Leveraging Digital Approaches for Transparency in Sustainable Supply Chains: A Conceptual Paper

Exploring the intersection of digitalization and sustainability in oil palm production: challenges, opportunities, and future research agenda

The increasing global demand for palm oil and its derivatives has led to significant environmental and social concerns, prompting the need for sustainable practices in oil palm production. In recent years, digital technologies have emerged as a potential solution to enhance sustainability in this sector. The objective of this review was to provide insights into the potential benefits and limitations of digital technologies in promoting sustainable practices in the oil palm industry, and to identify key challenges that must be addressed to ensure that digitalization contributes to sustainable development in this sector. To obtain valuable insights on this topic, this review employed a thorough analysis and exploration of relevant literature. Our findings highlight the transformative potential of digital technologies such as precision agriculture, data analytics, blockchain, and robotics to optimize resource utilization, improving efficiency, promoting social welfare, improving supply chain transparency, mitigating environmental impacts, and enhancing sustainability in oil palm production. However, the adoption of these technologies is hindered by several challenges, including high cost, lack of knowledge, and inadequate infrastructure. Our findings emphasize the importance of supportive policies, collaborative efforts, and targeted research to promote technology adoption and ensure equitable benefits across the oil palm industry. Recommendations are provided for industry stakeholders, policymakers, and researchers to leverage digitalization effectively and promote sustainable practices in the oil palm industry, ultimately contributing to global sustainability goals.

Blockchain technology for sustainable development: a systematic literature review

Purpose

Blockchain technology (BCT) is one of the latest disruptive innovations, brought along with-it immense scope of diverse applications contributing towards sustainable development (SD). The consistent increase in the publications reveal that the application of BCT for SD has become popular among researchers and practitioners in past few years, in turn, urged for a systematic literature review (SLR) to get an insight into the research journey travelled so far and setting directions for future research in this area. Therefore, this study aims to identify, map and synthesize the available literature on application of BCT for SD.

Design/methodology/approach

The automatic and manual search resulted into 1,277 studies from Scopus and Web of Science database. Further applying inclusion and exclusion criterion resulted in bringing out total of 157 studies, which were termed as primary studies. Based on the results of descriptive analysis, conducted through Bibliometric and VOSviewer software, the characteristics of BCT and its key capabilities, contributing towards shaping the recent SD literature, were critically examined. Identified research themes for clustering primary studies were aligned with United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (UNSDG). A mind-map was also prepared on the basis of thematic classification of primary studies.

Findings

The research themes “business practice and economic sustainability”, “agriculture and food security” and “business practice and environment sustainability” were found to be the focal points of scholarly attention. Synthesis and analysis of primary studies resulted into classification of research gaps under four categories – theoretical foundation, methodological limitation, research themes and technology implementation challenges. The study was concluded by sensitizing and sanitizing the concrete research questions for future research.

Research limitations/implications

The research findings shall be a roadmap for research scholars, academicians and practitioners to comprehend the present state of knowledge in the domain of “BCT application for SD” and decide upon adopting the future course of action to attain the UNSDGs by the year 2030.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first attempt in its own sense to analyse and synthesize the available literature on “attaining SD through BCT” using SLR approach.

A critical analysis of the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence for supply chain

The integration between blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) has gained a lot of attention in recent years, especially since such integration can improve security, efficiency, and productivity of applications in business environments characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In particular, supply chain is one of the areas that have been shown to benefit tremendously from blockchain and AI, by enhancing information and process resilience, enabling faster and more cost-efficient delivery of products, and augmenting products' traceability, among others. This paper performs a state-of-the-art review of blockchain and AI in the field of supply chains. More specifically, we sought to answer the following three principal questions: Q1-What are the current studies on the integration of blockchain and AI in supply chain?, Q2-What are the current blockchain and AI use cases in supply chain?, and Q3-What are the potential research directions for future studies involving the integration of blockchain and AI? The analysis performed in this paper has identified relevant research studies that have contributed both conceptually and empirically to the expansion and accumulation of intellectual wealth in the supply chain discipline through the integration of blockchain and AI.

Artificial intelligence and blockchain implementation in supply chains: a pathway to sustainability and data monetisation?

Digitalisation is expected to transform end-to-end supply chain operations by leveraging the technical capabilities of advanced technology applications. Notwithstanding the operations-wise merits associated with the implementation of digital technologies, individually, their combined effect has been overlooked owing to limited real-world evidence. In this regard, this research explores the joint implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain Technology (BCT) in supply chains for extending operations performance boundaries and fostering sustainable development and data monetisation. Specifically, this study empirically studied the tuna fish supply chain in Thailand to identify respective end-to-end operations, observe material and data-handling processes, and envision the implementation of AI and BCT. Therefore, we first mapped the business processes and the system-level interactions to understand the governing material, data, and information flows that could be facilitated through the combined implementation of AI and BCT in the respective supply chain. The mapping results illustrate the central role of AI and BCT in digital supply chains' management, while the associated sustainability and data monetisation impact depends on the parameters and objectives set by the involved system stakeholders. Afterwards, we proposed a unified framework that captures the key data elements that need to be digitally handled in AI and BCT enabled food supply chains for driving value delivery. Overall, the empirically-driven modelling approach is anticipated to support academics and practitioners' decision-making in studying and introducing digital interventions toward sustainability and data monetisation.

