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The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations for Indian hotel administrators for improving sustainability practices: environment, economic and social with respect to the supply chain members by analyzing performance dimensions and the importance attached to them.

Importance performance analysis is a tool to analyze the perception of top-level, middle-level and first-level managers in hotels. Questionnaire is developed to collect the hotel manager’s perceptions. The snowball sampling method is used for data collection.

The paper introduces specific sustainability practices, namely, environment, economic and social factors, at the interface of the tourism supply chain (TSC). This will allow the hotels to identify the importance and performance of various sustainability practices to achieve a long-term competitive advantage. The present work finds that the responding hotel managers have given highest importance to the sustainability practices within the organization and the hotel manager’s perception of sustainability practices in the TSC will vary with respect to the supply chain members.

The effort has been made to capture specific sustainability practices across the supply chain. The paper reinstates the fact that sustainability practices are not firm specific and should be practiced at the supply chain interface. The data for the study were taken from focal organizations perspective which is the hotels.

Results provide the hotel administrators to develop appropriate strategies to improve their practices and functions by analyzing their strengths and weakness regarding their tangible and intangible assets. The identified sustainability practice attributes can act as a benchmark and drive the hotel industry toward possible cost-saving conditions by prioritizing the allocation of the resources while taking care of overall performance.

Results will help the hotel administrators to identify the better sustainability practices which will reduce the negative effects and protect the Mother Nature.

The study included hotels/resorts from tourism locations: hill station, backwaters and coastal areas, specifically in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations to Indian hospital administrators for improving service quality by analysing performance dimensions and the importance attached to them by patients and attendants.

Patient and attendant perceptions were collected using a questionnaire.

Patients and attendants have different perceptions. Different customers have different needs of which providers need to be aware to better serve their consumers.

The study captured only 408 patient and attendants’ perceptions – a 32 per cent response rate.

Results enable hospital administrators to develop appropriate strategies to improve their structure and function by analysing their strengths and weaknesses regarding their tangible and intangible assets.

The study included attendants, specifically in an Indian healthcare context.

The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations to supply chain managers of Indian manufacturing industries for a robust supply chain related to risk management by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers in manufacturing industries to ensure a robust supply chain risk management (SCRM).

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is utilized to identify and provide strategic recommendations to manufacturing industries for improving their supply chain performance by attaching due importance to risk constructs and appropriately choosing mitigation strategies.

The investigation using the strategic action grids reveals that most of the means of risks are near the point of intersection of the grand means of the risk constructs and their impact on the supply chain, indicating that all the risks have the equal likelihood of occurrence. The mean importance of risk monitoring, risk avoidance (RA) and risk sharing surpass the mean performance for both OEMs and suppliers.

The study is executed with following limitations: the study assumes that the manufacturing industries across different sectors perceive similar risk. The sectors considered are automotive, heavy engineering, general engineering and home appliances. The Southern States of India are considered because of the dominant presence of many industries, especially automotive industries. However, it should be noted that these States form the manufacturing hubs where the lead organizations are functioning along with their major suppliers.

By understanding the importance of SCRM dimensions and utilization of these dimensions, firms can mitigate the impact of risk on the supply chain. The detailed study of SCRM strategies highlights the importance attached to risk factors, mitigation strategies, and top management commitment. By the implementation of SCRM strategies, supply chain managers can improve the firm’s performance.

The study involves empirically validated data on SCRM dimensions. The IPA is performed on the SCRM dimensions to investigate the importance attached to the factors of the dimensions and their performance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework to manage the strategy to counter disruptive innovation by identifying stronger attributes and key strategic areas for improvements in an engineering services context with less freedom to orchestrate product innovation. The authors also validate the combined use of multi-grade fuzzy, Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) and gap analysis in developing the strategy to mitigate turbulence.

The paper presents a framework using a combination of Dynamic Capabilities and Organizational Agility to develop the strategy. The study uses data gathered from a 60-member engineering project team working on an Aircraft Engine Controller design to identify 50 attributes and the related importance and performance ratings. The research study is designed using a three-tier approach. First, multi-grade fuzzy is utilized to measure the overall firm response agility index. In the second step, the IPA is used to analyze the strength and weaknesses of the firm and to identify the attributes where the firm needs to focus. In the past step, gap analysis is used to prioritize the identified attributes. The findings are validated by panel discussions with a different group of experts from the project team and action points were arrived at.

This research work finds that the firms’ response agility index of 6.97 is comparable to that of the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) from previous literature, but still needs a better agility score to effectively counter turbulence from disruptive innovations. It also identifies seven key areas for improvement and their relative priority to effectively improve the response agility by utilizing the least number of resources, the reasons for the gap and the mitigation strategy to close the gap. The findings highlight a few key differences between an engineering services firm in comparison to OEMs and Software Services firms.

