Purpose: This paper aims to focus on supply chain quality (SCQ) in the hospitality industry in China, and to stress the importance of the synergy of quality management (QM) and supply chain management (SCM). The authors have investigated the relationship among QM practices, SCM practices, SCQ and hotel performance, and examined the effect of contextual variables.Design/methodology/approach: This study mainly uses a questionnaire survey to collect data relating to the research hypotheses. Structural equation model technique is suited for our research purposes, and the LISREL software is implemented to test the conceptual model.Findings: The results show that QM practices and SCM practices are significantly correlated. QM practices/SCM practices are positively related to SCQ, and consequently influence hotel performance. SCQ has the mediating effect between QM/SCM practices and hotel performance. Contextual variables truly play a moderator between QM/SCM practices and SCQ.Research limitations/implications: Hotel managers should look beyond their own hotels into supply chain to manage quality, highlight the importance of interdepartmental or external (i.e. customers or suppliers) connectedness, such as building close and long-term relationships with well-chosen suppliers, encouraging customer involvement and establishing an effective interface for accumulating information regarding customers’ needs and feedback. Hotel managers are also able to realize the influence of contextual variables (e.g. the new normal state of the Chinese economy), and further to gain chance of hotel’s survival.Originality/value: This study focuses on SCQ and tries to fill a gap in the exiting literature on SCQ management in hospitality industry.

Purpose: Despite its crucial role in ensuring food safety, traceability remains underutilized by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a vital component of China’s agricultural supply chain, thereby compromising the integrity of the supply chain traceability system. Therefore, this study sets out to explore the factors influencing SMEs’ adoption of traceability systems and the impact of these factors on SMEs’ intent to adopt such systems. Furthermore, the study presents a model to deepen understanding of system adoption in SMEs and provides a simulation demonstrating the evolutionary trajectory of adoption behavior.Design/methodology/approach: This study considers the pivotal aspects of system adoption in SMEs, aiming to identify the influential factors through a grounded theory-based case study. Concurrently, it seeks to develop a mathematical model for SMEs’ adoption patterns and simulate the evolution of SMEs’ adoption behaviors using the Q-learning algorithm.Findings: The adoption of traceability among SMEs is significantly influenced by factors such as system attributes, SMEs’ capability endowment, environmental factors and policy support and control. However, aspects of the SMEs’ capability endowment, specifically their learning rate and decay rate, have minimal impact on the adoption process. Furthermore, group pressure can expedite the attainment of an equilibrium state, wherein all SMEs adopt the system.Originality/value: This study fills the existing knowledge gap about the adoption of traceability by SMEs in China’s agricultural supply chain. This study represents the pioneer study that identifies the factors influencing SMEs’ adoption and examines the effects of these factors on their traceability adoption, employing a multi-methodological approach that incorporates grounded theory, mathematical modeling and the Q-learning algorithm.

This study explores how factor endowment, digital transformation, and institutional quality influence high-quality tourism economic development through the lens of endogenous growth theory. Using data from 30 Chinese provinces (2010–2019), it applies panel regression and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to identify key drivers. Findings reveal three distinct pathways to high-quality tourism economic development, with digital transformation emerging as a universal driver, even in regions with weak institutional support. Challenging conventional institutional perspectives, we demonstrate that institutional quality’s impact is not uniformly positive but context-dependent. Strong digital capabilities or abundant resources can effectively compensate for institutional weaknesses. The study extends endogenous growth theory to tourism and offers valuable guidance for policymakers to optimize resource allocation, accelerate digital transformation, strengthen institutional frameworks, and promote region-specific tourism strategies while fostering regional integration to ensure sustainable and high-quality tourism economic development.

In the supply chain context, risk events can accumulate, amplify, and mutate as they spread through the supply chain network structure. This can lead to significant losses for supply chains and global businesses. Therefore, monitoring supply chain risk is crucial to ensure the smooth operation of the supply chain. To address this issue, our study focuses on the DongNan automobile manufacturing supply chain and examines the monitoring of lead time risk. We use the graphic evaluation and review technique (GERT) to characterize the topology of the risk transmission network in the supply chain and construct a supply chain risk transmission model. We then use the change-point control chart to monitor risk factors, specifically delayed lead time. Our study includes a case study that demonstrates the effectiveness of the change-point control chart in signaling and accurately estimating the change point and out-of-control stage in terms of performance indices. We also investigate the impact of mis-specified risk function parameters on the chart's performance, finding that it remains relatively stable. Overall, the change-point control chart is an effective tool for monitoring supply chain risk, and its monitoring effect is relatively stable.