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The purpose of this paper is to investigate critical barriers hindering the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) and the opportunities that can be exploited with such an implementation in the construction industry of developing countries. It also devises strategies to avoid critical barriers in implementation and exploit opportunities for a better overall environmental performance of the construction industry.

This research relies upon an extensive literature review; data are collected from 163 professionals and 15 interviews of field professionals from 11 developing countries are conducted. The barriers and opportunities are synthesized through literature review and then data are collected over their significance from the construction professionals through an online survey. To highlight the interconnectedness of the critical barriers and opportunities, a causal loop framework is developed. Furthermore, expert opinion is sought to develop the strategies.

This research integrates information from different sources and provides a holistic view of the current situation of GSCM in developing countries. In total, 34 barriers and 23 opportunities are extracted from literature. The top 4 barriers fall under the “involvement and support” category, whereas the top four opportunities fall under the “environmental” category. Furthermore, the strategies to implement GSCM include suitable policies by top management to incorporate practices such as innovative green design, green procurement, green packaging, green distribution and even end-of-life management, which play a vital role in emission reduction.

This research is a first attempt at evaluating the barriers and opportunities facing GSCM in the construction sector of the developing countries. The findings encourage the stakeholders in adopting GSCM practices by presenting a clear picture of the potential benefits that can be exploited by implementing the proposed strategies to eliminate critical barriers in the construction industry.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an automated industrial robotic system for handling steel castings of various sizes and shapes in a foundry.

The authors first designed a prismatic gripper for pick-and-place operations that incorporates underactuated passive hydraulic contact (PHC) phalanges that enable the gripper to easily adapt to different casting shapes. The authors then optimized the gripper parameters and compared it to an adaptive revolute gripper using two methods: a planar physics based quasistatic simulation that accounts for object dynamics and validation using physical prototypes on a physical robot.

Through simulation, the authors found that an optimized PHC gripper improves grasp performance by 12 per cent when compared to an human-chosen PHC configuration and 60 per cent when compared to the BarrettHand™. Physical testing validated this finding with an improvement of 11 per cent and 280 per cent, respectively.

This paper presents for the first time optimized prismatic grippers which passively adapt to an object shape in grasping tasks.

Aluminium silicon carbide reinforced metal matrix composite (Al/SiC‐MMC) materials are rapidly replacing conventional materials in various automotive, aerospace and other industries. Accordingly, the need for accurate machining of composites has increased enormously. The present work analyzes the machining of Al/SiC composites for surface roughness. An empirical model has been developed to correlate the machining parameters and their interactions with surface roughness. Response surface regression and analysis of variance are used for making the model. The developed model can be effectively used to predict the surface roughness in machining Al/SiC‐MMC composites. The influences of different parameters in machining Al/SiC particulate composites have been analyzed through contour graphs and 3D plots.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the influence of the cathodic polarized potential on the stress corrosion cracking (SCC) susceptibility of X120 steel in a simulated acidic soil solution and the different SCC mechanisms at different cathodic polarized potentials.

The SCC behaviors of X120 pipe steels at various potentials were investigated in a simulated acidic soil solution by slow strain rate tensile tests, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and surface analysis techniques.

The fracture surface of X120 steel stretched in air showed a ductile fracture. Both elongation and tensile strength of X120 steel in the simulated acidic soil solution decreased compared to that obtained in air. A slight cathodic polarization increased the elongation and tensile strength of X120 steel; therefore, the SCC susceptibility was lower at −0.65 V_SCE than that at OCP, anodic dissolution dominates the corrosion process. However, a strong cathodic polarization induced hydrogen embrittlement, decreasing elongation and tensile strength, therefore, the SCC susceptibility was highest at −1.1 V_SCE, and hydrogen embrittlement became the dominant process.

The paper provides an essential insight into the mechanism of pipeline SCC for X120 steel in acidic soil environments.

