Guest editorial: Post-COVID-19 sustainable supply chain management in emerging markets

Citation

Ali, S.M., Jabbour, C.J.C., Paul, S.K. and Munim, Z.H. (2023), "Guest editorial: Post-COVID-19 sustainable supply chain management in emerging markets", International Journal of Emerging Markets, Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 1285-1288. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOEM-06-2023-996

Since the early 2000s, emerging markets have become the heart of global supply chains hosting a large volume of industrial productions. As the upstream suppliers in the global supply chains, emerging markets likely encounter greater risks at uncertain times (Alvarado-Vargas and Kelley, 2020). Supply chain disruption in these markets can adversely affect the firms that outsource to them or countries that rely on importing goods. The economy of emerging markets can be slowed down due to supply chain disruptions leading to increasing unemployment and reduced quality of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected emerging markets more negatively than developed markets (Harjoto and Rossi, 2021). The government imposed lockdowns, travel restrictions, the shutdown of production plants, etc., disrupting their supply chains. Nearly all manufacturing functions are disturbed, and so are their supply chains worldwide, including emerging markets (Karmaker et al., 2021; Shahed et al., 2021). As a response to the disruption, manufacturing firms have been re-engineering their supply chains (Belhadi et al., 2021; Chowdhury et al., 2021). Disruption mitigation measures include developing local suppliers, increasing collaboration through digital technologies, ensuring social distancing at manufacturing plants and offices, and offering favorable terms to buyers (Munim et al., 2022). Moreover, manufacturing firms in the context of emerging markets are likely to face severe post-COVID-19 challenges (Chowdhury et al., 2022). To deal with post-COVID-19 challenges, it is essential to understand the effect of the recent outbreak of COVID-19 on supply chains and strategies taken by firms to overcome the challenges.

This special issue attempts to expand the theoretical and practical knowledge of sustainable supply chain management in the context of emerging markets. This special issue contains nine research articles which discuss diversified research problems from practical scenarios, strategic solution frameworks, and decisive and incisive conclusions in sustainable supply chain management applicable to emerging economies.

The first article examined causal relations and the importance of factors affecting supplier performance using a fuzzy cognitive map with a hybrid learning algorithm. It demonstrated a case study of a Turkish personal care product company in the context of post-COVID-19 (Kocabey Çiftçi, 2023). The second article analyzed drivers of a resilient supply chain in the humanitarian sector in preparing for outbreaks ensuring the continuity of emergency healthcare services in India. It applied the Grey-Delphi, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Shannon's information entropy theory (Hossain et al., 2023). The third article examined how supply chain data analytics ensure the development strategies of adaptability, agility and alignment, thus ensuring post-COVID supply chain performance using partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in the textile sector of Pakistan (Khan et al., 2023). The fourth article pinpointed and delivered empirical evidence about digital supply chain transformation drivers, focusing on interplays between technology, organizational potentials and environmental dynamism during the COVID-19 era. It was based on a case study of Vietnam's small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises using PLS-SEM (Ngo et al., 2023). The fifth article investigated central strategies to combat post-COVID-19 impacts based on a case study of Indian smart furniture using grey relational analysis. It found that inventory-categorization is a crucial strategy (Sachan et al., 2023). The sixth article analyzed how perceived customers' resilience, customer-centric green supply chain management and fear-uncertainty of COVID-19 interact with each other, how corporate social responsibility plays a mediating factor, and thus exploring opportunities of post-COVID-19. It used PLS-SEM by demonstrating a case study of Egypt's SMEs (Kholaif et al., 2023). The seventh article explored a new way to assess suppliers' suitability by considering pseudo-resilience factors to achieve sustainable supply chain (SSC) in the post-COVID-19 era using an analytical hierarchy process and R. It also provided a case study of three smartphone processor suppliers (Jessin et al., 2023). The eighth article delivered a prioritization model of potential antecedents towards sustainable freight transportation in emerging markets in post-COVID-19 time using a neutrosophic analytic network process (Dwivedi et al., 2023). The importance of certain primary flexible SSC practices for the footwear industry in the developing market scenario have been evaluated by the ninth article using a combination of approaches namely, Bayesian, and the Best-Worst-Method and Delphi method (Ahmed et al., 2023).

To summarize, those above nine articles are believed to explore different problems from various significant perspectives of SSC management and to provide significant theoretical and practical implications for researchers, policy makers, industrial decision makers and executives in context of during and post-COVID situation of emerging markets.