Search results

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the antecedents and impacts of a largely overlooked concept, employee development, within the challenging area of returns management.

The proposed relationships are validated through structural equation modeling analysis with survey data collected in India.

Combining the ability–motivation–opportunity model in human resource management and the theoretical tenets associated with dynamic capabilities, the authors confirmed that supply chain learning, returns management orientation and information support are important antecedents of returns management employee development. In turn, the findings suggest that, as a dynamic capability, returns management employee development positively impacts a firm’s returns management and market performance.

To successfully tackle the challenges related to handling returns, companies must focus their resources not only on new technologies and related processes, but also on employee training and development as well.

Although recruiting and retaining talent in supply chain management has long been recognized as a serious global challenge, no previous research has empirically studied employee development practices in the returns management context.

The authors' goal in writing this article was to provide background information and detailed considerations to assist those wishing to provide patent and trademark assistance at their libraries. The major considerations include staffing, spaces and resources, with the time commitment from the staff being the most significant.

This paper combined the experiences of an author relatively new to patent and trademark librarianship with one who has years of experience. These were used in tandem with knowledge gained from a decade of attendance at annual week-long seminars at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) as well as by way of a comprehensive literature review.

The main commitment needed in providing patent and trademark services to the public is not money but the investment of time, which includes professional development, staffing, teaching classes and workshops, outreach and consultations.

The information in this paper should serve as guidance to anyone new to providing patent and trademark services within their libraries, including those at Patent and Trademark Resource Centers (PTRCs), Patent Information Centres (PATLIBs) and beyond. Although articles have been published on various aspects of intellectual property (IP) and libraries, a comprehensive guide to providing patent and trademark services has yet to be published.

The purpose of the paper is to perform bid mark‐up optimisation through the use of artificial neural networks (ANN) and a metric of the selected bid mark‐up's derived entropy. The scope is to provide an alternative, entropy‐based method for bid mark‐up optimisation that improves on the analytical models of Friedman and Gates.

The proposed method enables the incorporation of bid parameters through the use of ANN's pattern recognition capabilities and the integration of these parameters with a mark‐up selection process that relies on the entropy produced by possible mark‐up values. The entropy metric used is the product of the probability of winning over the bidder's competitors multiplied by the natural logarithm of the inverse of this probability.

The case study results show that the proposed entropy‐based bidding model compares favourably with the prevailing competitive bidding models of Friedman and Gates, resulting in higher optimisation with regards to the number of jobs won, the monetary value of contracts awarded and the value of “money left on the table”. Furthermore, the method allows for the incorporation of several objective and subjective bid parameters, in contrast to Friedman's and Gates's models, which are based solely on the bid mark‐up history of a bidder's competitors.

While the proposed method is a useful tool for the selection of optimal bid mark‐up values, it requires historical data on the bidding behaviour of key competitors, much like the classic bidding models of Friedman and Gates.

The method is suitable for quantifying objective and subjective competitive bidding parameters and for optimising bid mark‐up values.

This paper examines the nexus between supply chain social capital (relational social capital and structural social capital), supply chain responsiveness (operations system responsiveness and supplier network responsiveness) and firm performance. Additionally, the study examines the mediating role of supply chain responsiveness on the relationship between supply chain social capital and firm performance.

The authors test their hypotheses on a sample of 120 firms operating in Ghana. The measurement model and hypothesized paths were assessed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The findings revealed that structural social capital had a significant direct effect on firm performance, but relational social capital did not. It was also revealed that both relational and structural social capital have significant effects on operations system responsiveness and supplier network responsiveness. Additionally, operations system responsiveness fully mediated the effect of relational social capital on firm performance and partially mediated the effect of structural social capital on firm performance. Supplier network responsiveness, on the other hand, partially mediated the effect of both relational and structural social capital on firm performance.

This study contributes to the limited literature on supply chain social capital by unearthing the mechanisms through which supply chain social capital enhances firm performance. Specifically, the study demonstrates the intervening role of operations system responsiveness and supplier network responsiveness in the supply chain social capital–firm performance link.

This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.

Although the importance of establishing sound metrics is often noted in the logistics literature, few research efforts have examined appropriate metrics for reverse logistics (RL) processes. Through the lens of goal-setting theory, the paper identifies and align salient RL goals and metrics, and uncover some of the most common challenges to RL professionals. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper used open-ended questions to gather qualitative data from 84 RL professionals from the defense industry. A content analysis method was employed to extract and categorize the goals, challenges, and metrics for RL processes.

The paper identifies specific categories of goals, challenges and metrics. Several themes emerged from the study, to include customer service, disposition, costs, and process efficiencies. Using these themes, the paper matched goals to metrics and found a lack of uniformity and noted that metrics and goals often were not matched or were misaligned.

