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This study aims to propose guidelines for developing circular products based on waste recovery that are aligned with sustainable production and consumption.

A systematic literature review and case studies on circular product development were conducted. In total, 15 companies with products based on waste recovery and aligned with sustainable production and consumption goal were studied.

The results show the decisions and strategies applied at each stage of the new product development process, including the design for recycling, the use of waste as a raw material for products and the concern for reducing pollution and recovering end-of-life products.

The cases studied meet the goals of efficient use of natural resources and waste reduction by preventing, reducing, recycling and reusing waste. For practitioners, a set of guidelines is proposed to help companies develop circular products based on waste recovery.

Previous studies have not evaluated the new product development process and circularity from the institutional theory and waste valorization perspectives.

This chapter elucidates the wage differential between male and female informal workers in urban labour market by using employment and unemployment survey 61st (2004–2005) round, 68th (2011–2012), and Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019–2020 data of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) unit level data. This study found that gender inequality not only increased during getting job but also persists after getting job during wage distribution. Based on the Oaxaca–Blinder (OB) decomposition, it is revealed that gender wage inequality is more in the labour market due to the labour market discrimination, that is, unexplained components. Hence, this study helps researcher, policy makers and government to fix the gender wage discrimination issues exist in the Indian labour market. This will enhance economic growth through the rise of the women labour force participation.

The present chapter attempts to highlight the vulnerabilities of female migrants as compared to non-migrants in the unorganized urban labor market. Informal female migrants working in construction, as domestic workers, tailors/boutiques, and garment workers in the urban unorganized sector of Uttar Pradesh’s selected urban locations, are covered in this chapter. Though the fact prevails that workers in the unorganized labor markets are confronted with various livelihood crunches, still those who are migrants and swelling the urban labor markets are more prone to different vulnerabilities. There is scanty literature on the situation and condition of migrants particularly female migrant workers in India, whereas we know more about the condition of international migrants, mainly migrant workers in the Gulf and other regions. The study is based on interviews with 174 female informal workers who have migrated and 222 non-migrants from various regions of the state to the urban locations of selected cities. Our study also attempts to do an in-depth, qualitative exploration of these vulnerable women’s lives and perceptions and tries to capture layered vulnerabilities, risks, and rewards confronted due to both migration and work in the informal sector. Specifically, the findings reflect upon the fact that how strong societal norms may actually prevent women from acknowledging or articulating the true reasons for their migrations.

Due to increasing socio-ecological concerns, manufacturers are paying ample attention to the strategic decision-making for enhancing customer satisfaction considering Industry 4.0 requirements. Customers' preferences are being considered vital into the decisions related to sustainable supplier selection for building competitive gain. Thus, the objective of this study is to develop a real-case-based empirical approach for evaluating performance of suppliers based on customers' feedback, an area not explored much in literature. The novelty of current study lies in the development of an integrated supplier evaluation and selection model involving three phases: (1) identifying sustainable criteria according to Industry 4.0 requirement through customers' feedback, (2) calculating relative scores of criteria using Z-numbers and (3) determining evaluation weights of suppliers using fuzzy-TOPSIS. The contribution of the study lies in effective validation of the model by considering the case of a manufacturing firm, which aids the firm in evaluating performance of suppliers based on customers' socio-ecological expectations while considering reliable information provided by decision-makers (DMs).

The adoption of e-taxing plays an important role in modernizing tax administration. Ghana, like many other developing countries, has adopted e-taxing to modernize its revenue collection processes and improve its tax-to-GDP ratio. This study aims to examine the current state of e-taxing maturity in Ghana, focusing on the advancements made and what can be done to achieve a mature e-taxing system.

Through qualitative design, interviews were conducted with Ghana Revenue Authority, National Information Technology Agency and Businesses to provide an in-depth understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improving e-taxing maturity.

The study reveals mixed e-taxing maturity. While the digital service aspect of e-taxing has seen progress, digital infrastructure, digital analytics, digital integration and digital culture hinder the full actualization of mature e-taxing.

The findings suggest the need for a comprehensive plan that addresses regulatory, cultural, technical and organizational aspects to drive digital transformation in e-taxing tax implementation.

The lack of resilient infrastructure, especially in rural areas, can worsen societal inequalities. Owing to the lack of telecommunication infrastructure and poor internet connectivity in rural areas, businesses in these areas may lack the needed information for business growth and expansion. This can result in unfair treatment of rural businesses widening the inequality gap between businesses in urban areas and rural areas. Therefore, the study is important from the standpoint that implementing the recommendations will help to bridge the gap between businesses in urban areas and rural areas.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is among the first to conduct an empirical study on e-taxing maturity in Ghana.

The purposes of this study are to identify the ways that luxury fashion brands can leverage in metaverse retailing, and give insights to practitioners in the fashion industry who are planning to launch metaverse retailing.

To offer a balanced view of available evidence, this study adopted a literature review approach and attempted to collect all existing academic journal articles on the issues related to metaverse retailing and luxury fashion brands. A comprehensive literature search was conducted in electronic databases Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, Pro Quest and Science Direct from January 2023 to April 2024. Based on the results of the research in literature, real-life examples of luxury fashion brands were used to explain the ways that luxury fashion brands in the metaverse retailing can be put into practice.

The findings have revealed that there are many ways that luxury fashion brands can leverage in the metaverse retailing. The fusion of metaverse-related technologies provides brands with a wide platform of choices that can create immersive, personalized marketing experiences for customers. Four roles of metaverse are identified: (1) enhance of immersive experience; (2) provide big data interface to smart decision-making; (3) form high-fidelity simulated space; and (4) maintenance economic system and making of identification. To further enhance the four roles of metaverse, four types of technologies and 15 components for metaverse can be adopted by luxury fashion brands.

