Xiaojun Wang

University of Bristol | UB · School of Economics, Finance and Management

Drawing on the dynamic capabilities view, this study investigates the role of failure analysis capability in affecting venture goal progress in the technologically turbulent environment in which entrepreneurial failures are commonplace. Combining a three-wave time-lagged questionnaire survey (Study 1) with a qualitative interview (Study 2) on high-...

This study examines the past, present, and future of supply chain resilience (SCR) research in the context of COVID-19. Specifically, a total of 1,717 papers in the SCR field are classified into eleven thematic clusters, which are subsequently verified by a supervised machine learning approach. Each cluster is then analyzed within the context of CO...

The behavioural theory of the firm (BTOF) claims that firms’ performance feedback is significant for strategic decision‐making. Building upon this, we shift our focus from the widely researched topic of financial performance to sustainability performance. We theorize that firms’ environmental performance feedback (i.e. performance relative to aspir...

Inventory financing is crucial to helping businesses survive during an economic crisis—such as that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—and supporting economic recovery in the aftermath. However, inventory financing is particularly risky in a volatile market environment since fluctuating collateral prices increase default risk. This paper presents an i...

By providing useful product information from the perspective of other buyers, online product/service reviews can help customers better evaluate the true quality of products and judge whether a product is a good fit for them. Based on online reviews, firms may improve product quality and/or adjust selling price to compete with other firms. In this s...

Hospitals are suffering from a critical challenge induced by the rapid spread of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Not only have patients been marginalized, but many clinicians working in the region-al hospitals have limited access to the specialist consultations and treatment guidelines they need from provincial-level hospitals to manage pneumo...

Portfolio optimization has long been used in asset management to mitigate risks of fluctuating asset prices. In this study, we use copula models and portfolio optimization to investigate how inventory financing providers (IFP) can utilize the timely market information of collaterals to optimize their portfolios of collaterals to mitigate default ri...

We investigate the effects of low-carbon technology transfer between two rival manufacturers on their economic, environmental, and social welfare performance under a cap-and-trade policy. We model alternative licensing arrangements of technology transfer and evaluate the model performance from the perspectives of different stakeholders, including m...

This research explores firms' digital presence in an online interactive network. Anchored in the literature on firm engagement and firm-generated content, this study discusses and empirically examines the impact of managerial response to online reviews on future ratings. A big data approach coupled with text analytics is employed on a large field d...

In-transit inventory financing is gaining popularity as an alternative way to access financing. However, compared with other financing means such as trade credit and bank loans, the effects on the supply chain of a third-party logistics provider (TPL) providing in-transit inventory financing are seldom investigated. This study adopts a channel comp...

Although cross-shareholding has increasingly been adopted in the industry to improve strategic synergy between companies, its role in the green supply chain is seldom investigated. By employing a Stackelberg game model, this paper investigates how the mechanism of cross-shareholding affects operational behaviour in a green supply chain. Specificall...

Although scholars in management recognize the value of harnessing big data to understand, predict and respond to future events, there remains little or very limited overview of how various analytics techniques can be harnessed to provide the basis for guiding scholars in studying contemporary management topics and global grand challenges raised by...

Over the years, supply chain reconfiguration decisions have been solely based on operational risk. Simplification strategies, such as horizontal mergers, and networking strategies, such as risk pooling, are conflicting paradigms that have been shown to improve financial performance of supply partners. The implication of this to disruption risk is n...

Sustainable product–service systems (SusPSSs) offer an innovation-driven approach to production based on providing results or functions with minimal material use and emissions. Networks of SusPSSs partners are central to the decision-making of sustainability policies. Evaluations and assessments of network-oriented risks sources are therefore cruci...

In the current business and political climate, deliberations concerning international trading agreements and their importance to B2B firms are increasing. Although the volume and value of international exchanges are growing, this study reveals that literature exploring issues concerning B2B international business, and particularly the role technolo...

This paper considers a two-echelon pharmaceutical supply chain comprising two pharmaceutical manufacturers and a pharmacy. We derive optimal decisions for three different supply chain power structures considering two scenarios: one scenario featuring quality regulation, and one without. By comparing the equilibriums of the two regulatory scenarios...

This research addresses the timely challenge of climate changes by investigating how a carbon emissions taxation scheme can be designed to reduce carbon emissions without hindering long-term economic development. Considering different power structures and green technology investment efficiencies, this research examines the optimal carbon tax design...

