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The four pillars of food security are availability, accessibility, utilization and stability. In order to facilitate food security, an attempt is made to design a fruit supply chain network (FSCN) considering multi-compartment reefer trucks (MCRT) to reduce total supply chain costs. This in turn increases affordability, decreases food loss and increases availability, which further helps in improving food security.

A mixed integer non-linear programming (MNILP) model is developed to minimize the overall cost considering MCRT and the same is solved by a heuristic approach. A real-world case study is conducted to test the robustness of the model.

There is a considerable cost saving with the new proposed model (MCRT). The number of trucks used is drastically reduced when the dedicated truck is replaced with MCRT. Overall, the design of the FSCN not only improves food security by lowering the total supply chain cost but also shows a high impact on sustainability. Since the proposed model is a mathematical formulation, the same model can be applied to other perishable commodities like vegetables.

The proposed FSCN still requires more intermediaries to be added for more practicality. The model will be suitable for emerging markets mainly because the food supply chain sector is not completely organized.

This study is one of the initial studies in the context of facility location and FSCN optimization, specifically focusing on the inclusion of capacitated DCs. This study has the potential to assist supply chain managers in achieving sustainability by optimizing location decisions, inventory levels and movement between facilities. This study provides a valuable contribution towards the sustainable development goal of zero hunger (food security) by increasing affordability for low-income people.

Information and communication technology (ICT) implementation has demonstrated usefulness in supply chain coordination and efficiency optimization in various industries and sectors. This study investigates the extent of ICT deployment in fruits and vegetable supply chains (FVSC) from “farm-to-fork” to ensure food security.

This paper employs a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology and identified a total of 99 journal articles ranging from 2001 to April 2023 for analysis. The reviewed articles have been classified based on the framework proposed from the perspective of food security. Bibliometric and content analysis is carried out with the final list of articles to extract useful insights.

The findings reveal that ICT implementation in FVSC is a relatively new research area; researchers have started investigating several aspects of ICT in FVSC through varied research methodologies. Experimental research aimed at addressing food safety and condition monitoring of fruits and vegetables (FV) has started to gain traction while theory building is yet to gain traction in the literature reviewed. Findings indicate further research is required on technologies like blockchain (BCT), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), especially on key objectives such as food security, and the triple-bottom-line approach of sustainability. It also indicates that implementing relevant ICTs in FVSC can help delay, if not avert, the food crisis predicted by Malthusian theory.

This study used only well-established databases to ensure quality of the studies examined. There is a possibility of missing out on articles from other sources not considered. As a result, future SLR studies may employ additional databases, such as Springer Link, Taylor and Francis, Emerald Insight and Google Scholar. Other methodologies such as expert interviews and extra empirical methodologies may also be employed to give a more balanced picture and insights into ICTs implementation in FVSC.

This study offers a summative detail of the status of ICT implementation in FVSC and can serve as a reference guide for stakeholders in developing strategies for efficient FVSC management. This research work highlights the impact of ICT implementation in FVSC on the four pillars of food security which include improved availability, accessibility, utilization and stability.

This study focuses on ICT implementation for food security in FVSC. The SLR highlights the gaps and proffers potential solutions that enhance global efforts on food security through ICT-enabled reduction in food waste and food loss in FVSC.

This paper studied a bid generation problem in combinatorial transportation auctions that considered in-vehicle consolidations. The purpose of this paper seeks to establish mixed integer programming to the most profitable transportation task packages.

The authors proposes a mathematical model to identify the most profitable transportation task packages under vehicle capacity, flow balance and in-vehicle consolidation operational constraints, after which a two-phase heuristic algorithm was designed to solve the proposed model. In the first phase, a method was defined to compute bundle synergy, which was then combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO) to determine a satisfactory task package, and in the second phase, the PSO was adopted to program vehicle routings that considered in-vehicle consolidation.

Three numerical examples were given to analyze the effects of the proposed model and method, with the first two small-scale examples coming from the same data base and the third being a larger scale example. The results showed that: (1) the proposed model was able to find a satisfactory solution for the three numerical examples; (2) the computation time was significantly shorter than the accurate algorithm and (3) considering in-vehicle consolidations operations could increase the carrier profits.

The highlights of this paper are summarized as following: (1) it considers in-vehicle consolidation when generating bids to maximize profits; (2) it simultaneously identifies the most valuable lane packages and reconstructs vehicle routes and (3) proposes a simple but effective synergy-based method to solve the model.

The inclusion of sustainable practices in the service only supply chain (SOSC) is less evident in the literature. The aim of this research is to analyse the enablers of sustainability to be implemented in (SOSC).

A rigorous literature review and experts’ outlook are used to identify fifteen key enablers of sustainability to be implemented in the SOSC. These key enablers are analysed by the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and fuzzy decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique. A case study of an Indian hospital is taken for testing the relevancy of the research.

