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This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

The occupational stress and well-being literature often focuses on specific causes of stress as health risk factors to be managed, on attributes of work environments that are stressful and/or risky, or on prevention and intervention strategies for managing these causes of stress as well as individual stress responses at work (Quick & Tetrick, 2003). The occupational stress literature has not focused on how executives and organizations can cause positive stress for people at work. In this chapter, we explore a principle-based framework for executive action to create positive, constructive stress for people at work.

The first major section of the chapter discusses seven contextual factors within which the principle-based framework is nested. The second major section of the chapter develops nine principles for executive action. The third and concluding section of the chapter turns the focus to a set of guidelines for executive action in managing their personal experience of stress.

Prior studies have shown that terminology support can improve health information retrieval but have not taken into account the characteristics of the user performing the search. In this chapter, the impact of translating queries’ terms between lay and medico-scientific terminology, in users with different levels of health literacy and topic familiarity, is evaluated. Findings demonstrate that medico-scientific queries demand more from the users and are mostly aimed at health professionals. In addition, these queries retrieve documents that are less readable and less well understood by users. Despite this, medico-scientific queries are associated with higher precision in the top-10 retrieved documents results and tend slightly to generate knowledge with less incorrect contents, the researchers concluded that search engines should provide query suggestions with medico-scientific terminology, whenever the user is able to digest it, that is, in users above the lowest levels of health literacy and topic familiarity. On the other hand, retrieval systems should provide lay alternative queries in users with inadequate health literacy or in those unfamiliar with a topic. In fact, the quantity of incorrect contents in the knowledge that emerges from a medico-scientific session tends to decrease with topic familiarity and health literacy. In terms of topic familiarity, the opposite happens with Graded Average Precision. Moreover, users most familiar with a topic tend to have higher motivational relevance with medico-scientific queries than with lay queries. This work is the first to consider user context features while studying the impact of a query processing technique in several aspects of the retrieval process, including the medical accuracy of the acquired knowledge.

This chapter provides an overview of the case and draws attention to the types of teams who respond to disasters, specifically a structure fire. We then provide a detailed recounting of the case, what resources were at play, and how the incident resolved.

There have been a number of case studies that have documented the challenges organizations face in monitoring complex and turbulent environments and the anomalous events that characterize them combined with multiteam systems’ unique combination of intricacy, propensity toward hazards, and necessary team cohesion makes it particularly difficult to foreshadow – and subsequently train for – all possible contingencies. The majority of the cases reported here is based on the official National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report that occurred shortly after the event and which is a required investigation by both State and Federal laws. Although the report is publicly available, specific identifying information was removed to allow for ease of comparison and to emphasize the multiteam system processes of interest.

As outlined in the case study above, there are many challenges that were faced in this multiteam system response to the supermarket structure fire. We discuss the response of the multiteam systems and attempt to identify a few key areas where miss-steps occurred and how the response would be different when multiteam systems function properly. We conclude with some practical implications from the incident as well as how multiteam systems can be improved based on this case study.

This chapter provides a real-world example of a disaster and systematically analyzes the steps and decisions that were utilized during the process from a multiteam perspective. Hopefully, the analysis of the case presented here will assist in developing increased awareness during high-stress encounters and offer an unbiased evaluation of what is required to properly train and therefore mitigate such tragedies in the future.

In contrast to the largely functionalist and apolitical literature which dominates organisational scholarship on exploitation and exploration after March, this paper seeks to complement this view of exploitation and exploration with a Marxist reading which is unwittingly implied by these terms. More specifically, we combine neo-Marxist and paleo-Marxist arguments to more fully understand the conflictual relations that underpin exploitation and exploration in the management of firms. This enables us to address both the objective and subjective dimensions of exploitation and exploration which firms and workers are involved in through the contemporary capitalist labour process. We illustrate this by drawing on a case study of a large Swedish manufacturing firm which sought to improve lean production by systematically helping employees to explore their own lifestyles and possibilities for a healthier and happier life.