The findings help the practitioners with a comparative agility score of an engineering services firm, and an effective way of measuring agility, identify key focus areas and prioritize the actions using a simple set of data that could be collected regularly to keep track of the improvements. The provided strategic framework to improve the agility score can be used for continuous improvement.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by developing a framework for outsourcing services companies to cope with the turbulence by using dynamic capabilities and organizational agility. It also adds to the literature by extending the validity of IPA and gap analysis in making strategic decisions in an industrial set-up.

The purpose of this paper is to formulate the strategy for improving the laboratory practices to enhance customer satisfaction by analyzing the performance of critical factors of IS/ISO/IEC 17025 (2005) laboratory accreditation and the importance attached by the quality/technical managers in the accredited Indian testing/calibration laboratories.

The perceptions of the critical factors of laboratory accreditation and the importance attached by the quality/technical managers in their organizations have been collected and analyzed to develop an importance-performance analysis (IPA) model to enhance the customer satisfaction.

Findings report that the performance of the critical factors and the importance assigned to them are not the same. There exist gaps between the performance and importance which need to be measured and analyzed by the management to strive toward continual improvement to enhance the customer satisfaction through the accredited testing and calibration services.

This study is restricted to 54 responses out of 150 which were sent (i.e. about 36 percent response rate) to capture the perspectives of the quality/technical managers.

This study would enable the accredited laboratories to analyze the gap in performance and the importance assigned to critical factors through the feedback from the quality/technical managers. By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses in the accredited testing/calibration laboratories, managerial decisions and strategic plans can be proposed to gain greater insights into benchmarking improvement of the laboratory quality management system with the existing resources to strive toward customer satisfaction.

This paper proposes IPA as a tool to assess the gap between the importance and performance of critical factors of accredited testing and calibration laboratories in India.

In the Indian manufacturing SMEs context, supply chains have a complex structure having multiple echelons, multiple partners and multiple locations. Due to these complexities, most of the Indian manufacturing SMEs face several types of supply chain risks. This paper aims to identify the dominant risk variables and to develop the interrelationship among these risk variables.

Based on the literature review and experts’ opinion, nine dominant risk variables faced by an Indian manufacturing SMEs have been identified. An interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach has been adopted to establish the interrelationship among the risk variables. These risk variables have been classified by using MICMAC analysis. Based on ISM-MICMAC approach, a case study on three Indian manufacturing SMEs has been carried out.

This study would help the supply chain managers to understand and prioritize the significant risk variables. Nine significant risks variables of Indian manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been studied. External risk, information technology risk and financial risk have identified as most influencing risk variables, while delay risk and market risk have emerged as the most dependent risk variables. These results will provide a guideline to supply chain managers for implementation of supply chain risk management (SCRM).

In this study, an ISM-based model is developed based on the opinion of experts from a group of Indian manufacturing SMEs; as such, this model may be biased and limited to a selected company. This framework can be extended further by adding more risk variables and sub-risk variables from the other sectors/organizations.

Many SCRM models are available in past literature, but no model has been proposed for the Indian Manufacturing SMEs. This research finding can be useful for managers to understand the characteristics and interrelationships among the risk variables for building a robust supply chain. These results will also help the supply chain managers in making proactive plans for SCRM, especially in the Indian SMEs context.

The study aims to identify the possible risk factors for electricity grids operational disruptions and to determine the most critical and influential risk indicators.

A multi-criteria decision-making best-worst method (BWM) is employed to quantitatively identify the most critical risk factors. The grey causal modeling (GCM) technique is employed to identify the causal and consequence factors and to effectively quantify them. The data used in this study consisted of two types – quantitative periodical data of critical factors taken from their respective government departments (e.g. Indian Meteorological Department, The Central Water Commission etc.) and the expert responses collected from professionals working in the Indian electric power sector.

The results of analysis for a case application in the Indian context shows that temperature dominates as the critical risk factor for electrical power grids, followed by humidity and crop production.

The study helps to understand the contribution of factors in electricity grids operational disruptions. Considering the cause consequences from the GCM causal analysis, rainfall, temperature and dam water levels are identified as the causal factors, while the crop production, stock prices, commodity prices are classified as the consequence factors. In practice, these causal factors can be controlled to reduce the overall effects.

From the results of the analysis, managers can use these outputs and compare the risk factors in electrical power grids for prioritization and subsequent considerations. It can assist the managers in efficient allocation of funds and manpower for building safeguards and creating risk management protocols based on the severity of the critical factor.