ISM identified the six hierarchical levels of the enablers and MICMAC classified the enablers into four categories based on the driving and dependence power of the enablers. The fuzzy DEMATEL technique categorized the enablers into cause and effect groups. Four enablers were found in the effect group and eleven enablers were identified in the cause group.

This research will help the managers in identifying the enablers of sustainability to implement in the SOSC and to handle the critical enablers with care.

This is the first of its kind of study which not only identifies the key enablers to achieve sustainability in the SOSC but also derives the hierarchy levels of enablers and categorizes these enablers into cause and effect groups.

Despite increasing attentions to sustainable service supply chain management (SSSCM), a framework for performance evaluation of sustainable service only supply chain management (SSOSCM) is still missing. This paper tries to fill this gap and provides a novel conceptual framework.

The articles related to SSSCM are fetched from the databases of SCOPUS and Web of Science. Analysis of 174 articles identified by the systematic literature review is further carried out.

This research identifies the sustainable practices for service only supply chain (SOSC) as environmental management, social management, economic management, customer management, health, safety and risk management, technical sustainability, institutional sustainability, information and technology management as well as two performance measurement criteria as operational performance and organizational performance. This paper provides a novel conceptual framework for the performance evaluation of SSOSCM. The results call for future exploration in the following three broad directions-(1) customer's perception, involvement and their behaviour towards sustainability in SOSC context; (2) trade-off, incentive mechanism and multilevel evaluation for achieving sustainability in SOSC and (3) sustainability in SOSC from various point of views.

The managers can use the framework to assess the performance of the organization while researchers can explore the discussed research gaps.

This is the first paper that provides a novel conceptual framework for the performance evaluation of SSOSCM as well as potential future research directions.

In times of crisis, the fundamental principles of companies erode, leading to strategy shifts. This paper aims to examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) is on management’s agenda in times of crisis, indicating CSR embeddedness into corporate strategy. The focus is on the four pillars of CSR: social, environment, economy and governance.

Starting points are competing hypotheses based on shareholder and stakeholder theory. Chief executive officer (CEO) letters to shareholders of German HDAX firms from 2003 to 2012 are analyzed by means of computer-aided text analysis.

The authors find that CEOs talk less about CSR in times of crisis, especially about social and governance issues, indicating that CSR is not fully embedded into corporate strategy, and that, in times of crisis, other aspects gain more importance on management’s agenda.

CEO communication is an indicator for management’s attention. Less talk about CSR in times of crisis does not automatically indicate less real CSR activity. This study is a starting point for analyses of the discrepancy between both, if any exists.

Managers should regard CSR as a strategic and trust enhancing element and stick to CSR even when under pressure from market distortions.

Environment issues – exposed to companies’ attention for a long time – are embedded into corporate strategy. More research and management attention is essential to get the other CSR aspects woven into company DNA as well.

The paper is the first to research CSR in times of crisis in depth: CSR as umbrella covers social, environment, economy and governance issues. The institutional level of analysis ensures that implications for the business-society link are central.

The purpose of this paper is to understand and compare the level of patient’s expectations of healthcare services and their perceived performance. The paper also provides insights into the specific service factors and quality of hospital services which are required to meet the needs of Indian patients.

A total of 210 exit interviews were conducted using a structured questionnaire addressing the probable factors of quality related to healthcare services in a five-point Likert scale. The survey was conducted among the patients recently discharged and about to be discharged from private hospitals of Delhi and NC. A set of questionnaires is administered to collect responses on expected and perceived service qualities.

The paper reviews and discusses the importance of service quality for Indian patients using the SERVQUAL gap model as the measure of service quality. The results gave an overview of the perspectives of Indian patients on the quality of service in private hospitals. Patients indicated best satisfaction in some dimensions of services, namely, the tangible dimension of “hospitals provide ample parking spaces,” empathy dimension of “Doctors are never too busy to respond to my request”, assurance dimension of “I can depend on Doctor/Nurse,” and in the responsiveness dimension of “employees always communicate truly” on hospital matters.

The first limitation is in the scope of sample, that is research findings are limited to Delhi. The second limitation is that the research should have been done in two parts, that is by contacting the patient before they take the services and after the service encounter. Third limitation – for a better understanding, the analysis should have been performed on the gap between the patient’s perception and the perception of the medical service provider about the customer’s perception.

This research would be beneficial to healthcare organizations to do their best to achieve greater patient satisfaction. The findings of the paper that, for all dimensions, the patient’s perception is always higher than the expectation suggests that in the Indian healthcare segment, there is a need of dissemination of information regarding the most modern medical facilities.