The environmental performance of organizations has come under public policy limelight since the phenomenal increase of natural resource degradation and industrial waste. Thus, green concepts have been put forward, but the implementation of green practices faces many barriers and challenges. These barriers require attention as organizational practices are negatively affecting the environment leading to global warming and climate change. Therefore, this chapter systematically identifies four internal barriers including inadequate management commitment and support, insufficient technology competence and infrastructure, financial constraints, the uncertainty of economic benefits, and eight sub barriers within an organization concerning green concepts implementation. Moreover, this chapter also identifies four external barriers including lack of stakeholder's interest, inadequate environmental administrative support, scarce academic research, and lack of green collaborative practices, and eight sub barriers outside an organizational context concerning green concept implementation. The barriers in this research were identified by reviewing the existing literature on the topic. This chapter advances the green literature by identifying multiple barriers and challenges to the successful implementation of green concepts in organizations. This is of significance as if these barriers are tackled strategically, it would reduce environmental degradation problems and help make financial gains. Moreover, this research can help managers understand the key barriers to green concept implementation and provide guidance to them when attempting to implement green practices in their organizations. This research would also motivate researchers to extend further investigation on how to overcome such barriers and find out strategies to mitigate the barriers to green concept implementation to effectively address environmental issues.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and model critical barriers to sustainable practices implementation in Indian oil and gas sectors by the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach.

In this paper, through exhaustive literature survey and experts opinions, 14 critical barriers were identified, and the ISM tool, which is a multi-criteria decision-making approach, was used to establish interrelationship among the identified barriers and to determine the key barriers having high driving power.

After analyzing, it was found that six barriers, namely, market competition and uncertainty (B7), shortage of resources (B8), governmental rules and regulations (B1), knowledge and training (B2), financial implications (B3), and management commitment and leadership (B5) were found to have high influencing power. These barriers need the maximum attention and organizations need to overcome these hindrances for the effective implementation of sustainable practices. From the driving and dependence power diagram, two barriers, namely, management commitment and leadership (B5) and knowledge and training (B2) were found to have the highest driving power and two barriers, namely, lack of green initiatives (B9) and lack of corporate social responsibility (B14) were found to have highest dependence power.

The presently developed model is based on the experts’ opinions, which may be biased, influencing the final output of the structural model. The research implications of the developed model are to help managers of the organization in understanding significance of the barriers, to prioritize or eliminate the same for the practical implementation of sustainability.

This is for the first time an attempt has been made to apply the ISM methodology to explore the interdependencies among the critical barriers for Indian oil and gas industries. This paper will guide the managers at various levels of an organization for effective implementation of the sustainable practices.

The purpose of this study is on AISI 409 M ferritic stainless steel (FSS) which is developing a preferred choice for railway carriages, storage tanks and reactors in chemical plants. The intergranular corrosion behavior of welded SS 409 M has been studied in H₂SO₄ solution (0.5 M) with the addition of NH₄SCN (0.01 M) with different heat input. As this study is very important in context of various chemical and petrochemical industries.

The microstructure, mechanical properties and intergranular corrosion properties of AISI 409 M FSS using shielded metal arc welding were investigated. Shielded metal arc welding with different welding current values are used to change the heat input in the joints resulted in the microstructural variations. The microstructure of the welded steel was carefully inspected along the width of the heat-affected zone (HAZ) and the transverse-section of the thin plate.

The width of heat affected zone (3.1,4.2 and 5.8 mm) increases on increasing the welding heat input. Due to change in grain size (grain coarsening) as HAZ increased. From the microstructure, it was observed that the large grain growth which is dendritic and the structure become finer to increase in welding heat input. For lower heat input, the maximum microhardness value (388HV) was observed compared with medium (351 HV) and higher heat input (344 HV), which is caused by a rapid cooling rate and the depleted area of chromium (Cr) and nickel (Ni). The increase in weld heat input decreases tensile strength, i.e. 465 MPa, 440 MPa and 418 MPa for low, medium and high heat input, respectively. This is because of grain coarsening and chromium carbide precipitation in sensitized zone and wider HAZ. The degree of sensitization increases (27.04%, 31.86% and 36.08%) to increase welding heat input because of chromium carbide deposition at the grain boundaries. The results revealed that the higher degree of sensitization and the difference in intergranular corrosion behavior under high heat input are related to the grain growth in the HAZ and the weld zone.