The trends of blockchain in environmental management research: a bibliometric analysis

The emergence of blockchain technology has brought about disruptive challenges in multiple fields. Blockchain research has come into the global spotlight, particularly in the field of environmental management. The decentralized mechanism of blockchain conflicts with the centralized structure of environmental management; however, there is a need to review the literature on blockchain and its potential in environmental management. In this paper, we performed a bibliometric analysis to investigate publications on environmental management based on blockchain (EMBB) in the Web of Science (WOS). The distribution by journal, author, organization and keywords were measured by R Package in a descriptive analysis. The network analysis of research themes was visualized in VOS Viewer. The results show that research on EMBB is still in its infancy and lacks case studies. In terms of research trends, we conclude by suggesting future directions in EMBB. In summary, we propose a blockchain-based environmental management framework to provide a reference for regulators. The governance framework will inform policy by unravelling the challenges and opportunities presented by technological change for decision makers in environmental governance.

The application of Industry 4.0 technologies in sustainable logistics: a systematic literature review (2012-2020) to explore future research opportunities

Nowadays, the market competition becomes increasingly fierce due to diversified customer needs, stringent environmental requirements, and global competitors. One of the most important factors for companies to not only survive but also thrive in today's competitive market is their logistics performance. This paper aims, through a systematic literature analysis of 115 papers from 2012 to 2020, at presenting quantitative insights and comprehensive overviews of the current and future research landscapes of sustainable logistics in the Industry 4.0 era. The results show that Industry 4.0 technologies provide opportunities for improving the economic efficiency, environmental performance, and social impact of logistics sectors. However, several challenges arise with this technological transformation, i.e., trade-offs among different sustainability indicators, unclear benefits, lifecycle environmental impact, inequity issues, and technology maturity. Thus, to better tackle the current research gaps, future suggestions are given to focus on the balance among different sustainability indicators through the entire lifecycle, human-centric technological transformation, system integration and digital twin, semi-autonomous transportation solutions, smart reverse logistics, and so forth.

Modeling the blockchain readiness challenges for product recovery system

Product Recovery System (PRS) transfers products from their typical final place to their source to arrest some value on the product. There are obstructions, such as costs, associated with the modification of accounts and assessment of products and refunds associated with the implementation of PRS. Blockchain Technology (BCT) emerged as an innovative approach to constructing trust in a trust less environment and assures the availability, traceability, and security in data management. It also presents a valuable solution to PRS. This study aims to analyze the Blockchain Readiness Challenges (BRCs) to PRS in the context of manufacturing industries. The study observes 20 readiness challenges linked with the implementation of BCT in PRS. The BRCs are identified from the literature survey and confirmed after consequent examinations with industry experts and researchers. The study employed a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) i.e., the Decision-Making Trial And Evaluation Laboratory (Fuzzy DEMATEL) approach to find the cause-and-effect interactions to prioritize BRCs. The Maximum Mean De-Entropy (MMDE) algorithm was adopted to establish the threshold value based on the information entropy of the interactions among the BRCs for PRS. The fuzzy set theory was adopted to tackle the uncertainty and vagueness of personnel biases and data deficiency problems. The findings from this study reveal that inadequate financing for PRS exercises, lack of governance and standards, and security challenges to BCT implementation are the most influential readiness challenges for the adoption of blockchain in PRS. The study is useful to manufacturing organizations for identifying the potential BRCs to implement PRS among all existing readiness challenges so that they can take suitable measures before proceeding to adopt blockchain in PRS. The managers are suggested to eliminate the readiness challenges and widen the blockchain technology adoption in PRS.

Study of deployment of “low code no code” applications toward improving digitization of supply chain management

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand the concept of “Low Code No Code” applications and study its scope of application for web designing, rapid application development (RAD) and supply chain digitization (SCD).

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative exploratory study was conducted for this exploratory study. A semi-structured open-ended questionnaire was prepared by the authors. Based on the questionnaire in-depth interviews were conducted with subject matter experts having more than 10 years of experience in the domain of supply chain management and digitization. The study questionnaire focused on the current reach and future potential of “Low Code No Code” platforms. A total of 20 responses were collected from experts as post this point thematic saturation was reached. A non-probabilistic convenience sampling was applied to identify the experts The data was content analyzed for themes.

