SUNIL K LUTHRA - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by SUNIL K LUTHRA

Operations Management Research, 2021

This study attempts to present a contribution of Blockchain Technology (BC-T) in managing disrupt... more This study attempts to present a contribution of Blockchain Technology (BC-T) in managing disruptions, and risk caused by the COVID-19 outbreaks and extending profound support in developing resilient Food Supply Chains (FSCs). The effects of the pandemic can be witnessed on global supply chains in their demand & supply side disruptions and in the changing patterns of consumer buying in the food industry. The assessment of the disruptive factors is required to explore the present issues and promising resilient strategies to impart robustness to the FSCs for mitigating disruptions in the future. An integrated approach of Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Weighted Assessment Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) is employed to assess the factors related to sourcing, lean, workforce, and flexibility, as well as evaluation of the BC-T enabled FSCs resilient strategies that mitigate the effect of disruption during the pandemic. The findings exhibit that 'Sourcing related' is the most affecting disruptive factor causing distress in the FSCs and 'flexibility resilient strategy' is the most relevant resilient strategy for BC-T enabled FSCs. The BC-T acts as a catalyst in enhancing the flexibility, traceability, and shorter supply chain network structure that may help the FSCs to mitigate risk and disruption in the pandemic situation. The BC-T helps the FSCs to control the demand and supply shocks, and supports the organization with real-time monitoring and sharing information. This study provides insights to the decision-makers, managers, and other stakeholders to take significant decisions during an emergency.

Barriers to implement green supply chain management in automobile industry using interpretive str... more Barriers to implement green supply chain management in automobile industry using interpretive structural modeling

Digital financial services (DFS) can expand the delivery of basic financial services to the poor ... more Digital financial services (DFS) can expand the delivery of basic financial services to the poor through innovative technologies like mobile-phone-enabled solutions, electronic money models and digital payment platforms. By 2020, it is estimated that the mobile will have the potential to serve about 250 million people for financial services in India. Yet there remains a long way for India to go in digital finance. Realizing this, the objectives of the current research are to recognize various key challenges of DFS, to find contextual relationships between various challenges and to develop a hierarchy of challenges to promote DFS in India. The findings revealed 45 contextual relationships among the key challenges using experts' inputs. Implementing interpretive structural modelling (ISM) indicated "Lack of literacy/digital literacy (C4)" and "Universal unavailability of Internet (C8)" as the key driving challenges coming on the way of using DFS.

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021

Ever-changing conditions and emerging new challenges affect the ability of the healthcare sector ... more Ever-changing conditions and emerging new challenges affect the ability of the healthcare sector to survive with the current system, and to maintain its processes effectively. In the healthcare sector, the conservation of the natural resources is being obstructed by insufficient infrastructure for managing residual waste resulting from single-use medical materials, increased energy use, and its environmental burden. In this context, circularity and sustainability concepts have become essential in healthcare to meliorate the sector’s negative impacts on the environment. The main aim of this study is to identify the barriers related to circular economy (CE) in the healthcare sector, apply big data analytics in healthcare, and provide solutions to these barriers. The contribution of this research is the detailed examination of the current healthcare literature about CE adaptation, and a proposal for a big data-enabled solutions framework to barriers to circularity, using fuzzy best-wor...

Journal of Cleaner Production, 2020

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

Journal of Cleaner Production, 2021

The resilience of Agri-Food Supply Chain (AFSC) due to recent epidemics outbreak (COVID-19, SARS-... more The resilience of Agri-Food Supply Chain (AFSC) due to recent epidemics outbreak (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) has not been matching with, globalisation of AFSC, and complicated networking system of AFSC and thus poses huge global sustainable issues. Thus, the aim of this research is the modelling of the sustainable AFSC secure mechanism managed through different emerging application of Internet of Things (IoT) technology (Blockchain, Robotics, Big data analysis and Cloud computing). Competitive Supply Chain Management (SCM) needs cautious incorporation of multi- tiers suppliers, specifically during dealing with globalised sustainability issues. Firms have been advancing towards their multi suppliers for driving social and environments and economical practices. This paper also studies the interrelationship and their cause and effect magnitude among various enablers contributing to IoT based food secure model. The methodology used in the paper is Interpretative Structural Modelling (ISM) fo...