This paper considers a supply chain composed of a supplier and a retailer who commits to a service level to make end-users happy and promote sales. To reduce the losses resulting from the high demand volatility, the retailer purchases put options from the supplier to adjust its initial order. The optimal ordering and production policies with and wi...

With the increasing popularity of online retailing, in this article, we investigate the alternative online operation strategies regarding commission price when selling through the online platforms. We exploit a triadic network setting that consists of one online platform firm and two competing vendors and examine the strategic choice of the involve...

Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was first mentioned in 2013, it has created a lot of expectations in many aspects: international trade and economy, logistics infrastructure, policy and managerial implications, and so on. That said, research regarding BRI, particular from logistics and supply chain management perspectives, is scarce. There...

This research explores rival firms’ optimal strategies when engaging in market competition. We assume that customer demand is subject to customer sensitivity to the competitors’ prices and service levels. First, we develop coopetition models under a symmetric case where there is identical service-investment efficiency between two firms. We then ext...

Airlines have been adopting yield management to optimise the perishable seat control problem and overbooking is a common strategy. This study outlines the connections between yield management, crises, and crisis communication. Using big data captured on a social media platform, this study aims to combine traditional yield management with emerging s...

The aim of this research is to explore the process linking participative leadership to organizational identification. The study examines the relationship between participative leadership and internal CSR perceptions of employees and also investigates the role that pride in membership plays in the affiliation of CSR perceptions with organizational i...

In response to the global fight against climate change, a growing number of firms cooperate with their supply chain partners on green innovations. This study explores firms' green R&D cooperation behaviour in a two-echelon supply chain in which a manufacturer and a retailer first cooperate to invest green R&D and then organise production according...

The purpose of this study is to identify the customers' primary topics of concern regarding online retail brands that are shared among Twitter users. This study collects tweets associated with five leading UK online retailers covering the period from Black Friday to Christmas and New Year's sales. We use a combination of text analytical approaches...

The paper examines how firms develop supply chain financing model to help overcome institutional voids (IVs) and become ambidextrous. This study presents a case analysis of a novel supply chain financing model instigated and implemented by China's Sichuan Telecom (ST) to help supply chain partners overcome IVs in their environments. We identified t...

The Twittersphere often offers valuable information about current events. However, despite the enormous quantity of tweets regarding online retailing, we know little about customers’ perceptions regarding the products and services offered by online retail brands. Therefore, this study focuses on analysing brand-related tweets associated with five l...

This study examines the strategic choices of two rival manufacturers between competition and coopetition. A complex relationship exists between these two firms, who manufacture substitutive products. In addition, each of these firms has an option to purchase (or sell) a key component from (or to) the other. We develop a benchmark competition model...

This research investigates the optimal pricing strategy for the perishable food supply chain. Using the setting of a two-echelon supply chain including a supplier and a retailer, we apply the game theory approach to derive the equilibriums for both a single pricing strategy and a two-stage pricing strategy. Through a comparison of the equilibriums,...

Although big data, big data analytics (BDA) and business intelligence have attracted growing attention of both academics and practitioners, a lack of clarity persists about how BDA has been applied in business and management domains. In reflecting on Professor Ayre's contributions, we want to extend his ideas on technological change by incorporatin...

This paper considers a pharmaceutical supply chain composed of one pharmaceutical manufacturer and one pharmacy. We investigate how price cap regulation affects pharmaceutical firms' pricing decisions. We also evaluate the economic and social performance of the pharmaceutical supply chain and assess the risks associated with price cap regulation. T...

Purpose In the era of climate change, industrial organizations are under increasing pressure from consumers and regulators to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of product mix as a strategy to deliver the low carbon supply chain under the cap-and-trade policy. Design/methodology/approach Th...

Option contracts have been increasingly employed by supply chain firms as a popular strategy to hedge against the risk of unanticipated demand. This paper examines the impact of bidirectional option contracts on a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer taking into consideration of a service requirement. We characterize the...

In recent years, big data has emerged as one of the prominent buzzwords in business and management. In spite of the mounting body of research on big data across the social science disciplines, scholars have offered little synthesis on the current state of knowledge. To take stock of academic research that contributes to the big data revolution, thi...

We investigate a supply chain in which a retailer is supplied by two manufacturers with differentiated brands, a good brand and an average brand. The customers in the market are segmented based on value and brand preference, namely the customer acceptance of the average brand and the customer surplus for each brand. Both horizontal competition (bet...

