Beyond GoodRelations: A Behaviouristic Ontological Approach for the WEB 3 Challenges

Methodological and ideological options exploring supply chain models for Sydney rock oysters

Community building and community development, i.e., community management are a key success factor in the digital economy. They differentiate business models in the digital economy from traditional ones. These communities may be constituted as Internet shops, portal sites, groupware systems, electronic auctions, billboards, enterprises or organizations. Product-centered communities as well as communities of interest are relevant for electronic marketing, as for example the reader communities at Amazon.com, The Well, or Dreamworks. Another example are communities that form value chains, such as single product manufacturing consortia or flexible consumer-driven organization of global supply chains. Further examples are topic and technology oriented communities such as Open-EDI trading communities, Open Trading on the Internet (OTP), or EDI/XML, in addition to the community-oriented programming of Linux. Communities of practice or learning communities are pivotal for knowledge management.As the mentioned examples show, online communities differ in their orientation. The features that all types of communities share are common interests, practices, languages and ontologies with common semantics as well as normative issues. The platform plays a special role for those communities. Thus, the relation, interplay or symbiosis between communities and platforms is of particular interest.This minitrack comprises a series of papers that address communities, their platforms and community-related business models as critical success factors in the digital economy. It covers a variety of novel concepts, models and platforms for communities. This minitrack deals with: Community-related business models, best practices and lessons learned. Case studies and topologies of Online Communities. Conceptual frameworks, formal and semi-formal models of communities, the behavior of agents and the platforms. Design principles for interaction and community platforms: Coordination, trust, normative values, design patterns and methods, implementations, architectures and components.The first session of this minitrack comprises three papers on communities in general. Katarina Stanoevska and Beat F. Schmid present a typology of communities and community supporting platforms. Yao Hua Tan and Cristiano Castelfranchi discuss with trust and deception two of the most crucial issues in Electronic Commerce. The third paper of the first session, written by Bernd Simon, Susanne Guth and Gustaf Neumann presents a general framework for Learning Media.The second session comprises three case studies of communities in the digital economy. Dorine Andrews and Jennifer Preece present an analysis of communities that are resistant to Online Interaction. The second paper by Alexander Hars and Shaosong Ou is an empirical study on the motivation for participation in communities arising around open source projects. Ulrike Lechner and Beat Schmid analyze in a series of case studies the relation of business models and system architectures in communities.The third session presents two papers that deal with application specific issues in communities. Steven O. Kimbrough, D.J. Wu and Fang Zhong present a simulation framework for software agents in supply chain management. The second paper of this section authored by Sue Newell and Jacky Swan deals with communities in innovation and knowledge management.The paper of Dorine Andrews and Jennifer Preece entitled ?A Conceptual Framework for Communities Resistant to Online Interaction? was nominated for the best paper award of this minitrack.

This study is to propose some extensions of the existing halal food supply chain model by diagnosing and reviewing the important issues of halal in Malaysia's food and beverages (F&B) products from the perspective of supply chain and logistics model. Over the years, Malaysia has gone through a series of arguments on halal and non-halal issues from the consumers' community and how it imparted the serious contamination to the halal supply chain expansively in the foods' products industries. Some issues like Cadbury and supermarket trolleys have released how seriousness the responsibilities of authorities in tackling the halalness of the entire industries and cautiously up to date the issue with highly integrity. In this study, the biggest challenge of the F&B products is to develop a model of supply chain halal integrity and unluckily not many studies have been conducted so far. Therefore, the proposed extensions are crucial and critical to be referred to by all businesses in order to support the growing halal economic development, especially in the Muslim countries. Methodology of the research information was based from the qualitative semi-structured interviews and literature reviews. The interview's objective of this research is to get a real case scenario understanding about halal F&B products, e-Halal, halal hubs, including supply chain and logistics in Malaysia. This study gets its information from the seven respondents from various halal industry backgrounds and is analyzed in order to add some new elements into the existing halal supply chain model. As a conclusion, the study is trying to propose some extensions of the halal food supply chain model into a more comprehensive model known as New Islamic Supply Chain & Logistics Network Model.

