Search results

Several freight operations rely on human cognition and behavior. Tackling these aspects, gamification transforms activities to resemble game-like experiences. Since the freight transportation sector is rapidly adopting gamification, the purpose of this study is to provide an overview that synthesizes the state-of-the-art and plot future directions for research and the practice of gamifying this area.

A systematic review of the gamification of freight transportation was conducted. After screening 691 studies, 40 relevant studies were analyzed.

Most studies found positive psychological and behavioral outcomes from gamification. Literature mainly focused on tackling the operational-level issues of road and maritime transportation modes by implementing simulation games.

Besides elaborating how gamification can improve freight transportation, the authors describe directions still uncovered by the current corpus, such as research design and temporality and the variety of modes and tasks.

Practical implications emerged from the studies, primarily focusing on understanding users, tasks and contexts, targeting different audiences and transportation modalities, and balancing motivational affordances, while considering the demands of the freight transportation domain, including dynamic, spatially dispersed environments and cooperation between multiple stakeholders.

The transportation of goods dominates much of the global economy and ecology. Therefore, gamifying this domain has a huge societal impact potential, especially related to issues of sharing economy, safety, environmental sustainability and social media.

Beyond providing an original overview of gamified freight transportation, this study maps current research gaps and describes practical recommendations.

The 1997-98 financial crisis has had a profound effect on how East Asian economies the role of the IMF and its strategic interests relative to those of the United States in the international financial regime. It has prompted them to create a regional mechanism for financial and monetary cooperation, ranging from deeper policy dialogue and surveillance, to a system of financial cooperation, and common exchange rate arrangements. This paper analyses the economic and strategic motivations behind this and outlines recent developments in financial cooperation in East Asia to provide possible directions for the future.

A network of bilateral swap arrangements under the Chiang Mai Initiative(CMI) needs stronger policy dialogue and surveillance to develop into a regional financing facility, a sort of East Asian IMF. The facility plays a role as an regional lender of last resort, providing short-term funds to a member country facing a temporary liquidity shortage and for market intervention to stabilize foreign exchange rate. East Asian countries need to achieve regional exchange rate stability. In the long run, the region may develop a common currency arrangement, but it cannot be expected in the very near future because there is no convergence of macroeconomic conditions, economic structure and systems. A realistic approach would be for East Asian developing countries to adopt a currency basket system to minimize the impact of dollar/yen exchange rate volatility on their economies. Strong political will and a vision for regional integration will be required to introduce it.

This qualitative study was to understand the factors affecting successful adoptive breastfeeding among women who underwent induced lactation process.

This study conducted in-depth interviews among induced lactation women in five states based on five regions [South (Johor), Central (Selangor), North (Penang), East (Kelantan) and East Malaysia (Sabah)]. The interviews have been consented, audio-recorded then transcribed verbatim, followed by identification of emerging themes.

Data saturation was achieved after interviewing a total of 23 induced lactation women. There were six main themes that emerged to describe factors affecting successful induced lactation process: (1) support and encouragement, (2) diet supplementation, (3) breastfeeding devices support, (4) incorporating treatment plan in the daily schedule, (5) high determination and pleasant attitude and (6) being informed on induced lactation process.

There can be recall bias among the respondents since the information was collected retrospectively, one to two years after the induced lactation practice completed. Due to that, we cannot rule out recall bias in the responses given in the interviews. In this study, induced lactation women barely were ethnic Malay Muslims. Thus, comparisons to other ethnic groups were not possible. This was due to the difficulty to get participation from induced lactation mother of other ethnic groups in the study. Even though the success is demonstrated, a significant limitation is that the ratio between Muslims and non-Muslims cannot be performed for the reason that the respondents only consists of Muslims alone.

The benefits of breastfeeding by an adoptive woman are numerous for both the mother and baby. There are multifactors involved in successful induced lactation process. After experiencing induced lactation, all respondents agreed that it has prepared them to be real mothers and breastfeeding is a pleasurable experience. All respondents corresponded to breastfeeding have a positive influence in the aspect of affection and touch. A mother who feels confident in her ability to lactate and is reassured by those around her will be most likely to feel successful in this great attempt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This study used the literature review and the modified Delphi method to evaluate the importance of the catering quality indices of university canteens in China. In order to compile the catering quality indices of university canteens in China as reference for the subsequent improvement of Chinese canteens.

This study first analysed literature data to establish the preliminary quality indices and used the modified Delphi method for measurement. After three rounds of Delphi analysis by 35 experts, the results of the catering quality indices of university canteens in China are summarised.

The research results show that university canteen catering quality issues are divided into six dimensions, including catering safety management, employee hygiene management, catering service, food quality, environmental atmosphere and corporate social responsibility. Catering safety management is the most important index, followed by employee hygiene management.

The research results can be used as suggestions for follow-up improvements in the quality of university canteens in China and a basis of reference for amendments to relevant national or local laws and regulations. The food prices, food quality and whether food hygiene and safety standards are met by university canteens are all related to the health and vital interests of the teachers and students, as well as the stability of the university. Therefore, the government should increase supervision in these aspects to avoid decline in the quality of meals due to low profits and enforce strict requirements for food safety.