Findings

The major findings that emerged from the study was that “Low Code No Code” platforms applications could be used across end-to-end SCD. The study also revealed that RAD through “Low Code No Code” platforms could reduce organizations dependency on coders. In the case of procurement, “Low Code No Code” applications could improve vendor and supplier management by streamlining processes. The cost-effective and easy-to-maintain “Low Code No Code” application development could help Medium and Small-Scale Enterprises level the playing field against large organizations. The lack of adoption strategy and low perceived usefulness was identified as major barriers to the adoption of “Low Code No Code” applications by organizations.

Research limitations/implications

“Low Code No Code” application-based automation would enable better utilization of organizational supply chain (SC) resources and capabilities. This would improve the sustainability performance of the firm. Furthermore, it would also enable the provision of SC services at a lower cost level, thus benefiting customers.

Practical implications

“Low Code No Code” application-based automation would help organizations to reduce the dependency on coders and Information Technology developers SCD. This could also allow SC managers to make more apps to be built in less time without the need of complex coding. This could potentially reduce app development costs toward digitizing SCs.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was one of the very first studies regarding how “Low Code No Code” applications could revolutionize the SC using these app development capabilities. This study also provided an extensive study of Diffusion of Innovations and Technological Organizational Theory frameworks for in the context of “Low Code No Code” technology adoption.

Data Usage and the Legal Stability of Transactions for the Commercial Operation of Autonomous Vessels Based on Digital Ownership in Korean Civil Law

Stakeholders in the maritime industry have agreed to expand commercial operations by developing autonomous vessels, the epitome of innovative technologies. However, they are still concerned about the risks of infringing on the rights and interests of individuals or organizations linked to data transactions. Based on Locke’s theory of property ownership, and the assurance of absolute ownership as specified in the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, the business model is still in its early stages. This study examined the concept, transaction structure, and application scope of data activating digital platforms to support data transactions, and aid in advancing the new business sector for commercial operations of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASSs). Consequently, this study contributes to and recognizes the future value of knowledge and intellectual property related to maritime data. This is achieved by defining the intellectual property emerging from newer avenues, such as MASSs, blockchain technology, and smart ports, that are consequential to the rapid development of the maritime industry.

Applications of Blockchain Technology in Sustainable Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management: A Systematic Review

Developing sustainable products and processes is essential for the survival of manufacturers in the current competitive market and the industry 4.0 era. The activities of manufacturers and their supply chain partners should be aligned with sustainable development goals. Manufacturers have faced many barriers and challenges in implementing sustainable practices along the entire supply chain due to globalisation, outsourcing, and offshoring. Blockchain technology has the potential to address the challenges of sustainability. This study aims to explain the applications of blockchain technology to sustainable manufacturing. We conducted a systematic literature review and explained the potential contributions of blockchain technology to the economic, environmental, and social performances of manufacturers and their supply chains. The findings of the study extend our understanding of the blockchain applications in sustainable manufacturing and sustainable supply chains. Furthermore, the study explains how blockchain can influence the sustainable performance of manufacturers by creating transparency, traceability, real-time information sharing, and security of the data capabilities.

Sustainable Supplier Selection in Construction Industry through Hybrid Fuzzy-Based Approaches

Due to increase in the public and stakeholders’ awareness regarding economic, environmental, and social issues, the construction industry tends to follow the sustainability policies and practices in supply chain management. Hence, one of the most crucial aspects for a construction company in this regard is sustainable supplier selection, and, to this end, an accurate and reliable model is required. In this paper a hybrid fuzzy best-worst method and fuzzy inference system model is developed for sustainable supplier selection. In the first phase of this study, after determining 19 criteria in three main aspects, the final weight of each aspect and criterion is obtained using fuzzy best-worst method approach. In the second phase, the most sustainable supplier is selected by running the weighted fuzzy inference system both in aspect and criterion level, providing more accurate results compared to the use of other available models. Finally, two different tests are employed to validate the results and evaluate the robustness of the proposed model. The novel developed model enables the decision-maker to simulate the decision-making process, reduce the calculations loads, consider a large number of criteria in decision making, and resolve the inherited uncertainties in experts’ responses.

Green Practices for Global Supply Chains in Diverse Industrial, Geographical, and Technological Settings: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

With the rise in global consumption and the consequent intensive demand for global resources, the attention of scholars and practitioners towards greener supply chains has grown over the years. In this context, this study has two main aims. The first is to offer an up-to-date literature review of the ways in which sustainability is pursued in diverse settings, based on the sector, the geographical area, and the level of adoption of digital technologies of a company. The second aim is to identify the research gaps in this field, and to suggest directions for future investigations. The results of the structured literature review reveal that, although developed and developing countries tend to focus on different types of sustainable interventions, three factors are consistently considered to be crucial for the success of a sustainable initiative in global supply chains. These factors are the collaboration along the supply chain, the commitment of the top management, and the presence of environmentally-oriented policies or regulations. These three factors complicate the decision-making process that is needed to implement sustainable practices. Therefore, we suggest ways in which to design future research that better capture the real challenges of making environmentally conscious decisions, leveraging on the concepts of the Intertwined Supply Network (ISN) and the cognitive frame.