Humanitarian logistics is an integral part of disaster relief operations, which involves the phases of preparedness, disaster operations, and post-disaster operations. Integrating the planning and execution between phases minimizes the gaps in providing relief to the affected population. This paper presents a two-stage multi-objective mathematical model for integrated decision-making during the preparation and response phases. The proposed model is developed to jointly optimize the location of emergency shelters (and/or depots) and coordinate the movement of relief vehicles between the disaster site and emergency shelters. Focusing on the optimal distribution of relief supplies to the emergency shelters, the proposed model aims to minimize the operational, distributive injustice, and dissatisfaction costs. To address the computational complexity of the introduced model, two multi-objective meta-heuristics, namely multi-objective vibration damping optimization and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), are used. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the impacts of variations in key parameters on model output under different scenarios. Our results suggests that the employed solution algorithms outperform the traditional optimization methods in achieving the Pareto-Front solutions. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Biomachining is an innovative metal machining process in which metal is machined using the metabolic activity of a microbial culture instead of the hard metal cutting tool used in the conventional machining process. Nowadays, aluminum alloy has gained importance especially for its wide applicability in the construction field. There are many environmental issues involved in alloy machining which have a negative impact on surrounding, for instance, extensive use of cutting fluids. As a mitigation measure, biomachining can easily overcome above-cited issues currently faced by machining. So this study deals with biomachining of aluminum alloy 46500 using Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans to remove metal from the workpiece. Taguchi-based design of experiments has been used to determine the effect of operating parameters such as shaking rate, pH, time and cell concentration on functioning indicators such as specific material removal rate (SMRR) and percentage change in surface roughness (%?SR). The optimization of operating parameters is done utilizing the multi-objective genetic algorithm toolbox in MATLAB. The optimized results of the study indicate the SMRR value of 0.257 mg/h cm2 and % ?SR of 41.37. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.

Gigantic growth of social media and unbeatable trend of progress in the direction of the web seeking user’s interests have generated a storm of social text streams. Seeking information to know the phenomenon of various events in the early stages is quite interesting. Various kinds of social media live streams attract users to participate in real-time events to become a part of an immense crowd. However, the vast amount of text is present on social media, the unnecessary information bogs a social text stream filtering to extract the appropriate topics and events effectively. Therefore, detecting, classifying, and identifying burst events is quite challenging due to the sparse and noisy text of Twitter. The researchers' significant open challenges are the effective cleaning and profound representation of the text stream data. This research article's main contribution is to provide a detailed study and explore bursty event detection in the social text stream. Thus, this work's main motive is to present a concise approach that classifies and detects the event keywords and maintains the record of the event based on related features. These features permit the approach to successfully determine the booming pattern of events scrupulously at different time span. Experiments are conducted and compared with the state-of-the-art methods, which reveals that the proposed approach is proficient to detect valuable patterns of interest and also achieve better scoresto extract burst events on social media posted by various users. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Purpose: To explore building blocks of corporate value creation that can be effectively assembled by practicing managers to deconstruct corporate value creation into distinctive models (customer value creation and shareholder value creation) and stages (resource assembly and capability leverage) in the Indian Information Technology enabled Service (ITeS) industry for exploring efficiency differentials between large Indian ITeS companies. Design/methodology/approach: Data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique has been used to uncover efficiency differentials in large Indian ITeS companies that represent 90% of all the ITeS companies listed in the Indian stock market and 13.9% of all companies listed in the Indian stock market, across industries. Findings: This paper documents a nuanced understanding of interrelationships among activities that influence corporate value creation and comprehensively highlight those dominant activities that contribute to corporate value creation in an ITeS industry setting. The study demonstrates as to how companies can become more efficient in such crucial value creating components that result in superior corporate value. The explicating methodology proposed in this study can be handy for managers and can be extrapolated to other industry and national settings as well. Practical implications: Deconstructing corporate value creation into granular models, customer value creation and shareholder value creation and further into two stages, being assembling resources to create capabilities and leveraging such capabilities to deliver value, this study provides hands-on value for managers in ITeS companies to create value. Originality/value: Fusing the value creation and appropriation (VCA) framework, the resource-based view (RBV) and its extensions, this paper builds a robust theoretical model specification that is empirically tested. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

In order to achieve large capacity inter-satellite communication, optical wireless communication (OWC) is emerging as a promising area of research amongst the academic and research groups. While radio over fiber (ROF) and advanced modulation technique is considered to be a key enabling technology in the development of OWC based access networks for high-speed data transmission. This paper has proposed a novel ROF based system model using OWC for long haul high data rate applications. This system is designed using differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) through inter-satellite optical wireless communication (IsOWC) channel. The verification of the performance is performed at bit rates of 100 and 200 Gbps over a space distance range up to 1000 to 50000 km under different transmitted power. The simulative investigation has been carried out in terms of important parameters like BER, Q-factor and eye diagrams. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2018.