IntroductionThe rise of live-stream selling has made the e-commerce platform attractive to many small and medium-sized retailers that are often faced with capital constraints. The choice between the e-commerce platform financing (EPF) and trade credit financing (TCF) for the capital-constrained e-retailers engaging in live-stream selling is particularly important problem.MethodsThis paper considers a supply chain made up of a manufacturer, an e-commerce platform that offers live-stream selling service to consumers and an online retailer with capital constraint. We, respectively, investigate the optimal decisions of the supply chain enterprises under EPF and TCF modes based on Stackelberg game models and optimization theories.ResultsWe compare the profits of supply chain firms under different cases and obtain some important conclusions through theoretical and numerical analysis.DiscussionFirst, when the e-commerce platform’s commission rate is low enough, the retailer’s ordering quantity is, under EPF mode, greater than that evidenced without capital constraint. In addition, when the retailer’s marginal profit is high and the e-commerce platform’s commission rate is low, the online retailer should choose EPF mode; in other instances, TCF is its optimal choice. Second, the e-commerce platform can obtain the highest profit under EPF mode, while TCF mode will bring the highest profit to the manufacturer. Third, when the platform’s commission rate is below a certain threshold, the profit of the entire supply chain under EPF mode is larger than that of well-funded supply chain, but TCF mode cannot. Finally, we also find there exists the access threshold about the live-stream selling. Only when the commission rate is relatively high, the e-commerce platform should offers live-stream service to consumers and the live-stream investment is the highest under EPF mode.

PurposeThis exploratory study illustrated an integrated academic library supply chain (IALSC) model to design the strategic planning management tool of the academic library. The supply chain (SC) model has been widely used in manufacturing industries and has also been applied in many service industries with the same objectives. However, very few studies for academic libraries, particularly the implementation of the integrated SC model, are being executed, although it has been proven that SC management in practice can enhance stakeholder satisfaction, increase revenues and decrease total costs. The academic library also needs to be successful in providing quality products, services and information to fulfil the library users’ needs within the library budget. This research aims to develop a verified model of the integrated SC for the academic library.Design/methodology/approachThis research used both qualitative and quantitative approaches to achieve its objectives. The proposed conceptual SC model, named as IALSC, for the academic library has been developed using the system thinking method; eventually, it has been validated through the fuzzy Delphi method, an expert judgement technique.FindingsThe research findings could contribute to academic library management in planning and formulating a roadmap for the library to increase its quality services for all stakeholders.Originality/valueThe conceptual model would have a high potential to be proposed as the strategic decision-making tool for an academic library, i.e. the flow of funds through the operations of the library, the library stakeholders’ satisfaction measurement, the decision process currently made by the library management team on the purchase of new library resources, the library resource suppliers, etc.

Operations in today’s demand chain management framework

There are three types of information flow control models in supply chains, which are dispersive control model, centralized control model and comprehensive coordination model. This paper quantitatively calculates the organization structure's order degree of these three types of information flow control models based on the relative theory and calculation method about entropy, and gives advice for the selection of information control models in the practical supply chain.

The study measured customer satisfaction in online shopping on e-commerce platforms in Vietnam using a structured questionnaire to survey and collect data from 386 customers. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 26 software for descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and linear regression. The results revealed nine factors that affect customer satisfaction, ranging from high to low, when shopping online on e-commerce platforms in Vietnam: product quality, payment methods, customer service, information quality, response time, delivery service, price, website design, and security. These results provide a crucial foundation for proposing several solutions to improve customer satisfaction during online shopping on e-commerce platforms in Vietnam.

