Antecedents of freight transportation for sustainable supply chain in the post-COVID era: an emerging market study

Abstract

PurposeIn past years, the global supply chain has witnessed devastating effects of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the interest of the Sustainable Supply Chain (SSC) stakeholders on sustainability. The stakeholders are now rethinking their business processes and strategy to make them sustainable. In this context, the relevant literature is required to support emerging markets to formulate sustainability-focussed strategies. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of potential antecedents that leads towards sustainable development of freight transportation in emerging markets.Design/methodology/approachInitially, the antecedents of the Sustainable Freight Transport (SFT) system are derived from the literature survey followed by verification from the experts. Then, the potential antecedents are categorized under four (social, organizational, operational and environmental) broad categories. Afterwards, a Neutrosophic Analytic Network Process (N-ANP) method is employed to obtain the priority weights of the identified potential antecedents.FindingsThe paper identified and ranked 17 antecedents of the SFT system. According to the study’s findings, the top three antecedents of SFT are “the presence of a multimodal transportation system,” “circularity in SFT” and “traffic congestion management”. The results from the study advocate the promotion of existing multi-modal transport facilities which is promising to achieve sustainability. The results suggested the adoption of the digital twin to manage the transport operations.Originality/valueThis study sheds light on how to achieve sustainability in the freight transportation system post-COVID era highlighting the potential antecedents. The study’s findings will assist practitioners in developing SFT strategies in the face of such pandemics in future.

Key Directions for Transforming Supply Chain Management in Emerging Markets during the Post-COVID-19 Pandemic Period

“…A significant number of studies during the COVID-19 pandemic have been dedicated to investigating the direct impact of the pandemic on supply chain formation (Ajmal et al, 2023;Sombultawee et al, 2022), as well as enhancing their resilience amidst the influence of adverse factors (Shen and Sun, 2023;Moosavi et al, 2022;Karmaker et al, 2021). It is worth noting the growing academic interest in supply chain formation issues in emerging markets, as the disruption of previously established supply chains undoubtedly exerts a shock effect on the economy, but can also present promising opportunities for developing markets, providing an additional chance to form competitive advantages through the establishment of sustainable supply chains, including at the global level (Aray et al, 2023;Dadzie et al, 2023;Dwivedi et al, 2023).…”

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

“…The eleventh article explored a new way to assess suppliers' suitability by considering pseudo-resilience factors to achieve 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 twelfth article delivered a prioritization model of potential antecedents toward sustainable freight transportation in emerging markets in post-COVID-19 time using a neutrosophic analytic network process (Dwivedi et al ., 2023). A structured literature review has been prepared by the thirteenth article through combining 56 scopus indexed scholarly articles to come up with four types of insights, i.e.…”

“…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).…”