Search results

The purpose of this research is to identify major barriers to the implementation of reverse logistics (RL). Also, the study addresses best practices among reuse, remanufacture, recycling, refurbishment and repair as alternatives for RL processes.

This study targets supply chain management experts for their opinions regarding the identification of critical barriers and alternatives for RL implementation. Their opinions were extracted through a Web questionnaire based on 14 criteria with 5 alternatives. The tools of multi-criteria decision-making are used for analysis, i.e. fuzzy VIKOR and fuzzy TOPSIS.

The results indicate that lack of recognition of competitive advantage to be gained through RL practice is the most critical barrier to RL implementation. The least barrier or major facilitator for RL is “supportive initiative for end-of-life products.” The top-ranked alternative in this study is reuse followed by remanufacturing. The least important alternative is “repair” in the case of Pakistan. These alternatives are ranked based on “q values” derived through fuzzy VIKOR.

The results of this study can only be generalized for the manufacturing sector of Pakistan during the period of the study.

The findings of this study will assist managers in deploying the best practices concerning RL.

Fuzzy VIKOR and fuzzy TOPSIS have not been applied to RL alternatives in previous research.

The purpose of the study was to ascertain the influence of innovation conviction, innovation mindset and innovation creed on the performance of women entrepreneurs in South African small and medium enterprises and their capacity for innovation. The study also examined how proactive personality and entrepreneurial education moderate the relationship between innovative capability and women entrepreneurs' performance.

The study used a quantitative research design and administered a questionnaire to collect data from participants. Since there was no sampling frame available, purposive sampling, a non-probability sampling technique, was used to select suitable respondents who were identified as entrepreneurial women. Data were collected from 304 women entrepreneurs in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The data were analyzed using smart partial least squares.

The findings demonstrated that innovation conviction, innovation mindset and innovation creed have a positive impact on innovation capability. It was also discovered that innovation capability, proactive personality and entrepreneurial education all positively and significantly impact women entrepreneurs' performance. Furthermore, the results showed that entrepreneurial education and proactive personality had a positive and significant moderating effect on the nexus between innovation capability and the performance of women entrepreneurs.

This study will add to the body of knowledge on women's small business management and entrepreneurship in Africa, two topics that are typically ignored by academics in developing nations.

This study seeks to examine the mediating role of innovative work behavior (IWB) in the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership (EL) and employee performance.

The study adopted the cross-sectional research design of quantitative approach where data were collected from 344 employees in Ghana’s food and beverages industry. The retrieved data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics (partial least squares structural equation modeling).

Mainly, the study revealed that IWB positively and significantly mediated the relationship between EL and contextual and task performance (TP). The study found that EL has a significant positive relationship with task and contextual performance (CP). This indicates that leaders who demonstrate entrepreneurial qualities, such as innovation, proactiveness and risk-taking, are likely to enhance their team’s ability to complete specific tasks effectively (TP) and contribute positively to the broader organizational environment (CP).

Practically, organizations that prioritize EL qualities among managers and supervisors in the form of providing training programs, coaching and mentorship opportunities that emphasize innovation, risk-taking and pro-activeness in decision-making significantly influence their employee performance.

The originality and value of this study lie in its comprehensive exploration of the relationship between EL, IWB and performance outcomes.

The concept of a sustainable warehouse management system (WMS) is a relevant yet under-researched area within warehousing logistics. The purpose of this research is twofold: first, to review the literature on the topic of socially and environmentally sustainable practices; second, to lay the theoretical base for identifying social and environmental sustainability practices in warehousing operations that can serve as focus areas for WMS operational functions.

This research built knowledge on a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis in Scopus Elsevier and Web of Science Core Collection databases. After comprehensively filtering English literature from 2016 to 2024, only 43 out of the initial 601 studies comprised relevant warehousing practices that can be incorporated into the scope of WMS activities.

As a result, retrieved practices were allocated to a specifically designed warehouse model within the main processes, equipment and resources. This model could serve as a baseline for incorporating 48 sustainable WMS practices. The prevailing share of practices focuses on environmental rather than social warehouse sustainability. WMS should adopt sustainable warehousing practices to reduce warehouses' carbon footprint, energy and resource consumption and improve working conditions in a warehouse.