Nowadays e-commerce develops rapidly. Volumes of online sales grow globally. E-commerce forms a separate sector of the economy. Moreover, e-commerce is at the peak of its popularity. The article aims to analyze the development of the e-commerce market worldwide and to identify the further prospects of its development. The article analyzes the world e-commerce market. The volumes of products online-sales in the dynamics since 2014 are determined. The volumes of sales in the e-commerce market by regions of the world are studied. The largest one is the Asia-Pacific region. It accounts for 62.6% of all e-commerce sales. It is followed by the North American region (19.1% of all global e-commerce sales) and the Western Europe region (12.7% of all global e-commerce sales). It is established that global sales figures are significantly influenced by China and the United States of America. These countries rank the first and the second places responsively in the world in terms of products’ sales in the e-commerce market. Similar indicators for the European e-commerce market are analyzed. The dynamics of the growth of online shoppers in different European countries are determined. The payment methods that online shoppers use most often are highlighted. The most popular methods in many countries are debit and credit card payments. Nevertheless, German online shoppers prefer ELV payments, and online shoppers from the Netherlands choose IDEAL. The most popular categories of online products are small appliances, books, clothing and shoes, computers and accessories, tickets. People like to buy online products at lower prices and universe products. The reason is that the target audience of universe products is not limited by age, body composition, psychological complexes, and other factors that can potentially reduce interest in the products. The results of this study determine the expediency and perspective directions of world e-commerce development.

