a b s t r a c tThis paper extends prior supply chain research by building and empirically testing a theoretical model of the contingency effects of environmental uncertainty (EU) on the relationships between three dimensions of supply chain integration and four dimensions of operational performance. Based on the contingency and organizational information processing theories, we argue that under a high EU, the associations between supplier/customer integration, and delivery and flexibility performance, and those between internal integration, and product quality and production cost, will be strengthened. These theoretical propositions are largely confirmed by multi-group and structural path analyses of survey responses collected from 151 of Thailand's automotive manufacturing plants. This paper contributes to operations management contingency research and provides theory-driven and empirically proven explanations for managers to differentiate the effects of internal and external integration efforts under different environmental conditions.

Background COVID-19 is a scientifically and medically novel disease that is not fully understood because it has yet to be consistently and deeply studied. Among the gaps in research on the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a lack of sufficient infoveillance data. Objective The aim of this study was to increase understanding of public awareness of COVID-19 pandemic trends and uncover meaningful themes of concern posted by Twitter users in the English language during the pandemic. Methods Data mining was conducted on Twitter to collect a total of 107,990 tweets related to COVID-19 between December 13 and March 9, 2020. The analyses included frequency of keywords, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling to identify and explore discussion topics over time. A natural language processing approach and the latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm were used to identify the most common tweet topics as well as to categorize clusters and identify themes based on the keyword analysis. Results The results indicate three main aspects of public awareness and concern regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the trend of the spread and symptoms of COVID-19 can be divided into three stages. Second, the results of the sentiment analysis showed that people have a negative outlook toward COVID-19. Third, based on topic modeling, the themes relating to COVID-19 and the outbreak were divided into three categories: the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, how to control COVID-19, and reports on COVID-19. Conclusions Sentiment analysis and topic modeling can produce useful information about the trends in the discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic on social media as well as alternative perspectives to investigate the COVID-19 crisis, which has created considerable public awareness. This study shows that Twitter is a good communication channel for understanding both public concern and public awareness about COVID-19. These findings can help health departments communicate information to alleviate specific public concerns about the disease.

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This research examines the individual and combined effects of internal integration (II) and external integration (EI) on product innovation. Two combined effects-balanced integration and complementary integration-are examined. Based on ambidexterity theory, the combined effects of II and EI are theorised to facilitate exploration and exploitation of external and internal knowledge, and subsequently improve product innovation. Our analysis of survey data from the Thai automotive industry ascertains that EI and complementary integration are positively associated with product innovation, but II and balanced integration are not associated with product innovation.This research is the first to provide novel insights into how exploration and exploitation of external and internal knowledge can be facilitated by internal and external integration, and their complementary effects on product innovation, which was previously less understood. Our findings provide managerial insights for firms involved in supply chain integration implementation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test the moderating effects of technological and demand uncertainties on the relationship between supply chain integration and customer delivery performance.Design/methodology/approachBased on a survey questionnaire with 151 participants in the Thai automotive industry supply chain, hierarchical regressions are used to test the moderating effects.FindingsInternal and supplier integration, but not customer integration, were positively associated with customer delivery performance. Technological and demand uncertainties were found to moderate the relationships between internal integration and customer delivery performance, and supplier integration and customer delivery performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe moderating effects of technological and demand uncertainties in the Thai automotive just‐in‐time (JIT) environment are explained. This research contributes to the development of a contingency theory of supply chain integration suggesting that the impacts of supply chain integration on customer delivery performance vary under different levels of technological and demand uncertainties.Practical implicationsManagers recognize the diminishing effects of internal integration and supplier integration under demand uncertainty, and the increasing effect of supplier integration under high technological uncertainty.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the supply chain management literature by clarifying the moderating effects of technological and demand uncertainties on the relationship between supply chain integration and customer delivery performance.