Earlier researchers have observed that an individual consumer's mood plays a significant role in increasing the impulsiveness, which leads to impulsive buying. The literature on shoppers' motivational traits has profoundly acknowledged the impact of these traits and mood regulation constructs on individual shopping values. The present study is a pioneer attempt proposing a comprehensive model, which incorporates three main antecedents (motivation, mood and value) of buying behaviour that influence the consumer purchasing decision. The paper empirically explores the liaison between the regulatory focus (promotion-focused and prevention-focused motivations), mood regulation (mood monitoring, mood clarity and mood repair), shopping values (hedonic and utilitarian), and impulsive buying behaviour. The outcomes suggest that two regulatory focus motives influence mood clarity. Mood repairing and mood monitoring impact hedonic shopping values, which has a substantial impact on consumers' impulsive buying tendency. The paper closes with theoretical and practical inferences, limitations, and discussion on the potential scope for future research. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

It is undeniable that the growth of the computer and network security is repeatedly increased since the past 40 years. In 1985-1986 encryption was applied as a primary technique for providing security. Network security technology includes authentication and authorisation, data encryption, access control and security auditing. Bitcoin is presently one of the most popular crypto-currencies. The phenomenon of Bitcoin crypto-currencies is based on the public key cryptography and peer to peer network. In the Bitcoin, blockchain is used for storage of the transaction which is also called the public ledger. Digital money or Bitcoin is used in day to day activities, some of which are illicit and illegal. In this paper, the main area is security, i.e., the main focus here is to protect Bitcoin systems from unauthorised access and from various threats using an appropriate scheme (elliptic-curve cryptography, ECC) protocol. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

In the broad sphere of Operations Management, Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) is a significant area of interest for both academics and practitioners. As SCRM has transitioned from an emerging topic to a growing research area, there is a need to review existing literature in order to ascertain development in this area. There are many literature reviews on this topic, however, there is a lack of an extensive review using network analysis and meta-analysis within SCRM context including ripple effect. To address this gap, we performed a review of 2564 articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals from 1976 to December 2018. First, we apply a network analysis tool on 2564 articles and identify emerging research clusters. Second, to conduct meta-analysis, we collated empirical results from the studies identified. Of those 2564 articles, 42 studies were empirical in nature including 29 studies that used a range of different constructs with appropriate correlation values required for performing meta-analysis. Through this study, we contribute to the literature on SCRM by discussing the challenges of current research, but more importantly, by identifying and proposing five research clusters and future research directions. Finally, the paper acknowledges the theoretical contribution, the limitations of this study, and suggests further research directions. © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

E-commerce has witnessed a steady growth with advances in digital technologies. However, one of the challenges faced by online retail is its inability to provide customers with the opportunity to “touch-and-feel” a product before purchasing, thereby resulting in a higher rate of product returns. To address this, online retailers, nowadays, are adopting various omnichannel configurations. Using a stylized model, we study three such omnichannel configurations: selling the product online, establishing a showroom while selling the product online (‘Experience-in-Store-and-Buy-Online (ESBO)’), and selling the product through both a brick-and-mortar (B&M) store and the online channel while allowing in-store product returns (‘Buy-Online-and-Return-In-Store (BORS)’). Based on product attributes such as product standardization and valuation we recommend optimal omnichannel strategies. Our results show that depending on whether a premium product is highly personalized or standardized, opening an additional showroom or a B&M store becomes optimal for the retailer. In contrast, for a low-valued, highly personalized product, the retailer prefers opening an exclusive showroom. Otherwise, for a low-valued, standardized product, the retailer opens an additional B&M store or continues to operate only online based on the product return rate and valuation. If the unit cost of transporting the returned products from customers is low, the retailer prefers to sell the product online only. Moreover, if the hassle cost of online purchase is too high, the strategy of in-store return becomes uneconomic. We also analyze the impact of customers’ exchanging returned items at the B&M store and their product fitness heterogeneity on the retailer's optimal omnichannel strategy. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Empirical evidence on conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in the education domain suggests increases in school participation but minimal effects on learning. In this paper, we find strong evidence for intrahousehold spillover effects of a CCT programme on children's academic performance, but interestingly, the CCT was not conditioned on education. We study a flagship health and safe motherhood programme from India, and by exploiting plausible exogenous variation in exposure to the programme, show positive effects on reading, writing and maths test scores for non-targeted elder children in the household whose mothers or aunts were potentially exposed to the policy. Our results can be viewed as intergenerational effects of CCTs because the estimated benefits accrue to the future generations of the potential recipients of the transfer payments. We identify higher expenditure on private tutoring as a potential mediating channel for the effects. We also find changes in fertility preferences of women, suggesting a longer-term mediating channel applicable in a standard quantity–quality trade-off setting. © 2021 The London School of Economics and Political Science

