Search Results (212)

The rapid expansion of new energy vehicles (NEVs) has intensified concerns over power battery safety, making consumer safety preferences an important driver of firms’ innovation and supply chain decisions. From the perspective of structural symmetry and structural asymmetry in supply chains, this study examines how consumer safety preferences shape innovation incentives and supply mode selection in the power battery supply chain. A game-theoretic framework is developed to analyze four representative supply modes characterized by different degrees of decision power and structural asymmetry, including in-house production, sourcing from a dominant supplier, sourcing from a non-dominant supplier, and equity-based cooperation. Stackelberg and Nash game models are employed to derive equilibrium pricing, innovation effort, recycling decisions, and profit allocation outcomes. Numerical simulations further explore the interaction effects between consumer safety preferences and key cost factors. The results show that stronger consumer safety preferences consistently promote battery innovation and enhance overall supply chain profitability, while the distribution of innovation gains depends critically on the underlying supply structure. Supply mode selection exhibits threshold effects as safety preferences increase, and innovation and recycling decisions respond asymmetrically. Moreover, innovation costs significantly moderate the impact of safety preferences on innovation effort, with the strength of this interaction varying across symmetric and asymmetric supply modes. These findings highlight the role of structural asymmetry in shaping innovation incentives and provide insights for firms and policymakers seeking to design effective supply chain governance mechanisms under rising safety concerns. Full article

In this study, we develop a game-theoretic optimization framework to analyze competing vessels’ technology choices between shore power (SP) and low-sulfur fuel oil (LSFO) within a maritime supply chain which is regulated by a cap-and-trade mechanism. Using a Stackelberg game approach, we construct two models—one port-led and the other vessel-led—to derive closed-form equilibrium for pricing, service quantities, profits, emissions, and social welfare. The results reveal three key findings. First, the leader in either Stackelberg structure always achieves higher profits, while total supply chain profits remain identical across power structures. Second, at low carbon prices, LSFO-equipped vessels provide more services and earn higher profits due to cost advantages. As the carbon price rises—which directly incentivizes emission reduction and accelerates maritime decarbonization—SP becomes more attractive and eventually dominates in profitability despite higher initial investment. Notably, although SP has lower unit emissions, its total emissions may surpass those of LSFO at certain carbon-price thresholds because the SP-equipped vessel optimally expands output. Third, intensified competition reduces service quantities, profits, and emissions, with a more substantial reduction effect on LSFO vessels. Overall, our results provide mathematically grounded insights for optimizing low-carbon technology adoption in maritime transport and offer actionable policy implications for carbon pricing that balance environmental objectives and supply chain efficiency. This research contributes specifically to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure). Full article

Persistent inflation has intensified uncertainty in the construction industry, particularly in volatile economies. Inflation-driven risks affecting Turkish residential projects are examined in this study, focusing on rising costs, fluctuating labor and material prices, and associated risks. The power-based linguistic hedges were used to quantify dominant severity levels under uncertainty based on descriptive statistics and standard deviation thresholds. Results indicate that inflation mostly impacts projects through budget overruns and wage inflation, which exhibit the highest severity and crisis-level risk behaviors. A number of factors drive material price volatility, particularly macroeconomic instability, currency depreciation, and supply-chain disruptions. There is a sustained pressure on contractor profitability due to wage inflation. In contrast, inflation-related effects on schedule, quality, safety, and contractual disputes are secondary and context-dependent. The findings indicate a structural shift in the risk profile of Turkish residential construction, indicating a need for inflation-resilient cost management, adaptive contracting, and proactive labor planning. Full article

The growing prevalence of severe and unpredictable disruptions has prompted logistics firms to restructure their supply chain strategies to ensure long-term sustainability. Therefore, this study developed a research framework with factors including supply chain innovation, supply chain empowerment, risk management capability, supply chain collaboration, and supply chain disruption, and investigated supply chain robustness. Moreover, this study conceptualized supportive HR practices as a moderating factor between supply chain robustness and supply chain velocity, highlighting their role in supporting sustainable supply chain performance. The study design is grounded in a quantitative research approach. Sample size was estimated using a priori power analysis. A research survey was administered using a purposive sampling approach. Overall, 253 valid responses were retrieved during the months of April and May 2024. These numerical responses were further analyzed with a structural equation modeling approach. The structural assessment indicated that supply chain innovation, risk management capability, supply chain disruption, supply chain empowerment, and supply chain collaboration explained 77.7% of the variance in supply chain robustness. Practically, this study proposes that supply chain innovation, risk management capability, supply chain disruption, and supply chain empowerment are key factors that boost supply chain robustness, contribute to sustainable operational performance, and hence need managerial attention. Similarly, this study suggests that managers could achieve supply chain velocity through supportive HR practices, which must be considered while developing sustainable supply chain strategies. This research is unique as it develops an integrated research model to investigate factors that impact supply chain robustness and supply chain velocity from a sustainability-oriented perspective. Full article

