essential role in “industrial output,” “Gross Domestic Product ” and “employment creation.” Evidence suggests that pandemics have risen over the last century due to rising global travel and assimilation, urbanization, alterations in land use, and significantly larger exploitation of the natural environment. These trends are likely to continue and intensify. These pandemic episodes affect businesses, especially start-ups. Supplier selection is among the vital critical elements that start-ups must include in start-ups' strategy procedures during the pandemic episodes. This study's focus is to “identify,” “analyze,” and “categorize” the factors affecting supplier selection in start-ups during frequent pandemic episodes like coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Through “literature review” and “experts' opinion” from various start-ups in India, ten affecting factors were identified. Total Interpretative Structural Modeling (TISM) and Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) were employed to analyze the interrelationship among the factors affecting the supplier selection on start-ups during frequent pandemic episodes, and these factors were ranked as “autonomous,” “independent,” “linkage,” and “dependent” factors.

The findings show that “performance history,” “service levels,” “technical capability,” and “financial stability” are the most critical factors affecting the supplier selection on start-ups during frequent pandemic episodes. The next importance should be safety and environmental concern” and “quality.”

The factors affecting supplier selection on start-ups during frequent pandemic episodes are the current focus of this study. This study is mainly performed on Indian start-ups and can be extended to other countries.

The start-ups can rely on this study to clearly understand the factors affecting the supplier selection on start-ups during frequent pandemic episodes.

There is no research regarding factors affecting supplier selection on start-ups during the COVID-19 emergencies. This research gap is filled by analyzing aspects linked to supplier selection in start-ups. This gap inspired the present study, which employs the “Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM)” technique to uncover supplier selection determinants and investigate hierarchical interconnections among factors influencing/affecting supplier selection in start-ups during frequent pandemic episodes.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

Founded in 2004, OPPO has experienced the boom of the Chinese mobile phone market, the trend of mobile Internet and the prosperity of the smartphone market. While adjusting its business structure based on changes in the market environment, it has transitioned itself from an audio device manufacturer to a smart-phone manufacturer that offers hardware, software, and service.

This case study focuses on OPPO's evolution and strategy, and provides an insight into its history, competition, and strategic choices based on whether or not OPPO should release a feature phone with a foldable display at the MWC 2019, and discusses the core competitiveness that helped OPPO succeed against the market downturn. This case study helps students understand the development of corporate strategies and the process of building core competitiveness in the microcompetition in the red ocean market. We also wish to help students understand how to come up with the most appropriate decision-making framework and conduct a critical analysis on the issues based on the internal and external factors of their businesses while they make strategic decisions. When it comes to different dimensions and indicators coming to contradictory conclusions in particular, what should the manager of a business do to make the correct strategic decision?

This paper addresses the growing fragmentation between traditional and digital service innovation (DSI) research and offers a unifying metatheoretical framework.

Grounded in service-dominant (S-D) logic's service ecosystems perspective, this study builds on an institutional and systemic, rather than product-centric and linear, conceptualization of value creation to offer a unifying framework for (digital) service innovation that applies to both physical and digital service provisions.

This paper questions the commonly perpetuated idea that DSI fundamentally changes the nature of innovation. Instead, it highlights resource liquification—the decoupling of information from the technologies that store, transmit, or process this information—as a distinguishing characteristic of DSI. Liquification, however, does not affect the relational and institutional nature of service innovation, which is always characterized by (1) the emergence of novel outcomes, (2) distributed governance and (3) symbiotic design. Instead, liquification makes these three characteristics more salient.

In presenting a cohesive service innovation framework, this study underscores that all innovation processes are rooted in combinatorial evolution. Here, service-providing actors (re)combine technologies (or more generally, institutions) to adapt their value cocreation practices. This research demonstrates that such (re)combinations exhibit emergence, distributed governance and symbiotic design. While these characteristics may initially seem novel and unique to DSI, it reveals that their fundamental mechanisms are not limited to digital service ecosystems. They are, in fact, integral to service innovation across virtual, physical and blended contexts. The study highlights the importance of exercising caution in assuming that the emergence of novel technologies, including digital technologies, necessitates a concurrent rethinking of the fundamental processes of service innovation.

The emerging industrial revolution referred to as Industry 5.0 is focusing on leveraging human creativity with intelligent and autonomous systems to derive user-friendly work environment for the businesses. Industry 5.0 stresses on people centric work ecosystem, zero accident policy and the well-being of labour within the production processes. This approach of Industry 5.0 to obtain human-centric safety solutions through the deployment of digital technologies deduces workplace accidents and costs leading to the development of Safety 4.0. This chapter aims to investigate the opportunities and challenges of Safety 4.0 and its enabling technologies aspiring towards the greater impact on safety management. Further, we have proposed a framework for the role of human centric digital transformations concerning safety in the manufacturing industry propelling Safety 4.0. Concluding, we discuss the implications for managers and practitioners. We found that Safety 4.0 will strengthen industrial safety, and instead of reacting to accidents, the concept evolved towards a preventive and proactive approach for a healthy industrial ecosystem.

This study aims to understand the challenges of 5G deployment in India from the perspectives of telecom operators. These challenges are also mapped to different contexts within the technological-organizational-environmental (TOE) framework.

The study uses a qualitative approach comprising in-depth semi-structured interviews of employees working in telecom companies in India. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the qualitative data.

The author has identified nine challenges that are categorized under three dimensions of the TOE framework. Specifically, the findings indicate three technological challenges: hardware/device challenges, security concerns and limited use cases; two organization challenges: financial challenges and lack of skilled workforce; and four environmental challenges: inadequate infrastructure, regulatory and administrative challenges, consumers’ attitudes and competitive market conditions.

The results of this study would help understand the key factors that can act as barriers to the 5G rollout in India. Based on the findings of the study, the government and regulatory bodies could design conducive policies and regulatory frameworks to successfully deploy 5G in India.

The study is one of the very few studies to empirically examine the telecom operators’ perspectives on the challenges of 5G deployment in India. The study contributes to the TOE framework as its application in the context of identifying barriers to 5G deployment is probably for the first time.