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Article
Publication date: 24 June 2020

Bruno S. Silvestre, Minelle E. Silva, Allan Cormack and Antônio Márcio Tavares Thome

This paper explores how organizational capabilities and path dependence affect the implementation of supply chain (SC) sustainability initiatives. Through the lenses of…

1711

Abstract

Purpose

This paper explores how organizational capabilities and path dependence affect the implementation of supply chain (SC) sustainability initiatives. Through the lenses of contingency and evolutionary theory, the paper addresses the underexplored supply chain dynamics that enhance or inhibit sustainability trajectories.

Design/methodology/approach

Using in-depth multi-case studies for theory elaboration, five supply chains were studied through open-ended interviews with SC members, secondary data collection and site visit observation. The design consists of a combination of deductive and inductive approaches to elaborate theory on supply chain dynamics and enhanced sustainability trajectories.

Findings

The empirical study shows that learning is a fundamental condition for supply chains as they implement sustainability initiatives, and that exploitation capabilities are more frequently used than exploration capabilities. Path dependence plays a role in the outcomes of supply chain sustainability initiatives, which are influenced by both path dependence and contingencies of the contexts in which these systems operate.

Research limitations/implications

This paper puts forward five propositions that emerge from the literature and from the field study results. Although this is an exploratory research bounded by geographical limitations and the limited number of SC cases, the goal of elaborating theory may open up several promising avenues for future large-scale and longitudinal research studies.

Practical implications

By enhancing our understanding of the dynamics of supply chain sustainability trajectories, decision-makers, scholars and policy-makers can better understand how supply chains learn, how they employ SC member capabilities and how they deal with stakeholder resistance.

Originality/value

This paper extends supply chain sustainability theory by addressing the knowledge gap that exists with regard to understanding the dynamics of evolving supply chain sustainability trajectories. This paper sheds additional light on this important topic and contributes in multiple ways to the sustainable supply chain management literature.

Details

International Journal of Operations & Production Management, vol. 40 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-3577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 June 2023

Matthew Philip Masterton, David Malcolm Downing, Bill Lozanovski, Rance Brennan B. Tino, Milan Brandt, Kate Fox and Martin Leary

This paper aims to present a methodology for the detection and categorisation of metal powder particles that are partially attached to additively manufactured lattice structures…

58

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present a methodology for the detection and categorisation of metal powder particles that are partially attached to additively manufactured lattice structures. It proposes a software algorithm to process micro computed tomography (µCT) image data, thereby providing a systematic and formal basis for the design and certification of powder bed fusion lattice structures, as is required for the certification of medical implants.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper details the design and development of a software algorithm for the analysis of µCT image data. The algorithm was designed to allow statistical probability of results based on key independent variables. Three data sets with a single unique parameter were input through the algorithm to allow for characterisation and analysis of like data sets.

Findings

This paper demonstrates the application of the proposed algorithm with three data sets, presenting a detailed visual rendering derived from the input image data, with the partially attached particles highlighted. Histograms for various geometric attributes are output, and a continuous trend between the three different data sets is highlighted based on the single unique parameter.

Originality/value

This paper presents a novel methodology for non-destructive algorithmic detection and categorisation of partially attached metal powder particles, of which no formal methods exist. This material is available to download as a part of a provided GitHub repository.

Details

Rapid Prototyping Journal, vol. 29 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2546

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 April 2020

Fleur Diamond

Contemporary standards-based reforms to teaching and teacher education are characterised by appeals to technical orientations to teacher professionalism. In addition, the…

Abstract

Purpose

Contemporary standards-based reforms to teaching and teacher education are characterised by appeals to technical orientations to teacher professionalism. In addition, the standardisation agenda has targeted literacy education as a focus for interventions. This has highlighted an incongruence between standardised approaches to literacy and pedagogies and practices in subject English that have developed over time, and which represent disciplinary ways of knowing.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses the occasion of the author’s transition from classroom English teacher to teacher educator to inquire into the pedagogies and practices around teaching with texts that form part of her professional identity. The purpose of this study is to introduce cultural memory as an approach to interpreting narratives about educational experience and the development of English pedagogies over time.

Findings

The paper argues that standards-based reforms tell “official stories” (Malcolm and Zukas, 2009) about teacher professionalism that displace knowledge of past practices and the ethical and intellectual investments they represent. This is characterised by a marked “presentism” (Green and Cormack, 2015) in contemporary education policy. By contrast, critical autobiographical inquiry practised as cultural memory produces situated accounts of the role of professional memory in the on-going “project” (Green 2002/2014) of English teaching.

Originality/value

The paper presents new work in the area of teacher professional identity drawing on the interdisciplinary methods of cultural memory studies.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 19 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Aubrey Chaputula and Allan Kanyundo

The purpose of this paper is to study the use of Koha integrated library system by higher education institutions in Malawi.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study the use of Koha integrated library system by higher education institutions in Malawi.

Design/methodology/approach

The study made use of the diffusion of innovation theory as an anchoring model. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire that was administered to library managers of higher education institutions registered with the National Council for Higher Education in Malawi. The data collected were analyzed using SPPS version 21 to generate descriptive statistics.

Findings

The findings revealed that 84.2 per cent of libraries in higher education institutions in Malawi are automated, and 81.3 per cent of them are using Koha ILS and the rest were using proprietary and other open source software. Cost and technical aspects have been discovered to be the primary factors that have assisted in the rapid diffusion of Koha. The study also exposed some factors that negatively impacted the use of Koha in the adopting institutions. The main ones included lack of information and communication technology infrastructure, unreliable Internet connectivity and limited finances.

