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1 – 10 of over 5000The purpose of this research is to systematically review the properties of supply chains demonstrating that they are complex systems, and that the management of supply chains is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to systematically review the properties of supply chains demonstrating that they are complex systems, and that the management of supply chains is best achieved by steering rather than controlling these systems toward desired outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
The research study was designed as both exploratory and explanatory. Data were collected from secondary sources using a comprehensive literature review process. In parallel with data collection, data were analyzed and synthesized.
Findings
The main finding is the introduction of an inductive framework for steering supply chains from a complex systems perspective by explaining why supply chains have properties of complex systems and how to deal with their complexity while steering them toward desired outcomes. Complexity properties are summarized in four inter-dependent categories: Structural, Dynamic, Behavioral and Decision making, which together enable the assessment of supply chains as complex systems. Furthermore, five mechanisms emerged for dealing with the complexity of supply chains: classification, modeling, measurement, relational analysis and handling.
Originality/value
Recognizing that supply chains are complex systems allows for a better grasp of the effect of positive feedback on change and transformation, and also interactions leading to dynamic equilibria, nonlinearity and the role of inter-organizational learning, as well as emerging capabilities, and existing trade-offs and paradoxical tensions in decision-making. It recognizes changing dynamics and the co-evolution of supply chain phenomena in different scales and contexts.
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Roberto Linzalone, Salvatore Ammirato and Alberto Michele Felicetti
Crowdfunding (CF) is a digital-financial innovation that, bypassing credit crisis, bank system rigidities and constraints of the capital market, is allowing new ventures and…
Abstract
Purpose
Crowdfunding (CF) is a digital-financial innovation that, bypassing credit crisis, bank system rigidities and constraints of the capital market, is allowing new ventures and established companies to get the needed funds to support innovations. After one decade of research, mainly focused on relations between variables and outcomes of the CF campaign, the literature shows methodological lacks about the study of its overall behavior. These reflect into a weak theoretical understanding and inconsistent managerial guidance, leading to a 27% success ratio of campaigns. To bridge this gap, this paper embraces a “complex system” perspective of the CF campaign, able to explore the system's behavior of a campaign over time, in light of its causal loop structure.
Design/methodology/approach
By adopting and following the document model building (DMB) methodology, a set of 26 variables and mutual causal relations modeled the system “Crowdfunding campaign” and a data set based on them and crafted to model the “Crowdfunding campaign” with a causal loop diagram. Finally, system archetypes have been used to link the causal loop structure with qualitative trends of CF's behavior (i.e. the raised capital over time).
Findings
The research brought to 26 variables making the system a “Crowdfunding campaign.” The variables influence each other, thus showing a set of feedback loops, whose structure determines the behavior of the CF campaign. The causal loop structure is traced back to three system archetypes, presiding the behavior in three stages of the campaign.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is both methodological and theoretical. First, the DMB methodology has been expanded and reinforced concerning previous applications; second, we carried out a causation analysis, unlike the common correlation analysis; further, we created a theoretical model of a “Crowdfunding Campaign” unlike the common empirical models built on CF platform's data.
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Alastair Orr, Jason Donovan and Dietmar Stoian
Smallholder value chains are dynamic, changing over time in sudden, unpredictable ways as they adapt to shocks. Understanding these dynamics and adaptation is essential for these…
Abstract
Purpose
Smallholder value chains are dynamic, changing over time in sudden, unpredictable ways as they adapt to shocks. Understanding these dynamics and adaptation is essential for these chains to remain competitive in turbulent markets. Many guides to value chain development, though they focus welcome attention on snapshots of current structure and performance, pay limited attention to the dynamic forces affecting these chains or to adaptation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper develops an expanded conceptual framework to understand value chain performance based on the theory of complex adaptive systems. The framework combines seven common properties of complex systems: time, uncertainty, sensitivity to initial conditions, endogenous shocks, sudden change, interacting agents and adaptation.
Findings
The authors outline how the framework can be used to ask new research questions and analyze case studies in order to improve our understanding of the development of smallholder value chains and their capacity for adaptation.
Research limitations/implications
The framework highlights the need for greater attention to value chain dynamics.
Originality/value
The framework offers a new perspective on the dynamics of smallholder value chains.
