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Manpower planning is a key aspect of the human resource management function in organizations. Specifically, manpower planning examines the gap between staff availabilities (internal and external to the organization) and staffing requirements (to perform tasks in the organization) over time, and prescribes courses of action to narrow such a gap. Different perspectives in manpower planning have each been studied widely in the past. However, few insights are available on the interactions among these perspectives and the impact of these interactions on the resultant manpower plans. Describes these interactions in the form of decision and feedback loops. From this description, derives an integrated decision support system (DSS) framework for manpower planning. Also presents a methodology for analysis of the manpower planning business process and feasibility assessment of DSS deployment. The system framework and analysis methodology constitute a basis for applications deployment and consultancy undertaken by the author’s institute.

Business process management (BPM) networks have become an important theme in both research and practice. Drawing from governance theory, this paper seeks to provide a theoretical understanding of BPM networks and introduce three types of BPM governance: market, network, and hierarchy. Subsequently, it aims to study the impact of BPM maturity, organization size, and financial stress (independent variables) on the three types of BPM governance (dependent variable).

After a thorough literature analysis a quantitative study is conducted. Comprehensive data of 538 local public administration in Germany and Japan is comparatively studied by means of a PLS (model and multi group) analysis.

The empirical study provides evidence for the significant dependence of BPM governance on contextual variables: the configuration of the BPM network relies on the BPM maturity and the perceived financial stress. Also, such dependence does vary between the two countries. Higher financial stress leads to more higher network sourcing in Germany and to higher market sourcing in Japan, respectively.

This study suggests that the role of process managers changes over time. In immature organizations, process managers appear to work alone and struggle for resources. However, once organizations start to mature, the role changes to that of an “orchestrator of different actors.” Process managers in future public organizations (assuming a positive development of capabilities), both in Asian and European settings, must be able to collaborate with actors from different governance mechanisms.

First, the paper provides a governance‐theory based understanding of BPM networks. It introduces market‐type, network‐type, and hierarchy‐type BPM governance and thereby provides greater conceptual and theoretical clarity of this important phenomenon. So far, this research area has been under‐theorized. Second, the paper provides a theory that explains BPM network governance. Here, relevant contextual variables are taken into account, including the BPM maturity of an organization. Third, the paper contributes comprehensive empirical insights into BPM networks structures, governance mechanisms, and their dependence on contextual variables (especially the BPM maturity of an organization). Fourth, it provides an ample comparative theory‐based analysis of BPM networks in two different countries. Such an endeavor, as to the author's best knowledge, has not yet been undertaken so far.

This chapter explains the impact containerisation has on the various partners of the global supply chain and the challenges companies encounter and the solutions they use in dealing with empty container repositioning.

The phenomenon of imbalanced container flows and its impact on shipping lines, shippers, container haulage companies, port development and the economy are presented. Special attention is given to explain the many solutions companies use to reduce the impact of empty container repositioning, hence tracing out the past research that led to these solutions and pointing to potentially new research directions in the future.

Because of the widespread use of containerisation and the imbalanced container flows that results from globalisation, empty container repositioning will be an ongoing issue for the maritime logistics industry. Many solutions are being used, but there is room for improvement and more research is needed.

Empty container repositioning is an important issue but has not been deemed as such in the literature. This chapter explains the reasons it is important and that its impact is not limited to shipping lines only but affects the whole supply chain.

The Total Service Concept (TSC) framework, which forms part of a long‐term R&D strategy in the Information Technology Institute in Singapore, is aimed towards sustained product development for service operations management applications. The TSC project is centred around the design of state‐of‐the‐art, robust operations research and management science models, supported by innovative computing tools. The project is an unprecedented, multi‐million dollar effort that is targeted for regional market penetration by the mid 1990s. Discusses the key motivations behind the TSC project, the TSC framework, and the long‐term R&D strategy and deliverables for the TSC effort.

The study is an attempt to provide empirical evidence, in the context of acute hospital care, of the current human resource practices in the health sector of the Slovak Republic. Using a sample of 72 acute care hospitals the research explored the perceived functions, typical customers and priorities of hospital human resource departments, ownership of a workforce plan, and the relationships between ownership of a workforce plan and type of hospital, as well as the degree to which different human resource activities are given priority. Cross‐tabulation procedure revealed statistically significant relationships between ownership of a workforce plan and the degree of priority given to having a quick, efficient and cost‐effective recruitment and selection system and, not surprisingly, the degree of priority given to ensuring that the human resource department has a workforce plan. The study evidence also indicates that, although the human resource staff in hospitals seem to be aware of their role in assisting hospital management in decision making, the human resource function in the Slovak hospitals still rather resembles that of a personnel administration than that of an important strategic human resource activity.

