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The maritime freight transportation industry has played an important role in the Korean economy. The Korean maritime freight transportation industry is faced with a period of transforming it competitively and efficiently in this global age. This paper, therefore, aims to identify the impact of the maritime freight transportation industry in the Korean national economy. Hence, this paper provides policy-makers with accessible and reliable information regarding the role of the Korean maritime freight transportation industry. This study employs input-output (I-O) analysis to examine the role of the maritime freight transportation industry in the national economy for the period 1995-2003, with specific application to Korea. This study pays particular attention to the maritime freight transportation industry by taking the industry as exogenous variable and then investigates its economic impacts. We identify inter-industry linkage effects in 20 sectors, production-inducing effects, added value-inducing effects, and supply-shortage effects of the maritime freight transportation industry.

Using the constructal law of physics this study aims to provide guidance to future scholarship on global supply chain management. Further, through two case studies the authors are developing, the authors report interview findings with two senior VPs from two multi-national corporations being disrupted by COVID-19. This study suggests how this and recent events will impact on the design of future global supply chains.

The authors apply the constructal law to explain the recent disruptions to the global supply chain orthodoxy. Two interviews are presented from case studies the authors are developing in the USA and UK – one a multi-national automobile parts supplier and the other is a earth-moving equipment manufacture. Specifically, this is an exploratory pathway work trying to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on supply chain scholarship.

Adopting the approach of Bejan, the authors believe that what is happening today with COVID-19 and other trade disruptions such as Brexit and the USA imposing tariffs is creating new obstacles that will redirect the future flow of supply chains.

It is clear that the COVID-19 response introduced a bullwhip effect in the manufacturing sector on a scale never-before seen. For scholars, the authors would suggest there are four pathway topics going forward. These topics include: the future state of global sourcing, the unique nature of a combined “demand” and “supply shortage” bullwhip effect, the resurrection of lean and local production systems and the development of risk-recovery contingency strategies to deal with pandemics.

Supply chain managers tend to be iterative and focused on making small and subtle changes to their current system and way of thinking, very often seeking to optimize cost or negotiate better contracts with suppliers. In the current environment, however, such activities have proved to be of little consequence compared to the massive forces of economic disruption of the past three years. Organizations that have more tightly compressed supply chains are enjoying a significant benefit during the COVID-19 crisis and are no longer being held hostage to governments of another country.

An implicit assumption in the press is that COVID-19 caught everyone by surprise, and that executives foolishly ignored the risks of outsourcing to China and are now paying the price. However, noted scholars and epidemiologists have been warning of the threats of pandemics since the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus. The pundits would further posit that in their pursuit of low-cost production, global corporations made naive assumptions that nothing could disrupt them. Both the firms the authors have interviewed had to close plants to protect their workforce. It was indicated in the cases the authors are developing that it is going to take manufacturers on average one month to recover from 4–6 days of disruption. These companies employ many thousands of people, and direct and ancillary workers are now temporarily laid off and face an uncertain future as/when they will recover back to normal production.

Using the constructal law of physics, the authors seek to provide guidance to future scholarship on global supply chain management. Further, through two case studies, the authors provide the first insight from two senior VPs from two leading multi-national corporations in their respective sectors being disrupted by COVID-19. This study is the first indication to how this and recent disruptive events will impact on the design of future global supply chains. Unlike the generic work, which has recently appeared in HBR and Forbes, it is grounded in real operational insight.

This study aims to present a study on the supply chain process of a Myanmar-based pharmaceutical company (named ABC Pvt. Ltd. in this study) that produces pharmaceutical products across Myanmar and aims of bringing quality medical products and best care for Myanmar people’s health. The study aims to identify the key supply chain challenges and manage the opportunities executed by this pharmaceutical company to improve the supply chain process during the COVID-19 outbreak.

This work used a case study and conducted semistructured interviews with the manager, senior managers and senior staff of the ABC Company to improve the supply chain process and develop a comprehensive structural relationship to rank them to streamline the uncertainties, real-time information and agility in a digital supply chain using grey relational analysis (GRA) method.

From the data analysis and results, “Impact of political factor,” “Delay in import process” and “Weak internet connection,” and “Weak knowledge of the use of digital platform,” “Poor information sharing in online by employees” and “Information flow from top management to operational level” have been identified as top and bottom three key challenges, respectively. “Inventory management,” “Selection of transport method” and “Operational cost”, and “Marketing and brand Innovation,” “Online delivery of products” and “E-commerce enablement (Launching applications, tracking system)” are identified as the top and bottom three managing the opportunities, respectively.