The research comprehensively analyses the risk factors of electrical power grids in India. Moreover, the study apprehends the cause-consequence pair of factors, which are having the maximum effect. Previous studies have been focused on identification of risk factors and preliminary analysis of their criticality using autoregression. This research paper takes it forward by using decision-making methods and causal analysis of the risk factors with blend of quantitative and expert response based data analysis to focus on the determination of the criticality of the risk factors for the Indian electric power grid.

The purpose of this paper is to determine and benchmark the senior tourists’ preferences by considering the importance attached by them and their perception with respect to internal tourism attributes (i.e. package tour characteristics) and external tourism attributes (i.e. destination features).

The present study makes use of importance-performance analysis and employs paired sample t-test for this purpose.

The senior tourists evaluated the package tour attributes to be more important and better than destination characteristics. They also perceived that the service providers have to pay immediate attention to improve the quality of restaurants and meals and hotels.

Data are collected only from inbound senior tourists in Poland. In future, research may be conducted with a more representative sample.

The senior tourists want to explore the local cuisine and then have food choices from their culture as well. “Tour escort” is one of the most essential characteristic of a package tour and it could serve as a factor of differentiation. Hence, the tourist service providers have to pay attention to these factors.

The paper takes into account the internal tour attributes and destination attributes to evaluate senior tourists’ holiday experience.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between various risk management strategies and risk management practices in order to design and hence enact a suitable supply chain risk mitigation (RM) plan. Additionally, this study proposes a hierarchical framework to explain the mutual relationship between supply chain risk management (SCRM) practices and strategies by considering the underlying dimensions between them.

An amalgamation of systematic literature analysis (SLA) and correspondence analysis (CA) has been performed to develop the conceptual framework. A real-life case of Indian petroleum supply chain has been considered to validate and explain the proposed model.

The results reveal three underlying dimensions, which associate the relationship between RM strategies. They are, risk adaptability of SC managers with a variance of 34.71%, followed by resource capability of the firm and the degree of sophistication of RM practices, with variances of 27.72 and 20.35%, respectively. Risk avoidance strategy comprises of practices such as supplier evaluation, technology adaption, flexible process and information security. On the other extreme, the risk sharing strategy includes revenue sharing, insurance, collaboration, public–private partnership and so on as essential RM practices.

The study not only focuses on the distinction between RM strategies and practices, which were used interchangeably in the prior literature, but also provides an association between the same by exploring the underlying dimensions. These underlying dimensions perform a crucial role while developing a risk management plan. This study explicitly focuses on the RM step of SCRM process. Pre and post risk mitigation phases of SCRM process, such as risk assessment and risk monitoring, are beyond the scope of the current research.

The paper develops a framework for mapping various RM strategies with their corresponding practices by considering the Indian petroleum supply chain as a viable case study. Various theoretical and business implications are derived in the context of the developing country.

Health-care delivery organizations (hospitals) constitute a complex adaptive system; hence, a contingency perspective is imperative to guide the design of customized approaches to quality management in different health-care settings. Accordingly, this paper aims to propose a contingency framework to advance the understanding of the relationship between situational factors and effectiveness of quality approaches in health-care organizations (HCOs), such as hospitals in India.

Related literature was reviewed to identify existing research and theories related to quality and quality approaches, situational factors of the HCOs (hospitals) and some existing logical evidence on public and private hospitals in India. Then a contingencies framework for quality and quality approaches was conceptualized.

This paper proposes contingent determinants arise out of conceptualization of the HCOs (hospitals) from different system perspective such as rational system, natural system, open system and integrative system; uncertainty because of physicians’ behaviour, nurses’ approach and a dual line of authority; and the task environment such as patients, competition and economic pressure. These determinants represent situational constructs to the quality enhancement of any attempt at quality approaches. While these determinants have an influence on the quality and quality approaches of the HCOs (hospital), it is imperative to build any quality improvement strategy to work effectively, i.e., quality approach is dependent on determinants of the contingencies of the hospital’s environment, be it external or internal. Propositions for future research are also incorporated.

This paper proposes a conceptual model as well as research propositions that need to be validated and confirmed empirically. It advances the research and theory related to quality and quality approaches in a health-care setting. It can enable policymakers, hospital managers to analyze and gauge the appropriateness of quality approaches in a given context before implementing them and could help to improve the introverted quality approaches and quality dimensions currently followed in HCOs (hospitals).

Contingency framework is a new approach for research on the effectiveness of quality approaches in hospitals. The fundamental idea behind this framework is that effectiveness of quality approaches can be understood best by examining its contingent determinants. Thus, it has the capacity to contribute to the efforts of government and policymakers to make the quality of care affordable to all in India. Essentially, we examine the contexts and variables that determine the effectiveness of quality approaches.