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Nick Zonneveld, Carina Pittens and Mirella Minkman
The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the existing evidence on leadership that best matches nursing home care, with a focus on behaviors, effects and influencing factors.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the existing evidence on leadership that best matches nursing home care, with a focus on behaviors, effects and influencing factors.
Design/methodology/approach
A narrative review was performed in three steps: the establishment of scope, systematic search in five databases and assessment and analysis of the literature identified.
Findings
A total of 44 articles were included in the review. The results of the study imply that a stronger focus on leadership behaviors related to the specific context rather than leadership styles could be of added value in nursing home care.
Research limitations/implications
Only articles applicable to nursing home care were included. The definition of “nursing home care” may differ between countries. This study only focused on the academic literature. Future research should focus on strategies and methods for the translation of leadership into behavior in practice.
Practical implications
A broader and more conceptual perspective on leadership in nursing homes – in which leadership is seen as an attribute of all employees and enacted in multiple layers of the organization – could support leadership practice.
Originality/value
Leadership is considered an important element in the delivery of good quality nursing home care. This study provides insight into leadership behaviors and influencing contextual factors specifically in nursing homes.
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Albert Postma and Ian Seymour Yeoman
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of systems thinking and its value for strategic foresight and scenario planning to address disruptive forces from…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of systems thinking and its value for strategic foresight and scenario planning to address disruptive forces from the outside, with the outbreak of COVID19 as a case study.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper concisely discusses the notion of systems thinking and the concept of complex adaptive systems and puts this in the context of contemporary society in general and travel and tourism in particular. Strategic foresight and scenario planning are introduced as an approach to anticipate disruptions in the complex adaptive travel and tourism system.
Findings
As COVID-19 has demonstrated, travel and tourism is sensitive for disruptions from the outside. To ensure long-term resilience and sustainability, a systems approach embedded in strategic foresight and scenario planning is emphasised.
Practical implications
Strategic foresight and scenario planning is a competence that can be learned.
Originality/value
Given the present status of COVID-19 and other disruptors on travel and tourism, a resilient approach to the future is necessary; thus, the value of this viewpoint paper is the proposition of an adaptive capacity system. This paper offers advice to understand and manage complexity and adaptive systems.
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Marilú Pereira Castro and Tomas Aquino Guimaraes
The purpose of this paper is to identify dimensions that can influence the innovation process in justice organizations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify dimensions that can influence the innovation process in justice organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a qualitative approach. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview script. In all, 23 in-depth interviews were undertaken with lawyers, public defenders, judges, prosecutors and public officials from the five regions of Brazil. These data were analyzed using content analysis techniques.
Findings
The perceptions of the interviewees show that the process of innovation in justice organizations can be influenced by five dimensions: Institutional Environment (institutional level), Leadership (organizational level), Organizational Resources (organizational level), Cooperative Relations (interorganizational level) and Innovative Behavior (individual level). These dimensions may promote or restrict innovation.
Originality/value
The results indicate that there are growing efforts to introduce innovations designed to improve the performance and service delivery of justice organizations. However, there is resistance to innovation because these organizations are highly institutionalized and consequently seek stability and absence of change.
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Rasha Hassan and Yasser Ibrahim
Media has always been used as a key manipulator of public agendas, political beliefs and individuals’ attitudes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of three…
Abstract
Purpose
Media has always been used as a key manipulator of public agendas, political beliefs and individuals’ attitudes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of three adaptive media strategies on the pattern and dynamics of potential crowds.
Design/methodology/approach
An agent-based approach is used to simulate the three adaptive media strategies on the pattern and dynamics of potential crowds. During the experiments, the media broadcast is intensified to gather momentum for crowd movements or is lessened to maintain the budget.
Findings
The results show that a slight change in the media management strategy could lead to a radical different impact on the crowd dynamics. The results also show that a quite smart media strategy could outperform a strategy with an unlimited budget. Finally, the structure of the society shows a significant influence on the crowd dynamics than it could be inferred.
Originality/value
The model presents an explanatory toolkit for the crowd complexity. The results provide deep insights into the crowd formation and a basis for understanding the influence of media and the impact of its strategies on the crowd dynamics.
