The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and firm performance in the manufacturing sector in Asian emerging economies (AEE) based on empirical evidence. Through a systematic literature review, we identified 50 articles that surveyed 11,127 manufacturing companies in the AEE and were published between 1996 and 2015. Subsequently, a conceptual framework was developed and analyzed through a meta-analysis of 130 effects from 25,680 effect sizes. The findings revealed that the GSCM practices lead to better performance in four aspects: economic, environmental, operational, and social performance. Moreover, the results indicate that industry type, firm size, ISO certification, and export orientation moderate several of the GSCM practice-performance relationships. Moreover, the findings of this research help managers and policy makers to have more confidence in the adoption of GSCM practices to improve firm performance. Such results also help researchers to better channel their efforts in studying the GSCM practices in AEE. In addition, as meta-analysis has not been widely used in the supply chain management literature, our study is an important step in maturing the academic field by adopting this technique for confirming GSCM practice-performance relationships in the manufacturing sector of AEE

Sustainability considerations in manufacturing scheduling, which is traditionally influenced by service oriented performance metrics, have rarely been adopted in the literature. This paper aims to address this gap by incorporating energy consumption as an explicit criterion in shop floor scheduling. Leveraging the variable speed of machining operations leading to different energy consumption levels, we explore the potential for energy saving in manufacturing. We analyze the trade-off between minimizing makespan, a measure of service level and total energy consumption, an indicator for environmental sustainability of a two-machine sequence dependent permutation flowshop. We develop a mixed integer linear multi-objective optimization model to find the Pareto frontier comprised of makespan and total energy consumption. To cope with combinatorial complexity, we also develop a constructive heuristic for fast trade-off analysis between makespan and energy consumption. We define lower bounds for the two objectives under some non-restrictive conditions and compare the performance of the constructive heuristic with CPLEX through design of experiments. The lower bounds that we develop are valid under realistic assumptions since they are conditional on speed factors. The Pareto frontier includes solutions ranging from expedited, energy intensive schedules to prolonged, energy efficient schedules. It can serve as a visual aid for production and sales planners to consider energy consumption explicitly in making quick decisions while negotiating with customers on due dates. We provide managerial insights by analyzing the areas along the Pareto frontier where energy saving can be justified at the expense of reduced service level and vice versa

Purpose: Food waste occurs in every stage of the supply chain, but the value-added lost to waste is the highest when consumers waste food. The purpose of this paper is to understand the food waste behaviour of consumers to support policies for minimising food waste. Design/methodology/approach: Using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical lens, the authors design a questionnaire that incorporates contextual factors to explain food waste behaviour. The authors test two models: base (four constructs of TPB) and extended (four constructs of TPB plus six contextual factors). The authors build partial least squares structural equation models to test the hypotheses. Findings: The data confirm significant relationships between food waste and contextual factors such as motives, financial attitudes, planning routines, food surplus, social relationships and Ramadan. Research limitations/implications: The data comes from an agriculturally resource-constrained country: Qatar. Practical implications: Food waste originating from various causes means more food should flow through the supply chains to reach consumers’ homes. Contextual factors identified in this work increase the explanatory power of the base model by 75 per cent. Social implications: Changing eating habits during certain periods of the year and food surplus have a strong impact on food waste behaviour. Originality/value: A country is considered to be food secure if it can provide its citizens with stable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. The findings and conclusions inform and impact upon the development of food waste and food security policies.

Purpose: Why do managers redesign global supply chains in a particular manner when faced with compounding geopolitical disruptions? In answering this research question, this study identifies a constrained system of reasoning (decision-making logic) employed by managers when they redesign their supply chains in situations of heightened uncertainty.Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted 40 elite interviews with senior supply chain executives in 28 companies across nine industries from November 2019 to June 2020, when the UK was preparing to leave the European Union, the US–China trade war was escalating, and Covid-19 was spreading rapidly around the globe.Findings: When redesigning global supply chains, the authors find that managerial decision-making logic is constrained by three distinct environmental ecosystem conditions: (1) the perceived intensity of institutional pressures; (2) the relative mobility of suppliers and supply chain assets; and (3) the perceived severity of the potential disruption risk. Intense government pressure and persistent geopolitical risk tend to impact firms in the same industry, resulting in similar approaches to decision-making regarding supply chain design. However, where suppliers are relatively immobile and supply chain assets are relatively fixed, a dominant logic is consistently present.Originality/value: Building on an institutional logics perspective, this study finds that managerial decision-making under heightened uncertainty is not solely guided by institutional pressures but also by perceptions of the severity of risk related to potential supply chain disruption and the immobility of supply chain assets. These findings support the theoretical development of a novel construct that the authors term ‘supply chain logics’. Finally, this study provides a decision-making framework for Senior Executives competing in an increasingly complex and unstable business environment.

Purpose: This paper examines how firms of different sizes formulate and implement strategies to achieve fit with an external environment disrupted by a geopolitical event. The context of the study is the pharmaceutical industry and how it managed the supply chain uncertainty created by the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union, or Brexit.Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected longitudinally from the pro-Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, until the UK’s departure from the EU on 31 January 2020. Twenty-seven interviews were conducted in the pharmaceutical sector, including nineteen interviews with senior managers at eight case companies and eight interviews with experts working for trade associations and standards institutes. The interview findings were triangulated with Brexit policy and strategy documentation.Findings: When formulating strategy, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) used worst case assumptions, while large firms, and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) gathered knowledge as part of a “wait-and-see” strategy, allowing them to reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty. Firms then implemented reactive and/or proactive strategies to mitigate supply chain risks.Originality/value: The study elaborates on strategic contingency theory by identifying two important conditions for achieving strategic fit: first, companies deploy intangible resources, such as management time, to gather information and reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty. Second, companies deploy tangible resources (supply chain redundancies, new supply chain assets) to lessen the negative outcomes of supply chain risks. Managers are provided with an empirical framework for mitigating supply chain uncertainty and risk originating from geopolitical disruptions.