The high organizational complexity of the Global Coffee Supply Chain (GCSC) poses significant challenges in terms of governance and sustainability, such as asymmetric access to information, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and overproduction, as well as high price volatility and social issues such as workers’ rights and the unequal distribution of value along the supply chain. In this context, therefore, the coffee sector could benefit from the adoption of advanced traceability systems such as blockchain, whose implications in the GCSC remain poorly systematized in the literature. Therefore, this research presented a systematic literature review on the application of BC in the GCSC to analyze its efficiency, traceability, and sustainability implications, as well as identifying the main factors that hinder its full implementation. The review included 42 peer-reviewed studies indexed in Scopus, and the results showed that, in terms of efficiency, BC adoption can help improve coordination and reduce information asymmetries along the supply chain, but only in specific contexts, as they depend largely on organizational and infrastructural conditions, rather than on the technical characteristics of the technology. With regard to sustainability, the results sometimes appear contradictory, reflecting profound differences in context. The review highlighted that the main obstacles to the effective adoption of BC in the GCSC stem from a combination of constraints, including centralized governance structures, power asymmetries in data management, infrastructure deficiencies in production contexts, and digital exclusion dynamics. Overall, the study highlighted that BC in the coffee sector cannot be considered a stand-alone solution but should be interpreted as a socio-technical infrastructure whose effectiveness depends on many interconnected factors. Full article

Critical mineral supply chains underpin electric mobility, power electronics, clean hydrogen, and advanced manufacturing. Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), the relational view, and dynamic capabilities, we conceptualize advantage not as ownership of ore bodies but as orchestration of multi-tier resource systems: upstream access, midstream processing know-how, standards and permits, and durable inter-organizational ties. In a world of high concentration at key stages (refining, separation, engineered materials), full “decoupling” is economically costly and technologically constraining. We argue for structured cooperation among the United States, European Union, China, and other producers and consumers, combined with selective domestic capability building for bona fide security needs. Methodologically, we conduct a structured conceptual synthesis integrating RBV, relational view, dynamic capabilities, and network-of-network research, combined with a structured comparative policy analysis of U.S./EU/Chinese instruments anchored in official documents. We operationalize the argument via technology–material dependency maps that identify midstream bottlenecks and the policy/standard levers most likely to expand qualified, compliant capacity. Full article

Background: In an increasingly volatile global business environment, supply chain resilience has become a strategic imperative, particularly for firms operating in developing economies. Guided by Dynamic Capabilities Theory (DCT), this study examines how AI-powered tools foster an innovation culture comprising communication, creativity, and learning, and how these dimensions enhance supply chain resilience measured through flexibility, efficiency, and velocity. Methods: A quantitative research design was employed using survey data collected from 270 supply chain and operations managers in Jordanian manufacturing firms. Twelve direct hypotheses were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. Results: The findings indicate that AI-powered tools significantly influence communication, creativity, and learning. Communication and creativity positively affect all three dimensions of supply chain resilience. Learning significantly improves efficiency but shows no significant effect on flexibility or velocity, indicating that learning is mainly utilized for process improvement rather than rapid adaptation. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that AI adoption alone is insufficient to build resilient supply chains unless supported by innovation-oriented cultural capabilities. The findings extend DCT by clarifying the differentiated role of learning in resilience building and provide actionable guidance for managers seeking to align AI investments with cultural development in resource-constrained manufacturing contexts and long-term competitive advantage. Full article

Amid China’s “Manufacturing Power” push, full-chain digital restructuring in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area remains hampered by mismatches among technology, organization, and environment. We therefore explored how shop floor actors perceive and shape this Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) interplay. Semi-structured interviews with frontline operators, maintainers, and supply chain staff from GBA manufacturers were inductively coded, yielding 36 concepts, 10 categories, and 3 core TOE aggregates that were woven into a grounded model. The analysis shows that industrial internet platforms and smart equipment only create value when matched by flexible shop floor structures, cross-department data protocols, and skilled teams; otherwise, data silos, simulation–production deviations, and “buy-but-not-build” procurement stall adoption. Market pressure for customized, short-lead-time products and divergent municipal pilot policies further intensify the TOE balancing act, particularly for SMEs with weak absorptive capacity. By revealing a grassroots “technology-driven → organization-adapted → environment-adjusted” spiral that is moderated by frontline feedback, the study extends the TOE framework to micro-level, regional innovation theory and offers policy–practice levers for differentiated, cross-city manufacturing upgrading. Full article

