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1 – 10 of over 1000Arja Flinkman, Benita Gullkvist and Henri Teittinen
This paper aims to explore how the time and temporal aspects are managed in a financial accounting outsourcing (FAO) transition process in an international interorganizational…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how the time and temporal aspects are managed in a financial accounting outsourcing (FAO) transition process in an international interorganizational context. As a research outcome, the authors identify management interventions of both the service provider (SP) and the outsourcing company (OC) at both the corporate and operational levels.
Design/methodology/approach
The framework by Huy (2001a, 2001b) was used to analyze the qualitative data, which draw on observations, participation in 32 official meetings during the outsourcing process, informal discussions with key actors from the SP and the OC, and archival data of a single case company.
Findings
The authors illustrate how the time and temporal aspects of planned accelerated change are managed through management interventions during the FAO transition process. All four ideal intervention types (commanding, engineering, teaching and socializing) were used sequentially but also jointly to complement one another. The pacing was mostly rapid, owing to strong commanding interventions initiating almost every stage. When analyzing the FAO transition process, the authors identified four stages: contact, contract, convergence and control. Moreover, the authors focused on the role of the operational-level managers and accounting specialists of both organizations. The findings indicate that management interventions vary with the management level.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the interorganizational control literature by considering the time and temporal aspects in planned organizational change and the role of operational-level managers in managing large-scale changes.
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Michelle Grace Tetteh-Caesar, Sumit Gupta, Konstantinos Salonitis and Sandeep Jagtap
The purpose of this systematic review is to critically analyze pharmaceutical industry case studies on the implementation of Lean 4.0 methodologies to synthesize key lessons…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this systematic review is to critically analyze pharmaceutical industry case studies on the implementation of Lean 4.0 methodologies to synthesize key lessons, benefits and best practices. The goal is to inform decisions and guide investments in related technologies for enhancing quality, compliance, efficiency and responsiveness across production and supply chain processes.
Design/methodology/approach
The article utilized a systematic literature review (SLR) methodology following five phases: formulating research questions, locating relevant articles, selecting and evaluating articles, analyzing and synthesizing findings and reporting results. The SLR aimed to critically analyze pharmaceutical industry case studies on Lean 4.0 implementation to synthesize key lessons, benefits and best practices.
Findings
Key findings reveal recurrent efficiency gains, obstacles around legacy system integration and data governance as well as necessary operator training investments alongside technological upgrades. On average, quality assurance reliability improved by over 50%, while inventory waste declined by 57% based on quantified metrics across documented initiatives synthesizing robotics, sensors and analytics.
Research limitations/implications
As a comprehensive literature review, findings depend on available documented implementations within the search period rather than direct case evaluations. Reporting bias may also skew toward more successful accounts.
Practical implications
Synthesized implementation patterns, performance outcomes and concealed pitfalls provide pharmaceutical leaders with an evidence-based reference guide aiding adoption strategy development, resource planning and workforce transitioning crucial for Lean 4.0 assimilation.
Originality/value
This systematic assessment of pharmaceutical Lean 4.0 adoption offers an unprecedented perspective into the real-world issues, dependencies and modifications necessary for successful integration, absent from conceptual projections or isolated case studies alone until now.
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Hakan Karaosman, Donna Marshall and Irene Ward
Just transition is a fundamental concept for supply chain management but neither discipline pays attention to the other and little is known about how supply chains can be…
Abstract
Purpose
Just transition is a fundamental concept for supply chain management but neither discipline pays attention to the other and little is known about how supply chains can be orchestrated as socioecological systems to manage these transitions. Building from a wide range of just transition examples, this paper explores just transition to understand how to move beyond instrumental supply chain practices to supply chains functioning in harmony with the planet and its people.
Design/methodology/approach
Building from a systematic review of 72 papers, the paper identifies just transition examples while interpreting them through the theoretical lens of supply chain management, providing valuable insights to help research and practice understand how to achieve low-carbon economies through supply chain management in environmentally and socially just ways.
Findings
The paper defines, elaborates, and extends the just transition construct by developing a transition taxonomy with two key dimensions. The purpose dimension (profit or shared outcomes) and the governance dimension (government-/industry-led versus civil society-involved), generating four transition archetypes. Most transitions projects are framed around the Euro- and US-centric, capitalist standards of development, leading to coloniality as well as economic and cultural depletion of communities. Framing just transition in accordance with context-specific plural values, the paper provides an alternative perspective to the extractive transition concept. This can guide supply chain management to decarbonise economies and societies by considering the rights of nature, communities and individuals.
Originality/value
Introducing just transition into the supply chain management domain, this paper unifies the various conceptualisations of just transition into a holistic understanding, providing a new foundation for supply chain management research.
