1,721,416 research outputs found
Multi-tier sustainable supply chain management and blockchain technology solutions
No full textMore organizations are realizing that implementing sustainability strategies cannot rely on internal operations or first-tier suppliers alone; they also need to engage cross-tier suppliers to coordinate sustainability initiatives. However, a multi-tier sustainable supply chain (MT-SSCM) involves complex network structures, and sub-suppliers are often perceived as the ‘iceberg’, creating invisible threats to promoting sustainability practices and supplier compliance. Brands usually do not have direct leveraging power over sub-suppliers, including lack of contractual relationships and limited information, resulting in the limited rollout of sustainable initiatives. Blockchain technology (BCT) offers innovative solutions to disrupt traditional MT-SSCM. The inherent transparency, immutability, decentralized, and smart contract features of BCT are expected to tackle the bottlenecks of MT-SSCM implementation. However, research on BCT is still in its early stages, and there is even less about the BCT application in SSCM from a multi-tier perspective. Therefore, this chapter explores how BCT drives effective MT-SSCM implementations. This chapter first reviews the existing MT-SSCM research, including conceptual frameworks, empirical practices, and theoretical perspectives. This is then followed by discussions of the underlying concepts of BCT, SSCM applications, and potential MT-SSCM solutions with a case study
Dataset supporting the University of Southampton Doctoral Thesis "Building sustaining port competitiveness constructs: a case study of ports in China"
No full textDataset supporting the University of Southampton Doctoral Thesis "Building sustaining port competitiveness constructs: a case study of ports in China"
The dataset includes text transcript of interviews and relevant materials. The data has been compiled from port stakeholders and experts in China and is available on request for bona fide researchers only. See request form attached.</span
Case Analysis: W Company
No full textThis chapter presents the case analysis of W company. It introduces the background of the company; the issues that the company wishes to address; stages of blockchain implementation; the benefits of blockchain; and how the company overcame the blockchain implementation barriers
Tetra Pak: creating a recycling chain in China
No full textIn early 2016, the newly appointed recycling planning coordinator for an industry-leading food packaging and processing company, Tetra Pak International SA (Tetra Pak), was reviewing his company's recent success in creating a recycling chain in China. By 2015, Tetra Pak China had successfully created a recycling chain system, increasing China’s recycling rate from almost 0 to 28 per cent. It had done so by following a four-stage process: scanning the recycling market, building awareness and selecting partners, creating recycling capacity, and securing the recycling capacity. While the recycling planning coordinator was pleased with this recent success, he knew that questions remained: How could Tetra Pak continuously motivate recyclers to grow? How could Tetra Pak support recycling activities to achieve an even higher recycling rate? How could Tetra Pak achieve its recycling targets without much financial support
A systematic literature review on port competitiveness
No full textThe continuous investment and expansion of ports has introduced new requirements for the sustainable development of seaports. Port competitiveness is an increasingly relevant subject due to the value that ports create for enterprises in the maritime supply chain. As the functions and requirements of ports evolve, this article aims to present an up-to-date review of the research trends and future directions of port competitiveness. A systematic literature review was performed to comprehensively gather and review 81 journal papers on port competitiveness published in the past two decades. The result shows a hierarchy of the top ten port competitiveness drivers based on their research frequency in the literature, categorised into four aspects. The frequency ranking of port competitiveness strategy is further summarised based on the reviewed papers. This paper also provides a critical analysis of port competitiveness mechanism in order to identify research trends, gaps, and future research directions.</p
Implications and Conclusion
No full textThis chapter is a summary of the whole research. It provides the answers to the research questions, presents contributions of the research, identifies the research limitations, and provides directions for future research
Supply chain finance and blockchain in operations management: a literature review
No full textThe emerging blockchain technology is believed to be a disruptive innovation in the fields of both supply chain management and financial management. Yet, little is known on the interaction of the two domains. In this paper, we conducted a thematic literature review in the novel field of blockchain and supply chain finance (SCF), which is based on 52 papers published from 2017 to 2021 in academic journals, proceedings and books. Based on thematic analysis, the current status of this field is concluded and presented in this research, including the challenges in traditional SCF, factors influencing blockchain adoption in SCF, blockchain-based SCF solutions, and the blockchain adoption mechanism and system design in SCF. Furthermore, a conceptual framework of blockchain adoption in SCF is developed, which combines the emerged themes. Finally, three future research directions are proposed for further research, including cost optimization of blockchain adoption in SCF, risk management of blockchain operations in SCF, and blockchain and sustainable SCF. This research presents a timely and useful summary on existing research and points out the future research directions on blockchain and SCF.</p
Case Analysis: FairChain
No full textThis chapter presents a within-case analysis of FairChain. The content includes background of the company and the industry; the issues that FairChain hopes to address by applying blockchain; the actual implementation stages and the plan for future; what kind of benefits blockchain can bring to FairChain; and what the challenges are that FairChain overcame
Multiple multi-tier sustainable supply chain management: a social system theory perspective
Get PDFA multi-tier supply chain is a complex system as it covers a focal company and multiple tiers of suppliers in a complex supply chain network. This study explores the complexity in multi-tier sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) through a social systems theory perspective. We carried out a case study on IKEA China’s sustainable cotton initiative and examined its five cotton-textile supply chains. The primary data were collected through 22 semi-structured interviews with managers of IKEA China and their multi-tier suppliers. The findings suggest that in order to cope with environmental complexity in implementing multi-tier sustainable initiatives, focal companies tend to create both internal complexity and collaborative complexity in a variety of governance mechanisms. In addition, environmental overlap and available collaborative complexity increase in this process and can feed back into systems to facilitate further creation of requisite variety. We contribute to the multi-tier SSCM literature through providing an in-depth understanding of nuanced mechanisms of managing different tiers of suppliers to cope with complexities by adopting a social systems theory perspective. We also contribute to multi-tier supply chain governance mechanisms from an evolution perspective
Dynamic analysis of a Solow–Swan model with capital-induced labor migration
No full textThe Solow–Swan model, introduced in 1956, is a fundamental framework in macroeconomic theory that models long-term economic growth through capital accumulation and labor force dynamics. This research builds on the original Solow–Swan model by incorporating capital-induced labor migration, which is a significant extension considering modern economic contexts where migration plays a crucial role in regional and national economic dynamics. First, we analyze the existence of the solution of the model. Then, we explore the local asymptotic stability and Turing bifurcation of the positive equilibrium. We then study the nonconstant steady state solution of the model as a branch of solution bifurcation from stationary system. And then we investigate the stability of the nonconstant steady state solution. Finally, we present some numerical simulations to verify our theoretical predictions.</p
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