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This study aims to explore the essence of the omnichannel in the handloom industry’s development and to identify, analyse and estimate the barriers obstructing the implementation of the omnichannel in the handloom industry of India.

A descriptive literature review and expert opinion are used to identify the barriers obstructing the successful realisation of the omnichannel in the handloom industry of India. Moreover, interpretive structural modeling and the matrix of cross-impact multiplications applied to classification are used to analyse and estimate the impact of these barriers.

This research suggests the implementation of the omnichannel is subjected to several barriers, specifically lack of government support and policies, uncertainty in business contract partners, poor reverse logistics system, etc.

This research explores the contribution of the handloom industry to the socioeconomic development of the rural and semi-urban Indian population. It also explores the need for government support for the survival and growth of the handloom industry. It also explains how omnichannel can support this industry for its survival and its overall development. Furthermore, factors inhibiting the implementation of the omnichannel in the handloom industry are identified and evaluated based on their over impact.

The purpose of the study is to identify the important barriers to the development of medical tourism in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Further, it aims to establish a relationship among these barriers and propose a framework to overcome them.

The study uses a narrative review of the literature to identify barriers to medical tourism development (MDT) in the UAE. Using a graph theory-based Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM) approach to explaining the hierarchy of the identified barriers and interpret the relationship links. The study further uses Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) analysis to validate the finding of the study and derive conclusions.

The study identifies barriers related to MDT as (1) Policies and Regulations (2) Government support (3) Healthcare costs (4) Healthcare Capacity (5) Healthcare Quality (6) Medical Insurance (7) Facilitator and Marketing (8) International Relations (9) Ease of Travel, and (10) Religion, Culture, and Language. The study concludes that Healthcare Cost, Healthcare Quality, and the inapplicability of international medical insurance are the most important barriers. More than fifty percent of barriers fall under the linkage quadrant in MICMAC analysis which reflects that overcoming one barrier helps in overcoming other barriers as well.

This study is one of the most comprehensive accounts of the barriers to MDT in the UAE and strategies to overcome these barriers. To the best of our knowledge, we were not able to find a similar study.

Digital lean implementation can solve the dual problem of stagnating quality and rising costs in healthcare. Although technology adoption in healthcare has increased in the post-COVID world, value unlocking using technology needs a well-thought-out approach to achieve success. This paper provides a prescriptive framework for successfully implementing digital lean in healthcare.

This study uses a mixed-method approach to achieve three research objectives. Whilst it uses a narrative review to identify the enablers, it uses qualitative thematic analysis techniques to categorise them into factors. The study utilises the delphi method for the thematic grouping of the enablers in the broader groups. The study used an advanced ordinal priority approach (OPA) to prioritise these factors. Finally, the study uses concordance analysis to assess the reliability of group decision-making.

The study found that 20 identified enablers are rooted in practice factors, followed by human resource management (HRM) factors, customer factors, leadership factors and technology factors. These results further counter the myth that technology holds the utmost significance in implementing digital lean in healthcare and found the equal importance of factors related to people, customers, leadership and best practices such as benchmarking, continuous improvement and change management.

The study is the first of its kind, providing the prescriptive framework for implementing digital lean in healthcare. The findings are useful for healthcare professionals and health policymakers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the applications of blockchain in vaccine passport solution. The world is facing an unprecedented situation because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries have witnessed sporadic lockdown and travel restrictions and it has marred trade and tourism. As the mass vaccination has started the life is slowly and steadily returning to true normal. Various countries are issuing vaccination passports to manage the immunization information and validate it. To realize vaccine-passport’s true potential, security and privacy concerns should be being taken care of. There is a need for studies to evaluate the emerging technology for the vaccine passport.

This study uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve its objective. This study uses a systematic literature review to analyze the potential of blockchain for vaccine passports. The case study of three different types of organizations implementing blockchain for vaccine passports was analyzed and results were presented. Last but not least, focus group discussion and search of secondary literature was to done to identify scientific, ethical and legal challenges associated with the use of vaccine passports. The method used for calculating the importance score of these challenges was analytical hierarchy process.