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Annelies Heijmans and Rik Eweg
This study aims to investigate how Living Labs of Van Hall Larenstein UAS perform as sustainability-oriented, transdisciplinary learning environments. It shows how the sustainable…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how Living Labs of Van Hall Larenstein UAS perform as sustainability-oriented, transdisciplinary learning environments. It shows how the sustainable development goals (SDGs) can be used as a compass and debates the sustainability impact of applied research.
Design/methodology/approach
A case study approach was adopted, including a literature review, scoping visits, online workshops and peer-to-peer inter-vision/learning, using the SDGs as a compass and framework for analysis.
Findings
Most Living Labs use a “silo-approach” on the SDGs and are designed from a technological-expert perspective. This results in blind spots, particularly on SDGs related to reducing socio-economic inequality and just institutions. Debating unsustainable systems, cultures and practices is avoided. To contribute to sustainability transitions, universities need to invest in developing transformative capacity. This refers to SDG-transition competences such as collaborative communication, constructively engaging with diversity and conflicts, discussing values, norms and ethics and encouraging reflexivity.
Research limitations/implications
Mainly lecturer-researchers were involved in the study. COVID-19 travel restrictions hindered the research at the grassroots level in India and Indonesia.
Originality/value
The study revealed the importance of creating Living Labs as safe and brave inter- and transdisciplinary learning environments to practice reflexivity: encouraging students, researchers and stakeholders to look at sustainability issues from plural perspectives and questioning unsustainable practices, which combined lead to changing perceptions, practices and relations and a deeper understanding of how change happens. The SDGs as a compass method supports reflexivity among stakeholders and in redirecting strategies towards a sustainable future.
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Rodrigo Cortopassi Goron Lobo, Susan Gilbertz and Jose Carlos Pereira de Morais
Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour, this research aims to investigate systemically if and how incumbents and successors share attitudes, social norms and perception of the…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour, this research aims to investigate systemically if and how incumbents and successors share attitudes, social norms and perception of the feasibility of their business succession.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative research carried out on a group of small Italian family firms (N = 10).
Findings
This study provides evidence of background mechanisms (attitudes, social norms and perception of feasibility) affecting the implementation of business succession planning in family SMEs. Moreover, this study provides further evidence supporting the role of social norms in strategic decision-making processes within family firms.
Research limitations/implications
Findings from this study contribute to current literature in multiple ways and have several research implications.
Practical implications
This study highlights that it is more appropriate to adopt a systemic rather than an individualistic approach in investigating/managing business succession.
Social implications
Family firms are the most widespread type of firms in the world; thus, a systematic failure in business transmission represents a prominent socioeconomical problem for policy-makers and institutions.
Originality/value
This study leads to further developments in exploring business succession from a psychological point of view. Findings also highlight the limits of how a theory applied in order to predict individual behaviour can provide insight into collective behaviour involving a family.
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Esra Kurul1 and Maurizio Sibilla
This document presents BasES, which is a tool kit disseminated as an open educational resource. BasES is focused on the topic of buildings-as-energy services, promoting the…
Abstract
This document presents BasES, which is a tool kit disseminated as an open educational resource. BasES is focused on the topic of buildings-as-energy services, promoting the knowledge integration to envisage buildings as components of future distributed renewable and interactive energy systems (DRIs). BasES will allow users of exploring and analysing DRIs' emergent properties at the local level, developing, and implementing the tool kit proposed. The specific objective concerns the use of the tool kit in the organisation of a technology support net (TSN) for buildings-as-a-service. TSN is composed of a multitude of actors, who often have different perspectives and scopes, but they are called to work collaboratively in order to establish work rules, requisite skills, work contents, standards and measures, culture and organisational patterns with regard to the emergent systems. Buildings-as-a-service is a completely new topic, and thus, an appropriate TSN is needed urgently. Our tool kit (i.e. Buildings-as-Energy-Services; BasES) will be a ground-breaking cognitive apparatus for involving stakeholders in knowledge transfer and integration processes. Thus, a new generation of product-service systems will be promoted. BasES is expected to configure a multi-stakeholder co-designed UK roadmap on socio-technical innovation in DRIs transition.
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Laura Hedin, Lydia Gerzel-Short, Lisa Liberty and Jason Pope
District-university partners increasingly rely on “grow-your-own” licensure programs to address teacher shortages. Because vacancies in special education represent a chronic…
Abstract
Purpose
District-university partners increasingly rely on “grow-your-own” licensure programs to address teacher shortages. Because vacancies in special education represent a chronic issue, our district-university partnership developed LEAP – the Licensed Educators’ Accelerated Pathway, successfully preparing 26 paraprofessionals as special education teachers (SEs). We describe a model university-district partnership in which we collaborated to design and implement paraprofessionals’ SE licensure program.