Operational decisions made by manufacturers and retailers are often affected by the power relationships of both vertical and horizontal competitions in a supply chain. Although many studies have been carried to assess how the power structure impacts supply chains, most of them only focus on the power dynamics in the vertical competition or horizont...

Concerning the increasing emphasis on risk management in this uncertain global environment, there is an urgent demand for practical decision support tools that support supply chain risk communication and management. This research proposes an integrated framework that takes explicit account of multiple types of risk in aiding decision-making, and co...

Social media such as forums, blogs and microblogs has been increasingly used for public information sharing and opinions exchange nowadays. It has changed the way how online community interacts and somehow has led to a new trend of engagement for online retailers especially on microblogging websites such as Twitter. In this study, we investigated t...

Low carbon economy has become a top agenda for many countries following the agreement in the Paris meeting on climate change. In this article, we take price and emission sensitive demand into account and incorporate competition between the two rival manufacturers in the demand function. This research takes more proactive actions incorporating carbo...

This study examines the role of power relationship and coordination in sustainable supply chain management. We investigate a two-echelon supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer whose Customer demand is carbon emission sensitive. Using the game-theoretic approach, we compare the equilibrium solutions under three supply chain powe...

Main Message Organisations within the social care sector are faced with demanding changes driven by the government’s agenda to modernise and an ageing population, requiring high quality and personalized services that are efficiency and cost effective, facilitated by complex organizational technology. Running Heading IT Adoption in Social Care Key...

Green warehouse management plays a significant part in developing a carbon efficient supply chain. This research examines the behaviour change in warehouse management decisions under the cap-and-trade emission policy and explores the role of green technology investment in managing the trade-offs between the economic and environment performances of...

Service supply chain management has attracted increasing attention from academics and practitioners because of its importance to the world economy. Operational decisions made by service firms are often influenced by the power relationship in a service supply chain. This research investigates the impact of different power structures on firms' operat...

Low carbon manufacturing has become a strategic objective for many developed and developing economies. This study examines the role of co-opetition in achieving this objective. We investigate the pricing and emissions reduction policies for two rival manufacturers with different emission reduction efficiencies under the cap-and-trade policy. We ass...

To assist filtering and sorting massive review messages, this paper attempts to examine the determinants of review attraction and helpfulness. Our analysis divides consumers’ reading process into “notice stage” and “comprehend stage” and considers the impact of “explicit information” and “implicit information” of review attraction and review helpfu...

We are witnessing more frequent extreme weather events due to the global warming. There is an urgent need for governments, industries, general public, and academics to take coordinated actions in order to tackle the challenges imposed by the climate change. It is essential to incorporate the environmental objective in the transportation mode select...

s This paper examines the feasibility of employing subsidy contracts as a control mechanism to optimise the mobile phone sales channel. We investigate a dual-channel that consists of a telecommunication service operator (TSO) and a mobile phone manufacturer (MPM). The MPM׳s optimal production quantity and optimal retail price and the TSO׳s optimal...

Food supply chain operations contribute significantly to Greenhouse Gas emissions. In the United Kingdom (UK), supermarkets are leading operators in the food retailing sector. With 75-90% of a typical food product's "carbon footprint" occurring in the supply chain upstream of the point of sale, socially responsible retailers need to influence suppl...

With large volume of product flows and complex supply chain processes, more data than ever before is being generated and collected in supply chains through various tracking and sensory technologies. The purpose of this study is to show a potential scenario of using a prototype tracking tool that facilitate the utilisation of sensor data, which is o...

In the last decade, social media platforms have become important communication channels between businesses and consumers. As a result, a lot of consumer-generated data are available online. Unfortunately, they are not fully utilised, partly because of their nature: they are unstructured, subjective, and exist in massive databases. To make use of th...

While the Internet has provided a new means for retailers to reach consumers, it has fundamentally changed the dynamic of competition in the retail service supply chain. The mix of offline and online channels adds a new dimension of competition, and one central issue of this competition is the pricing strategy between the two channels. How to set p...

Green operations management has gained increasing interest among researchers and practitioners from the industry. It helps organisations to achieve competitive advantages. However, introducing green initiatives can bring various challenges to firms and supply chains. It is important to develop a systematic and effective decision support tool to hel...

Green product development has become a key strategic consideration for many companies due to regulatory requirements and the public awareness of environmental protection. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular tool to measure the environmental impact of new product development. Nevertheless, it is often difficult to conduct a traditional LCA at t...

