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Confusion over the interpretation of date labels is one of the main causes of food waste at the retail and consumer level. The purpose of this study was to determine consumer understanding of food date labels and to assess consumer perception of food waste based on these labels.

It is a cross-sectional study carried out in India. Google forms were used to administer an online structured questionnaire. A total of 389 individuals participated in the study. The data were analyzed using Chi-square statistics and ordinal logistic regression.

The results affirmed that most of the consumers frequently looked at date labels while purchasing food products, but many of them did not have adequate knowledge of commonly used date label terms. In particular, respondents tended to misunderstand the “best before” date label as the last date for safe consumption, that is, a safety indicator that is not correct. The study indicated that lack of appropriate knowledge, misunderstanding of date labels and lack of complete information contributed toward unnecessary and excess discard of foods that may otherwise perfectly be safe and edible.

Raising public awareness, educating consumers about food date labels and pushing for standardizing the information on date labels by providing adequate guidelines to companies would enable consumers to better interpret the labels, and it would lead to lowering the unnecessary food wastage.

This study fulfills an important knowledge gap in respect of examining the food date label knowledge and its relationship with food waste practices in India.

The purpose of this two-part paper is to develop a process model of unlearning established organizational routines. The model traces the interactions among three unlearning sub-processes: ostensive aspects of initial destabilization of an established routine; performative aspects of ongoing discarding-from-use of old behaviors and experimenting with new ones; and ostensive aspects of eventual release of prior understandings and development of new ones.

The paper draws on evidence from psychology and cognitive science to explain the mechanisms underlying organizational processes of unlearning embedded routines.

The proposed model contributes to enriching current understanding of unlearning organizational routines without contradicting it. Consistent with prior understanding, destabilizing an old routine may lead to discarding it, and further discarding-from-use is likely required for continued destabilization of embedded routines. Again, consistent with prior understanding, experimenting with new behaviors may be a desired outcome of unlearning an old routine, and ongoing experimentation is likely required to sustain unlearning embedded routines.

The organizational unlearning literature provides many examples of organizational members relinquishing old routines to then make new learning possible and also provides little insight into the processes by which this occurs. The paper addresses this gap by modeling the mutually reinforcing nature of three unlearning sub-processes.

The general objective of this research was to identify the practices of the mass production industries, on the decisions related to the detection of defective products and to identify relevant criteria, actions, effects and variables to be used in a decision-making model.

A survey questionnaire was developed and structured in 20 questions, with 18 closed questions and 2 open questions. The questions were constructed based on the literature review, with the identification of 15 theoretical and practical concepts of quality. Seven other information requests were included, concerning the initial characterization of the defective items and industry. The company, the product, the processes and the defects were contextualized, and then the decision-making process was framed, to understand the factors that influenced it.

The industries of the Industrial Pole of Manaus discard or rework their defective products influenced by promoting the lowest cost and the required quality. The factors with the biggest influence on decisions are rework and disposal costs, and time available for rework and replacement. The main requirements defined for the decision-making model were: 1) compare the rework and discard options, only if the rework reaches the required quality level; and 2) identify and account the effects of defective items on quality, productivity and costs.

Overall, 109 questionnaires were sent, representing 21.3% (109/512) of the companies at the Industrial Pole of Manaus. The respondents represent 14.6% (75/512) of the population.

Defects can occur, requiring a decision that promotes the lowest cost and the required quality. Quality cost models do not show a systematic analysis for identification, accounting, evaluation of effects and criteria associated with the destination of manufactured defective items. Therefore this research was done to fill this gap.

Electronic waste (e-waste) such as discarded computers and smartphones may contain large amounts of confidential data. Improper handling of remaining information in e-waste can, therefore, drive information security risk. This risk, however, is not always properly assessed and managed. The authors take the protection motivation theory (PMT) lens of analysis to understand intentions to protect one's discarded electronic assets.

By applying structural equation modeling, the authors empirically tested the proposed model with survey data from 348 e-waste handling users.

Results highlight that (1) protection intention is influenced by the perceived threat of discarding untreated e-waste (a threat appraisal) and self-efficacy to treat the discarded e-waste (a coping appraisal) and (2) optimism bias plays a dual-role in a direct and moderating way to reduce the perceived threat of untreated e-waste and its effect on protection intentions.

Results support the assertions and portray a unique theoretical account of the processes that underline people's motivation to protect their data when discarding e-waste. As such, this study explains a relatively understudied information security risk behavior in the e-waste context, points to the role of optimism bias in such decisions and highlights potential interventions that can help to alleviate this information security risk behavior.

The purpose of Part II of this two-part paper is to uncover important differences in the nature of the three unlearning subprocesses, which call for different leadership interventions to motivate people to move through them.

The paper draws on research in behavioral medicine and psychology to demonstrate that initial destabilizing of old patterns and the subsequent behavioral processes of discarding the old and experimenting with the new are qualitatively different.

Leadership interventions must fit the unique requirements of each unlearning subprocess. Discarding old routines requires continued focus on the costs of not doing so, as well as a progressive refocus on positive possibilities and engaging people in activities to explore them. When aspects of the old routine resurface, the costs of relapse must again become salient, leading to further discarding-from-use, followed by further positive experimentation. Finally, maintaining long-term release of an embedded routine requires recognition of the emerging new patterns and a shift from future-oriented visioning of possibilities to current satisfaction with the new.