This current research is concluded with the suitability of a model that can be used to find the levels of patient satisfaction for healthcare services. The present study is based on primary data and offers a systematic procedure that could form the cornerstone for providing further insights into the conceptual and empirical comprehension of patients perceived service quality and its constituents. The current emergency medicine patient’s service dilemmas are a complex interaction of patients and physician factors specifically targeting efficiency and patient satisfaction. The awareness of these issues particular to the emergency patient can help to maximize efficiency, minimize subsequent medico-legal risk and improve patient care if a tailored management plan is formulated.

One of the major challenges faced by the world at present is management and treatment of waste. Especially, waste such as polyethylene (plastics) is non-degradable and is causing great damage to our environment. Aquatic environment is one among them that is getting affected by these plastic wastes. Water pollution is a great issue faced in many countries and steps to reduce it are being taken on a wide scale. Unwanted aquatic plants grown in ponds and lakes create problems like totally covering up the surface of the lake that blocks the sunlight for aquatic species and also reducing their total storage. Identifying such unwanted plants and plastics is a very essential part in treating and management of waste. Detection and classification help us to achieve this. With the help of satellites, drone-shot images of many oceans are captured, and the amount of plastic content present is detected using artificial intelligence. In artificial intelligence, we have many algorithms and platforms that help us to achieve object detection. Tensorflow is one such framework that helps us to perform object detection with the help of pre-trained models present in it, and thus, it is used in this study. Object detection uses computer vision to detect objects from images. Convolutional neural networks are a subset of machine learning that is helpful in image processing – in other words, processing of pixel data. In this study, we used the ResNet-50 model involving transfer learning for classifying unwanted plants and plastics. Lakes and ponds are the major places among the other aquatic environments where these kinds of wastes are found, and therefore, this study concentrates on waste present in these aquatic bodies. The lakes and ponds present near residential areas act as a place for storing excess rainwater, which prevents flooding. Many cities, especially residential areas, face a lot of water stagnation problems during the rainy season. Ponds and lakes near these areas contain unwanted plants and plastics present, which makes it a problem to store the rainwater that comes during monsoon. Another problem is that they don’t provide sunlight to enter deep into water, making the aquatic species difficult to survive. Preserving and maintaining such lakes from getting filled with non-degradable plastics and unwanted plant growth becomes very important. Therefore, the lakes and ponds present in such residential areas would be useful to detect the unwanted waste.

In this study, the focus is on detection and classification of the plastics and unwanted plants. The dataset is very important for this study, which is an image dataset. There was not any readily available image data of unwanted plastics available online, and therefore, the images were captured from the lakes and ponds in Kanchipuram district. Images of duckweed, plastics, bulrush and leaves of sky lotus were taken. This dataset consisted a total of 200 images, with 50 images belonging to each category. Having this as the dataset, detection and classification were carried out.

The object detection took place for the plastic, duckweed, bulrush and leaves of sky lotus and the performance metrics such as precision and recall was evaluated to test the accuracy of the detections. Precision is used to calculate the number of correctly identified positive identifications. This is done by dividing the sum of true positives and false positives from the number of true positives. True positives are nothing but the number of correct predictions of positive identifications, and false positives are the number of false predictions of positive identifications. Similarly, recall is used to calculate the number of actual positives identified. We can calculate recall by dividing the sum of true positives and false negatives from the total number of true positives. Here false negatives are the number of false predictions of false identification. This performance metrics was evaluated for the trained model, and we obtained an average precision of 0.81 and an average recall of 0.86. The high precision and recall values of our model show that the model produces accurate results. Therefore, the model is producing good performance in detecting the unwanted plants and plastics from lakes and ponds. The evaluation results were visualized with the help of TensorBoard and are available in fig-4 and fig-5. The loss rate is visualized and is available in fig-6. We can see that the loss rate has reduced over the steps as we pass from 1,000 to 4000th step.

The work was originally carried out in the Kanchipuram district of Tamil Nadu.

This paper aims to systematically review male cosmetics consumption (CC) literature and, given the dearth of research about the topic, especially on Western emerging country contexts, to shed light on the paradoxical behaviour concerning male grooming by empirically assessing the impact of some psychological and demographic antecedents of consumption.

Six hypotheses derived from a systematic review of the literature were tested through structured equation modelling (SEM), based on data of 476 Brazilian men.

The results empirically sustain the positive influence of vanity and masculinity in grooming product consumption, with partial mediation of vanity between masculinity and consumption. Counterintuitively, it also confirms the negative influence of income. Age and marital status are not statistically relevant.

Practitioners should invest in marketing actions focusing on low-income men, who showed genuine interest in grooming products, promoting them as powerful tools to improve appearance and social recognition. Additionally, educational and wellness-related campaigns could be effective.

Beyond profitability, economic growth and men’s well-being, the results might affect the whole society through male cosmetics' contribution to blending gender paradigms.

This study focuses on an economically relevant segment that defies the status quo. It is the first to systematically demonstrate the state of the art of male CC knowledge and to illuminate the role of psychological and demographic variables in influencing CC, enriching the literature on appearance, gender and consumption.