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Documented evidence supports the improvements resulting from the use of the Last Planner System® (LPS) as a lean construction technique; however, several barriers to the implementation of the technique have been identified. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implementation process of LPS by a project team that is transitioning from the traditional planning and control to LPS on a typical commercial project. The paper compares the adopted implementation process with that of the recommended best practices and identifies the overlaps and variances.

An in-depth case study was conducted to accomplish the specific objectives: document the process of LPS implementation in detail; identify the overlaps and variance from the recommended practices; and investigate the causes for variance from the recommended practices. The authors used direct observations, document investigations and semi-structured interviews with key project participants to gather data. Constant comparison and content analysis were used as data analysis method for this study.

The paper identified critical barriers to the implementation process of LPS in the case study project, which are supported by existing literature and are considered typical of project teams that are new adopters and transitioning to the implementation of LPS.

Based on a single case study, the outcomes may lack generalizability. However, similar findings of existing literature and evaluations by the project personnel substantiated the findings of the study.

The study attempted to conduct a systematic investigation on the implementation process of LPS, which is a less investigated topic. The paper draws attention to the major barriers experienced while adopting LPS in the case study project and suggested possible ways to address similar issues in the future. The barriers experienced by the case study project are typical of project teams who are new adopters and transitioning to the adoption of LPS, process and have the potential to be alleviated through the recommended practice implementation and process maintenance strategy.

This paper aims to provide an action-orientated reflection for promoting gender equality in hospitality, based on Bradley’s (2013) approach that considers the operation of gender in the “production” and “reproduction” spheres of social life. To that end, it reflects on women’s career development in hospitality based on the Western perspective.

A two-stage thematic analysis of a public research seminar on gender issues in tourism and hospitality were used to explore issues of women’s career development within the intertwining spheres of “production” and “reproduction”.

Three themes, namely, culture of an open dialogue, bringing men into the equation and educating the future workforce, emerged from data to propose new insights on “what can be done” about gender equality in tourism and hospitality, including practical suggestions for transformations of gender relations in organisations.

This paper contributes new knowledge on women’s career development in the hospitality industry by proposing recommendations to address gender gaps including fostering a culture of an open dialogue based on an inclusive listening environment, recommending changes to organisational policies and culture and integrating the subject of gender into tourism and hospitality curriculum.

By proposing a sociological perspective of gender in hospitality employment informed by Bradley (2013), this study challenges the traditional masculinity and the long-standing gender labour division through education, organisational and daily practices thus tackling fundamental gender issues.

Airports are limited in terms of capacity. Particularly, runways can only accommodate a certain number of movements (arrivals and departures) while ensuring safety and determined operational requirements. In such a constrained operating environment, any reduction in system capacity results in major delays with significant costs for airlines and passengers. Therefore, the efficient operation of airports is a critical cornerstone for demand and delay management of the whole air transportation system. Runway scheduling deals with the sequencing of arriving and departing aircraft at airports such that a predefined objective is optimized subject to several operational constraints, like the dependency of separation on the leading and trailing aircraft type or the runway occupancy time. This study aims to develop a model that acts as a tactical runway scheduling methodology for reducing delays while managing runway usage.

By considering real airport performance data with scheduled and actual movements, as well as arrival/departure delays, this study presents a robust model together with an optimization algorithm, which incorporates the knowledge of uncertainty into the tactical operational step. The approach transforms the planning problem into an assignment problem with side constraints. The coupled landing/take-off problem is solved to optimality by exploiting a time-indexed (0, 1) formulation for the problem. The Binary Integer Linear Programming approach allows to include multi-criteria and multi-constraints levels and, even with some major simplifications, provides fewer sequence changes and target time updates, when compared to the usual approach in which the plan is simply updated in case of infeasibility. Thus, the use of robust optimization leads to a protection against tactical uncertainties, reduces delays and achieves more stable operations.

This model has been validated with real data from a large international European airport in different traffic scenarios. Results are compared to the actual sequencing of flights and show that the algorithm can significantly contribute to the reduction of delay, while adhering as much as possible to the operative procedures and constraints, and to the objectives of the airport stakeholders. Computational experiments performed on the case study illustrate the benefits of this arrival/departure integrated approach: the proposed algorithm significantly reduces weighted aircraft delay and computes efficient runway schedule solutions within a few seconds and with little computational effort. It can be adopted as a decision-making tool in the tactical stage. Furthermore, this study presents operational insights regarding demand and delay management based on the results of this work.

Scheduling arrivals and departures at runways is a complex problem that needs to address diverse and often competing considerations among involved flights. In the context of the Airport Collaborative Decision Making programme, airport operators and air navigation service providers require arrival and departure management tools that improve aircraft flows at airports. Airport runway optimization, as the main element that combines airside and groundside operations, is an ongoing challenge for air traffic management.

The purpose of this paper is to draw from an adapted model of the Theory of Planned Behaviour and from existing models of entrepreneurial intention (EI) to analyse the role of gender on academics’ perceptions concerning the commercialisation of their research results. In particular, the authors explore differences in perceptions arising from diverse cognitions, such as attitudes towards entrepreneurial activities, the influence of close social groups and opportunity recognition self-efficacy.

A questionnaire was addressed to 500 Spanish academics who have headed research projects with public funding in technology-related areas, and the results were subjected to multigroup structural equation analysis (LISREL) to determine the extent and nature of the differences within this group.

The results obtained show that the influence of close social groups is perceived differently by men and women, particularly as regards the support received for academics’ attitudes and perceptions of control over the development of EI.

The aim is to better understand the world facing academics and the influences on their intention to commercialise research outcomes. An understanding of these issues offers the opportunity to design appropriate government interventions to assist academic entrepreneurs undertaking a business venture.

This paper considers an under-researched area that of female entrepreneurship in academia, traditionally considered a male-dominated activity. Helpful information is provided on gender differences in the academic context.

Recent years have seen increased participation by women in Science and Technology activities, but parity with men remains a distant goal. This paper provides a framework for improving knowledge on the dynamics of women’s contributions to innovation, as measured through their contributions as inventors.

Analysis was conducted using data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database, covering over 40 years from 1976 to 2019. The study provides a breakdown of women’s inventiveness/innovation by technology area, which permits analysis of whether female inventors tend to work individually or as part of a team, as well as analysis of the effects of international networks.

Specific data have been analyzed around innovative activity by women in Spain, providing new insights on gender gaps. Key findings include those recent increases in inventions by women (as measured through patents) have occurred mostly via participation in internationally connected mixed-gender teams. Furthermore, the inventive creativity of women is found to be sector-biased and framed mainly in the chemical sector.

There are no similar contributions using USPTO data for Spanish inventions. This is an original paper that emphasizes the potential of collaborative networks as key driving mechanisms for the reduction of gender gaps and for the larger integration of women into innovation activities, with potential implications for stakeholders at both firm and governmental levels.