In the era of business sustainability, the modern supply chain is becoming complex due to several inhibitors such as uncertainty in the market, technological innovation, environmental protocols, cross-border trade regulations, and many stakeholders’ involvement. In the existing literature, minimal discussion to study the inhibit supply chain complexity (SCC) inhibitors for achieving sustainability. Therefore, the study analyses the inhibitors to SCC and supply chain sustainability (SCS) jointly. The combined examination of the underlying relationship for improving the Petroleum Supply Chain’s sustainable performance (PSC) is arguably one of the complex sectors with a significant impact on the environment and sustainability. The inhibitors to SCC and SCS are identified through extensive literature review and experts’ opinions. Through a structured questionnaire, data were collected from PSC experts. An integrated approach of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and interpretive structural modelling (ISM) is proposed to prioritize and examine the underlying relationship between inhibitors. This study explores the driving and dependence power of the inhibitors. The results indicate that most of the SCS inhibitors, such as institutional pressures (laws and regulations), strategic lack of strategic supplier alliance, market threat, act as drivers of SCC inhibitors, such as technological complexity, horizontal complexity, and complexity of customers. The study’s findings would help the supply chain managers and the petroleum sector policymakers to make better decision to overcome the challenges for achieving sustainability in PSC.
Keywords: Petroleum supply chain | Environment and sustainability | Complexity | Business strategy | Interpretive structural modelling | Performance

In the European Union, the silver economy is focused on developing strategies to facilitate the elderly population, mainly in terms of creating services based on innovations and technology. The paper encompasses a detailed overview of the silver economy in Estonia and the introduction of ICT solutions for the elderly population through knowledge management techniques. A knowledge map has been created using the Ontology model in Protégé to demonstrate the key knowledge resources for ICT integration in the silver economy. The results and information displayed in the knowledge map have been gathered from two detailed workshops which were further validated through questionnaires and interviews from the professionals in the field. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the different knowledge resources and competencies relevant to the integration of ICT in the silver economy which will serve as a basis for the development of a knowledge management model in the future.
keywords: Smart Specialization Strategy | ICT | Silver Economy | Knowledge Map | Ontology | Digital Competency

Technologies have been driving improvements in logistics and transportation. Focusing on a third-party logistics (3PL) firm’s technology innovations supported by external equity financing, we examine how the innovations can benefit the supply chain, and how the supply chain members should respond with coordinated operational decisions. More specifically, we consider a platform supply chain where a supplier sells a single product on an online platform provided by a retailer, and then hires a 3PL firm for transportation services. The 3PL firm may choose to raise capital through equity financing from external financial institutions, which can be used to support technology innovations to reduce the transportation cost. The financing decision of the 3PL in- teracts with operational decisions of the platform supply chain via possible cost savings. We start with investigating the supply chain coordination by characterizing the optimal operational decisions of the three firms under any given equity financing strategy. Acting non-cooperatively, the 3PL firm and the online retailer first determine the freight charge and revenue sharing respectively, in light of which the supplier’s decision on the retail price. We then move to the 3PL firm internally and derive the optimal equity financing strategy. Our analytical results show that the supply chain efficiency is dependent on the cost allocation between the retailer and the other two firms, but independent of the cost allocation between those two firms. It is also revealed that the original shareholders of the 3PL firm always have a chance to benefit from an appropriate financing strategy, and the optimal financing strategy may depend discontinuously on supply chain parameters. Finally, we check the robustness of our model and show that all key findings remain unchanged when relaxing the deterministic cost reduction to an uncertain one.
Keywords: Technology innovation | Equity financing | Platform supply chain | Non-cooperative game theory

With the aggravation of the global environmental crisis, consumers are keen to use green products, and enterprises are more committed to technology investment and innovation to meet consumers’ green preferences. This study considers a supply chain system composed of one manufacturer and one retailer, where the manufacturer invests in green emission reduction technology (GERT) to reduce carbon emissions, and the retailer invests in information disclosure technology to transmit the higher greenness quality of products to consumers. We discuss the technology investment decisions and cooperation strategies between the manufacturer and the retailer, as well as the impacts of government regulations on supply chain members’ decisions. We consider three scenarios: decentralized, government intervention, and cost sharing and government intervention. We derive the optimal technology investment decisions of the manufacturer and retailer. In addition, we identify the conditions for the manufacturer to subsidize the retailer’s disclosure technology costs. The results show that a higher emission reduction subsidy encourages GERT investments and increases supply chain members’ profits. However, when the government sets a higher emission reduction standard, the subsidy neither increases the emission reduction nor benefits the retailer, and hurts the manufacturer’s profit. We also demonstrate that when there is cost sharing and government intervention, emission reduction and supply chain performance are always better than in the other scenarios.
Keywords: Emission reduction | Information disclosure | Technology investments | Government intervention | Sustainable supply chain management