While this paper provides a literature review and real-life examples of luxury fashion brands in the metaverse retailing to explain the findings, further research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of current efforts in the development of luxury fashion brands in the metaverse retailing through collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. Also, future studies may attempt to explore the challenges of investigating consumers in response to luxury fashion brands in the metaverse retailing.

The metaverse is turning imagination into reality through the integration of multiple technologies and is gaining momentum in tech. With technology leading the way, business leaders and brands must not only rethink retail but also bring immersive shopping experiences into the future. Metaverse has immense potential to transform the retail industry, thus the leading global and local firms must embrace innovation and new technologies, and prioritize “metaverse transformation” for their business. Based on the results of this study, some emerging practices pertaining to metaverse retailing are provided.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it would seem that this is the first work that conducts a literature review of the relevant academic journal articles addressed to the practitioners or managerial audiences in the area of luxury fashion industry who are concerned about the development of metaverse retailing. This paper identifies the ways that luxury fashion brands can leverage in the metaverse retailing and gives insights to practitioners in the luxury fashion industry who are planning to launch metaverse retailing.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for the assessment of service quality of bus fleet services based on the service quality influencing factors. The paper also tries to evolve a quantitative measure for fleet service quality in the form of a fleet service quality index.

A graph theoretical approach is employed in this paper for bus fleet service quality assessment. Modelling of fleet service quality factors and their interrelations with due attention towards their structure is achieved through graph theory. A directed graph (digraph) of the service quality is developed, where its nodes represent factors influencing the quality while its edges show the degree of interrelationships. A matrix, which is equivalent to the digraph, is established that will generate a service quality function that will result in the development of a fleet service quality index (FSQI).

Attaining customer satisfaction through assurance of quality is the cornerstone of the existence and survival of any business organization, and bus fleet services are no exception to this. Several influential factors are there for the bus fleet service quality. This research paper has identified factors such as fleet management practices, operational characteristics, safety and reliability features, travel comfort, bus maintenance and environmental concerns that affect fleet service quality. Every factor is composed of distinct sub-factors. Furthermore, these factors are linked with one another. A higher value of the fleet service quality index indicates the adequate performance of the bus fleet service organization.

The methodology is useful for not only evaluating but also for comparison of service quality of different fleet agencies or organizations. The perceptions would be useful to the fleet service managers to create procedures and arrangements for improving the service quality.

The paper identifies various service quality factors of the bus fleet and an evaluation scheme for those factors has been developed. Based on these, a framework had been developed for the assessment of the service quality of different fleet service providers.

This systematic review of the current gender inequality issues in operations and supply chain management (OSCM) seeks to illuminate the multifaceted aspects of this issue and their various implications for the field.

Employing systematic literature review and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Literature Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodologies, this research delves into an analysis of 238 journal articles spanning a 47-year period. The objective is to discern existing voids and put forth actionable suggestions that align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal Number 5 (SDG5) in the context of men and women, which pertains to realizing gender equality and empowering girls and women.

The results show a significant increase in published articles over the period. However, only five literature review articles were found that specifically address gender inequality in OSCM. The five common themes impacting gender inequality in this field are gender issues, mindset, transportation disparities, human resources and gender roles in OSCM, alongside sustainability, mobility and government policy intersections. The paper emphasizes the need for further research on these themes. It also suggests implications for educators, researchers, companies, OSCM departments and policymakers to achieve SDG5.

This study offers valuable insights by comprehensively reviewing and systematically analyzing the prevailing gender inequality issues within OSCM. It accentuates the significance of gender equality in OSCM, augmenting the burgeoning discourse and catalyzing concerted endeavors for gender equality.

Performance optimization algorithms based on node attributes are of great importance for sharding blockchain systems. Currently, existing studies on blockchain sharding algorithms consider only random selection sharding strategies. However, the random selection strategy does not perfectly utilize the performance of a node to break the bottleneck of blockchain performance.

This paper proposes a blockchain sharding algorithm called TOPSIS Optimization Sharding System (TOSS), which is based on entropy weight method, relative Euclidean distance and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). It defines a multi-attribute matrix to assess node performance and applies TOPSIS for scoring nodes. Then, an algorithm based on the TOPSIS method is proposed to calculate the performance score of each data node. In addition, an entropy weighting method is introduced to obtain the weights of each attribute to balance the impact of dimensional differences of attributes on the attribute weights. Nodes are ranked by composite scores to guide partitioning.

The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in this paper is verified by comparing it with various comparative algorithms. The experimental results show that the TOSS algorithm outperforms the comparison algorithms in terms of performance improvement for the blockchain system, and the throughput metrics are improved by about 20% in comparison.

This study introduces a novel approach to blockchain sharding by incorporating the entropy weight method and relative Euclidean distance TOPSIS into the sharding process. This approach allows for a more effective utilization of node performance attributes, leading to significant improvements in system throughput and overall performance, addressing the limitations of the random selection strategy commonly used in existing algorithms.

This study aims to comprehend the smart city–built environment’s (SCBE) effect on citizens’ quality of life in the smart cities of a developing country such as India. This study also sought to investigate the moderating effect of technological anxiety on the association, as mentioned earlier.

This study’s hypotheses were tested using data from 494 sample respondents who lived in the top five smart cities of India using partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

This study validated five dimensions of an SCBE, including smart governance, smart economy, smart people, smart transportation, smart environment and smart living, and demonstrated a favorable connection between a SCBE quality of life. This study confirmed that technology anxiety strongly moderates the relationship between the built environment of smart cities and citizens’ quality of life.

This study is a pioneering effort that explores the relationship between SCBE and the quality of life of its residents and the moderating effect of technology anxiety on this relationship.