All empirical studies of organizational unlearning imply some form of destabilization of old learning as an antecedent to unlearning, and many of them discuss subsequent behavioral and cognitive displacement. However, they have not clearly distinguished between these subprocesses to fine-tune how to motivate people to move through them. This paper addresses that gap.

The shelf‐life of a product, from packing to “sell‐by” date is divided between the distributor and the retailer. If the time allowed for distribution is inadequate then either some good product has to be discarded, and/or some customers have to go short. In this article John Sussams discusses the financial and other consequences of this situation, and examines possible remedies. These involve speeding up the flow and/or increasing the shelf‐life available to the distributor so that small buffer stocks can safely be held to cover fluctations in demand. The writer concludes with a detailed case study.

The term ‘obsolescence’ occurs frequently in the literature of librarianship and information science. In numerous papers we are told how most published literature becomes obsolete within a measurable time, and that an item receives half the uses it will ever receive (‘half‐life’) in a few years. ‘Obsolescence’ is however very rarely defined, and its validity, interest, and practical value are often assumed rather than explained. Before reviewing studies on ‘obsolescence’, therefore, it is necessary to look at the concept and to identify the reasons why it should be of interest.

OF all the efforts which have been made within recent years to popularize Public Libraries or to improve the reading standard of the public, none has been so popular, or so generally adopted as the plan of organizing courses of lectures. This in spite of the fact that lectures are becoming less and less necessary as a means of spreading knowledge and ideas. It may be that lectures with experiments, lectures to arouse interest, to amuse, to produce an emotional or æsthetic effect may still have some value, but lectures to call forth intellectual effort and to spread ideas are practically superseded by books. If this be granted it follows that the lecture courses generally given under the auspices of library authorities have this result—they do not stimulate the intellect nor do they create any desire to use books as a means of improving the intellectual standard of the individual. The cause of this is to be found in the miscellaneous character of the lectures. It is no unusual thing to find that a course of library lectures includes such diverse subjects as “The Ice Age,” “Six months in the Tropics,” “Beetles,” “Hygiene,” “The Moon,” “Shakespeare,” &c. The effect of such courses upon anyone who may attend them all is similar to that produced upon the mind of the person who reads the “tit‐bits” pages in one of the popular magazines. Custom has much to do with this state of affairs, and lectures like those above outlined have long been recognized as suitable for a library, mainly perhaps because they can be procured cheaply and with little trouble.

Conventionally, fleet maintenance decisions are made based on the level of repair (LOR) analysis. A general assumption made during LOR analysis is the consideration of the lifetime distribution with constant failure rate (CFR). However, industries do use preventive maintenance (PM) to extend the life of such components, which in turn may affect the LOR decisions such as repair/move/discard. The CFR assumption does not allow the consideration of effect of PM in LOR analysis. The purpose of this paper is to develop a more practical LOR analysis approach, considering the time-dependent failure rate (TDFR) of components and the effect of PM.

In the proposed methodology, first, a detailed life cycle model considering the effect of various parameters related to LOR and PM is developed. A simulation-based genetic algorithm approach is then used to obtain an integrated solution for LOR and PM schedule decisions. The model is also evaluated for the various cases of quality of maintenance measured in terms of degree of restoration.

The results, from the illustrative example for a multi-indenture and multi-echelon fleet maintenance network, show that the proposed integrated strategy leads to better LCC performance compare to the conventional approach. Additionally, it is identified that the degree of restoration also affects the PM schedule as well as LOR decisions of the fleet system. Therefore, consideration of TDFR is important to truly optimize the LOR decisions. The proposed approach can be applied to fleet of any equipment.

The approach is illustrated using a hypothetical example of an industrial system. A more complex system structure in terms of number of machines, types of machines (identical vs non-identical), number of echelons, possible repair actions at various echelons, etc. may be present for a particular industrial case. However, the approach presented is generic and can be extended to any system. Moreover, the aim of the paper is to highlight the importance of the considering PM and quality of maintenance in LOR decision making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work which considers the effect of PM and quality of maintenance on LOR analysis. Consideration of TDFR and imperfect maintenance while optimizing LOR decisions is a complex problem. Thus, the work is of high significance from the research point of view. Also, most of the real life fleet systems use PM to extend the life of the equipment. Thus, present paper is a more practical approach for LOR analysis of such systems.

The goal of the present research was to resolve two problems with contemporary methods used to assess consumer food waste: the lack of established categories of food wasting behaviours and difficulties in assessing food waste. In Studies 1 A and 1 B, a five-factor questionnaire for measuring food wasting behaviours was developed. Study 2 and Exploratory analyses verified whether the questionnaire allows for predicting the amount of wasted meat, dairy and bakery and a range of socioeconomic characteristics.

Based on pre-registered studies, a new questionnaire for measuring the frequency of food wasting behaviours, the Food Wasting Behaviours Questionnaire (FWBQ), was developed.

The results provided evidence that behaviours associated with food wasting could be narrowed down to five distinctive basic categories: (1) discarding food because of its' unpalatability; (2) preventing food waste through buying only the necessities; (3) preventing food waste through planning; (4) preventing food waste through sharing and (5) preventing food waste through feeding animals. The FWBQ allowed for investigating the socio-economic factors that influence food wasting behaviour. Finally, the FWBQ allowed for predicting the amount of wasted meat, dairy and bakery products. Also, particular factors were associated with a range of socioeconomic characteristics.

The FWBQ has been shown to be an inexpensive and easy-to-use method for systematising distinct categories of food wasting behaviours and demonstrating their determinants. The study takes an empirical approach (rather than intuitive) to distinguish separate categories of food wasting.