There have not been any existing reviews on warehouses' social and environmental sustainability to synthesize knowledge and serve as a base for WMS sustainability. This research will contribute to developing more sustainable and environmentally responsible warehousing operations, ultimately benefiting society and the environment. By incorporating such practices into WMS, warehouse owners can ensure efforts toward social and environmental sustainability while still maintaining efficient operations.

Halal brands are crucial in driving the growing global Islamic economy. Despite the importance of brand research and the rich brand literature, there has yet to be a comprehensive study of brand image across halal industries. This study aims to systematically review the existing literature on brand image in halal industries to provide a state-of-the-art understanding and identify opportunities in this research area.

Guided by the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews protocol and the theories, contexts, characteristics and methods framework, this paper reviews 35 journal articles from the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases that feature brand image as an underpinning theory in the context of halal economies.

Since the first study almost a decade ago in 2014, brand image research in halal industries has concentrated on consumers in the Islamic finance sector. Keyword co-occurrence analysis reveals that central research themes in halal brand image include outcomes of trust, satisfaction and loyalty. Most studies are focused on halal industries in Muslim countries. The cognitive operationalization of brand image remains dominant in halal industry studies. There is a lack of studies on the moderators of halal brand image. Several unique antecedents of halal brand image are uncovered in this review that are undetected in traditional brand image studies.

The studies in this review are based on the Scopus and WoS databases, which may be perceived as a study limitation. This paper also only considered English journal articles and studies that focused on brand image in halal industries rather than general industries with Muslim consumers.

To become a global brand, halal brands must effectively build and communicate their brand image. This review provides managers with an appreciation of brand image across different halal industries and a strategic lens on universal drivers and those that are faith/ethics related. The consequences of an effective halal brand image can inform and motivate managerial decisions with multiple stakeholders in brand-building campaigns. Researchers can use the results of this review to guide future multidisciplinary studies and contribute toward the development of this research field.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to comprehensively map the antecedents, dimensions, outcomes and moderators of brand image across halal industries. This study gives managers a strategic understanding of brand image across the halal economy. This review also develops a conceptual model that maps the halal brand image nomological network revealing three key antecedent categories of halal brand image. A research agenda on halal brand image with 18 future research recommendations is introduced to the literature.

The main purpose of this research is to investigate factors influencing rural women entrepreneurship development and sustainable rural livelihoods in Manicaland province of Zimbabwe.

A quantitative research was conducted in Manicaland province in Zimbabwe. Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 400 women entrepreneurs in various sectors. The participants were in vegetable vending, operating clothing flea markets and cross border trading. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect data from respondents. Structural equation modeling in SmartPLS version 3 was used to test the research hypotheses.

The study established that women entrepreneurship is driven by financial factors, positive environmental factors, positive psychological factors as well as positive sociological factors for a sustainable rural livelihood.

It is clear that if the discovered challenges are not addressed, sustainability of women entrepreneurship will remain a dream.

The study came up with strategies for improving women entrepreneurship activities. Future research can be done in other areas of provinces to avoid generalization challenges.

Many challenges hinder the sustainability of women entrepreneurship. Major impediments to women entrepreneurship comprises inadequate support from government schemes, patriarchal societal structure of the community, lack of relevant entrepreneurial knowledge to manage businesses, lack of collateral security to access funding, time limitation or role conflict to balance family pressures and business.

The study recommends proper entrepreneurship education and training, supportive government schemes and access to network affiliation/connection to sustain women entrepreneurship.

Engaged employees assure organizational competitiveness and sustainability. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between job resources and employee turnover intentions, with employee engagement as a mediating variable.

Data were collected from 934 employees of eight wholly-owned pharmaceutical industries. The proposed model and hypotheses were evaluated using structural equation modeling. Construct reliability and validity was established through confirmatory factor analysis.

Data supported the hypothesized relationship. The results show that job autonomy and employee engagement were significantly associated. Supervisory support and employee engagement were significantly associated. However, performance feedback and employee engagement were nonsignificantly associated. Employee engagement had a significant influence on employee turnover intentions. The results further show that employee engagement mediates the association between job resources and employee turnover intentions.