Journal of Cleaner Production, 2019

Across the globe, the awareness for environmental degradation and its harmful effects is rapidly ... more Across the globe, the awareness for environmental degradation and its harmful effects is rapidly growing. The whole world has come together to work in the direction to protect the environment. Consumers are increasingly becoming cautious towards the impact of their consumption pattern on environment and organisations can attain a competitive edge by leveraging this cautiousness by offering them green products/brands. However, it is importance for the marketers to understand that how increasing levels of sustainability awareness impacts other factors which explain pro-environmental behaviour of customers. To fill the existing gap in the current literature in this regard, the current study aims to build a structural model which includes social and environmental sustainability awareness in measuring customer altruism, buying intention, loyalty and customer evangelism. The theoretical model extends the existing framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and explores the decision-making framework regarding ethical behaviour. Through existing literature review and expert input, the indicators (variables) for each construct were recognised. After that, data was collected from 331 respondents through a structurally designed questionnaire; the hypothetical model was test using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) technique. The findings of the study indicate that sustainability awareness positively influence the consumer altruism which in turn enhances the consumer purchase intention, green brand loyalty and green brand evangelism and altruism can and can bridge value-action gap for green brands. Current analysis supports the view that there are significant positive associations among the identified constructs.

International Journal of Production Research, 2019

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and sustainability are recent buzzwords in manufacturing environments. Howeve... more Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and sustainability are recent buzzwords in manufacturing environments. However, the connection between these two concepts is less explored in the literature. In the current business context, the future generation of manufacturing systems is greatly influenced by the rapid advancement of information technology. Therefore, this study aims to examine the drivers of I4.0 to diffuse sustainability in Supply Chains (SCs). This research identifies the most relevant drivers through the literature and discusses them with area experts. Afterwards, an empirical analysis is conducted to validate the key drivers. Finally, the Grey based DEMATEL method is employed to examine the influential strength of the identified drivers and to build an interrelationship diagram. 'Government supportive policies' and 'Collaboration and transparency among supply chain members' were reported as highly significant drivers of I4.0. This study is an initial effort that investigates the key drivers of I4.0 to achieve high triple bottom line (ecological-economic-social) gains in SCs by taking an example from an emerging economy, i.e. India. This study may help managers, practitioners and policy makers interested in I4.0 applications to diffuse sustainability in SCs.

Internet Research, 2019

Purpose The wider use of Internet of Things (IoT) makes it possible to create smart cities. The p... more Purpose The wider use of Internet of Things (IoT) makes it possible to create smart cities. The purpose of this paper is to identify key IoT challenges and understand the relationship between these challenges to support the development of smart cities. Design/methodology/approach Challenges were identified using literature review, and prioritised and elaborated by experts. The contextual interactions between the identified challenges and their importance were determined using Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM). To interrelate the identified challenges and promote IoT in the context of smart cities, the dynamics of interactions of these challenges were analysed using an integrated Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliqués à un Classement (MICMAC)-ISM approach. MICMAC is a structured approach to categorise variables according to their driving power and dependence. Findings Security and privacy, business models, data quality, scalability, complexity and governance were fo...

Information Technology & People, 2019

Purpose Digital financial services (DFS) have substantial prospect to offer a number of reasonabl... more Purpose Digital financial services (DFS) have substantial prospect to offer a number of reasonable, appropriate and secure banking services to the underprivileged in developing countries through pioneering technologies such as mobile phone based solutions, digital platforms and electronic money models. DFS allow unbanked people to obtain access to financial services through digital technologies. However, DFS face tough challenges of adoption. Realising this, the purpose of this paper is to identify such challenges and develop a framework. Design/methodology/approach The authors developed a framework of challenges by utilising interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and fuzzy MICMAC approach. The authors explored 18 such unique set of challenges culled from the literature and further gathered data from two sets of expert professionals. In the first phase, the authors gathered data from 29 professionals followed by 18 professionals in the second phase. All were pursuing Executive MBA ...

Production Planning & Control, 2019

Annals of Operations Research, 2018

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 2018

Purpose Consumers have the multiple options to choose their products and services, which have a s... more Purpose Consumers have the multiple options to choose their products and services, which have a significant impact on the pattern of consumer decision making in digital market and further increases the challenges for the service providers to predict their buying pattern. In this sense, the purpose of this paper is to propose a structural hierarchy model for analyzing the changing pattern of consumer decision making in digital market by taking an Indian context. Design/methodology/approach To accomplish the objectives, the research is conducted in two phases. An extensive literature review is performed in the first phase to list the factors related to the changing pattern of consumer decision making in digital market and then fuzzy Delphi method is applied to finalize the factors. In the second phase, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is employed to find the priority weights of finalized factors. The fuzzy set theory allows capturing the vagueness in the data. Findings The findi...

