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The proliferation of traceability standards shed light on the understanding of the mechanisms leading agri-food firms to choose among different kind of rules and systems for their implementation. The present paper investigates the role of firms economic incentives on the adoption of different traceability systems. In specific, the analysis aims at segmenting food firms on the basis of economic incentives for the adoption of voluntary traceability and the levels of the system complexity implemented.

A survey based on an ad hoc questionnaire was conducted in 2014 on a sample of firms certified ISO 22005/2008. Cluster analysis was run for the analysis and one-way ANOVA was used to confirm differences among clusters.

The analysis presents three different clusters in terms of economic incentives for voluntary traceability and the level of systems complexity implemented. All the clusters reveal that supply chain incentives play a key role. Moreover, ‘fine traceability’ clusters firms with high level of traceability. They consider food safety as an important incentive to adopt a voluntary standard. ‘Medium traceability’ groups firms with an average level of traceability system complexity. The interviewed consider the firm reputation as strategic driver for voluntary standard implementation. The cluster ‘coarse traceability’ groups firms which introduced traceability for quality differentiation of products on the market. These firms implemented a low level of traceability system complexity.

The paper presents some limitations due to the sample dimension. Future research is oriented to test such results on an extended sample and to analyse the relationships between the traceability system implemented and the different kind of economic incentives for traceability standards.

The present paper offers two main contributions. From a conceptual point of view it tries to deepen existing knowledge on the mechanisms regulating the existence of different traceability standards. From a managerial point of view, the analysis contributes in the understanding of firm strategies in relation to the adoption of different traceability systems. Such results could address firm management on the allocation of financial resources for the adoption of different traceability systems.

Increased focus on safe and healthy food has resulted in the need for implementing electronic chain traceability. This poses challenges both regarding technical solutions and business processes. The purpose of this paper is to report from a research project where implementation in a value chain for farmed salmon is used to investigate these challenges.

The first step in the project was to establish a complete value chain for farmed salmon as a basis for further study. The second step was to use theoretical concepts of internal traceability and chain traceability as a basis for analyzing the status of each company regarding readiness to implement electronic chain traceability. The third step was to compare the final level of implementation in each company with the level of implementation readiness at the start of the project.

Implementation of electronic chain traceability may involve changes both in work processes and software systems. This study shows that a set of criteria regarding implementation readiness can be used to assess the challenges and risks involved. Coherence between implementation readiness and the final level of implementation is indicated.

This research is limited to companies in a specific food sector. The generalization of the results for use in other sectors needs to be investigated.

Because of the increasing demand for improving chain traceability, it can be expected that implementation readiness regarding electronic chain traceability solutions will be an important factor in selecting partners in food value chains.

The large number of companies involved in this study is a good basis for evaluating the complexity of implementing electronic chain traceability. This paper describes guidelines and assessment criteria for companies planning to implement such solutions.

According to United Nations reports, the worldwide population is expected to reach around 9.6 billion by 2050. This forecasting emphasizes the role of phosphate-based fertilizers for developing sustainable agriculture and ensures the demand all over the planet. From this perspective, phosphate companies are racing to improve their industrial performance and guarantee the quality, reliability and integrity of information efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to propose a traceability system framework that ensures product quality tracing and real-time operations monitoring for open-pit mines.

The authors develop a hybrid approach that integrates Business Process Model and Notation techniques with System Modeling Language to formalize several use cases and scenarios to model quality traceability processes related to open-pit mines. This framework also embeds an optimization module based on mathematical modeling approaches to optimize stockpiles’ movement and respect the distinction between different qualities.

This paper explains a successful implementation of a quality traceability tool for an African mining company. The research team was able to understand and scale down the problem faced by the managers. Further, the study is focused on improving quality tracing over time and automatizing the current compliance processes related to the mine extraction activities. The proposed tool is proved highly effective in reducing the time of tracing quality claims by 46% compared with the manual procedure. Second, the implementation of this tool reduced fuel costs by 34% and CO₂ emissions by 10%.