With the acceleration of digital transformation, open-source software has become a fundamental component of modern smart grids and other critical infrastructures. However, the complex dependency structures of open-source ecosystems and the continuous emergence of vulnerabilities pose substantial challenges to software supply chain security. In power information networks and cyber–physical control systems, vulnerabilities in open-source components integrated into Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Energy Management System (EMS), and Distribution Management System (DMS) platforms and distributed energy controllers may propagate along the supply chain, threatening system security and operational stability. In such application scenarios, large language models (LLMs) often suffer from limited semantic accuracy when handling domain-specific security terminology, as well as deployment inefficiencies that hinder their practical adoption in critical infrastructure environments. To address these issues, this paper proposes KD-SecBERT, a domain-specific semantic bidirectional encoder optimized through multi-level knowledge distillation for open-source software supply chain security in smart grid applications. The proposed framework constructs a hierarchical multi-teacher ensemble that integrates general language understanding, cybersecurity-domain knowledge, and code semantic analysis, together with a lightweight student architecture based on depthwise separable convolutions and multi-head self-attention. In addition, a dynamic, multi-dimensional distillation strategy is introduced to jointly perform layer-wise representation alignment, ensemble knowledge fusion, and task-oriented optimization under a progressive curriculum learning scheme. Extensive experiments conducted on a multi-source dataset comprising National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) entries, security-related GitHub code, and Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) test cases show that KD-SecBERT achieves an accuracy of 91.3%, a recall of 90.6%, and an F1-score of 89.2% on vulnerability classification tasks, indicating strong robustness in recognizing both common and low-frequency security semantics. These results demonstrate that KD-SecBERT provides an effective and practical solution for semantic analysis and software supply chain risk assessment in smart grids and other critical-infrastructure environments. Full article

Against the backdrop of China’s economic transformation and the transition towards sustainable industrial systems, optimizing ownership structures to enhance the resilience and bargaining power of manufacturing suppliers has become crucial for building sustainable supply chains. This study empirically examines the impact of ownership concentration on supplier bargaining power using data from manufacturing companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share markets from 2008 to 2022, integrating insights from principal-agent theory and industrial dynamics within a sustainability-oriented framework. The findings reveal: (1) Ownership concentration significantly strengthens the bargaining power of supplier enterprises, contributing to more stable and equitable supply chain relationships. (2) R&D investment plays a partial mediating role between ownership concentration and supplier bargaining power, suggesting that innovation efforts—often aligned with green and sustainable technologies—can reshape dependency dynamics. (3) Industry competitiveness negatively moderates the relationship between ownership concentration and supplier bargaining power, indicating that intense competition may undermine the governance advantages of concentrated ownership in sustainable value creation. (4) Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of ownership concentration is more pronounced in central and western regions, state-owned enterprises, and large firms, highlighting contextual factors in achieving sustainable supply chain governance. Full article

Background: This study examines how AI-driven metaverse integration enhances sustainable manufacturing performance in Jordan’s industrial sector, with particular emphasis on the mediating role of digital supply chain resilience. Grounded in resource orchestration theory (ROT), the research explains how digital twin systems, predictive AI analytics, and virtual collaboration technologies jointly support sustainability through improved supply chain agility, responsiveness, and continuity. Methods: Data were collected from 500 industrial managers, of which 415 valid responses were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Results: The findings indicate that AI-powered metaverse dimensions have significant and positive effects on sustainable manufacturing performance, both directly and indirectly through digital supply chain resilience. The mediation analysis confirms that resilience serves as a critical mechanism linking metaverse-based technology adoption to sustainability outcomes. Conclusions: The study highlights the strategic importance of integrating advanced digital and virtual technologies into supply chains to address sustainability challenges, particularly in emerging economies such as Jordan. By extending resource orchestration theory to the metaverse context, this research contributes to theory development and offers practical insights for industrial managers seeking to leverage digital transformation as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Full article

Origin warehouses, positioned at the critical “first mile” of the agri-food supply chain, profoundly influence supply chain power structures and profit allocation, as well as supply chain stability and sustainable development. To explore the role of origin warehouses in the agri-food supply chain, this study develops a three-level game model comprising a “planter–origin warehouse operator–seller” framework. Notably, this study conceptualizes the dual-functional “origin warehouse” as observed in practice, proposing two theoretical modes: the Logistics Center (LC) and the Supply Chain Center (SCC). By treating quality level, service level, and selling price decisions as endogenous variables, this study further reveals the interconnected decision-making mechanisms under different operational modes. Overall, the LC mode performs better in quality-driven markets, generating higher system profits and greater social welfare, whereas the SCC mode is superior when consumers are more price-sensitive or place greater value on service. Based on these findings, this study provides decision-making guidance for origin warehouse operators aiming to select the optimal mode under varying market conditions and proposes targeted coordination strategies to promote the high-quality development and economic sustainability of the agri-food supply chain. Full article

