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The purpose of this paper is to identify the key elements of digitalization for lean and green operations and develop a conceptual framework for their implementation. The paper focuses on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and aims to explore the role of digitalisation in enhancing their operational efficiency and sustainability. By identifying key factors and metrics related to digitalisation, the paper seeks to provide insights for strategic management to improve lean and green practices in SMEs.

Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and Matrix of Cross-Impact Multiplication Applied to a Classification (MICMAC) approaches were deployed to classify the major dimensions of digitalisation. These methods were used to analyse the direct and indirect relationships among the identified elements of digitalisation. A comprehensive literature review and expert consultations were conducted to identify 13 key elements relevant to lean and green operations. The experts also assisted in determining the contextual relationships between the variables for the ISM model.

The analysis classified the 13 identified elements of digitalisation into different levels according to their driving power and dependence. The results from the ISM model indicated three levels of classifications. At level-1, Internet of things (IoT) and smart sensors (IoT & SS), automation and robotics directly influence lean and green operations. At level-2, real-time monitoring and control system and at level-3 fundamental elements of digitalisation such as big data analytics, predictive maintenance, cloud computing, energy management systems (EMSs), additive manufacturing, blockchain, digital workflow automation and digital collaboration platform.

All elements are interrelated and essential for making strategic decisions. This study emphasis the significance of prioritising these attributes to attain long-term excellence through digitalisation. For the industries that seek the reward of lean and green operations for their growth, this paper has great practical utility. Identifying the key factors of digitalisation would help strategic managers in handling lean and green environment of SMEs through these aspects.

The purpose of this research is to identify and analyse the perceived risk factors affecting the safety of electric two-wheeler (E2W) riders in urban areas. Given the exponential growth of the global E2W market and the notable challenges offered by E2W vehicles as compared to electric cars, the study aims to propose a managerial framework, to increase the penetration of E2W in the emerging market, as a reliable, and sustainable mobility alternative.

The perceived risk factors of riding E2Ws are relatively scanty, especially in the context of emerging economies. A mixed-method research design is adopted to achieve the research objectives. Four expert groups are interviewed to identify crucial safety risk E2W factors. The grey-Delphi technique is used to confirm the applicability of the extracted risk factors in the Indian context. Next, the Grey-Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique is employed to reveal the causal-prominence relationship among the perceived risk factors. The dominance and prominence scores are used to perform Cause and Effect analysis and estimate the triggering risk factors.

The finding of the study suggests that reckless adventurism, adverse road conditions, individual characteristics and distraction caused by using mobile phones, as the topmost triggering risk factors that impact the safety of E2Ws drivers. Similarly, reliability on battery performance low velocity and heavy traffic conditions are found to be some of the critical safety factors.

E2Ws are anticipated to represent the future of sustainable mobility in emerging nations. While they provide convenient and quick transportation for daily urban commutes, certain risk factors are contributing to increased accident rates. This research analyses these risk factors to offer a comprehensive view of driver and rider safety. Unlike conventional measures, it considers subjective quality and reliability parameters, such as battery performance and reckless adventurism. Identifying the most significant causal risk factors helps policymakers focus on the most prominent issues, thereby enhancing the adoption of E2Ws in emerging markets.

We have proposed an integrated framework that uses grey theory with Delphi and DEMATEL to analyse the safety risk factors of driving E2W vehicles considering the uncertainty. In addition, the amalgamation of Delphi and DEMATEL helps not only to identify the pertinent safety risk factors, but also bifurcate them into cause-and-effect groups considering the mutual relationship between them. The framework will enable practitioners and policymakers to design preventive strategies to minimize risk and boost the penetration of E2Ws in an emerging country, like India.

In the recent post-pandemic era, the globe has been anxious for the sustainable disposal of healthcare waste to protect public health, protect the environment and enhance future preparedness. Developing countries, in particular, have struggled to dispose of healthcare waste (HCW) to eradicate the hazardous effects of medical waste generated during and after the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Hence the purpose of the research paper is to develop a hybrid decision-making framework to identify various barriers for sustainable disposal of healthcare waste use of Grey-Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (G-DEMATEL) and Analytical Network Process (ANP).

A hybrid framework of Grey-Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (G-DEMATEL) and Analytical Network Process (ANP) has been used to rank barriers and sub-barriers in the disposal of healthcare waste.

The study’s findings suggest that lack of segregation practices, absence of green procurement policy, obsolete technologies and resistance to adopting change management are the topmost causal barriers influencing the remaining barriers. Lack of commitment among healthcare administrations, lack of standard performance measures and resistance to adopting change appear to be the topmost crucial barriers.

