Restorative measures to diminish the covid-19 pandemic effects through circular economy enablers for sustainable and resilient supply chain
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JABS-05-2021-0217 |
| Published date | 28 December 2021 |
| Date | 28 December 2021 |
| Pages | 538-567 |
| Subject Matter | Strategy,International business |
| Author | Somesh Agarwal,Mohit Tyagi,Rajiv Kumar Garg |
Restorative measures to diminish the
covid-19 pandemic effects through circular
economy enablers for sustainable and
resilient supply chain
Somesh Agarwal, Mohit Tyagi and Rajiv Kumar Garg
Abstract
Purpose –The catastrophicstate of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has seizedoff all the operations
along with the globe. It has not only distressed the socio-economic structure of the world but also
mounted enormous pressure on the governmental bodies to save the lives of the people.Despite this,
severe impacts of the same have been observed on the small and medium manufacturing enterprises
(SMME) practices, resulting in the economic downturn. The purpose of this study is to facilitate the
SMME’s with circular economy (CE) practices to overcome the negative impacts of the COVID-19
outbreakon their supply chain (SC) operations.
Design/methodology/approach –The presentedwork identified seven critical impactsas criteria of the
novel COVID-19 pandemic on the Indian SMME and seeks to identify the relief measures in the CE
paradigm by identifying 13 prominent enablers to CE as alternatives. Experts’ opinions have been
engaged to detectCE enablers’ proficiency to overpower the pandemicimpact through a questionnaire-
based survey. The obtained data have been clustered and analyzed through a hybrid approach of
entropyweight method and grey relational analysisto find an organized ranking of the enablers.
Findings –Current work spotlightsthe SMME’s losses due to SC disruptions and declinedconsumption
patterns.The waste augmentation during the pandemicera has also been grouped in this study, primarily
associating with the SC’s waste generation. The result of the performed analysis shows that the CE
enabler ‘‘waste reduction and its transformation into a resource (E1)’’ have achieved the highest rank
among all the consideredenablers, governing a higher demand toward reusingwaste for better handling
the postCOVID era state of affairs.
Originality/value –The presented study aimed to suppress the pandemic impact and generate
anticipationof the CE concept, which might help the managers and policymakers identifyits urgent need
to achieve a stableand resilient SC system in a post COVIDperiod. Presented work is peculiar,aiming to
accelerate the CE adaption with green material usage in the industrial sector to suppress the present
miserablecondition and to achieve industrialand social sustainability for a better-foreseenfuture.
Keywords Sustainability, Supply chain management, Grey relational analysis (GRA), COVID-19,
Circular economy (CE), Entropy weight method (EWM), Coronavirus, Pandemic
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The onset of pandemic outbreaks always has a massive effect on society’s livelihood and
business environment. Economic crashes or wars or natural calamities or any major
disease create pandemic and epidemic outbreaks, which have continually challenged
society’s resilience and prosperity. The era of 2020 is vested by a new pandemic
outbreak of the COVID-19 or coronavirus and such kind of threat barely occurs once in a
generation. The COVID-19 infection is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome
Somesh Agarwal,
Mohit Tyagi and
Rajiv Kumar Garg are all
based at NIT Jalandhar,
Jalandhar, India.
Received 31 May 2021
Revised 5 August 2021
19 November 2021
Accepted 22 November 2021
PAGE 538 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jVOL. 16 NO. 3 2022, pp. 538-567, ©Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1558-7894 DOI 10.1108/JABS-05-2021-0217
coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), which infects the respiratory tract, ranging between mild
and fatal, raising havoc to the world due to its rapid transmissible nature. This
devastating outbreak has hit almost every part of the world, with a total infection rate of
almost 3.16% of the total world’s population up to the end of October 2021 and still
counting (Worldometer, 2020) along with a considerable mortality rate, affecting almost
223 countries and regions globally [World Health Organization (WHO), 2020], out of
which the USA, India, Brazil, India, The UK and Russia have affected the most, in a
respective manner of total infections counting. Governments worldwide are trying hard to
control this deadly virus. However, infection rates are uncontrollable and are increasing
day by day.
As this virus is highly contagious from person to person, breaking the chain of such a virus
is highly desirable. Hence, refraining people’s contacts and safeguarding them has
become a concern for the government. To attain the same, many countries had restricted
the leading things toward coronavirus; with this, the Indian Government had also restricted
the people’s movement by imposing lockdown and curfew across the nation. Lockdown
actions had instigated people to stay home, transportation had widespread canceled and
many public activities had been restricted (Sharma et al., 2021), which had undoubtedly
contributed to the lower rates of infection all over the country. But on the other side,
lockdowns circumstances also led to the closure of various business ventures,
establishments and commercial marketplaces, throwing the economy out of gear.
Upbringing technologies are trying hard to improve society’s working environments and
well-being, but the pandemic outbreak has terminated these kinds of practices (Ghosh
et al., 2020;Laing, 2020). Pandemic occurrence suddenly scattered the economic stability
and, perhaps, it would take a long runto normalize the things as earlier.
The pandemic raised by the coronavirus outbreak has simultaneously elevated the concern
for slowing down the businesses in the zone of manufacturing, logistics, distribution,
retailing and cash flows (Paul and Chowdhury, 2020). The insourcing and outsourcing of
goods have been debarred, leading to difficulty for urgent raw material scarcity and
generating a grim state for the small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMME).
Additionally, a substantial problem of the workforce’s absence due to anxiety of infection
and instructions regarding limitedhuman resources practices radically affected the sector’s
working environment (Wuyts et al.,2020). The hindrances in the industrial production
system have generated a disorganized supply chain (SC) system, producing considerable
losses to the enterprises. Moreover, economic losses to businesses impact employees,
which has brought a state of reduction in wages and even job losses. This circumstance
has affected the purchasing capability and cash flow in the market, declining in
consumption pattern. On the other hand, significant harm to the business occurred due to
centralized manufacturing,too much reliance on just in time production, manual operations,
extreme rigidity and lack of collaboration/cooperation between companies (Ding et al.,
2020;Singh et al.,2020).
It is apparent that the outbreak has confronted the resilience and robustness of the existing
economic system, thus generating a need for a sturdy alternative. The sudden financial
losses that occurred to the SMME elucidate them to think differently toward their working
system and chiefly toward attaininga stable and robust economic model that can withstand
any adverse circumstances and remain serviceable at the dismantling state and is an
offering by the circular economy (CE) paradigm. CE is a concept in which material/product
after the end-of-life return to the industry to extract maximum benefit from it (Mohamed
Sultan et al.,2017
). CE aims to narrow and close the loops of materials and products cycle
to increase the material’s life as long as possible. In this way, materials and products follow
a circular motion within the SC system and exist within the system for the maximum time.
Thus, CE strengthens the business’ practices by minimizing the risk, primarily associated
with raw material procurement and pricing uncertainty.
VOL. 16 NO. 3 2022 jJOURNAL OF ASIA BUSINESS STUDIES jPAGE 539
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