In recent times, Supply chains are required to undergo the structural changes in order to adapt to the positive events such as Industry 4.0 and negative events such as natural and man-made disasters. Both positive and negative events tend to cause disruptions and affect business operations continuity. Supplier selection, being the critical and foremost activity must ensure that selected suppliers are capable of supporting the organizations against disruptions caused by these events. Hence, supplier selection and order allocation must be restructured considering the dynamics of Industry 4.0 and disaster events to ensure undisrupted flow of materials across supply chain. The paper proposes a multi stage hybrid model for integrated supplier segmentation, selection and order allocation considering risks and disruptions. The suppliers are then evaluated based on set of criteria suitable in Industry 4.0 environment using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and are further prioritized using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FAHP-TOPSIS). The risk associated with each supplier is computed. The paper also proposes a Mixed Integer Program (MIP) as to optimize multi-period, multi item order allocation to suppliers in such a way that overall cost and risk of disruption is simultaneously minimized. In event of any disruption either from supply or demand side, the multi-stage hybrid model tends to reduce its economic impact by allocating emergency orders, thus, ensuring business operations continuity. The proposed multi-stage hybrid model is illustrated using a case of an automobile company. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.

The role of social media, particularly Twitter, in ensuring the large-scale propagation of information cannot be overemphasised. This study introduces the recipient network’s reciprocity toward a particular topic as a novel factor that contributes toward a central node’s information propagation potential, in addition to other widely studied factors. It first employs multiple regression analysis to present a model that reveals the prominent roles played by both content popularity, focal ratio, engagement efforts of users, and the recipient network’s reciprocity toward a topic, in determining his or her propagation potential. Further, it investigates the impact of the interaction terms of each of these propagation dimensions and the network’s reciprocity toward the topic on a user’s propagation potential. The results show that the network’s reciprocity toward the topic (i.e. ‘blockchain’ in this study) is important for modelling the diffusion process accurately. Second, applying a multi-methods approach, this study also incorporates fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). It reveals four alternative combinations of explanatory variables (propagation dimensions) that are sufficient for achieving the expected outcome (propagation potential of the user/central node). The study found fsQCA results complementing the results of the regression model. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Spectral amplitude coding optical code division multiple access (SAC-OCDMA) is one of the most important multiplexing schemes of OCDMA that has turned out to be a stimulating investigating area in optical communication due to its increased privacy, network capacity and its flexibility in allocating the channels and asynchronous environment. On the other hand, Inter-satellite optical wireless communication (IsOWC) which is a favorable area of research in optical communication is useful for bursty transmissions and long-distance communications. In this paper, we have designed a hybrid SAC-OCDMA system through IsOWC channel using ZCC code for advanced intensity modulation formats (CSRZ, Db, and AMI). The investigation is done for four users at a bit rate of 40(4×10) Gb/s using a direct detection technique. Further, on comparing the proposed system using advanced intensity modulation formats, the result shows that system using CSRZ format is better in terms of BER, Q-factor, SNR and the eye diagram with respect to AMI and Db. © 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2018.

Since last decade, Spectral Amplitude Coding Optical Code Division Multiple Access (SAC-OCDMA) system has become popular since it offers security, unlimited bandwidth and eliminates multiple access interference. On the other hand, Free Space Optics (FSO) provides last-mile access at a high data rate. We have designed a new zero cross-correlation code, which is named as an identity-type matrix ZCC code. The proposed code’s performance is evaluated by designing 120 GB/s Hybrid FSO-MDM (mode division multiplexing) and SAC-OCDMA system under atmospheric turbulence using the direct detection (DD) technique. Six channels, carrying 20 GB/s data each, are transmitted over the FSO channel. Two Laguerre Gaussian modes (LG 00 and LG 01) are used in MDM. The results of the simulation show that the performance of the proposed code is better in comparison to existing codes. © 2021, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