This research is limited by the defense industry sample and the research method. Caution should be used when generalizing the results, and further research is required to empirically test the validity of the findings. Nonetheless, in the context of goal-setting theory, the study contributes to the performance metrics literature by aligning RL metrics with goals and addressing challenges faced by RL practitioners. By investigating the topic from multiple perspectives, the study provides more detailed findings and demonstrates the differences between the inbound and outbound RL processes.

This study provides insight into the metrics used to monitor and control RL processes. The findings may help firms to identify shortcomings and choose metrics that they can employ to align RL processes with firm goals.

The study contributes to the performance metrics literature by aligning RL metrics with goals and addressing challenges faced by RL practitioners. By investigating the topic from both an inbound and outbound perspective, the study provides more detailed findings and demonstrates the differences between the inbound and outbound RL processes.

The purpose of this study is to examine the complex relationships between transformational leadership, organizational innovativeness, and motor carrier performance.

A covariance‐based structural equation model was developed, tested and validated to explain the effect of leadership style and innovativeness on motor carrier performance. The authors’ hypotheses were tested using responses from 158 North American motor carriers.

The results support a direct as well as an indirect positive relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance. Through the theoretical lens of dynamic capabilities theory, the results indicate that leaders motivate organizational change based on their own idiosyncrasies and perceptions of the environment.

This research was limited by its focus on the motor carrier industry and may limit the generalizability of the findings. While the sample of motor carriers was selected at random, the individuals within each of the organizations were purposively selected based on their positions.

The results indicate that the proactive leader who makes calculated changes is likely to chart a course towards enhanced organizational innovativeness and performance that may provide the firm with a sustained competitive advantage.

This is one of the few works investigating leadership style and innovativeness in the motor carrier industry.

Today's supply chains face increasing vulnerabilities; effective management of disruptions is critical to an organization's ability to weather disruptive events and remain competitive. Contingency planning is a method of risk management that promotes effective crisis management. This research tests proposed antecedents of contingency planning effectiveness in a supply chain setting.

A survey method was used to gather data from 103 participants who are involved in their respective organization's contingency planning and implementation processes. The data were analyzed using partial least squares to examine relationships between contingency planning effectiveness, inter‐organizational information technology (IT) use, cooperative attitude, and inter‐organizational collaboration.

The proposed model explains 87 percent of the variance in contingency planning effectiveness. The findings suggest that inter‐organizational collaboration, inter‐organizational IT use, and cooperative attitude directly impact contingency planning effectiveness. Inter‐organizational collaboration mediates the relationships between the other antecedents and contingency planning effectiveness.

Although effective contingency planning has been shown to influence positive outcomes, the relationship between contingency planning effectiveness and its antecedents is not well understood in extant literature. This study identifies and investigates key antecedents to contingency planning effectiveness and provides a foundation for continued investigation.

In this information age, demonstrating the significance of physical libraries is increasingly important. The roles and functions of libraries have been discussed using the concept of the library as place in interdisciplinary perspectives. However, the overall structure of the concept is inadequate because there are multifaceted arguments; how the concept has changed is not clear either. The purpose of this study is to clarify the whole picture of the roles and functions of the library as place in public libraries and to show the transition of the roles and functions.

Qualitative content analysis and time-series analysis were conducted using 175 related articles that mentioned the roles and functions of the library as a place.

An overall of 2,966 codes about library as a place was extracted and organised into a conceptual model, comprising 3 symbolic infrastructures (Wisdom, Heritage and Community), 11 categories (Intelligence, Creativity, Novelty, Culture and History, Neutrality, Equality, Empowerment, Publicness, Privacy, Sociability and Friendliness) and 30 subcategories. The study found that concepts of the library as place have developed rapidly since the 1990s, and roles have diversified from traditional ones.

The conceptual model of the library as place in this study, which integrates diverse perspectives such as physical spaces, activities and symbols, is the first of model's kind.

This study investigates how a firm's structural embeddedness, the structural position in a supply network that consists of major customers, influences the acquisition of supplier trade credit. Specifically, this study examines how network interconnectedness, network integration and network independence of a firm affect its ability to acquire supplier trade credit.

This study utilizes financial data from Compustat to build a longitudinal dataset of manufacturing firms from 1998 to 2013. Customer segment disclosure data are used to construct firm-level network variables. A fixed effect regression approach is used for estimation.

The study results show that network interconnectedness is negatively associated with supplier trade credit, while network integration is positively associated with supplier trade credit. Network independence does not influence the extent of supplier trade credit. The post hoc analysis shows that the effects of the hypothesized factors vary under different product categories and credit ratings.

This study broadens the supply chain finance literature by showing how a firm's embedded network structural position can influence its ability to obtain supplier trade credit.