Supply chain collaboration of Ghana's gold mining industry

The gold mining industry contributes about 41% of Ghana's export earnings, generating about 14% as tax revenue and a total of 5.5% gross domestic product (GDP). It is essential to salvage the industry’s image. Employees of the industry can be laid off and made redundant because the industry's financial position is almost always affected during critical moments. This in most cases result in the holding up of suppliers' payments and operations grinding to a halt due to procurement, logistics and inventory issues. In light of this, an empirical study is being conducted with the aim of identifying the factors of supply chain collaboration in Ghana's mining industry. Mixed methods were used including a purposive sampling method which was used with survey questionnaires administered on eleven operational mining companies in Ghana. SPSS tool was used in the analysis of data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at the mines site (company premises) in September 2019 in Ghana. The results identified some factors that affect the collaborative supply chain. These are the pricing of products and service, variable payment systems, open book, the share of company values, and consolidation of orders. Identifying these factors contribute to existing literature which makes this study unique as they have not been discovered in any of the supply chain literature in the context of gold mining. A framework in supply chain collaboration was developed, which is unique to the gold mining sector in Ghana. The result will have managerial implications to drive the gold mining industry's performance forward. Mining organisations will benefit from this study as this can be replicated in other gold mining sectors in Africa and across the globe’s mining industry

Supplier sustainability performance evaluation and selection: a framework and methodology

This study proposes a supplier sustainability performance evaluation framework for evaluating and selecting suppliers based on their sustainability performance. An integrated model which uses fuzzy-Shannon Entropy to determine the sustainability criteria weights and fuzzy-Inference system to prioritize suppliers from the individual sustainability dimensions perspective is proposed to aid in the evaluation and selection. A Pakistan manufacturing company is used to exemplify the applicability and usefulness of the proposed suppliers' sustainability performance evaluation decision framework. The results show that amongst the economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions, three criteria, namely: ‘Quality’ (10.87%), ‘Cleaner Technology Implementation’ (11.51%) and ‘Information Disclosure’ (13.75%), respectively, are the topmost ranked criteria. Across the triple-sustainability dimensions, suppliers 3 was ranked the topmost suppliers overall. This means that, to improve the sustainability of the company's supply chain, supplier 3 is most appropriate and recommended amongst the four suppliers for partnership. Managerial implications, limitations and further research directions are discussed

Analyzing the impact of environmental collaboration among supply chain stakeholders on a firm’s sustainable performance

In the era of industrialization, environmentalists are more concerned with the environment and so are continuously interested in investigating organizational factors that can facilitate the transition towards sustainability. This research systematically investigates the impact of the supply chain partner’s collaborative approach towards green practices on a firm’s sustainability performance. Stakeholder and coordination theories are used to underpin the study. A structural equation modeling technique is adopted to analyze data collected from 126 green supply chain professionals working at various manufacturing firms operating in Pakistan using a survey questionnaire. The results indicate significant and positive impacts of institution pressure and customer monitoring on the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices by organizations. This study also explains that organizational GSCM practices, external GSCM practices and performance measures have positive and significant relationships. These findings reveal that it is important for managers to address external GSCM pressures by adopting green practices and being a focal firm should undertake GSCM initiatives in collaboration with their suppliers and customers to achieve a holistic impact which ultimately leads to betterment in overall sustainability performance

Critical factors of digital supply chains for organizational performance improvement

Technological advancement is redefining supply chains (SCs) processes and soon traditional ways of managing SCs will no more be feasible and effective. Due to recent advancement in technology, digitalization has become an emerging topic among decision-makers and researchers. To cope-up with this emerging trend in customer behavior and remain competitive, organizations must move from their traditional ways of managing their SCs to digital supply chains (DSCs) for improved organizational performance. Therefore, the purpose of this article is in two folds: First, to identify critical factors of DSCs that are essential for transitioning traditional SCs to DSCs to improve organizational performance. Second, interpretive structural modeling is used to establish the relationship among critical factors and (matriced’ impacts croise´s multiplication applique´e a´un classement used to identify the driving and dependency power of the critical factors. Thus, this article identified fifteen DSC critical factors and established their direct and indirect effect on DSCs. The results show that “SC resilience”, and “proactive prevention” have the highest dependency power factors whilst “integration” and “advanced operational models” have the highest driving power factors. This article can help SC managers and decision-makers to understand the critical factors essential in adopting DSCs for improving organizational performance