Since the first case was identified, COVID-19 has spread to more than 200 countries. As of October 25, 2022, it had resulted in over 6 million deaths and 600 million confirmed cases. The rapid widespread of COVID-19 led to large-scale disruptions with major supply and demand shocks in supply chains, causing significant negative impacts on the global economy. The World Bank reported that the world GDP growth rate for 2020 was −3.27%, indicating the worst recession since 1961. First, the initial epidemic-control efforts blocked the flows of raw materials across the world, and limited labor movements by imposing temporary travel restrictions. As a result, many firms struggled with supply disruptions and labor shortages, setting off a chain reaction of disruption in global supply chains. Fortune (2020) reported that as of February 21, 2020, 94% of the Fortune 1000 companies had experienced supply-chain disruptions due to COVID-19.1 According to the Institute for Supply Management, almost 75% of companies reported supply-chain disruptions in some capacity due to coronavirus-related transportation restrictions.2 A survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers reported that 78.3% of manufacturers believed that COVID-19 had a significant negative influence on their financial performance, and 35.5% of them had experienced some type of supply chain disruptions.3 Second, the demand for essential personal-protective equipment increased dramatically because the virus was easily transmitted from person to person through air-borne droplets; accompanied by a drop in the need for other manufactured products (Nicola et al., 2020). For example, COVID-19 had caused a surge in the demand of face masks that were necessary to prevent infection among frontline workers (who were directly exposed to the virus when treating infected patients or conducting nucleic acid tests) and individuals in public places. China was the main producer of masks at the start of the crisis, accounting for approximately half of world production. In January 2020, China could produce 20 million masks per day, which was insufficient to equip even just healthcare workers in China. As a result of extensive efforts by the government and companies, Chinese production increased six-fold and reached 116 million masks per day by the end of February, 2020. But even this was insufficient to meet its own demand, and China imported a large quantity of masks. Similarly, Germany also experienced very limited availability of face masks in the spring of 2020. To increase the supply of face masks, the German government contracted with hundreds of companies and introduced a series of incentives to encourage local, non-medical manufacturers to temporarily transform to produce masks. More generally, demand patterns for supplies of all types became less predictable from the beginning of pandemic. Significant changes on the demand side included quick shifts of buying patterns (from physical stores to online stores) and rapid shifts of product mix (e.g., decline in office equipment to be used on site, but increases in appliances for home-office use). Compared with previous pandemics, COVID-19 has affected supply chains more durably and globally. As this special issue approaches publication, the COVID-19 pandemic has lasted for over 3 years. The extended duration of this external shock has been sufficient to permanently change the behavior of supply-chain partners (Poelman et al., 2021). These changes have encouraged firms to demonstrate an innovative bent, leading to structural process changes in a variety of industries. For example, demand for in-person restaurant dining decreased, whereas demand for take-away foods greatly increased, though by 2022, this pattern had begun to reverse. Under this change, firms needed to explore new ways of organizing their supply chains with respect to factors like product diversity and cooperation with more partners in the supply chains. This made it possible to define products and services to benefit quickly from pandemic-related opportunities (van der Vegt et al., 2015). The COVID-19 pandemic has also affected global supply chains as economic integration interacted with travel restrictions and worldwide lockdowns (Nikolopoulos et al., 2021) to create unprecedented challenges for enterprises to respond to changes in demand and supply, employee shortages, and lack of access to financial capital. These long lasting, structural, and global supply-chain impacts have led enterprises to increase responsiveness and resilience (2Rs) via management mechanisms and technological innovations. Based on the media reports and literature review, such innovative measures include cross-enterprise cooperation (e.g., Unilever and Terra Drone), government-enterprise cooperation (e.g., Hubei Provincial Government and JD Logistics), adjustments to manufacturing activities (e.g., BYD, Foxconn, Pernod Ricard, and Bauer shifted their production to face masks/shields), as well as the adoption of digital technologies (e.g., JD Logistics, New HAVI). This 2R emphasis represents a major departure from the usual emphasis on cost reduction (Caunhye et al., 2016). Observing that some companies have performed well in responding quickly to changes in demand and supply, and flexibly to disruptions, we seek to learn from the innovative practices and experiences of that have yielded success in dealing with this large-scale disruption. What were the key lessons learned in terms of selecting suppliers and managing supplier/customer relationships, designing global supply networks, and adopting new digital technologies and big data analytics? What were the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the structures of global supply chains and the strategic positioning of major supply chain players? This special issue focuses on uncovering the key success factors and lessons from these innovative practices. We aimed to gain deeper understanding of how the adoption of technological innovations, business model innovations, and innovations in collaboration mechanisms and methods of operations improvement/optimization have helped companies enhance 2Rs in supply chains. To frame this special issue, we define some key concepts and briefly review some literature published in leading operations management journals focusing on supply chain responsiveness, supply chain resilience, supply chain integration, and big data analytics. To address disruptions and demand shocks, a great deal of emphasis has been placed in research on strategies to enhance the 2Rs in supply chains (Hendricks et al., 2009). Responsiveness is defined as the ability of a supply chain to respond purposefully within an appropriate timeframe to customer requests or supply changes in the marketplace (Shekarian et al., 2020). Generally speaking, responsiveness to changes in demand and supply is reflected in multiple aspects (Williams et al., 2013), including volume flexibility, variety flexibility, product/service modification flexibility, new product flexibility, and so on. According to Singh and Sharma (2014), a responsive supply chain could ensure a reduction in lead time, the right service quality, the right service quantity, and the on-time response to requirements of customers. Roh et al. (2014) asserted that the goal of a responsive supply chain design is to provide customers with the right product at the right place in the right length of time. The recent literature and practice show