This study concludes that blockchain-based solutions are very suitable for vaccine passports and addresses the concern related to interoperability, privacy and security. The case study approach was used to elaborate the use of blockchain in three different options available for the vaccine. Last but not least, this study identifies the challenges faced by vaccine passport programs and suggests measures to overcome them. This study concludes that the ethical challenges associated with vaccine passports are more important and should be preferentially treated.

This study is timely and will be he lpful for policymakers in designing the vaccine passport programs. It gives valuable insight to decision-makers evaluating technologies for the development of vaccine passport programs. This study identifies nine challenges to be tackled to making a vaccine passport program successful.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is not able to find out a review on the use of blockchain technology for vaccine passports, and this study attempts to fill this gap. This study further discusses the cases of organizations that have implemented blockchain technology for vaccine passport programs.

Diabetes is one of the major healthcare challenges in India. The chronic nature of the disease makes the lifetime cost of the treatment exorbitantly high. The medicine cost contributes a major size of expense in diabetes management. To make healthcare available to poorest of the poor, it is imperative to control the rising cost of diabetes treatment. The earlier research works done in this area focuses more on inventory management techniques to control the cost of healthcare. Less interest is shown in the role of better supply chain partnership (SCP) in reducing the cost of procurement of medicine. The purpose of this paper is to develop and use the SCP assessment framework for a diabetes clinic. The approach is generalized enough to be adopted for other similar organization.

This paper adopts self-assessment criteria of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) business excellence model for analysis of SCP in the supply chain of a private diabetes clinic in Varanasi. The paper uses analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method for calculation of weights of criteria.

The EFQM-based framework can be adopted as easy-to-use tool to make an objective assessment of the SCP. The proposed model in the study is a balanced model between enablers and results, which includes multiple assessment dimensions. The supply chain performance score of the diabetes clinic under study was found as the Tool Pusher, which means the effort in direction of SCP is not too good. The organization needs to clearly define the SCP goal and analyze the results to identify the gap areas.

The study is first of its kind and contributes to the literature by providing non-prescriptive and easy-to-use SCP assessment framework, for chronic disease care. The case study approach provides a procedure for the healthcare organization willing to adopt this approach.

Blockchain has been considered a disrupting technology that can add value in various supply chains differently. The provenance framework matches the four blockchain capabilities of traceability, certifiability, trackability and verifiability to the five generic risks, namely, the financial risk, psychological risk, social risk, physical risk and performance risk. This will help in uncording which specific risk gets mitigated by the use of blockchain in a specific supply chain.

This study illustrates four supply chains, namely, pharmaceutical industry, fast moving consumer goods industry, precious metal and automotive industry, and maps the risks associated with them to the provenance framework wherein the applicability of blockchain is mapped. Fuzzy analytical hierarchical processing (F-AHP) is used to rank the risks in the supply chain.

Blockchain capabilities can elevate the provenance knowledge leading to assurance in terms of origin, authenticity, custody and integrity to mitigate the supply chain risks. Present work highlights the thrust areas across various supply chains and identifies the risk priority tasks aligning the contextual supply chain risks. This study has covered five major risk perceptions. This study contributes to the literature on blockchain, customer perceived risk, provenance and supply chain.

This methodology can be adopted to understand and market the application of blockchain in a supply chain. It brings the marketers and marketing perspective to the supply chain. Exhaustive risk perception can be included to get more comprehensive data on mapping the risks along different supply chains. Vertical extensions of this work can be consideration of other supply chains including dairy, fruits and vegetables, electronics and component assemblies to derive the comprehensive framework for mapping risk perceptions and thereby supply chain risk mitigation through blockchain technology.

This linkage between blockchain, perceived risk, applications in the supply chain and a tool to convince the customers about the blockchain applicability has not been discussed in the literature. Adopting the multi-criteria decision-making F-AHP approach, this study attempt to rank the risks and stimulate conversations around a common framework for multiple sectors.

