A Contingency Approach for Supply Chain Preparedness to Pursue Circular Economy Business Models

A growing stream in circular economy (CE) research is about circular economy business models (CEBM). It suggests how firms could learn to adopt unique material and product designs, newer business models, value chain networks and potential enablers that satisfies CE ideologies about economic, environment, and society. However, the understanding about how firms could integrate CEBM practices at internal, supply chain, and external levels is limited. Given the rising complexities in supply chains, the goal of this dissertation is to: (a) understand the landscape of CE concepts within the supply chain management context, and consequently (b) comprehend how firms’ preparedness about their internal, end-to-end supply chains and external environment, help them in pursuing business models that are guided by CE principles. In this dissertation, the first study provides an inclusive understanding of CE in a supply chain management context using bibliometric-network analysis. One key insight suggests CEBM is a promising theme within CE but remains unexplored in supply chain context. Using contingency theory lens, the second study identifies factors related to a focal firm’s CEBM practice as the response, its contingencies as context, its supply chain preparedness as output, and its CEBM performance as a consequent outcome. Using multi-industry multi-tier supply chain case-study method, the study explores how supply chain preparedness is related to CEBM practices and CEBM performance, and the factors upon which this relationship is contingent. A set of propositions and a contingency research framework is proposed. The research implications shall benefit scholars of transdisciplinary interests and serve as a guiding tool for practitioners and consultants presently acting upon CEBM implementation in their supply chain systems

Introducing an M-Commerce Course into the Business Management Curriculum: Experiences and Recommendations

Mobility has become an important extension to the business strategies of present-day organizations. Thus, organizations are increasingly seeking managers with knowledge of value chain related to mobile-oriented business activities, usually referred to as mobile commerce (m-commerce). Accordingly, business management schools are interesting in designing their curricula to respond to the need for m-commerce knowledge and, in particular, the scope of the content for an m-commerce course. The general conception of m-commerce is that it is a component of e-business or e-commerce. This paper presents the unique dimensions of m-commerce that makes it stand out as a separate course for postgraduate business management students. This paper also provides input in regard to the design and delivery of the course by drawing upon the recent teaching experience of the authors at a highly respected business school in India. The course design covers mobility-related technology elements as related to business in diverse industry segments and is expected to enable students to develop a suitable mobile strategy for a real-time business scenario. The course content was drawn primarily from research papers, industry reports, and examples of trending mobile applications. The pedagogy was a blend of lectures and classroom exercises on innovative case studies. The response of the students to the course indicated a high degree of satisfaction in regard to its relevance. The inputs provided in this paper are believed to serve as guidance to business management schools that are interested developing such a course

Non-renormalizable Yukawa Interactions and Higgs Physics

We explore a scenario in the Standard Model in which dimension four Yukawa couplings are either forbidden by a symmetry, or happen to be very tiny, and the Yukawa interactions are dominated by effective dimension six interactions. In this case, the Higgs interactions to the fermions are enhanced in a large way, whereas its interaction with the gauge bosons remains the same as in the Standard Model. In hadron colliders, Higgs boson production via gluon gluon fusion increases by a factor of nine. Higgs decay widths to fermion anti-fermion pairs also increase by the same factor, whereas the decay widths to photon photon and gamma Z are reduced. Current Tevatron exclusion range for the Higgs mass increases to ~ 142-200 GeV in our scenario, and new physics must appear at a scale below a TeV.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Top SU(5) Models: Baryon and Lepton Number Violating Resonances at the LHC

We propose the minimal and renormalizable non-supersymmetric top SU(5) models where the $SU(5)\times SU(3)'_C \times SU(2)'_L \times U(1)'_Y$ gauge symmetry is broken down to the Standard Model (SM) gauge symmetry at the TeV scale. The first two families of the SM fermions are charged under $SU(3)'_C \times SU(2)'_L \times U(1)'_Y$ while the third family is charged under SU(5). In the minimal top SU(5) model, we show that the quark CKM mixing matrix can be generated via dimension-five operators, and the proton decay problem can be solved by fine-tuning the coefficients of the higher dimensional operators at the order of $10^{-4}$. In the renormalizable top SU(5) model, we can explain the quark CKM mixing matrix by introducing vector-like particles, and we do not have proton decay problem. The models give rise to leptoquark and diquark gauge bosons which violate both lepton and baryon numbers involving the third family quarks and leptons. The current experimental limits for these particles is well below the TeV scale. We also discuss the productions and decays of these new gauge bosons, and their ensuing signals, as well as their reach at the LHC.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figure

Quark lepton unification in higher dimensions

The idea of unifying quarks and leptons in a gauge symmetry is very appealing. However, such an unification gives rise to leptoquark type gauge bosons for which current collider limits push their masses well beyond the TeV scale. We present a model in the framework of extra dimensions which breaks such quark-lepton unification symmetry via compactification at the TeV scale. These color triplet leptoquark gauge bosons, as well as the new quarks present in the model, can be produced at the LHC with distinctive final state signatures. These final state signals include high p_T multi-jets and multi-leptons with missing energy, monojets with missing energy, as well as the heavy charged particles passing through the detectors, which we also discuss briefly. The model also has a neutral Standard Model singlet heavy lepton which is stable, and can be a possible candidate for the dark matter.Comment: 28 pages, 5 eps figure

New signals for vector-like down-type quark in U(1)U(1) of E6E_6

We consider the pair production of vector-like down-type quarks in an $E_6$ motivated model, where each of the produced down-type vector-like quark decays into an ordinary Standard Model light quark and a singlet scalar. Both the vector-like quark and singlet scalar appear naturally in the $E_6$ model with masses at the TeV scale with a favorable choice of symmetry breaking pattern. We focus on the non-standard decay of the vector-like quark and the new scalar which decays to two photons or two gluons. We analyze the signal for the vector-like quark production in the $2\gamma+\geq2j$ channel and show how the scalar and vector-like quark masses can be determined at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures, 6 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1607.0081