that effective measures to improve the responsiveness of supply chains include signing flexible contracts with suppliers, forecasting the trend of future demand and supply, conducting multi-source procurement, making centralized decision-making, and investing in digital technologies. Resilience is defined as the ability to mitigate the negative effects, rapidly accommodate, and react to a supply chain disruption (Kim et al., 2015). Wieland and Durach (2021) stated that resilience does not just relate to the ability of a system to bounce back after a disruptive event but also to the capacity to adapt and transform. Combining these perspectives, resilience generally refers to the ability to absorb or cushion against damage or loss, as well as the ability to rapidly recover from a disruption (Hora & Klassen, 2013). Thus, resilience is dynamic instead of static, which is considered as a fundamental attribute that supply chains need to adopt for maintaining stable growth in the face of external disruptions (Essuman et al., 2020) such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain resilience consists of multiple constituent elements, including stability, agility, robustness, collaboration, redundancy, centralization, visibility, and information sharing (Hosseini et al., 2019). Tukamuhabwa et al. (2015) emphasized the importance of building collaborative relationships in improving supply chain resilience. Other measures include maintaining slack resources, adopting a flexible production strategy, and building a risk-management infrastructure (Ambulkar et al., 2015; Modi & Mishra, 2011). Although 2Rs are the key attributes for enterprises to improve supply chain performance, there is limited research on how to develop responsive and resilient strategies to deal with long-lasting, structural, and global impacts. Previous studies mainly focused on normal situations, in which supply chain integration and big data analytics are the bases of building 2Rs supply chains. Supply chain integration is the ability to integrate all activities among a company's internal functions and external partners (supplier, distributor, retailer, etc.), until the finished product arrives at the end customer (Zhao et al., 2013). From the perspective of collaborative partners, supply chain integration could be divided by horizontal strategies and vertical strategies (Mesquita & Lazzarini, 2008), while the vertical integration is further divided by integration with suppliers (also known as upstream integration) and integration with customers (also known as downstream integration). In the era of Industry 4.0, supply chain integration consists of three dimensions: process and activity integration, technology and system integration, and organizational relationship linkages (Tiwari, 2020). A recent editorial in JOM (Browning, 2020) discussed related aspects of organizational and process integration. In recent years, under the influence of economic globalization, supply chains have been transformed. Since globalization has become pervasive, suppliers have pursued global markets, and most companies source extensively from global suppliers (Cohen & Lee, 2020). This has led to an increase in outsourcing activities and a corresponding decline in vertical integration of supply chains. As a result, supply chain networks have become flatter and more complex, composed of different organizations dispersed across multiple tiers and different geographies, and extended beyond a single country's boundaries (Choi & Hong, 2002). Global supply chains are characterized by focal firms that distribute across multiple countries, locate production facilities abroad, or source from offshore suppliers. Munir et al. (2020) showed that integration in the global supply chain could increase companies' resilience in making flexible deliveries and the number of products. Big data refers to data that arrive at a high volume and velocity with considerable variation, while analytics refers to the ability to gain insights from data via statistics, learning, optimization, or other techniques. The applications of big data and analytics are closely interlinked to enable firms to make better decisions. Hence, prior literature has typically discussed them together as big data analytics, which allows the use of advanced computing techniques, strategies and architectures to store, extract, and analyze multi-source, heterogeneous data to support decisions, and has been commonly used in operations management (Wamba et al., 2015). In the era of economic globalization, supply chain management has become extremely complex, with large-scale and online decision-making challenges emerging (Yang et al., 2021), for example, the joint decision-making between proactive planning and reactive operations in the forms of demand forecasting, production planning, inventory management, supply allocation, transportation, and distribution. It is no longer efficient to rely on traditional analytics methods. Many firms have been exploring how to take big data analytics to promote lean and agile activities in supply chain management (Baruffaldi et al., 2019). Existing studies have shown that applications of digital technologies can help improve supply chain performance by enhancing visibility and reducing supply chain risks (Govindan et al., 2018). The digitalization of supply chains produces large volumes of data, which is regarded as a new kind of resource and has the potential to create value and enhance competitiveness. Singh and El-Kassar (2019) proposed that digital technologies have transformed traditional supply chain management into a more data-driven approach, which requires a much higher level of big data analytics capabilities compared to traditional supply chain management. Following the call for papers, the submission of 114 manuscripts, and the review and revision process, seven articles were selected for this special issue that contribute to our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains and its effect on addressing the 2Rs. In "Strengthening supply chain resilience during COVID-19: A case study of JD.com" (Shen & Sun, 2023), the authors used quantitative operational data obtained from JD.com4 to analyze the impact of the pandemic on supply chain resilience. They described the challenging scenarios that retailing supply chains experienced in China and the practical response of JD.com over the course of the pandemic the pandemic. JD.com was observed to respond well to the exceptional demand and severe logistical disruptions caused by COVID-19 in China based on its highly integrated supply chain structure (including both process and activity integration and technology and system integration) and comprehensive digital technologies. In particular, the existing, intelligent platforms and delivery procedures were modified slightly but promptly to deal with specific disruptions. The joint efforts of multiple firms, the government, and the entire Chinese society contributed to surmounting the challenges. The experience of JD.com contributes to understanding of the value of investing in operational flexibility and beyond-supply-chain collaboration given the possibility of large-scale supply chain disruptions such as the COVID-19 outbreak. In "Breaking out of the pandemic: How can firms match internal competence with external resources to shape operational resilience?" (Li et al., 2023), the authors explored how firms sought to effectively combine internal competence