Search results

This paper aims to review characteristics associated with digital natives and digital immigrants and explores selected research studies related to information and communication technology. Some of the challenges facing the twenty‐first century in training and developing our future workforce are explored, along with the differences between generations that contribute to their personal learning and instructional styles.

A review of the literature is combined with the authors' experience and the reporting of a survey on generational differences regarding perceived usefulness of technology in training programs.

A new digital language is evolving and is increasingly prevalent with technical savvy individuals as a normal means of communication, creating a communication lull between generations affecting both the digital natives and digital immigrants. This communication barrier extends beyond the casual day‐to‐day endeavors but reaches into learning environments. The survey indicated that the younger the respondent, the more favorable that person is to wanting technology in the learning environment.

In order for effective learning to occur both instructors and students must be able to match both instructional strategies and learning styles consistently. In addition, those who are responsible for aligning educational and learning strategies should meet the training and development programs being deployed. There is a need to examine possible rationale correlating with native and immigrant lifestyles that support their cognitive process. These processes relate to how natives and immigrants receive information and how it stimulates the brain to connect the inputs with previously learned data – how an individual's brain becomes “wired” to manipulate stored data to be used during problem‐solving and critical thinking activities in both life events and training sessions.

The paper explores whether individuals of the younger generation have more of a learning advantage or disadvantage compared to learners from an older generation. Exposure to new technologies strengthens the user's acceptance and knowledge of the digital product and may begin to acquaint them with other and future similar technological gadgets.

In the last ten years, businesses taking advantage of market deregulation, call‐centre, intranet and internet technology have broken traditional marketing norms and path‐dependent customer management practices. These businesses offer substantially lower prices and good customer service. In spite of anecdotal evidence of the high level of service complaints in the press, these businesses are expanding rapidly by growing the market and by taking share from traditional suppliers. Service failure recovery and complaint management are two areas which are extensively re‐designed by such businesses. This paper aims to identify and examine such new practices. The authors suggest that the traditional “customer‐centricity” model is being replaced by a “customer‐compliance business model” (CCBM) of service provision. This new model and its propositions defy conventional thinking in the areas of service recovery and complaint management.

Available data and research are reviewed, in an attempt to understand CCBM. Differences with the customer‐centricity model are discussed.

CCBM cannot be explained adequately by current assumptions in marketing. It breaks commonplace marketing expectations about service failure and recovery.

The emphasis is on explaining innovations in service recovery and complaint management.

Companies which operate the CCBM model are of growing importance to developed, service‐oriented economies. The paper builds on evidence to show how CCBM businesses have abandoned or minimised costly customer centricity and have broken past norms and conventional marketing thinking and practice.

The scarcity of research in this area is explained by the recent, rapid evolution of these new model businesses. The study reveals and makes sense of important trends in service provision, distinct from and incompatible with normative arguments in some academic writings that advocate service recovery excellence.

Film provides an alternative medium for assessing our interpretations of cultural icons. This selective list looks at the film and video sources for information on and interpretations of the life of Woody Guthrie.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationships between the capabilities and performance characteristics of logistic service providers (LSPs) in the Caribbean region. The study considers the organization’s process improvement (PI) performance as it relates to their innovation capabilities, their efforts into information sharing and collaboration with customers, their planning for contingencies and considering the uncertainty of their customer’s technology.

A survey was applied to 88 LSP firms with operations in the Caribbean region. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the hypothesized relationships.

The results indicate that the PI performance of LSPs is significantly related to their innovation capabilities, and that these capabilities are positively related to collaboration and exchange of relevant information. Furthermore, they indicate that information sharing between LSPs and their customers significantly improves the quality of contingency planning. However, the study showed that innovation capabilities are not directly related to the LSPs’ focus on contingency planning and that customers’ technology uncertainty does not have a significant effect on the LSPs’ innovation capabilities.

The sample of LSP firms is limited to three countries of the Caribbean region. Further examination of the model in additional countries and across multiple industrial contexts would increase the validity of the findings and expand to settings such as manufacturing and services.

This study measures operational performance of LSPs from a different perspective: its PI performance, and considers how multiple factors affect this performance.

El propósito de este trabajo es estudiar las relaciones entre las capacidades y características de ejecutoria de los proveedores de servicios de logística (LSP) en la región del Caribe. El estudio considera la ejecutoria en la mejora de los procesos de la organización en relación con sus capacidades de innovación, sus esfuerzos en el intercambio de información y colaboración con los clientes, la planificación de contingencias y teniendo en cuenta la incertidumbre de la tecnología de sus clientes.

Se aplicó una encuesta a 88 empresas de servicios logísticos con operaciones en la región del Caribe. Un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales se utilizó para analizar las hipótesis propuestas.

Los resultados indican que la ejecutoria en la mejora de procesos de los LSP se relaciona significativamente a sus capacidades de innovación, y que estas capacidades se relacionan positivamente con la colaboración y el intercambio de información. Además, los resultados indican que el intercambio de información entre los LSP y sus clientes significativamente mejora la calidad de la planificación de contingencia. Sin embargo, el estudio demostró que las capacidades de innovación no están relacionadas directamente a la planificación de contingencia y que incertidumbre relacionada con la tecnología de los clientes, no tiene un efecto significativo en las capacidades de innovación de las LSP.

La muestra de empresas LSP se limita a tres países de la región del Caribe. La examinación en otros países y en otros contextos industriales aumentaría la validez de los resultados y ampliaría este a otras áreas como la manufactura y los servicios.

Este estudio mide la ejecutoria operacional de los LSP desde una perspectiva diferente: su ejecutoria en la mejora de procesos y considera cómo múltiples factores afectan esta ejecutoria.

The purpose of this research is to examine how a change in team dynamics impacts an individual's motivation to engage in helping behavior and operational performance.

An online vignette experiment and a hybrid discrete event and agent-based simulation model are used.

Study findings demonstrate how a non-core worker's perception of team dynamics influence engagement in helping behavior and system performance.

This study provides a further understanding on how team members react to changes in team processes. This study theorizes on how an individual team member responds to fairness concerns. This study also advances our understanding of the critical importance of helping behavior in a retail logistics setting. This research illustrates how the theory of strategic core and procedural justice literature can be adopted to explain team dynamics in supply chain management.

Twenty-five years ago IJPDLM published “Integrating the Supply Chain” (Stevens, 1989). The purpose of that original work was to examine the state-of-the-art in supply chain management (SCM). There have been substantial changes to the landscape within which supply chains function and changes to supply chains themselves. Given these changes it is appropriate to re-visit what is the new state-of-the art and determine whether the 1989 conceptualization requires extending. The authors also attempt to assess whether the evolution of SCM is associated with improved financial performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors take a conceptual approach to suggest that SCM is undergoing a transition to devolved, collaborative supply chain clusters. In addition, the authors consider imperatives and models for supply chain change and development. In line with the 1989 work, many of the observations in this invited paper are based on the primary author’s experience. The authors use a selection of financial data from leading firms to assess whether benefits attributed to SCM and changes in supply chain operating models have affected financial performance.

The authors formalize a model for the dynamics of SCM change. The authors also synthesize a number of models of SCM that extend the original, highly cited work. These include goal-oriented networks and devolved, collaborative supply chain clusters. The authors also find the associations between the evolution of SCM and measures of firm financial performance over time to be equivocal.

This work proposes two additional operating models that firms can implement in order to improve the efficacy of their supply chains.

The authors extend Stevens (1989) original work by synthesizing a number of additional models for SCI.