Information Systems Frontiers, 2018

Smart city development is gaining considerable recognition in the systematic literature and inter... more Smart city development is gaining considerable recognition in the systematic literature and international policies throughout the world. The study aims to identify the key barriers of smart cities from a review of existing literature and views of experts in this area. This work further makes an attempt on the prioritisation of barriers to recognise the most important barrier category and ranking of specific barriers within the categories to the development of smart cities in India. Through the existing literature, this work explored 31 barriers of smart cities development and divided them into six categories. This research work employed fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique to prioritise the selected barriers. Findings reveal that 'Governance' is documented as the most significant category of barriers for smart city development followed by 'Economic; 'Technology'; 'Social'; 'Environmental' and 'Legal and Ethical'. In this work, authors also performed sensitivity analysis to validate the findings of study. This research is useful to the government and policymakers for eradicating the potential interferences in smart city development initiatives in developing countries like India.

International Journal of Production Research, 2018

According to the aim and scope of the journal, my main suggestion is to highlight the importance ... more According to the aim and scope of the journal, my main suggestion is to highlight the importance of the topic in the field of production research. My minor suggestions are: • Improve the quality of figures 3 and 4 The importance of the topic in the field of production research is highlighted in the Abstract, Introduction, Contributions, and Conclusions section of the revised paper. Suggested changes have been made.

Management Decision, 2018

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of stakeholder pressures on firm’s cir... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of stakeholder pressures on firm’s circular economy (CE) initiatives. The organizational responses are quite heterogeneous even when the firms face similar pressure. The authors have tried to explain this heterogeneity by using innovative capability as mediating variables. Design/methodology/approach Empirical survey data from Indian manufacturing firms are obtained to test the proposed hypotheses. The hypotheses are grounded in resource-based view of the firm. The authors used structural equation modeling approach with maximum likelihood methods of approximation. Findings The results indicate that exploratory innovation positively influences the firms to adopt CE practices. Whereas, exploitative innovation capability inhibits the adoption of CE practices. Practical implications This study guides business managers to focus on develop exploratory innovative capabilities before the adoption of CE practices. This study also pro...

Production Planning & Control, 2018

Circular supply chain emphasizes surge in application of reuse, recycling and remanufacturing and... more Circular supply chain emphasizes surge in application of reuse, recycling and remanufacturing and thereby promotes the transformation of manufacturing characteristics from linear ('take-produce-utilize-dump') to circular model of flow of products, by-products and waste. Supply chains of manufacturing industries have become global in last few decades. Products manufactured in developing nations like India and China are being sent to developed nations for consumption in higher volumes. Developed nations have the regulatory policies, technological knowhow and modern infrastructure to adopt circular supply chain model. Their counterpart is trailing in these aspects. In literature, limited research work has been performed on identifying challenges of implementing circular supply chain management in developing nations and their contextual association. In this article, based on thorough literature review and feedback received from experts, sixteen important barriers were identified to circular supply chain management adoption in Indian context. The listed barriers were then analysed using an integrated Interpretive Structural Modelling-MICMAC approach. This study attempts to identify the contextual interactions among identified barriers and to examine their hierarchical levels in effective adoption and implementation of circular supply chain management. The findings of this research will contribute in transforming

International Journal of Production Economics, 2018

Process Safety and Environmental Protection, 2018

Evaluating challenges to Industry 4.0 initiatives for supply chain sustainability in emerging eco... more Evaluating challenges to Industry 4.0 initiatives for supply chain sustainability in emerging economies Abstract: Industry 4.0 initiatives can influence whole business system via transforming the means the products are designed, produced, delivered and discarded. Industry 4.0 is relatively novel to developing nations, especially in India and needs a clear definition for proper understanding and practice in business. This paper aims to recognize key challenges to Industry 4.0 initiatives and analyze the identified key challenges to prioritize them for effective Industry 4.0 concepts for supply chain sustainability in emerging economies by taking Indian manufacturing industry perspective. Industry 4.0 initiatives can help industries to incorporate environmental protection and control initiatives as well as process safety measures in supply chains towards sustainable supply chains. However, adoption of Industry 4.0 initiatives are not so easy due to existence of many challenges. Therefore, the present research identifies 18 key challenges to Industry 4.0 initiatives for developing supply chain sustainability using an extensive literature review. These challenges were analyzed through 96 responses received from Indian manufacturing sector using a questionnaire based survey. Explanatory Factor Analysis results classified identified challenges into four key dimensions of challenges. Analytical Hierarchy Process further ranks the identified dimensions of challenges and related challenges. Findings of the study revealed that Organizational challenges holds the highest importance followed by Legal and ethical issues, Strategic challenges, and Technological challenges. This work is very useful for practitioners, policy makers, regulatory bodies and managers to develop an in-depth understanding of Industry 4.0 initiatives and eradicate the potential challenges in adopting Industry 4.0 initiatives for supply chain sustainability.