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Industry 4.0 and Green Entrepreneurship for Environmental Sustainability: Exploring Barriers from an Indian SME Perspective

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Advances in Best-Worst Method (BWM 2023)

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Abstract

Industry 4.0 has been considered a significant conduit for sustainable goods and processes, and green entrepreneurship are being held up as a solution for many social and environmental challenges. However, green entrepreneurs face certain challenges and uncertainty in incorporating digitisation (such as Industry 4.0) in sustainability activities. This article discusses the role and barriers that industry 4.0 and green entrepreneurs confront for environmental sustainability in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, we begin with a study identifying barriers based on a case study of SMEs and outline recent contributions exploring this role. Theoretical supports (Resource-Based View (RBV), Natural Resource-Based View (NRBV), and Stakeholder Theory (ST)) are used to support this case study. With expert opinion, multi-criteria decision-making modelling (MCDM), such as the “Best-Worst Method” (BWM), is used to assess and rank the barriers. The findings show that among the main category of barriers are “technology-related barriers”, whereas in the sub-category, “minimal technological resources and lack of technological infrastructure and facilities” are the top barriers to Industry 4.0 and green entrepreneurship on environmental sustainability. We then summarise the papers and conclude with suggestions for further research.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Studies and Industrial Engineering, IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, Jharkhand, 826004, India

    Himanshu Gupta, Sourav Mondal & Saumya Singh

  2. Department of Opeartions Management, Institute of Management Technology, Raj Nagar, Ghaziabad, Post Box No. 137, Delhi NCR, 201001, India

    Manjeet Kharub

Authors
  1. Himanshu Gupta
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  2. Sourav Mondal
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  3. Saumya Singh
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  4. Manjeet Kharub
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sourav Mondal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Jafar Rezaei

  2. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Matteo Brunelli

  3. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Majid Mohammadi

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7.

Table 6.5 Ranking of barriers (when considering geometric mean)
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Table 6.6 Thresholds values for different combinations using “input-based consistency measurement”
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Table 6.7 CR table of expert’s response
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Gupta, H., Mondal, S., Singh, S., Kharub, M. (2023). Industry 4.0 and Green Entrepreneurship for Environmental Sustainability: Exploring Barriers from an Indian SME Perspective. In: Rezaei, J., Brunelli, M., Mohammadi, M. (eds) Advances in Best-Worst Method. BWM 2023. Lecture Notes in Operations Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40328-6_6

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