Design/methodology/approach
In this general review, we describe a district-university partnership collaboration that resolved barriers experienced by paraprofessionals working toward licensure in special education (Essential #4, Reflection and Innovation). The specialized design and partnership solutions were grounded in SE preparation research literature.
Findings
25 (28 entered the program and 25 completed) paraprofessionals from one large urban and several regional districts completed special education licensure through LEAP. Slightly more than half of LEAP participants were Black or Hispanic (see Table 1), contributing to the diversification of SE workforce. University-district partnership was successful in designing and delivering a program that allowed participants: a) to remain employed, b) attend evening classes in their geographic region or online, c) complete all field experiences in sponsoring districts (Essential #2) and d) receive concierge advising from a “completion coach.” We describe solutions to barriers experienced by paraprofessionals and advocate for district-university collaboration to address chronic teacher shortages.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations include lack of data on success of program completers during their first year of teaching as they began this work in Fall 2023. Further, because the participating district was large and urban, generalization of program details for small and rural districts is difficult.
Practical implications
Practical tips for developing grow-your-own special education licensure programs are providing. Detailed descriptions of barriers candidates experienced and ways the district-university partners resolved these issues are included. Programs like the one described has the potential to positively impact teacher pipeline issues.
Social implications
The program described provided highly-trained teachers to fill chronic vacancies in special education in three participating districts/agencies. Because students receiving special education services are at risk for school failure and are disproportionately impacted by teacher turnover, addressing this area through grow-your-own licensure programs represents a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. Further, upskilling diverse paraprofessionals to licensed teacher roles represent an economic boost, which they might not otherwise have achieved.
Originality/value
Available research literature signals alarm over persistent teacher shortages in hard-to-staff districts and lack of diversity in the teacher workforce, but few published accounts describe successful programs. Partner collaboration fostered a re-imagining of course formatting and delivery to accommodate adult learners, avoiding problems often reported with alternative programs.
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This chapter considers adolescents' migration aspirations in Kyrgyzstan. The discussion is based on the data obtained from 14 semi-structured interviews with adolescents as part…
Abstract
This chapter considers adolescents' migration aspirations in Kyrgyzstan. The discussion is based on the data obtained from 14 semi-structured interviews with adolescents as part of a qualitative study devoted to changes and continuities in biographic projecting across three generations. The study reveals the tendency towards having aspirations to move abroad for studies, work and/or life. Thus, the objective of this chapter is to consider the adolescents' motivation and to trace opportunities and challenges which may promote or hinder the realisation of individuals' migration projects. Special attention is paid to the role of an adolescent's family in this process. Adolescents' aspirations oriented towards future life in foreign countries are analysed with the help of two theoretical concepts – the concept of intergenerational solidarity and the concept of individualisation.
The analysis has shown that in Kyrgyzstan, adolescents' plans concerning going abroad are often framed by their extended families' interests and expectations. Adolescents' migration aspirations become a collective project of every family member for the sake of the family's future well-being. Parental expectation of care and support in their older age is one of the main limitations on adolescents' aspirations to move abroad. Those adolescents whose migration aspirations do not correspond with parental expectations may experience strong ambivalence, when they face the conflict between their individualised biographic projects oriented towards promising global opportunities and intergenerational solidarity norms.
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Ingela Bäckström, Pernilla Ingelsson, Lilly-Mari Sten and Marie Häggström
The purpose of this study is to develop a model describing different factors that affect quality and efficiency in transitional care.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a model describing different factors that affect quality and efficiency in transitional care.
Design/methodology/approach
A meta-synthesis focusing on the transitions between wards was conducted within a research project. The results from eight studies within that research project have been combined and analysed from a holistic view.
Findings
The findings are a model with a description of seven different categories consisting of the identified factors affecting quality and efficiency in transitional care. Those categories are (1) learning organisation, (2) standardising and structuring, (3) applying a holistic view, (4) understanding organisational culture in a health care context, (5) management and leadership, (6) for whom value is created and (7) working together. The results from the study have been verified in previous research.
Research limitations/implications
The result of the completed meta-synthesis is based on studies conducted at two medium-sized hospitals in Sweden. The developed model can be used in a similar context to improve quality and efficiency in patient transfers by management and employees working based on the various factors.
Originality/value
This model describes factors (success factors, prerequisites, conditions and lack thereof) affecting the ability to achieve quality and efficiency in transitional care that can be used in future research as well as for practical improvements.
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