The generalizability of the findings will be constrained due to the research’s pharmaceutical industry focus and cross-sectional data.

The study’s findings will serve as valuable pointers for stakeholders and decision-makers in the pharmacuetical industry to develop a proactive and well-articulated employee engagement intervention to ensure organizational effectiveness, innovativeness and competitiveness.

By empirically demonstrating that employee engagement mediates the nexus of job resources and employee turnover intentions, the study adds to the corpus of literature.

This paper seeks to provide empirical insight into how industrialization and technology affect environmental quality in Ghana.

Using Ecological Footprint (ECF) as a measure of environmental degradation, the authors employ annual data from World Development Indicators of the World Bank and the Global Footprint Network spanning from 1970 to 2017 and apply the fully modified least squares (FMOLS) technique.

The results reveal that industrialization has a negative significant influence on ECF, suggesting that industrialization contributes to environmental sustainability in Ghana. The authors find that technology is harmful to the environment as it has a positive significant effect on ECF. The study also documents that while education and financial development improve environmental sustainability, fossil fuel consumption exacerbates environmental degradation in Ghana.

The environmental impact of industrialization is still being debated, with very scanty empirical evidence in the African context. Based on a detailed review of the literature, this paper provides an initial attempt to investigate the industrialization–environmental sustainability nexus in Ghana. Besides, whereas most extant studies have employed CO₂ emission as a proxy of environmental degradation, the authors use ECF to gauge the level of environmental degradation which is regarded as a more inclusive metric.

This study aimed to explore the relationship between supply chain resilience (SCR) and organizational performance (OP), with innovation (INN) serving as a mediator and information sharing (IS) acting as a moderator.

The study comprehensively examined the connections between SCR, OP, INN and IS. An exploratory approach and quantitative methods were employed. The data were collected from small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises of three cities Xian, Hainan and Guangzhou of China via online questionnaire surveys conducted through Emails and WeChat. SmartPLS-4 was used for data analysis.

The findings indicated that SCR has a positive effect on sustainability efforts. Additionally, INN and effective IS both mediated and moderated this relationship, playing crucial roles in improving sustainability within the supply chain.

The study offered practical insights for businesses to enhance their sustainability efforts. Managers can use these findings to develop strategies that improve SCR, foster INN and encourage effective IS, ultimately resulting in a more sustainable supply chain.

This study enriched the existing knowledge base by investigating the intricate relationships among SCR, OP, INN and IS, all within the context of achieving sustainability. By exploring these elements holistically, the research introduced originality and highlighted effective strategies for sustainable supply chain management.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework of green strategies as a combination of energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction for improving environmental sustainability at logistics sites. Such measures are examined by discussing the related impacts, motivations and barriers that could influence the measures' adoption. Starting from the framework, directions for future research in this field are outlined.

The proposed framework was developed starting from a systematic literature review (SLR) approach on 60 papers published from 2008 to 2022 in international peer-reviewed journals or conference proceedings.

The framework identifies six main areas of intervention (“green strategies”) towards green warehousing, namely Building, Utilities, Lighting, Material Handling and Automation, Materials and Operational Practices. For each strategy, specific energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction are further pinpointed. In most cases, “green-gold” measures emerge as the most appealing, entailing environmental and economic benefits at the same time. Finally, for each measure the relationship with the measures' primary impacts is discussed.

From an academic viewpoint, the framework fills a major gap in the scientific literature since, for the first time, this study elaborates the concept of green warehousing as a result of energy-efficiency measures and solutions towards environmental impact reduction. A classification of the main areas of intervention (“green strategies”) is proposed by adopting a holistic approach. From a managerial perspective, the paper addresses a compelling need of practitioners – e.g. logistics service providers (LSPs), manufacturers and retailers – for practices and solutions towards greener warehousing processes to increase energy efficiency and decrease the environmental impact of the practitioners' logistics facilities. In this sense, the proposed framework can provide valuable support for logistics managers that are about to approach the challenge of turning the managers' warehouses into greener nodes of the managers' supply chains.