This paper aims to identify and analyze the challenges for the Varanasi handloom industry after the COVID pandemic by considering their impact on different sections of the weavers and subsequently suggest the best possible solution for the same.

A combined approach of expert opinion and in-depth literature reviews are used to identify the challenges, and a multicriteria decision-making tool is used to rank the challenges for the type of weaver.

This research provides an elaborated view of the problems faced by the handloom industry after the COVID pandemic and suggests that the success of the handloom business is subjected to the eradication of a wide number of challenges according to the type of weaver.

The findings of this research will help the policymakers to make and align their policies and strategies for the upliftment of the Varanasi handloom industry efficiently and effectively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first kind of study that focuses on identifying and prioritizing the barriers affecting the success of the Varanasi handloom industry after the COVID pandemic. Furthermore, the uniqueness of this research lies in its ability to study all three independent sections of the handloom industry, having different capabilities and limitations.

The purpose of this study is to solve the problem of healthcare waste management in developing countries. The buildup of medical waste has attracted the attention of all spheres of society due to the expanding population and developing economy. Timely collection and processing of medical waste are extremely important due to its potential hazards. Although the problem of planning medical waste management has been addressed in developed countries, it persists in several developing countries. This research is motivated by an example of a city in India characterized by a dense population, abundant health-care facilities and a lack of planning for managing large medical waste generated daily.

The authors address the problem of designing the network of collection and processing facilities for medical waste and optimizing the vehicle route that collects and transfers the waste between facilities. Due to distinct topographic restrictions in the considered city, the collection and transfer process needs to be conducted in two echelons – from hospitals to collection centers using smaller vehicles and then to the processing facilities using trucks. This work addresses these two problems as a two-echelon location-routing problem.

A mixed-integer programming model is developed to minimize the cost of opening the facilities and transporting medical waste. Several managerial insights are drawn up to assist planners and decision-makers.

This study follows a case study approach to provide a descriptive and prescriptive approach to hospital waste management in the ancient city of Varanasi. The city has witnessed unplanned growth over the years and is densely populated. The health-care facilities in the city have a large catchment area and attract patients from neighboring districts. The situation analysis based on secondary data and unstructured interviews of the stakeholders suggests that the ad hoc approach prevails in present hospital waste management in the city.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) is a widely accepted guideline for performing a systematic review (SR) in clinical journals. It not only helps an author to improve the reporting but also assists reviewers and editors in the critical appraisal of available SR. These tools help in achieving reproducibility in research, a major concern in contemporary academic research. But there is a lack of awareness about the approach among management researchers. This chapter attempts to fill this gap using a narrative review of reliable online resources and peer-reviewed articles to discuss the PRISMA guidelines and recent amendments. The chapter further points out the limitations of PRISMA in the review of management literature and suggests measures to overcome that. This piece of literature introduces a reader to the basics of a systematic review using PRISMA as an instrument. One of the significant contributions is to delineate a seven-step strategy to attain reproducibility in the systematic review. The chapter is useful for researchers and academicians in the field of social science and management.

One of the most hyped concepts in the manufacturing industry is ‘Industry 4.0’. The ‘Industry 4.0’ concept is grabbing the attention of every manufacturing industry across the globe because of its immense applications. This phenomenon is an advanced version of Industry 3.0, combining manufacturing processes and the latest Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The main advantage of this paradigm shift is efficiency and efficacy in the manufacturing process with the help of advanced automated technologies. The concept of ‘Industry 4.0’ is contemporary, so it falls under exploratory study. Therefore, the research methodology is thematic narration grounded on secondary data (online) analysis. In this light, this chapter aims to explain ‘Industry 4.0’ in terms of concepts, theories and models based on the Web of Science (WoS) database. The data include research manuscripts, book chapters, blogs, white papers, news items and proceedings. The study details the latest technologies behind the ‘Industry 4.0’ phenomenon, different business intelligence technologies and their practical implications in some manufacturing industries. This chapter mainly elaborates on Industry 4.0 frameworks designed by (1) PwC (2) IBM (3) Frost & Sullivan.