Supply chain collaboration of Ghana's gold mining industry

The gold mining industry contributes about 41% of Ghana's export earnings, generating about 14% as tax revenue and a total of 5.5% gross domestic product (GDP). It is essential to salvage the industry’s image. Employees of the industry can be laid off and made redundant because the industry's financial position is almost always affected during critical moments. This in most cases result in the holding up of suppliers' payments and operations grinding to a halt due to procurement, logistics and inventory issues. In light of this, an empirical study is being conducted with the aim of identifying the factors of supply chain collaboration in Ghana's mining industry. Mixed methods were used including a purposive sampling method which was used with survey questionnaires administered on eleven operational mining companies in Ghana. SPSS tool was used in the analysis of data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at the mines site (company premises) in September 2019 in Ghana. The results identified some factors that affect the collaborative supply chain. These are the pricing of products and service, variable payment systems, open book, the share of company values, and consolidation of orders. Identifying these factors contribute to existing literature which makes this study unique as they have not been discovered in any of the supply chain literature in the context of gold mining. A framework in supply chain collaboration was developed, which is unique to the gold mining sector in Ghana. The result will have managerial implications to drive the gold mining industry's performance forward. Mining organisations will benefit from this study as this can be replicated in other gold mining sectors in Africa and across the globe’s mining industry

Critical factors of digital supply chains for organizational performance improvement

Technological advancement is re-defining supply chains (SCs) processes and soon traditional ways of managing SCs will no more be feasible and effective. Due to recent advancement in technology, digitalization has become an emerging topic among decision-makers and researchers. To cope-up with this emerging trend in customer behavior and remain competitive, organizations must move from their traditional ways of managing their SCs to digital supply chains (DSCs) for improved organizational performance. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is in two folds: First, to identify critical factors of DSCs that are essential for transitioning traditional SCs to DSCs to improve organizational performance. Second, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to establish the relationship among critical factors and MICMAC (Matriced’ Impacts Croise´s Multiplication Applique´e a´un Classement) used to identify the driving and dependency power of the critical factors. Thus, this study identified fifteen DSC critical factors and established their direct and indirect effect on DSCs. The results show that “SC resilience”, and “proactive prevention” have the highest dependency power factors whilst “integration” and “advanced operational models” have the highest driving power factors. This study can help SC managers and decision-makers to understand the critical factors essential in adopting DSCs for improving organizational performance

Analyzing the impact of environmental collaboration among supply chain stakeholders on a firm’s sustainable performance

In the era of industrialization, environmentalists are more concerned with the environment and so are continuously interested in investigating organizational factors that can facilitate the transition towards sustainability. This research systematically investigates the impact of supply chain partner’s collaborative approach towards green practices on a firm's sustainability performance. Stakeholder and coordination theories are used to underpin the study. A structural equation modeling technique is adopted to analyze data collected from 126 green supply chain professionals working at various manufacturing firms operating in Pakistan using a survey questionnaire. The results indicate significant and positive impacts of institution pressure and customer monitoring on the adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices by organizations. This study also explains that organizational GSCM practices, external GSCM practices and performance measures have positive and significant relationships. These findings reveal that it is important for managers to address external GSCM pressures by adopting green practices and being a focal firm should undertake GSCM initiatives in collaboration with their suppliers and customers to achieve a holistic impact which ultimately leads to betterment in overall sustainability performance

Impact of iron fortification on anaemia and iron deficiency among pre-school children living in Rural Ghana.

Anaemia in young sub-Saharan African children may be due to the double burden of malaria and iron deficiency. Primary analysis of a double-blind, cluster randomized trial of iron containing micronutrient powder supplementation in Ghanaian children aged 6 to 35 months found no difference in malaria risk between intervention and placebo groups. Here, we performed a secondary analysis of the trial data to assess the impact of long-term prophylactic iron fortificant on the risk of iron deficiency and anaemia in trial subjects. This population-based randomized-cluster trial involved 1958 children aged between 6 to 35 months, identified at home and able to eat semi-solid foods. The intervention group (n = 967) received a daily dose containing 12.5 mg elemental iron (as ferrous fumarate), vitamin A (400 μg), ascorbic acid (30 mg) and zinc (5 mg). The placebo group (n = 991) received a similar micronutrient powder but without iron. Micronutrient powder was provided daily to both groups for 5 months. At baseline and endline, health assessment questionnaires were administered and blood samples collected for analysis. The two groups had similar baseline anthropometry, anaemia, iron status, demographic characteristics, and dietary intakes (p > 0.05). Of the 1904 (97.2%) children who remained at the end of the intervention, the intervention group had significantly higher haemoglobin (p = 0.0001) and serum ferritin (p = 0.0002) levels than the placebo group. Soluble transferrin receptor levels were more saturated among children from the iron group compared to non-iron group (p = 0.012). Anaemia status in the iron group improved compared to the placebo group (p = 0.03). Continued long-term routine use of micronutrient powder containing prophylactic iron reduced anaemia, iron deficiency and iron deficiency anaemia among pre-school children living in rural Ghana's malaria endemic area