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a renewable energy technology that could make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation. Despite early recognition of its potential role within a diverse low-carbon energy mix in the UK, the on-farm AD sector has stubbornly refused to grow beyond the 'early adopter' stage at a time when some other European...

Industrial practitioners and scholars have argued that collaboration for the delivery of an industrial product-service system (IPS2) has become an increasingly important strategy for industrial firms. Further, the requirements for IPS2 implementation are different from traditional sales of manufactured products. Consequently, an understanding of un...

The smart phone industry has unique supply chain relationships. Companies at all levels of the supply chain compete and coordinate with each other for market share and profit. This paper examines the impact of power structures on the decision of pricing and channel selection between a free channel and a bundled channel. We investigate the smart pho...

The growing awareness of environmental issues has made the design of eco-friendly products a critical task for modern businesses. Almost all the costs and the environmental performance of a product over its life-cycle are determined in its design and development phase. The selection of alternative green designs is, however, a major challenge in tod...

Designing environmentally friendly products has become a tighter requirement in the marketplace because of both the increasing trend in awareness of consumers and the obligations from legislation requirements. Unfortunately, this is not a straight forward decision for designers to evaluate whether their design options are satisfactory in terms of b...

The special issue of the International Journal of Production Economics focuses on sustainable food supply chain management (SFSCM). Sustainable production and distribution is a pertinent and timely issue in production economics. This is particularly critical for the food industry, which is still the largest manufacturing sector in many developed an...

Green packaging is playing an increasingly important role in greening the supply chain. However, the issues that companies face when developing green packaging solutions for the transportation of products within supply chains are poorly understood. A case study of an automotive component manufacturer is presented that explores the complexity of the...

Due to an increasing awareness in environmental impact, consumers are more sensitive towards green products when making their purchasing decisions. The young generation, who represents the future of our society, seems to have a different attitude and belief which enables them to reflect on their choice of green products. This research empirically e...

Remanufacturing has emerged as a competitive strategy for manufacturers to tackle environmental and economic challenges. In this paper, an integrated fuzzy approach is developed for the evaluation of remanufacturing alternatives. Then, importance weights of main remanufacturing processes and evaluation criteria are obtained through fuzzy extent ana...

Risk management is often complicated by situational uncertainties and the subjective preferences of decision makers. Fuzzy Hierarchical Model for Risk Assessment introduces a fuzzy-based hierarchical approach to solve risk management problems considering both qualitative and quantitative criteria to tackle imprecise information. This approach is il...

More and more manufacturers are transitioning from product-focused operations towards global service-oriented operations through approaches such as an industrial product-service system (IPS2). These systems deliver a blend of goods, equipment and services for improved value/revenue streams and there is a need to leverage the knowledge of domain exp...

Environmental concerns, from consumers, governments, and academics, have encouraged businesses to incorporate more environmentally conscious designs in their new product development. However, selection of the best green design is a decision-making process that is not easy to address. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a popular and comprehensive tool t...

Implementing green supply chain management (GSCM) initiatives can generate more business opportunities for firms. It also requires changes in firms’ operational capabilities and resources that may have an adverse effect on firms’ operations performance. In order to achieve sustainable economic and environmental performance, it is essential for comp...

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has emerged as an organisational philosophy in recent years. GSCM helps organisation and their business to improve competitive advantages and profits. Nevertheless, introducing new green initiatives might require the use of new technologies in supply and production processes, as well as the development of new qu...

In this book, the authors have made use of several real-life case studies to demonstrate how hierarchical approach (more specifically AHP and ANP) can be coupled with fuzzy logic in multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) risk assessment–related problems. In summary, they are supplier selection of a manufacturing organisation, selection of eco-design...

Managing supply chain risk has become a key challenge to many organisations. Among the studies on supply chain risk, supplier risk is one important area (Xiao et al. 2012). Supply uncertainty triggered by supplier performance variability and inconsistency often leads to delayed, deficient or defective deliveries (Davis 1993). It is brought by machi...

This chapter presents a model that integrates fuzzy logic and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the selection of green product designs. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology commonly utilised to analyse the environmental impacts of a product from its origin (i.e. raw materials) to its end-of-life. LCA is a popular and comprehensive tool t...

Risk is defined by ISO 31000 (2009) as the effect of uncertainty on objectives. Generally, risks may result from different circumstances such as uncertainty in financial markets, supply chain disruptions, project failures, security breaches, quality and safety incidents, environmental causes and disasters as well as deliberate attack from an advers...