The originality of the contributions lies in four aspects: (1) adapting quality traceability concept for the mining industry; (2) assessing the current trends of traceability systems considering the mining industry context; (3) hybridizing business processes re-engineering, quality system and optimization modeling; and (4) using a real case study of a phosphate company to evaluate the framework.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the successful adoption of traceability technologies, such as blockchain, into food supply chains and facilitate the understanding of the barriers and enablers to their uptake by channel members' needs so that appropriate enabling strategy can be put in place.

In this paper, an integrated framework involving five components was used as the methodology: (1) diffusion of innovation theory, (2) the innovation concept, (3) the business structure-conduct-performance paradigm, (4) legitimacy and (5) trust was developed and assessed for validity through interviewing 21 channel members, including distributors, wholesalers, Internet retailers and traditional retailers associated with a global fresh produce company's supply chain in China.

Barriers negatively framing channel members' attitudes and decisions included a perceived lack of need owing to fresh produce having a short shelf life and being of low value and risk. However, the importance of traceability and the need for effective food recalls were not always understood among channel members, and distributed trust innovations were also suppressed by their lack of compatibility with the Chinese hierarchical culture.

To date, channel members' perception of innovations in food supply chains has not been considered in light of the components proposed in the integrated framework. The adapted framework used in this study ensured a comprehensive assessment of channel members' attitude and motivations toward traceability practices.

The notion, technologies and organizational elaboration of traceability have become more prominent and more systematic in recent years in many different fields, notably food. This chapter argues that traceability has many faces: it is a programmatic value embedded in norms and regulations; it is a frontier of technology development such as blockchain, and it is a continuous processual and political dynamic of organizational connectedness, leading also to resistance. These different aspects make up “traceability infrastructures,” which embody a number of tensions and dynamics. Three such dynamics are explored in this chapter: the tension between organizational entities and meta-entities, problems of agency and the distribution of responsibility, and dialectics of connectivity and disconnectivity. These three dynamics generate three testable propositions, which define a prolegomena for a new subject of “traceability studies.” Overall, traceability is argued to be an ongoing process of connecting discrete agencies – a process of “chainmaking” – and is formative of more or less stable forms of distributed agency and responsibility.

The incredulity among Muslim consumers due to fake and doubtful halal logos has led to some querying the halal compliance and halal integrity among food small and medium enterprises (SMEs). By using the traceability systems consumers may track and trace the movement of food products available in the market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence food SMEs’ intention to adopt a halal traceability system.

A structured questionnaire survey was developed and administered to a systematic random sampling of 260 food SMEs. The data were analyzed using descriptive analysis, Chi-square analysis, Pearson correlation analysis and logistic regression analysis.

The results revealed a strong correlation between the environmental aspect (EA) and perceived usefulness (PU) of a halal traceability system. Sales turnover, PU, perceived ease of use, technological aspect, organizational aspect and EA are the factors that influenced food SMEs’ intention to adopt a halal traceability system.

The context of this study is confined to the SMEs in the food industry in Peninsular Malaysia, thereby limiting the generalizability of the findings to other industries.

This study shows a halal traceability system facilitates food SMEs in enhancing their business and provides tremendous potential to further improve the halal industry in Malaysia.

The traceability system that is perceived to be easy and useful are the most influential factors toward the adoption of technology among food SMEs. Thus, this study confirms the growing importance of the halal traceability system in the food industry.

The relationship between sustainability, traceability and transparency in the fashion-apparel industry, characterised by complex, labour-intensive and geographically dispersed supply chains (SCs), needs further clarification. The first goal of this study is to revise, refine and adapt to the scope of this industry, the conceptualisation of traceability and transparency and their interrelations with sustainability. The second goal is to uncover the key elements responsible for fostering and hindering their relationship in the fashion-apparel practice.

A Delphi study with fourteen experts representing key stakeholders in the entire fashion-apparel SC was carried out.

Operational definitions for and clear boundaries amongst sustainability, traceability and transparency are identified, and a relational model including stakeholder groups and roles, drivers and barriers is developed. Traceability, defined as an ability, together with transparency, conceptualised as an internal decision and assisted (inter alia) by cross-sector collaboration are found to be necessary but not sufficient conditions to achieve SC sustainability, which is conceived as an outcome.

The work adapts concepts from the sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature to the particular fashion-apparel context, incorporating the practical vision and nuances of all the key stakeholder groups and highlighting the mutually reinforcing relationship among traceability, transparency and cross-sector collaboration for effective SSCM in the fashion-apparel industry.

