Continuous improvement and innovation are solid foundations for the textile sector to maintain excellent growth and active sustainability. As the limited resources possessed by textile companies generally result in the incapability of implementing circular economy (CE) strategies simultaneously, recently, researchers advocate that organizations should analyze the influential inter-relationship between key barriers to explore the more dominant determinants for designing improved actions for implementing CE in the textile sector. CE implementation in the textile sector appears to be in its infancy. Although much attention has been paid to CE implementation barriers, the present study tries to fill this research gap by analyzing the causal relationships among the CE barriers in the textile sector. Therefore, the twelve barriers are identified by an extensive literature review, and the application of the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) based on the expert options from the textile sector. Subsequently, the causal inter-relationship among the key CE barriers is based on expert opinions using the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL). The results of this study indicate that three key barriers require quick action: “consumers lack knowledge and awareness about reused/recycle (B1)”, “lack of successful business models and frameworks to implement CE (B3)”, and “lack of an information exchange system between different stakeholders (B8)”. In addition, the results provide significant managerial implications, including implementations of CE in the textile sector. Not only should the government build regulations and friendly laws and encourage environmentally-friendly materials but the textile companies should also focus or monitor the recycling methods and quality to overcome the CE implementation issues. In addition, this study contributes to the textile sector transition toward CE by using the novel methodology for determining and prioritizing the key barriers. Finally, this work would help top management and the practitioners to better design effective infrastructural strategies for the textile sector transition towards CE.

The banking sector often plays a crucial role in the improvement of infrastructure and economy of any country. In many emerging economies, it is apparent that a wide variety of social and political issues are related to the associated supply chain sustainability of financial service firms. Although such sustainability and its implementation issues have largely been addressed in existing research literature and in practice for many years, the attention towards socio-political sustainability aspects has been quite limited. Thus, this study attempted to explore the determinants for improving socio-political sustainability in financial service firms. Through adopting the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM), performing an exhaustive literature review, and conducting semi-structured interviews with the decision-makers of the service firms, nine key barriers for socio-political sustainability were first identified in this study. Then, the influence relationships of the key barriers were assessed by 15 experts. During the assessment process, the interrelationships and their dependence powers among key barriers were analyzed using the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) methods. The assessment results show that among the studied barriers, “antisocial considerations”, “unstable political climate”, and “lack of political coherence” are the decisive barriers that affect the socio-political sustainability in the supply chain of financial service firms. The knowledge in understanding and reducing these decisive barriers can provide service sector practitioners, especially those with limited resources, the enhanced capability to conduct better planning and designing of effective and continuous improvement programs, so as to win over new consumers and retain existing clients by offering sustainable services.

Different sources of risk factors can occur in sustainable supply chain management due to its complex nature. The telecommunication service firm cannot implement multiple improvement practices altogether to overcome the risk factors with limited resources. The industries should evaluate the relationship between risk factors and explore the determinants of improvement measures. The purpose of the present study is to identify and analyze critical risk factors (CRFs) for enhancing sustainable supply chain management practices in the Indian telecommunication industry using interpretive structural modelling (ISM). Risk factors are identified through a literature survey, and then with the help of experts, nine CRFs are identified using a fuzzy Delphi method (FDM). The relationship among these CRFs has been analyzed using ISM, and the driving and the dependence power of those CRFs are analyzed. Results indicate that both “government policies (laws and regulations)” and “the impact of rapid change in technology” are independent or key factors that affect the sustainability of the telecommunications supply chain. In addition, results provide significant managerial implications, including enhanced sustainability, and the government should build justice, fairness, open laws, certainties, and regulations to prevent risk in the telecommunications industry supply chain; service providers should monitor the rapidly evolving technologies and focus on technical learning and organizational capacity development to overcome the impact of technological changes. The contribution of this study is using a novel approach to establish a hierarchical structural model for an effective understanding of CRFs relationships and to explore decisive risk factors that can help telecom service providers to better plan and design effective improvement strategies to enhance sustainability supply chain management.

Telecom supply chain (TSC) research has determined several risk sources can happen for sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) due to their ambiguous nature. However, investigation of these risks is relatively sparse and has primarily been independent with less combinatory research, despite their interrelationships and causality. The present study aims to address that gap by an extant literature review and analysis of relationships among risk factors using a combination of fuzzy approaches. A mixed approach was used, including empirical data from private and government firms in a developing telecom sector. This research finding confirmed that economical dimension risk is major for SSCM in the TSC. In developing countries, it could help telecom service providers in determining which risk factors are critical and those that are crucially significant. As a result, they will be able to more effectively develop strategies focussing on the most affecting risk dimension for SSCM. This is the first study using a hybrid fuzzy approach that analysed interrelationships of risk factors for SSCM. Further, it gives a comprehensive view of risk assessment in the risk management context in the supply chain.

Purpose Due to the high use of mobile devices, the market share of mobile advertisements (Ads) is significantly growing. Although mobile Ads can contact potential customers at any time and in any location depending on their unique demands, one of the biggest problems for advertisers is how to improve customer repurchases with their Ads. The development and empirical support of customer repurchase through mobile Ads context have not been addressed. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to define and identify the key attributes of customer repurchase in a mobile Ads context. Design/methodology/approach In this research, the set of attributes was derived from a systematic literature review and finalized by applying the Fuzzy Delphi method. To develop a hierarchical model and classify the cause/effect groups among identified key attributes, the Fuzzy mixed approach uses a combination of Fuzzy interpretive structural modeling-decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory. Findings The findings suggest that language, type of website and social media are classified to as essential attributes for improving customer repurchase through mobile Ads. Research limitations/implications The focus of the current research is limited to identify and develop the hierarchical interrelationships between customer repurchase attributes that are unique to the mobile Ads business context. Additional research may be conducted for various media contexts and other products/services categories. Originality/value This study illustrated how multicriteria decision-making techniques could be used effectively using Fuzzy theory to explore the research area of customer repurchase in mobile Ads concept.