Decision-making problems normally involve multiple criteria. This is already not an easy problem to address.

The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) provides an effective way to deal with complex decision making. However, AHP requires decision makers to determine the relative importance of each criterion/factor by means of pairwise comparisons between the relevant criteria/factors included in the analysis. The decision maker may feel uncertain about the pa...

Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) has been widely used to solve many complicated multiple criteria decision (MCDM) problems, as discussed in the previous chapters. However, one limitation of AHP is the assumption of independence among various factors. The dynamic nature of many MCDM problems determines that factors considered in the decision probl...

Due to regulatory pressures from government and non-government bodies and public awareness of the need to protect the environment, incorporating sustainability concerns in product design has become a key strategic consideration in new product development. However, selecting an appropriate sustainable design solution is a challenging task. In additi...

Making decisions is part of human life. Nevertheless, making a good decision is not always easy. This is mainly because there are many contributing factors (i.e. we have multiple criteria) in a problem. Even worse, many of them involve multiple objectives (i.e. multiple input, multiple output). That means the objectives of the problems in question...

Waste stemmed from inappropriate quality control and excessive inventories is a major challenge for perishable food management in grocery retail chains. Improvement of visibility and traceability in food supply chains facilitated by tracking and tracing technologies has great potential to improve operations efficiency. This research aims to reduce...

Purpose Manufacturing organizations and networks are heavily dependent on the flow of information within and across organization boundaries. A disruption in information flow might interrupt the operations of the organization and make management even more difficult. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate information theory approach to investiga...

Food waste stemmed from inappropriate quality control and excessive inventories is a major challenge in perishable food supply chains. Improvement of visibility and traceability in food supply chains facilitated by modern tracking and tracing technologies has great potential to reduce waste and improve operations efficiency. This research aims to m...

Green or environmental concerns are drawing more and more attention both in academia and industry. Careful deployment of green initiatives or policies could not only fulfil the requirements of environmental legislation but also lead to a competitive advantage for firms. Nevertheless, making optimal decisions in this regard is not easy. This is prin...

Just-In-Time (JIT) has been a very popular operations strategy partly because of its success in the Japanese industry. Various benefits, for example, inventory reduction, improved in operations efficiency, and faster response, have been studied widely in previous research. Therefore, successful implementation of JIT is vital to many companies. The...

Cloud computing introduces flexibility in the way an organization conducts its business. On the other hand, it is advisable for organizations to select cloud service partners based on how prepared they are owing to the uncertainties present in the cloud. This study is a conceptual research which investigates the impact of some of these uncertaintie...

Perishables are increasingly important for grocery retailers as they have become a main reason for many consumers to choose where to shop. However, perishable food waste stemmed from inappropriate quality control and excessive inventories that have to be either marked down before the “sell-by-date” or thrown away after the date, remains a major cha...

Traceability has become an essential business function to consistently supply quality and safe food products to consumers. However, it has been not rare that the efforts in traceability are separately made from routine operations management decisions. In this paper, an integrated optimisation model is developed in which the product safety related t...

This paper outlines the range of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) undertaken by The University of the West of England and discusses two typical cases in detail. It presents the planned and unplanned benefits that have been identified and realized. In addition to the organizational improvements we identify the value of KTPs to those employed...

The food industry has been under pressure regarding improving food safety, implementing efficient risk management, and managing quality ‘from farm to fork’. Individual parties in a food supply chain must make appropriate strategic and operational adjustments, enhance product quality and increase operational efficiency and profits. In this paper, an...

The food industry is under pressure of managing food safety 'from farm to fork'. Food traceability has become an essential task for the food industry in supplying food products with adequate quality and safety assurance. However, it could be a daunting task if the effort on traceability systems is separated from profitable strategies of managing su...

The food industry is under pressure to improve food product safety, implement efficient risk management and manage quality 'from farm to fork'. In this paper, a new risk assessment approach is proposed to perform structured analysis of aggregative food safety risk in the food supply chain by using the concepts of fuzzy set theory and analytical hie...

After recent food scandals and incidents, the design and implementation of traceability systems from farms to forks has become an important task for the food industry. For many food businesses, traceability is seen as a daunting task with few financial benefits. However, traceability can create competitive advantages. The key issue to add values on...

This paper investigates the potential value adding capability of dynamic product tracing to the food supply chain management. As the environment of supply chain processes affect product quality significantly, technologies and approaches for tracking and tracing products have the potential to improve the food supply chain performance by dynamically...