with external resources from the supply chain network to improve operational flexibility and stability during the COVID-19 pandemic. The internal flexibility refers to product diversity, the internal stability refers to operational efficiency, the external flexibility refers to structural holes, and the external stability refers to network centrality. Drawing upon matching theory, the authors provided an internal-external combinative perspective to explain operational mechanisms underlying different matchings. Based on the empirical results of 2994 unique firms and 5293 observations, they found that more heterogeneous combinations between internal (external) flexibility and external (internal) stability may result in a complementary effect that enhances operational resilience, whereas more homogeneous combinations between internal flexibility (or stability) and external flexibility (or stability) may have a substitutive effect that reduces operational resilience. With the COVID-19 pandemic having had a significant impact on supply chains, government initiatives have played a central role in managing the crisis. In "The impact of governmental COVID-19 measures on manufacturers' stock market valuations: The role of labor intensity and operational slack" (Chen et al., 2023), the authors investigated the impact of the Chinese government's Level I emergency-response policy (Ge et al., 2020) on manufacturers' stock-market values, and the role of manufacturers' operational slack on adding resilience. Specifically, through an event study of 1357 Chinese manufacturing companies listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the authors found that the government's emergency-response policy triggered a statistically significant positive reaction from the stock market for manufacturers. However, the authors also found negative impacts on stock market values for manufacturers in labor-intensive industries because of the labor immobility triggered by the Level I measures. In addition, this article identified the positive role of operational slack in the form of financial slack and excess inventory in helping to maintain operations and business continuity, mitigate risks caused by the labor mobility restrictions, and improve supply chain resilience, which identifies operational slack as a supply chain resilience strategy to mitigate pandemic-related risks. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the medical-product industry faced unprecedented demand shocks for personal protective equipment, including face masks, face shields, disinfectants, and gowns. Companies from various industries responded to the urgent need for these potentially life-saving products by adopting ad hoc supply chains in an exceptionally short time. In "Realizing supply chain agility under time pressure: Ad hoc supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic" (Müller et al., 2023), the authors explored the use by 34 German companies of ad hoc supply chains to produce personal protective equipment. From these cases, the authors developed an emergent theoretical model of ad hoc supply chains around enablers of supply chain agility such as dynamic capabilities (the ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly scenario changes), entrepreneurial orientation (proactiveness, risk-taking, innovativeness, autonomy, and competitive aggressiveness), and temporary orientation (speedy action in a limited time). To cope with the COVID-19 crisis, many firms allowed their employees to work from home (WFH). In "Working from home and firm resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic" (Ge et al., 2023), the authors examined whether a firm's WFH capacity increased its resilience. The authors put forward and tested a unique data set that combines listed firms' financial data, epidemiological data, and online job postings data from China. They found that imposing COVID-19 anti-contagion policies on firms and their suppliers or customers significantly increased their operating revenue volatility, slowed their recovery, and had repercussions on their supply chains. WFH enhanced firms' resistance capacity by reducing the effect of COVID-19 on their operating revenue volatility and disruptions to their supply chain partners; however, it also decreased their recovery capacity by extending the time taken to return to normal. Firm attributes, along with workers' occupations, education, and experience, impacted the effect of WFH on firm resilience. This article enhances our understanding of shock transmission across supply chains and identifies WFH as a source of firm resilience. In "Developing supply chain resilience through integration: An empirical study on an e-commerce platform" (Qi et al., 2023), the authors developed a framework that described the impact on supply chain resilience of process and activity integration between an e-commerce platform and suppliers. An analysis of data from a Chinese e-commerce platform found that integration between the e-commerce platform and suppliers in terms of information sharing, joint planning, and logistics cooperation had positive impact on supply chain resilience, while procurement automation had the opposite effect. Manufacturing flexibility positively moderated the impact of information sharing, joint planning, and logistics cooperation. The results contribute to understanding of the factors that encourage the development of supply chain resilience, suggesting that the relationship between integration and resilience is best examined within a contingency framework. There is ongoing debate about whether a firm should develop a concentrated supply chain, with the literature reporting both benefits and drawbacks. In "Opportunities or constraints? A network embeddedness perspective on the role of supply chain concentration during the pandemic" (Jiang et al., 2023), the authors examined this puzzle. Drawing on the interdependence perspective, the authors investigated how customer and supplier concentration affected supply chain resilience during the disruption and recovery stages of the pandemic, where customer concentration refers to the extent to which a firm's sales are dependent on a few major customers, and supplier concentration refers to the extent to which a firm's purchases are from a few major suppliers. The analysis of 26,488 firm-quarter observations from 2366 Chinese-listed manufacturing firms revealed that concentration can be both detrimental and beneficial, contingent on the exchange role and the crisis stage. To be specific, customer concentration accentuated the downside of firm productivity in the disruption stage but facilitated productivity restoration in the recovery stage, while supplier concentration had no significant impact on productivity in the disruption stage but hindered firm productivity from bouncing back in the recovery stage. The guest editorial team (Xiang Li, Xiande Zhao, Hau L. Lee, and Chris Voss) would like to thank the co-editors-in-chief of the Journal of Operations Management, Suzanne de Treville and Tyson Browning, for their support. The authors would also like to acknowledge all of the many reviewers and associate editors for their extensive reviews and expert advice on the large number of articles submitted to this special issue. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 71931001, 71722007). The research of Prof. Zhao was partially suported by the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (22&ZD082).