The purpose is to increase knowledge of rent negotiations by investigating differences in beliefs held by property landlords and retailers on factors that they deem important in rent negotiation.

This study investigates differences in subjective beliefs held by landlords and retail trade tenants on factors that affect rent levels during the rent negotiation process using a factor analysis approach. Semi-structured interviews were made with seven large real estate owners/landlords and retailers and eight experts in negotiating retail rent to elicit variables that have an impact on retail rent. Thereafter, a web-based survey was sent to 421 respondents who had experience in rent negotiation. Several factors were extracted using factor analysis. The data collection was made in Sweden during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in late spring 2021

Significant differences are found in beliefs held by landlords and retail trade tenants in four out of seven-factor: regional growth, e-commerce, customer focus and trust. Landlords rate these factors higher than retailers do. There are also systematic differences between landlords and retailers depending on their education levels on the following factors: rent and vacancies, e-commerce and customer focus. The number of years of experience did not prove to be significant instead differences are found to exist in factors

Not only do traditional factors of importance, such as lease structure, the effect of location, size and anchor or non-anchor tenants, have an effect on negotiated rent levels. Differences in other factors also exist, such as regional growth, e-commerce, customer focus and trust factors that may play an important role in the negation of retail rent.

The findings provide new insights into the different views on factors that affect rent negotiations between landlords and retail tenants. Knowledge of such differences may increase the overall transparency in the negotiation process. Transparency may be increased by putting forward information on these factors before a negotiation takes place, in order to smooth differences in their beliefs.

If transparency in the negotiation process of retail rent increases, time to reach an agreement, stress and anxiety can be reduced by putting forward information on factors where differences exist between landlords and retailers

New insights on retail rent negotiation have been put forward in this research paper. Not only do traditional factors such as lease structure matters, but subjective beliefs on factors such as regional growth and the level of education are also important, as this study has shown using a factors analysis approach.

The study, within the Increasing Resilience of Cultural Heritage (ResCult) project, aims to support civil protection to prevent, lessen and mitigate disasters impacts on cultural heritage using a unique standardised-3D geographical information system (GIS), including both heritage and risk and hazard information.

A top-down approach, starting from existing standards (an INSPIRE extension integrated with other parts from the standardised and shared structure), was completed with a bottom-up integration according to current requirements for disaster prevention procedures and risk analyses. The results were validated and tested in case studies (differentiated concerning the hazard and type of protected heritage) and refined during user forums.

Besides the ensuing reusable database structure, the filling with case studies data underlined the tough challenges and allowed proposing a sample of workflows and possible guidelines. The interfaces are provided to use the obtained knowledge base.

The increasing number of natural disasters could severely damage the cultural heritage, causing permanent damage to movable and immovable assets and tangible and intangible heritage. The study provides an original tool properly relating the (spatial) information regarding cultural heritage and the risk factors in a unique archive as a standard-based European tool to cope with these frequent losses, preventing risk.

There are several infectious agents in the environment that can cause persistent infections in the host. They usually cause their symptoms shortly after first infection and later persist as silent viruses and bacteria within the body. However, these chronic infections may play an important role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and Tourette's syndrome (TS). We investigated the distribution of different neurotrophic infectious agents in TS, schizophrenia and controls. A total of 93 individuals were included (schizophrenic patients, Tourette patients and controls). We evaluated antibodies against cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes-simplex virus (HSV), Epstein-Barr virus, Toxoplasma, Mycoplasma and Chlamydia trachomatis/pneumoniae. By comparing schizophrenia and TS, we found a higher prevalence of HSV (P=0.017) and CMV (P=0.017) antibodies in schizophrenic patients. Considering the relationship between schizophrenia, TS and healthy controls, we showed that there are associations for Chlamydia trachomatis (P=0.007), HSV (P=0.027) and CMV (P=0.029). When all measured viruses, bacteria and protozoa were combined, schizophrenic patients had a higher rate of antibodies to infectious agents than TS patients (P=0.049). Tourette and schizophrenic patients show a different vulnerability to infectious agents. Schizophrenic patients were found to have a higher susceptibility to viral infections than individuals with TS. This finding might point to a modification in special immune parameters in these diseases.

The purpose of this paper is to explore managers’ learning-oriented leadership, and what conditions managers face when working with the promotion of employees’ learning.

Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with managers in three manufacturing firms. Verbatim expressions of the interview participants were analysed using stepwise analytical procedures.

The managers used many kinds of activities to promote learning. Most common were activities related to learning opportunities that arose during daily work. The identified activities ranged from being planned to occurring more spontaneously. Depending on the situation or the learning activity, the managers used different behaviours to promote learning. They supported, educated and confronted employees, and they acted as role models. Factors constraining the implementation of learning-oriented leadership included limited resources, and a lack of commitment from top management, employees or the managers themselves.

Future research should study learning-oriented leadership from the employees’ perspective.

Managers’ notions about learning and development constitute an important condition for learning-oriented leadership. Therefore, managers need to be trained in how to promote their employees’ learning at work.

This study adds to the limited knowledge of how managers carry out a learning-oriented leadership in their daily work. The findings contribute knowledge regarding managerial practices of promoting employees’ workplace learning by identifying different activities and behaviours that managers could incorporate into their leadership.