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This paper brings together the literature on theories of complexity adaptive systems (CAS), develops an analytical framework, applies this framework to the development of tourism…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper brings together the literature on theories of complexity adaptive systems (CAS), develops an analytical framework, applies this framework to the development of tourism destinations and critically reflects on the use of this perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper elaborates on a CAS perspective on destination development, to further develop complexity thinking in tourism studies. This approach enables to identify policy avenues geared towards improving destination governance and contributing to sustainable tourism development.
Findings
Theories of CAS offer an analytical lens to better understand destination development, drawing explicit attention to (1) the levels of the individual, (emergent) structures, the structure-agency interface and the system level, (2) the steps related to the process of adaptation that is critical for systems to survive and thrive in times of change and (3) the undervalued importance of considering the factor of time.
Originality/value
Applying CAS theories help to address a range of (policy) avenues to improve destination governance, contributing to a shift in focus from reactively fixing problems to proactively addressing the structural issue of adaptive capacity building. It shows that managing tourism destination as complex systems involves a set of conditions that are critical as well as difficult to meet in tourism practice.
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Zheng Xu, Yihai Fang, Nan Zheng and Hai L. Vu
With the aid of naturalistic simulations, this paper aims to investigate human behavior during manual and autonomous driving modes in complex scenarios.
Abstract
Purpose
With the aid of naturalistic simulations, this paper aims to investigate human behavior during manual and autonomous driving modes in complex scenarios.
Design/methodology/approach
The simulation environment is established by integrating virtual reality interface with a micro-simulation model. In the simulation, the vehicle autonomy is developed by a framework that integrates artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms. Human-subject experiments are carried, and participants are asked to virtually sit in the developed autonomous vehicle (AV) that allows for both human driving and autopilot functions within a mixed traffic environment.
Findings
Not surprisingly, the inconsistency is identified between two driving modes, in which the AV’s driving maneuver causes the cognitive bias and makes participants feel unsafe. Even though only a shallow portion of the cases that the AV ended up with an accident during the testing stage, participants still frequently intervened during the AV operation. On a similar note, even though the statistical results reflect that the AV drives under perceived high-risk conditions, rarely an actual crash can happen. This suggests that the classic safety surrogate measurement, e.g. time-to-collision, may require adjustment for the mixed traffic flow.
Research limitations/implications
Understanding the behavior of AVs and the behavioral difference between AVs and human drivers are important, where the developed platform is only the first effort to identify the critical scenarios where the AVs might fail to react.
Practical implications
This paper attempts to fill the existing research gap in preparing close-to-reality tools for AV experience and further understanding human behavior during high-level autonomous driving.
Social implications
This work aims to systematically analyze the inconsistency in driving patterns between manual and autopilot modes in various driving scenarios (i.e. multiple scenes and various traffic conditions) to facilitate user acceptance of AV technology.
Originality/value
A close-to-reality tool for AV experience and AV-related behavioral study. A systematic analysis in relation to the inconsistency in driving patterns between manual and autonomous driving. A foundation for identifying the critical scenarios where the AVs might fail to react.
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Shipeng Wang, Lizhen Cui, Lei Liu, Xudong Lu and Qingzhong Li
The purpose of this paper is to build cyber-physical-psychological ternary fusion crowd intelligence network and realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to build cyber-physical-psychological ternary fusion crowd intelligence network and realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection in cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system. Since the network of crowd intelligence is the future interconnected network system that takes on the features of large scale, openness and self-organization. The Digital-selfs in the network of crowd intelligence interact and cooperate with each other to finish transactions and achieve co-evolution eventually.
Design/methodology/approach
To realize comprehensive, real, correct and synchronous projection between cyber–physical–psychological ternary fusion system, the authors propose the rules and methods of projection from real world to the CrowdIntell Network. They build the mental model of the Digital-self including structure model and behavior model in four aspects: identity, provision, demand and connection, thus forming a theoretical mental model framework of Digital-self.
Findings
The mental model is excepted to lay a foundation for the theory of modeling and simulation in the research of crowd science and engineering.
Originality/value
This paper is the first one to propose the mental model framework and projection rules and methods of Digital-selfs in network of crowd intelligence, which lays a solid foundation for the theory of modeling, simulation, intelligent transactions, evolution and stability of CrowdIntell Network system, thus promoting the development of crowd science and engineering.
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