Originality/value

Previously, some small-scale case studies have been performed to examine implementation of Koha in some higher education institutions in Malawi. However, this is the first large-scale attempt to investigate use of Koha among higher education institutions in the country. Findings that have shown that Koha can be installed easily and used at minimal cost could assist in its rapid adoption in the higher education institutions, a majority of whom face a myriad of financial challenges.

Details

Digital Library Perspectives, vol. 35 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2059-5816

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 June 2014

Beatrice Godwin

Government guidelines promote service user consultation without providing extensive advice on people in later dementia. “Seen as too difficult to involve, they are effectively…

Abstract

Purpose

Government guidelines promote service user consultation without providing extensive advice on people in later dementia. “Seen as too difficult to involve, they are effectively excluded from […] influenc(ing) service provision”, especially institutional care residents (Clare and Cox, 2003, p. 936). This hard-to-reach group presents methodological challenges. The purpose of this paper is to explore innovative approaches, offering even those with fragmented or lost speech the opportunity to contribute to decisions about their care.

Design/methodology/approach

This specialist dementia home consultation included staff and every resident, irrespective of the level of their communication impairment. Consultation on potential colour schemes took the form of a ballot. Staff helped develop an unpatronising, person-centred approach. Visual aids supported communication, de-emphasising the spoken word and promoting inclusion.

Findings

The majority of residents appeared to express an opinion on the potential decor. Others chose a colour while not necessarily grasping the context. The approach engaged all except four.

Research limitations/implications

Even people with moderate/advanced dementia may be enabled to participate in consultation. Further research needs to refine methodology to include everyone and clarify the interpretation of results.

Practical implications

Service providers may widen their expectations of inclusivity in consultation exercises.

Originality/value

This consultation is important to researchers and practitioners because it explores ways of communicating, which avoid privileging the spoken word, revealing seldom-recognised abilities in people with moderate/advanced dementia.

Details

Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1471-7794

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1953

WE begin a new year, in which we wish good things for all who work in libraries and care for them, in circumstances which are not unpropitious. At times raven voices prophesy the…

Abstract

WE begin a new year, in which we wish good things for all who work in libraries and care for them, in circumstances which are not unpropitious. At times raven voices prophesy the doom of a profession glued to things so transitory as books are now imagined to be, by some. Indeed, so much is this a dominant fear that some librarians, to judge by their utterances, rest their hopes upon other recorded forms of knowledge‐transmission; forms which are not necessarily inimical to books but which they think in the increasing hurry of contemporary life may supersede them. These fears have not been harmful in any radical way so far, because they may have increased the librarian's interest in the ways of bringing books to people and people to books by any means which successful business firms use (for example) to advertise what they have to sell. The modern librarian becomes more and more the man of business; some feel he becomes less and less the scholar; but we suggest that this is theory with small basis in fact. Scholars are not necessarily, indeed they can rarely be, bookish recluses; nor need business men be uncultured. For men of plain commonsense there need be few ways of life that are so confined that they exclude their followers from other ways and other men's ideas and activities. And, as for the transitoriness of books and the decline of reading, we ourselves decline to acknowledge or believe in either process. Books do disappear, as individuals. It is well that they do for the primary purpose of any book is to serve this generation in which it is published; and, if there survive books that we, the posterity of our fathers, would not willingly let die, it is because the life they had when they were contemporary books is still in them. Nothing else can preserve a book as a readable influence. If this were not so every library would grow beyond the capacity of the individual or even towns to support; there would, in the world of readers, be no room for new writers and their books, and the tragedy that suggests is fantastically unimaginable. A careful study, recently made of scores of library reports for 1951–52, which it is part of our editorial duty to make, has produced the following deductions. Nearly every public library, and indeed other library, reports quite substantial increases in the use made of it; relatively few have yet installed the collections of records as alternatives to books of which so much is written; further still, where “readers” and other aids to the reading of records, films, etc., have been installed, the use of them is most modest; few librarians have a book‐fund that is adequate to present demands; fewer have staffs adequate to the demands made upon them for guidance by the advanced type of readers or for doing thoroughly the most ordinary form of book‐explanation. It is, in one sense a little depressing, but there is the challenging fact that these islands contain a greater reading population than they ever had. One has to reflect that of our fifty millions every one, including infants who have not cut their teeth, the inhabitants of asylums, the illiterate—and, alas, there are still thousands of these—and the drifters and those whose vain boast is that “they never have time to read a book”—every one of them reads six volumes a year. A further reflection is that public libraries may be the largest distributors, but there are many others and in the average town there may be a half‐dozen commercial, institutional and shop‐libraries, all distributing, for every public library. This fact is stressed by our public library spending on books last year at some two million pounds, a large sum, but only one‐tenth of the money the country spent on books. There are literally millions of book‐readers who may or may not use the public library, some of them who do not use any library but buy what they read. The real figure of the total reading of our people would probably be astronomical or, at anyrate, astonishing.

Details

New Library World, vol. 54 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0307-4803

Abstract

Details

Lived Experiences of Exclusion in the Workplace: Psychological & Behavioural Effects
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-309-0

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2000

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management…

27445

Abstract

Index by subjects, compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.

Details

Facilities, vol. 18 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-2772

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2001

K.G.B. Bakewell

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18;…

18730

Abstract

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐18; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐18; Property Management Volumes 8‐18; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐18.

Details

Structural Survey, vol. 19 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-080X

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2000

K.G.B. Bakewell

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17;…

23737

Abstract

Compiled by K.G.B. Bakewell covering the following journals published by MCB University Press: Facilities Volumes 8‐17; Journal of Property Investment & Finance Volumes 8‐17; Property Management Volumes 8‐17; Structural Survey Volumes 8‐17.

Details

Property Management, vol. 18 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-7472

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