The study’s finding enables all stakeholders to prioritize the barriers systematically for better performance and save resources during the process. The policymakers can use the results to design a clear regulatory framework.

The literature has highlighted the factors and their association with the disposal of healthcare waste mainly in isolation. The results are validated against the Grey-Analytical Hierarchy Process (G-AHP) to ensure the robustness of the proposed framework. This paper is one of the preliminary attempts to propose a framework of the interrelationships of the factors that have a direct role in survival for management education.

This paper investigates how stockist brand equity is created in the unorganized pharma retail sector in emerging markets despite the absence of any proactive brand-building efforts by distribution firms (stockists). In addition, this study also aims to unravel the sources of stockist brand equity.

Drawing from grounded theory, a qualitative research design using semi-structured interviews was conducted, and a theoretical saturation approach was used for this purpose. The retailer–stockist (business-to-business [B2B]) relationship in the Indian pharmaceutical market context was used as the study context.

The findings show that in the absence of any brand-building activities, stockists’ sales representatives play an important role in creating stockist brand awareness. In addition, word of mouth from other retailers also plays a minor role. Rational and emotional brand associations which are strong, favorable and unique are created 1) directly by the services provided by stockists, which includes product availability, deliverability, accuracy in billing and batch numbers, credit facilities and discounts, handling issues such as product expiry, and 2) indirectly by the services provided by stockists’ sales representatives which includes their frequency of visits, proactive customer orientation rather than sales orientation, fulfilling commitments and relationship with retailers. The strength of the retailer–stockist (B2B) relationship also depends on retailer-driven factors and other external factors discussed in this study.

Strong stockist brand equity helps build trust and loyalty with pharmacies, ensuring a consistent and timely supply of medicinal products, which will benefit their end consumers or society.

This study identifies the antecedents determining the strength of the retailer–stockist (B2B) relationship, a precursor for establishing retailer-based stockist brand equity in the unorganized sector. This study also highlights the consequences of establishing strong retailer-based stockist brand equity.

The main aim of this paper is to investigate key challenges that hinder sustainable and resilient green supply chain (GSC) building in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with respect to how they interact after the COVID era.

Using a questionnaire, policymakers and industry managers from SMEs identify the main obstacles that will affect their resilience. These issues are then discussed with 50 experienced professionals from the top management field and further divided into sustainability and gresilience challenges. The Grey-DEMATEL (Grey sets and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory) has been employed to assess the significance of challenges to SMEs' development of green resilience. Overall, the paper aims to build up a novel decision-making technology for the interconnectedness of green and resilience in the post-pandemic supply chain world.

The 12 sustainability and gresilience challenges highlighted by experts in the sector were analyzed. Insufficient government assistance and the handling of resources are the most significant challenges to developing a sustainable and gresilient value chain system, according to the study. The study highlights supply chain restructuring, waste reduction management, shortages of skilled manpower and insufficient knowledge of digitalization as key challenges for SMEs to prioritize.

The outcomes of this research are crucial for SMEs building resilient supply networks through the green concept. Policymakers may utilize the data to pinpoint shortcomings in the supply chain for tactical as well as strategic development and improvement.

When it comes to building green resilience and sustainability in an unpredictable business climate, the outcomes of this research will be significant for SMEs.

The study views accounting, control and governance dimensions in academia through the Foucauldian lens in the digital era. The study demystifies the dichotomy of controls and creative academic initiatives for enhanced learning outcomes by utilizing the works of Michel Foucault (1977, 1980, 1991a, b, 1979) in the context of digitally native actors.

The archival documents were studied to gain a clear insight into the academic processes. Next, the primary data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews of academic administrators (AA) and professors.

First, the study establishes that academia extensively models its systems and processes on the Foucauldian tenets of disciplinary control, self-surveillance, trust, empowerment and visibility, utilizing a blend of digital and non-digital technologies. Second, the study unpacks the shortcomings and offers a nuanced critique of digital governance in academic institutions. Such institutions extensively situate their systems, processes and routines on Foucauldian tenets. Third, digital platforms do reinforce injustice and exclusion. Such digital exclusion exists among the faculty, the students and the administrative staff. There are student groups which are marginalized in emerging economy settings. Furthermore, in a predominantly technology-driven ecosystem such marginalized students’ academic experience is significantly different from their privileged peers.

This study is one of the few studies that utilize the Foucauldian lens to understand the tension among accounting, controls and governance outcomes, at a granular level in an emerging market academic setting which is characterized by inequitable resource distribution. Second, by collecting rich primary data from knowledge agents, it supports the dominance of Foucauldian thought with respect to disciplinary control, self-surveillance, visibility, trust and power by embracing digital technologies.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of bank monitoring on conditional conservative accounting of Indian listed firms. Drawing on bank monitoring and relationship lending literature, the study hypothesizes that monitoring by a single bank reduces the bank’s demand for conservatism-facilitated control transfers.