Organic rice forms the largest portion of the Thai organic food market. Because of its increasing popularity, marketers need to better understand consumer behaviour to address emerging concerns regarding product safety and quality and to tailor better marketing strategies relevant to the development of organic rice. As such, this study aims to examine consumers' purchase intention towards organic rice, using traceability information, and to investigate the direct and moderating roles of product traceability knowledge, using the theory of planned behaviour.

Responses were collected from 243 organic rice consumers in a farmers' market in Chachoengsao Province, Thailand, following a convenience sampling approach. The gathered data were analysed using structural equation modelling to evaluate the strength of the relationship between the constructs.

The findings reveal that subjective norms, health consciousness and product traceability knowledge have a significant positive influence on consumers’ intention to purchase organic rice. This study also establishes the moderating role of product traceability knowledge in perceived behavioural control and purchase intention, indicating that elaborated product information through traceability is essential for consumers who feel capable of buying the product. However, the direct effects of attitude and perceived behavioural control are insignificant, indicating the presence of external barriers to the purchase of organic rice, and that people may have a negative attitude towards the product. In addition, the cost perception result reveals that consumers consider price as an indicator of organic product quality, thereby increasing their desirability.

The findings of this study will help community enterprises in Thailand develop a more effective marketing strategy based on the identified motivators of organic rice purchase intention.

This study develops a model that integrates important factors related to organic food consumption to generate a more comprehensive analysis of this mainstream research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first study to investigate the moderating role of product traceability knowledge to obtain a new and more focused understanding of how this factor influences purchase intention when applied explicitly to organic food. Finally, the findings provide theoretical contributions and implications for both the community enterprise and policymakers on developing strategies for organic rice marketing among community enterprises in Thailand.

Blockchain technology is provoking significant disruptions, thereby affecting supply chain management. This study endeavoured to advance research regarding blockchain-based supply chain traceability by identifying the opportunities and limitations that accompany the adoption of public blockchains. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to contribute to contemporary supply chain research by an assessment of blockchain technology and its linkages to traceability.

This paper is conceptual. The authors summarised the relevant literature on the concepts of supply chain traceability, conceptualised key elements exclusive to the public blockchain and highlighted opportunities and limitations in implementing traceability using blockchains.

Incompatibilities were identified between general traceability and the public blockchain. However, when embracing the blockchain's privacy model, the blockchains can support information exchange in supply chains where vulnerability towards third parties, the confidentiality of information, or the privacy of participants are concerns. Furthermore, the public blockchain can support areas of supply chains where institutional interest is lacking.

This is one of the first papers in an international supply chain management journal to critically analyse the intersection of specific blockchain characteristics and supply chain traceability requirements. The authors thereby add to the discussion of designs for a disintermediated, peer-to-peer models and guide researchers and practitioners alike in exploring the application of disruptive change from blockchain technologies. By setting focus on the privacy model, the paper identifies the potential application and future research approaches to exploit the elementary strength of the blockchain.

Supply chain traceability and supply chain visibility have become a critical element for the effective management of contemporary complex supply chains. At their core is information sharing, which has been acknowledged as a key prerequisite for logistics and supply chain performance, but whose notional underpinnings have not been delineated fully, leading to interchangeable deployment of these terms. Addressing the shortcoming, this paper aims to establish a contrast between the two notions.

Drawing from systematic review protocols, a multi-disciplinary review scope is constructed wherein the synthesis is strategized to primarily channel implications for the scholarship of logistics and supply chain management. The review is aimed at addressing two research objectives: (1) how the notions of traceability and visibility in supply chain management develop contrast in terms of their thematic emphasis and (2) to attain an integrative understanding of the notional convergence and divergence between supply chain traceability and visibility for raising strategic recommendations.

The review outcomes help contrast both the convergence and the divergence between traceability and visibility in the supply chain environment, and the differentiated but fundamental role that information sharing plays within these notions to outline why they are not interchangeable.

The originality of the findings lies in the conceptual synthesis of the relevant literature from both technological and non-technological perspectives to ultimately draw logistics and supply chain management implications. The review also points out key strategic considerations to demarcate the notional boundaries of traceability and visibility in future research.