The research paper aims to analyse the scholarly literature on advancing HR analytics as an intervention for attrition, a problem that lingers on organisational performance. This study aspires to provide an in-depth literature review and critically assess the knowledge gaps in HR analytics and attritions within organisational performance.

The review analyses the corpus of 196 research articles published in ostensible journals between 2011 and 2023. To identify research gaps and provide valuable insights, this study synthesises relevant studies using School of thought (S), Context (C), Methodology (M), Triggers (T), Barriers (B), Facilitators (F) and Outcomes (O) (SCM-TBFO framework). This study employs the R programming language to conduct a systematic literature review in accordance with the “preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis” (PRISMA) guidelines.

The emerging discipline of HR analytics encompasses the potential to manage attrition and drive organisational performance enhancements effectively. The study of SCM-TBFO encompasses a multidimensional approach, incorporating diverse perspectives and analysing its complex aspects compared to various approaches. The School of thought includes the human capital theory, expectancy theory and resource-based view. The varied research contexts entail the USA, United Kingdom, China, France, Italy and India. Further, the methodologies adopted in the studies are artificial neural networking (ANN), regression, structure equation modelling (SEM) case studies and other theoretical studies. HR analytics and attrition triggers are data mining decision systems, forecasting for firm performance and employee satisfaction. The barriers include leadership styles, cultural adaptability and lack of analytic skills, data security and organisational orientation. The facilitators were categorised into data and technology-related facilitators, human resource policies and organisational growth and performance-related facilitators. The study's primary outcomes are technology adoption, effective HR policies, HR strategies, employee satisfaction, career and organisational expansion and growth.

The primary goal of the literature review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of HR analytics and its impact on organisational performance, particularly in relation to attrition. Further, the study suggests that attrition, a critical organisational concern, can be effectively managed by strategically utilising HR analytics and empowering data-driven interventions that optimise performance and enhance overall organisational outcomes.

The emergence of advanced information technologies strengthens the capability to the entrepreneur to manage and manipulate data. However, the quality of information, the capability of providing the right information to the right person, and the utilization of information are still in doubt. Therefore, increasing numbers of firms have realized and started to develop as well as improve their existing information systems to fit the ever‐changing business needs of the organization to support decision‐making for the volatile business environment. Indeed, previous research studies have found that logistics management is the great frontier of cost reduction. Therefore, in this paper, an infrastructure of a decision support system is proposed to capture and maintain the business and resources allocation information with the adoption of the neural network for its artificial intelligent characteristic that mimic the operation of human brain to generate solutions systematically. The proposed system is adopted by a shipping company to assist allocation of containers.

The current competitive business environment has forced business leaders to consider business process reengineering (BPR) in their search for dramatic improvement in organizational effectiveness. This paper provides an extensive review of the existing literature by classifying the articles into four research streams, presents a comprehensive practical reengineering plan for achieving a true organization transformation, and suggests future research directions for BPR under each of these streams.

A case study conducted in a British company (Company A) on reengineering business processes is presented. It gives an example on how a case study ought to be written in order to go beyond the standard for writing an industrial report to one that is acceptable by academic peers. A good case study ought to contain information that readers can use in replicating the experiences gained and lessons learnt in future endeavours under similar settings. When a collection of good case studies is available to a practitioner or researcher he could formulate his plan for the future and avoid “re‐inventing the wheel”. This is most important to research in operations management because it lends a hand in the building up of a theory in POM to make an impact in its natural settings.

In recent years, many firms have rediscovered the importance of scheduling on the shopfloor. Within the manufacturing functions, scheduling remains among the most important and challenging tasks that must be performed routinely. Developing a schedule involves designating the resources needed to execute each operation of the process routeing plan and assigning the times at which each operation in the routeing will start and finish execution. The trend of current scheduling technology is towards a combination of the three common approaches; OR‐based, simulation‐based and AI‐based. Presents a hybrid approach using simulation‐based scheduling and a neural network to solve the detailed scheduling problem. Develops the neural network to analyse the complex information as well as orders coming on the shopfloor, and suggests candidate scheduling rules to the simulation model. The simulation model then uses the rules to schedule the orders on hand. The work is set against a backdrop of a currently operating flexible manufacturing cell.