The empirical design is composed of three steps. In the first step, using data on Indian firms listed in NSE and BSE for the period 2000–2019, market-based firm-year measure and accrual cash flow-based firm-year measure of conditional conservatism is estimated. In the second step, we test the hypothesis using multivariate panel regression corrected for heteroskedasticity and incorporating firm and year-fixed effects. In the third step, we test for the robustness of the results using Heckman’s correction approach.

Results indicate that firms which are monitored by a single bank tend to be less conservative. Also, the negative association between single bank monitoring and conservatism is stronger when the firm’s debt structure is dominated by bank debt.

The study’s scope does not include analyzing the influence of characteristics of the single banker monitoring the firm. Future research could investigate attributes like ownership of the banker as a possible source of variation in the relationship documented in this study.

Accounting standard-setting boards are now discouraging implementation of conservatism to avoid bias in financial reporting. This paper finds that a strong bank–firm relationship can be a possible substitute for conservatism.

The study sheds new light on the debt structure–conservatism relationship. Bank’s availability of inside information through the transaction account and its impact on lending relationships is established in the literature. However, the literature on the determinants of conservatism has not examined how the benefit enjoyed by the firm’s single banker, possessing all the information in the transaction account can lead to bank’s reduced dependence on financial statements and subsequently reduced accounting conservatism of borrowing firms.

The increasing urgency to address climate change in construction has made green construction (GC) and sustainability critical topics for academia and industry professionals. However, the volume of literature in this field has made it impractical to rely solely on traditional systematic evidence mapping methodologies.

This study employs machine learning (ML) techniques to analyze the extensive evidence-base on GC. Using both supervised and unsupervised ML, 5,462 relevant papers were filtered from 10,739 studies published from 2010 to 2022, retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases.

Key themes in GC encompass green building materials, construction techniques, assessment methodologies and management practices. GC assessment and techniques were prominent, while management requires more research. The results from prevalence of topics and heatmaps revealed important patterns and interconnections, emphasizing the prominent role of materials as major contributors to the construction sector. Consistency of the results with VOSviewer analysis further validated the findings, demonstrating the robustness of the review approach.

Unlike other reviews focusing only on specific aspects of GC, use of ML techniques to review a large pool of literature provided a holistic understanding of the research landscape. It sets a precedent by demonstrating the effectiveness of ML techniques in addressing the challenge of analyzing a large body of literature. By showcasing the connections between various facets of GC and identifying research gaps, this research aids in guiding future initiatives in the field.

The motivation to choose an electric vehicle (EV) is guided by principles of personal values, perceived rewards and preferences. While the benefits of sustainable transportation are known, the acceptance of EVs and the motivation to purchase them is not satisfactory in India. An assessment of the motivation continuum, a range of intrinsic to extrinsic personal and societal drives that encourage specific choices, explains the lack of EV adoption in the country. This study aims to examine the effect of motivation types on EV adoption intentions and also explores the moderating role of gender in this context.

By incorporating constructs from the self-determination theory, the study expands on the technological acceptance model. It uses the structural equation modelling method to test the hypotheses and presents an analysis of responses from 351 participants.

The findings suggest that there are significant relationships between external, identified, integrated motivation and EV buying intentions. The influence of gender on EV adoption is also explored.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of varied motivational types on EV buying intentions and the moderating effects of gender on these relationships.

The study aims to understand the association between subjective well-being, psychological well-being, work satisfaction and engagement amongst middle-level hospitality managers.

The data were collected from 624 middle-level hospitality managers working in two corporate hotel chains across five north-western states of India. Structural equation modelling (SEM) with a covariance-based approach (CB-SEM) was implemented using SPSS AMOS, adhering to a two-step process that included both measurement and structural models. The application of CB-SEM primarily aimed to (1) evaluate the cascading impacts across constructs and (2) scrutinise the concurrent relationships amongst constructs, with a specific focus on well-being (both psychological and subjective), context-specific job satisfaction and work engagement.

Evidently, the post-COVID-19 scenario found to be challenging for the hospitality industry. Thus, this empirical research posits that subjective and psychological well-being positively influences work engagement via work satisfaction as a mediator.

Given the people orientation in the hospitality sector, the research contributes to the existing body of literature by assessing the relationships between psychological and subjective well-being, work satisfaction and engagement amongst middle-level hotel managers employed in the corporate chain of hotels in India.