\n Petroleum has been the major source of meeting the world\\'s energy and chemical needs but rising energy demand, dwindling petroleum resources and climate change have led to an energy revolution resulting in the development of alternative fuels to replace fossil-derived energy products. Biofuel is one of the viable solutions that is increasingly becoming part of the energy mix of many nations whose market has become established by biofuel policies and regulations. However, investments in biofuel supply chains can be expensive and several supply chain models have been developed to demonstrate its cost-effectiveness or profitability without considering integrating with existing petroleum infrastructure. Also, seldom considered is the impact of demand fluctuations on capacity allocation and changes over time. Hence, this work presents a multi-period multiscale strategic planning model for policy-decision makers and which is an integrated biofuel and petroleum supply chain which composes a superstructure that combines the components of the biofuel and petroleum supply chain. The model presented is a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model used to make strategic and tactical decisions for biorefineries and distribution centers under environmental considerations to ensure sustainability. Furthermore, a dynamic capacity strategy is incorporated which allows for flexibility in the capacity allocation and location decisions in response to demand fluctuations over time. The model is applied to a case study in the Northeast of Brazil under the RenovaBio program where investments in biorefineries are required to overcome the production deficit in the region and eliminate import. Results of the case study carried out produced an optimal facility configuration of biorefineries and distribution centers, the evolution of capacities over time, capacity utilization profile, material flows and inventories, carbon credit and emissions profile from the network while maximizing the net present value of the supply chain. Results also show significant investments in corn dry mill and flex mill plants. This contribution shows that biorefinery supply chains modelled to incorporate the interactions petroleum fuel supply chain can provide insights that would not be possible with only biofuel supply chain models. It is shown that mathematical programming offers useful tools for biorefinery supply chain studiesPetroleum has been the major source of meeting the world\\'s energy and chemical needs but rising energy demand, dwindling petroleum resources and climate change have led to an energy revolution resulting in the development of alternative fuels to replace fossil-derived energy products. Biofuel is one of the viable solutions that is increasingly becoming part of the energy mix of many nations whose market has become established by biofuel policies and regulations. However, investments in biofuel supply chains can be expensive and several supply chain models have been developed to demonstrate its cost-effectiveness or profitability without considering integrating with existing petroleum infrastructure. Also, seldom considered is the impact of demand fluctuations on capacity allocation and changes over time. Hence, this work presents a multi-period multiscale strategic planning model for policy-decision makers and which is an integrated biofuel and petroleum supply chain which composes a superstructure that combines the components of the biofuel and petroleum supply chain. The model presented is a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model used to make strategic and tactical decisions for biorefineries and distribution centers under environmental considerations to ensure sustainability. Furthermore, a dynamic capacity strategy is incorporated which allows for flexibility in the capacity allocation and location decisions in response to demand fluctuations over time. The model is applied to a case study in the Northeast of Brazil under the RenovaBio program where investments in biorefineries are required to overcome the production deficit in the region and eliminate import. Results of the case study carried out produced an optimal facility configuration of biorefineries and distribution centers, the evolution of capacities over time, capacity utilization profile, material flows and inventories, carbon credit and emissions profile from the network while maximizing the net present value of the supply chain. Results also show significant investments in corn dry mill and flex mill plants. This contribution shows that biorefinery supply chains modelled to incorporate the interactions petroleum fuel supply chain can provide insights that would not be possible with only biofuel supply chain models. It is shown that mathematical programming offers useful tools for biorefinery supply chain studies\n