The study is based on intergranular corrosion behavior of welded SS 409 M in H2SO4 solution (0.5 M) with the addition of NH4SCN (0.01 M) with different heat input which is rarely found in literature.

The purpose of this paper is to speak about the production of biodiesel from waste cooking oil which serves as an alternate fuel in the absence of conventional fuels such as diesel and petrol. Though much research work was carried out using non-edible crops such as Jatropha and Pongamia, cooking oil utilized in bulk quantity is discarded as a waste. This is reused again as it contains more of esters that when combined with an alcohol in presence of an enzyme as a catalyst yields triglycerides (biodiesel).

The lipase producing strain Rhizopus oryzae and pure enzyme lipase is immobilized and treated with waste cooking oil for the production of FAME. Reaction parameters such as temperature, time, oil to acyl acceptor ratio and enzyme concentration were considered for purified lipase and in the case of Rhizopus oryzae, pH, olive oil concentration and rpm were considered for optimization studies. The response generated through each run were evaluated and analyzed through the central composited design of response surface methodology and thus the optimized reaction conditions were determined.

A high conversion (94.01 percent) was obtained for methanol when compared to methyl acetate (91.11 percent) and ethyl acetate (90.06 percent) through lipase catalyzed reaction at oil to solvent ratio of 1:3, enzyme concentration of 10 percent at 30°C after 24 h. Similarly, for methanol a high conversion (83.76 percent) was obtained at an optimum pH of 5.5, olive oil concentration 25 g/L and 150 rpm using Rhizopus oryzae when compared to methyl acetate (81.09 percent) and ethyl acetate (80.49 percent).

This research work implies that the acyl acceptors methyl acetate and ethyl acetate which are novel solvents for biodiesel production can also be used to obtain high yields as compared with methanol under optimized conditions.

The game of cricket that originated in Britain thrives on passion and the following it generates in India and other South Asian countries is tremendous. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the apex governing body that controls all cricketing events in the India. Being the richest such body, BCCI is the most powerful national body among similar organizations across countries where cricket is played. The world of cricket saw a sea change with the introduction of the Indian Premier League (IPL) due to its unprecedented commercial success. The case describes the betting scandal that hit IPL, BCCI and its promoter in the middle of 2013. The scandal involved the son-in-law of the President of BCCI. The events following the scandal saw the Supreme Court of India, the highest judicial body in the country, to indict BCCI and its President of serious misgovernance. Set in this backdrop, the case highlights governance issues in the functioning of not for profit organizations such as BCCI. The case provides an opportunity to reflect on and discuss as to how such quasi-public bodies ought to be governed.

Introduction: Historically, the corporate governance (CG) framework was designed primarily to safeguard the economic interests of shareholders, as a result of political and legal interventions, developing into an effective instrument for stakeholders and society in general.

Purpose: The core objectives of the study include: identifying journals/publications responsible for publishing CG studies in India, key CG issues covered by CG researchers, the amount of high-impact CG literature across different time periods, sectors/industries covered by CG researchers and different research instruments (quantitative or qualitative) used in CG studies in India.

Design/methodology: The chapter used a sample of 130 corporate governance studies that fulfil the selection criteria, drawn from the repository of over 100 reputed journals that are either recognised by the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) or indexed by SCOPUS. A systematic literature review has been carried out pertaining to CG issues in India, based on various statistical tools, data, industries, research outlets & citations, etc.

Findings: The results show an overwhelming number of studies have assessed the relationship between CG variables and firm performance, which could be measured through a variety of performance metrics such as ROA and ROI. Apart from empirical analysis, many conceptual studies use repetitive basic statistical tools like descriptive statistics or regression analysis. The chapter offers insights into current achievements and future development.

Originality/value: This bibliometric study is a useful guide for policymakers, corporate leaders, research organisations and management faculty to draw insights from work produced by eminent researchers in GC in India.