Over the last three decades, the theory of constraints (TOCs) has emerged as a complete management philosophy. Fox extended the application of TOC to the product mix situations and suggested the theory of constraints heuristics (TOChs). This algorithm was applicable to single constraint situations only and later, Fredendall and Lea (1997) modified it to revised theory of constraints heuristics (RTOChs) for multiple constraint situations. Neither of these heuristics is applicable to the situations where complete shipment to different customers is an additional constraint over and above the physical constraints. In this paper, some modifications are suggested in RTOCh proposed by Fredendall and Lea (1997). By applying these modifications, the heuristics can be used in the complete shipment constraint situations. The working of this modified heuristics has been explained by taking two illustrative examples. By comparing the results obtained from the proposed heuristics with those obtained from the integer linear programming model, it has been proven that the heuristics give satisfactory results. Since the proposed heuristics provides the sequence of manufacturing, the effect of contingencies on actual output will be minimum. Ease of usage and better actual output are the advantages of proposed heuristic over integer linear programming. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Religion is known for transforming human behaviour in many ways. This research investigates the influence of religiosity on two unrestrained buying constructs; impulsive and compulsive buying. The focus of this paper is on both intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity. The first study provides important insights into the differential impact of these two dimensions of religiosity on unrestrained buying constructs. The second study explores the underlying mechanism of the relationship between extrinsic religiosity and unrestrained buying behaviours. Results show a negative relationship of intrinsic religiosity and a positive relationship of extrinsic relationship with unrestrained buying constructs. We also found that this relationship for extrinsic religiosity is mediated by susceptibility to interpersonal influence and moderated by long-term orientation. This research explains the differential impact of religion on unrestrained buying behaviour. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

The team orienteering problem (TOP) requires a team of time-constrained agents to maximize the total collected profit by serving a subset of given customers. The exact solution approaches for TOP in the literature have considered only the case of identical agents, even though the heterogeneity of the agents is of essence in many applications. The heuristic approaches, on the other hand, although provide good feasible solutions, do not offer any measure of solution quality, such as an optimality gap. In this study, we consider an extension of the conventional TOP in which the agents are allowed to be identical as well as completely nonidentical. We explore a Lagrangian relaxation based approach that simultaneously obtains tight upper and lower bounds on the optimal solution of the problem and, therefore, provides a measure of solution quality by way of duality gap. Our algorithm achieves an average gap of less than 2% within an average time of around 120 s across 135 randomly generated instances with up to 100 customers and five nonidentical agents. We also introduce a new set of valid symmetry breaking constraints that significantly improves the effectiveness of our formulation and Lagrangian implementation for the case of identical agents. For the three most difficult sets of benchmark instances for TOP with identical agents, our approach achieves upper bounds that are, on average, 1.08% above the best-known solutions, and feasible solutions that are 0.35% below the best-known solutions. The average time taken to solve these problems was about 115 s. © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC

This paper investigated the role of information related, social and customer characteristics in public information adoption tendencies of online customers to result in herding in e-commerce. E-commerce platforms contains numerous online reviews about products which have the potential to influence customers. We applied structural equation modeling and a 2 × 2 scenario experiment to empirically verify the effect of a few factors in creating online herding. Two levels of cognitive complexity (simple, complex) and risk aversion (risk averse, risk taker) formed the 2 × 2 factorial design. The study's primary finding was that a person with simple cognitive structure and risk avoidance tendency may exhibit higher intention to adopt public information and engage in herding. Information specific attributes contributed maximum towards information adoption and herding. Among sociological variables, only reputation concern significantly predicted both information adoption and herding. Theoretically, the study offered a framework to explore herding intentions online and augmented the observations from the information adoption model. The quality of concise information from credible sources significantly instigates adoption of public information contained in online reviews. From the perspective of marketers, having a better understanding of herding behaviors and its mechanisms can enable the e-commerce platform to reduce herding’s erosion on the wisdom of the crowd by optimizing its information structures (i.e., public information, private information, etc.). © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.

This study tries to explore how social media had been used for public administration activities across the global by analysing the tweets tagged with “#government” and “#gov”. On the basis of the literature social media usage by public administration had been classified into five dimensions, namely information dissemination and broadcasting; open transparency; open participation; open collaboration; and ubiquitous engagement. The study collects 296,417 tweets (after cleaning, 174,204 tweets) tagged as “#government” and “#gov” as open government data (as data is available to everyone but managed by private organizations) and this study applies open government data activities and social media analytics to derive the insights. The article also explores how different usage of the social media is effecting sharing and liking of the tweets. The implications of these findings can be important to government of different countries. The article concludes by pointing that social media can be used by citizens for open participation which can subsequently facilitate information dissemination and ubiquitous engagement. © 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

This study tries to explore how social media had been used for public administration activities across the global by analysing the tweets tagged with “#government” and “#gov”. On the basis of the literature social media usage by public administration had been classified into five dimensions, namely information dissemination and broadcasting; open transparency; open participation; open collaboration; and ubiquitous engagement. The study collects 296,417 tweets (after cleaning, 174,204 tweets) tagged as “#government” and “#gov” as open government data (as data is available to everyone but managed by private organizations) and this study applies open government data activities and social media analytics to derive the insights. The article also explores how different usage of the social media is effecting sharing and liking of the tweets. The implications of these findings can be important to government of different countries. The article concludes by pointing that social media can be used by citizens for open participation which can subsequently facilitate information dissemination and ubiquitous engagement. © 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.