PurposeThe supply chain (SC) model is commonly utilized in manufacturing and has also been adapted to a variety of service industries with similar goals. However, in a few service industries, most notably academic libraries, the SC model is rarely implemented, despite the fact that SC management best practises have been shown to boost stakeholder satisfaction, revenue and decrease total expenses. This research aims to discuss the development of the entities of an academic library SC model and present the verifying/validation process of the model.Design/methodology/approachIn this research, both qualitative and quantitative approaches have been used. System thinking method used to develop the conceptual SC model of the academic library and fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) used to validate the developed model.FindingsThis research explores the functions and components that need to develop and validate the academic library SC model.Originality/valueThe outcome of this research is to construct a valid SC model of an academic library which could be a strategical tool for ensuring a quality service for the library users and the stakeholders because this model shows a holistic view of all entities of the academic library SC.

Agricultural supply chain optimization and complexity: A comparison of analytic vs simulated solutions and policies

Purpose – Despite the growing popularity of internet based social media on e-commerce platforms, systematic examination of the emerging phenomenon is scarce. This paper aims to study whether online retailers ' social activity on e-commerce platforms improves their business performance, and if it does, what are the underlying mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach – The paper proposes a typology of online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms. Then drawing on social capital theory and social network theory, the authors develop hypotheses that relate online retailers ' social activities to their business performance. The hypotheses are tested using a large dataset collected from an e-commerce platform in China. Findings – The paper shows that: online retailers ' social activities for friend-making improve their business performance, regardless of the directional attribute of the activities; social activities for advice-seeking decrease online retailers ' business performance; and social activities for advice-giving increase online retailers ' business performance. Research limitations/implications – The data in the empirical study are from an e-commerce platform in China, hence the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed hypotheses further. Practical implications – The paper includes implications for e-commerce market makers and online retailers operating on e-commerce platforms. The authors show that online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms can be an important source of business value. However certain types of social activities may hurt online retailers ' business performance, implying the necessity of a thoughtful social activity strategy in online marketplaces. Originality/value – This paper represents an early effort to study whether online retailers ' social activities on e-commerce platforms improve their business performance and the underlying mechanisms of the effect.

At the beginning of the emergence of Covid-19, there was panic buying in Indonesia which caused an unusual situation in supply management. Although the handling of this epidemic has entered a "new normal", the availability of stocks of electronics, automotive, pharmaceuticals, food, and others is running low and out of control, so supply chain management is needed. The purpose of this article is to try to see the extent of the transformation in supply and demand in Indonesia. With this in-depth literature, the supply chain model is likely to transform globally, given that many companies are confused about management being unable to cope with drastic changes in the market. The demand patterns over the past period indicate a shift from offline to online storefronts. Even though it has now entered a transition to a new normal and shopping outlets are slowly opening up, online shopping or demand patterns are predicted to last a long time. Therefore, supply chain actors, especially farmers, logistics entrepreneurs, and shipping services, inevitably have to be able to quickly adapt to changing patterns in Indonesia. There is an imbalance between the demand and supply sides. Food supply chains tend to be unique in comparison to the supply chains of other products and services.