The findings of the study help to supply chain decision-makers of the company in their establishment of key challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 era. As a leading company, it always tries to add value to its product through a supply chain system, effective management teams and working with skillful decision-making toward satisfying the demand on time and monitoring the supplier performance.

The novelty of this study is to identify the key supply chain challenges and opportunities by the GRA method to rank them, considering the case of Myanmar pharmaceutical manufacturing company as a case-based approach to measuring its performance during the COVID-19 outbreak era. This work will assist managers and practitioners help to the company to provide optimal services to its consumers on time in this critical situation.

This paper aims to develop a theoretical framework based on transaction cost economics that identifies key factors shaping public agencies’ governance of supplier relationships and related performance implications.

The paper presents an extended transaction cost framework for research on public procurement (PP) with a corresponding set of propositions. Transaction cost theory and specific features of and challenges to the PP function identified in extant literature constitute the main elements of the framework.

This conceptual paper makes three sets of proposals. First, public agencies tend to rely on market governance of supplier relationships and when PP deploys non-market governance, such governance tends to be of a unilateral (vs bilateral) kind. Second, increases in purchasing competence and autonomy of PP and particularly if implemented in tandem, will reduce PP’s overreliance on market governance and increase PP’s use of non-market governance. Third, PP should perform better for less complex transactions – and when contracting complexity relates to safeguarding of specific assets rather than when complexity relates to environmental and behavioral uncertainty. Increases in competence and autonomy should increase PP’s performance, particularly for complex transactions.

Public agencies may be in a better position to align governance solutions with transaction complexities by developing their procurement competence, decentralizing procurement decisions and increasing the flexibility of national and international procurement regulations. Private companies selling to public agencies need to be aware of and able to adapt to PP practices such as extensive use of market governance and unilateral governance as the primary form of non-market governance.

The paper discusses how public agencies can improve procurement performance through better alignment of governance of supplier relationships with transaction attributes and thereby increase the quality of public services.

The paper relies on a well-established theoretical perspective, enabling identification (and, potentially, correction) of governance misalignment in the public sector.

Population ageing, coupled with economic uncertainty and a shifting workforce structure, has directed the attention of public and organizational policy makers toward the potential contribution of older workers and skilled migrants in meeting labor supply shortages in ageing populations. This chapter presents labor supply and demand scenarios for 10 OECD countries and examines trends in the labor force participation of older workers against the backdrop of changes to the nature of work in an era of globalization, casualization, and, increasingly, automation. Brief analysis of each country’s situation and policy responses indicates that China, Japan, and Korea stand out as being at particular risk of being unable to maintain growth without undertaking drastic action, although their areas of focus need to differ. A limitation of the study is that GDP projections used in labor demand analysis were based on historical rates and represented past potential and a long-run average of historic economic output. Future research might also undertake comparative analysis of case studies addressing different potential solutions to workforce ageing. A key implication of the study is that there is a need to take a blended approach to public policy regarding older workers in a changing labor market. Where migration has historically been a source of labor supplementation, this may become a less viable avenue over the near future. Future shortfalls in labor imply that economies will increasingly need to diversify their sources of workers in order to maintain economic growth. For public policy makers the challenge will be to overcome public antipathy to migration and longer working lives.

As a frequently observed business phenomenon, the use of product scarcity to improve a product’s market performance has received increasing attention from both academics and practitioners. The resulting literature has covered a wide variety of issues based on various theories, using different research methods, in a diverse range of settings. However, this diversity also makes it difficult to grasp the core themes and findings, and to see the outstanding knowledge gaps. This paper aims to review previous studies on the use of product scarcity in marketing and identifies new directions for future research.

A systematic review was conducted to identify and analyse 66 research papers published in business and management journals between 1970 and 2017.

The authors examined the underlying theories of scarcity-based marketing, and developed a conceptual framework that describes the key factors of product scarcity and how they influence both consumers and the market. They also highlighted some key achievements in modelling the processes involved in using product scarcity in marketing.

This analysis of the identified papers suggests that there are substantial gaps in our knowledge of this field, which opens up new paths for future research. For future research, the authors identified three directions aimed at: addressing the practical needs of firms in understanding product scarcity; guiding the implementation of scarcity-based strategies; and measuring, monitoring and predicting the level of product scarcity and its impacts during implementation.