ABSTRACT
The handicraft business constitutes concept selling rather than mere product selling, which is highly dependent on demand. Handicrafts' Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) have an expanding market in developed countries. The impact of the pandemic on this industry is severe due to the industry's informal nature and seasonal demand. The survival and resilience of these handicraft MSMEs face many challenges in the post-COVID-19 outbreak. The focus of the present study is to understand and analyze the key challenges for building resilience in handicraft MSMEs by scrutinizing the existing literature and interactions with stakeholders. EFA and the Grey DEMATEL approach are used to analyze the challenges for the adoption of resilience. EFA is used to categorize the challenges into various dimensions. The study has divided the challenges for the inclusion of resilience into survivable, sustainable, and viable categories using EFA to plan for short- and long-term business growth. Grey DEMATEL is being utilized for understanding these contextual relationships for each resilience dimension. Grey systems theory is a methodology that enables the incorporation of improbability and vagueness into the analysis. Findings of the study revealed the influencing challenges for each of the dimensions such as competition from machine-made products, insufficient government support and incentives for export, and inefficient managerial concern and response to internationalization as the prominent challenges. The results of this study illustrate the causal relationships amongst the identified resilience challenges to the various stakeholders. These findings offer practical insights for the government to allocate resources and impose measures to ensure resilience, as well as understanding the cause-effect relationship. Managerial implications and Policy insights for building the resilience of handicraft MSMEs are discussed in detail.
ABSTRACT
The Indian electronics industry is facing immense pressure to include sustainability practices in order to meet customer expectations, comply with legislation and create an edge over competitors. This growing need for inclusion of sustainability is driving original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to collaborate with third-party reverse logistics providers (3PRLPs) to sustainably manage returns. Collaboration with 3PRLP will put OEMs in a stronger position regarding compliance with government legislation, improving upon their corporate image and customer satisfaction. It is a win-win situation for the OEM. On the other hand, from the 3PRLP's point of view, it is important to know the capabilities of the OEMs before entering into a collaborative endeavour. Hence, it is firstly necessary to identify the most appropriate attributes of the manufacturer which are essential for a sustainable collaboration. In this context, the study proposes a novel framework for investigating the performance attributes of the OEMs from the economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability. Since the evaluation of each attribute for each dimension of sustainability differs in terms of the nature of the information needed and the time and resources required, it is necessary to conduct a pre-evaluation of the attributes using the Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) method. Furthermore, the shortlisted attributes for each sustainability dimension are evaluated and prioritized using the best worst method (BWM). The novelty of the attribute selection process lies in simultaneously considering the degree of importance of the attribute as well as the degree of difficulty of the collection of data required for the assessment of the OEM. The result of this study helps decision-makers and practitioners to comprehend the most influential attributes of OEMs which are crucial for collaboration, thus enhancing the overall sustainability impact of the supply chain. The managerial implications drawn from the resulting analysis provide the 3PRLP with a sustainable evaluation framework which can be ideally used for the selection of collaborative partners. The above model is validated using the case of an Indian 3PRLP company that handles electronic products.
