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PurposeSupply chain management is one of the most important areas for competitiveness and growth of industries. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and other developing countries face problems in coordinating their supply chain due to lack of resources and improper directions. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for improving the coordination in supply chain and development of an index for coordination.Design/methodology/approachThe interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach has been employed to develop the structural relationship among different factors of coordination and responsiveness in supply chain to take strategic decisions. This framework is also used to evaluate coordination index for an organization. It has been further illustrated with the help of a case study.FindingsIn total, 32 enablers for coordination in a supply chain have been identified based on literature review. These are further grouped into six categories such as top management commitment, organizational factors, mutual understanding, flow of information, relationship and decision making and responsiveness. It is observed that all of these factors have strong mutual linkage and top management commitment is a major driver for improving the coordination among these factors.Research limitations/implicationsAs ISM methodology is based on experts' opinion, this framework needs further validation with empirical data and detailed case studies.Originality/valueThis paper has explored major factors for coordination in supply chain. It will be of great value for SMEs in developing their strategies for coordination in supply chain. The coordination index evaluated in this paper will also help them in benchmarking their performance in terms of different attributes of supply chain.

Assessment of information literacy competency (ILC) is a process and method to find out whether a person possesses ILC and if so, to what level. The present study is an attempt to gauge the ILC level of social science researchers with respect to information use ethics. On the competency scale overall 79.62 per cent of the respondents, consisting maximum 16.54 per cent from economics followed by 15 per cent from political science, 13.08 per cent from history, 12.69 per cent from sociology, 11.35 per cent from law and 10.96 per cent from geography, were found competent in information literacy (IL) to use information ethically and legally. The rest 20.38 per cent of the respondents, consisting of maximum 4.42 per cent respondents from law 4.04 per cent from geography, 3.46 per cent from history, political science and sociology and minimum of 1.54 per cent from economics were found lacking competency in information literacy to use information ethically and legally. IL skills to deal with information abundance and manage information in the ICT age having multiple similarity detection software and stringent legal provisions are highly important. The study findings have clearly established that a good part of researchers are far behind competency level and possess only baseline or below IL skills on 'Information Use Ethics'. The findings are supposed to be of great help to all the stakeholders to plan, organise and participate in various information literacy activities and ultimately enhance the ILC of researchers on 'information use ethics'.