Many manufacturers operate dual-channel supply chains, selling through both direct online and reselling channels, with market shares that are generally asymmetric. At the same time, consumers increasingly demand trustworthy traceability information. Although traceability systems based on blockchain technology (TSBT) can meet this demand, they require substantial investment, making large manufacturers or powerful retailers more likely to lead TSBT adoption. This paper investigates how different leadership structures (manufacturer leadership vs. retailer leadership) and asymmetric market shares influence blockchain adoption strategies. This study reveals that under retailer leadership, blockchain adoption occurs once consumer preference for blockchain-based traceability information (hereafter, consumer preference) in the reselling channel exceeds a threshold, increasing profits for both supply chain members. Under manufacturer leadership, adoption depends on consumer preference in the reselling channel, the initial market share of the reselling channel, and the intensity of channel competition, generally benefiting the manufacturer but potentially harming the retailer. Comparing equilibrium results across leadership structures reveals that blockchain is more likely to be adopted under manufacturer leadership, which may yield higher profits for both members. Full article

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen of significant concern. While it typically causes mild, self-limiting gastroenteritis, it poses a much higher threat to immunocompromised individuals and pregnant women, where it may lead to miscarriage. Numerous outbreaks have been linked to ready-to-eat foods. Although heat treatment is commonly used for microbial decontamination, it is unsuitable for fresh produce such as fruits and vegetables. Other physical (e.g., UV, gamma irradiation) and chemical (e.g., NaOCl, ozone) methods can compromise sensory qualities or face limited consumer acceptance. Photodynamic Inactivation (PDI) has emerged as a promising alternative, particularly when using natural photosensitizers. Because PDI efficacy depends on photosensitizer diffusion, there is a need to further explore how different and complex fruit surface structures may influence its performance. Three fruit models were therefore selected to represent distinct surface textures and were evaluated in situ: apples (smooth), strawberries (irregular), and kiwis (fuzzy and hairy surface). The influence of contamination order was also evaluated, as this factor is highly relevant to real-world supply-chain scenarios but has been largely overlooked in prior research. Additionally, the study investigated how the order of contamination affected the decontamination outcome. Sodium-magnesium-chlorophyllin (Na-Mg-Chl), an approved food additive (E140), was used as photosensitizer. Fruits were cut into 1 cm² squares and inoculated with L. monocytogenes. A 100 µM Na-Mg-Chl solution was applied either before or after bacterial inoculation. All samples were then illuminated using a 395 nm LED (radiant exposure 15 J/cm²). When L. monocytogenes was applied first, followed by the addition of Na-Mg-Chl, a 5.96 log reduction was observed in apples, a 5.71 log reduction in strawberries, and a 6.02 log reduction in kiwis. Conversely, when Na-Mg-Chl was applied prior to bacterial deposition, apples showed a 5.61 log reduction, strawberries demonstrated a 6.34 log reduction, and kiwis achieved the highest inactivation, at 6.74 log units. These results indicate that PDI consistently achieved substantial bacterial reductions across all fruit types, regardless of surface characteristics or application order. This supports PDI as a powerful method for fruit surface decontamination, reducing public health risks and economic losses while preserving product quality and consumer confidence. Full article

Background: The extraordinary disturbances faced by the hotel industry, ranging from worldwide health problems to political instability and climate change, have highlighted the insistent need for more resilient and agile supply chain (SC) systems. This study explored how artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities can generate competitive advantage (CA) through supply chain agility (SCA) and supply chain resilience (SCR) as mediators and competitive pressure (CP) as a moderator. Methods: Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) framework, we suggested and empirically tested the study model. Using data collected from 432 hotel managers and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (SEM-PLS). Results: the results reveal that AI-driven SC can significantly strengthen SCA and SCR. Furthermore, SCA and SCR can act as powerful mediators, and CP can strengthen the tested relationships (the links from AI adoption and CA) as a moderator. Conclusions: The study made several theoretical and practical contributions by integrating AI capabilities into SCR and SCA frameworks in the hotel and tourism context, and by providing practical evidence for professionals aiming to leverage AI-driven SC tools to navigate uncertainty and create sustainable CA. Full article