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From the perspective of the supply chain risk management (SCRM), this paper addresses the effects of a hybrid production system (make-to-stock and make-to-order) in order to know which risks can impact the production planning process at a large automaker in Brazil. Through the correlation of these themes, the purpose of this paper is to understand the relevant risks to the supply chain (SC).

Before the field research, a theoretical approach was made on two themes. After theoretical analysis of a case study on the automaker and data collection, the work used the Pearson’s product moment correlation (r) and χ² and Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests to assess the risk factors raised by the interviewed professionals, thus characterizing a mixed methodological approach (i.e. qualitative and quantitative).

It was evidenced that many risks are the result of functional failures, such as input of incorrect information in the system, and many are inherent to managerial decisions when procedures and different paths of production are adopted. Additionally, it has been proven that the adoption of a hybrid production planning approach does not increase the risks to the SC and that the identified risks do not necessarily are included within the scope of SCRM.

This study is characterized by an approach which combines SCRM and hybrid production system.

In the continuous development of high-speed railways, ensuring the safety of the operation control system is crucial. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) faults in signaling equipment may cause transportation interruptions, delays and even threaten the safety of train operations. Exploring the impact of disturbances on signaling equipment and establishing evaluation methods for the correlation between EMI and safety is urgently needed.

This paper elaborates on the necessity and significance of studying the impact of EMI as an unavoidable and widespread risk factor in the external environment of high-speed railway operations and continuous development. The current status of research methods and achievements from the perspectives of standard systems, reliability analysis and safety assessment are examined layer by layer. Additionally, it provides prospects for innovative ideas for exploring the quantitative correlation between EMI and signaling safety.

Despite certain innovative achievements in both domestic and international standard systems and related research for ensuring and evaluating railway signaling safety, there’s a lack of quantitative and strategic research on the degradation of safety performance in signaling equipment due to EMI. A quantitative correlation between EMI and safety has yet to be established. On this basis, this paper proposes considerations for research methods pertaining to the correlation between EMI and safety.

This paper overviews a series of methods and outcomes derived from domestic and international studies regarding railway signaling safety, encompassing standard systems, reliability analysis and safety assessment. Recognizing the necessity for quantitatively describing and predicting the impact of EMI on high-speed railway signaling safety, an innovative approach using risk assessment techniques as a bridge to establish the correlation between EMI and signaling safety is proposed.

For many decades, it has been recognized that maintenance activities should be adapted to the specific usage of a system. For that reason, many advanced policies have been developed, such as condition-based and load-based maintenance policies. However, these policies require advanced monitoring techniques and rather detailed understanding of the failure behavior, which requires the support of an OEM or expert, prohibiting application by an operator in many cases. The present work proposes a maintenance policy that relieves the high (technical) demands set by these existing policies and provides a more accurate specification of the required (dynamic) maintenance interval than traditional usage-based maintenance.

The methodology followed starts with a review and critical assessment of existing maintenance policies, which are classified according to six different aspects. Based on the need for a technically less demanding policy that appears from this comparison, a new policy is developed. The consecutive steps required for this functional usage profiles based maintenance policy are then critically discussed: usage profile definition, monitoring, profile severity quantification and the possible extension to the fleet level. After the description of the proposed policy, it is demonstrated in three case studies on real systems.

A maintenance policy based on a simple usage registration procedure appears to be feasible, which enables a significantly more efficient maintenance process than the traditional usage-based policies. This is demonstrated by the policy proposed here.

The proposed maintenance policy based on functional usage profiles offers the operators of fleets of systems the opportunity to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their maintenance process, without the need for a high investment in advanced monitoring systems and in experts interpreting the results.

The original contribution of this work is the explicit definition of a new maintenance policy, which combines the benefits of considering the effects of usage or environment severity with a limited investment in monitoring technology.

The objective of this research is to explore integration and transition activities in large industrial projects. The purpose is to (a) obtain a better understanding of the integration and transition activities between the project front-end (FE) and project initiation phases (PIPs), (b) explore what, how and when these integrations and transitions occur, and (c) explore what the integration and transition activities mean to project practitioners.

A qualitative research design methodology is followed, based on interviews using open-ended questions. An expert panel is used to provide responses to questions pertaining to the integration and transition between the project FE and PIP. The research is focused on managing large projects in the South African electrical engineering industrial projects industry. A literature review combined with empirical analysis reflects the importance of integrating and transitioning in project business.

The findings provide guidance to researchers and practitioners on integration and transition mechanisms, how and when these occur. It highlights the benefits of integration and transition activities. Important lessons for researchers and practitioners are provided together with areas for future research.

This is an interpretative analysis of expert opinion. Expert panel members are experienced at senior decision-making level, and their expertise was accessed based on experience, education and knowledge. This extensive experience is shared in this paper providing insights into their opinions, experiences, success and failures. These inputs together with the literature review provide interesting implications for both a theoretical foundation as well as practical implications for practitioners.

The need for robust governance standards in financial institutions requires no overemphasis. However, instances of governance failures have been a recurring global phenomenon. This paper examines the key elements of governance in financial institutions, evaluates reasons for failures and suggests ways to strengthen governance and prevent such failures.

The author follows a descriptive design and a behavioural approach to understand the governance issues in financial institutions.

The author identifies key elements of governance, and the potential reasons for failures and highlights that the structure of boards, thrust on the adoption of best practices and regulatory guidelines are necessary but not sufficient to ensure failsafe governance standards. The author emphasises the need for recognition of behavioural factors and a focus on continuous monitoring and red flagging of the conduct of key stakeholders by the third and fourth lines of defence. An effective whistle-blower policy, a clear focus on organisational culture and the subjugation of individuals to the systems can improve the robustness of the governance standards in financial institutions.

To the best of the author's knowledge and belief, the observations and suggestions made in the paper are original. The paper contributes by offering a nuanced perspective for strengthening governance in financial institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to generalize the traditional risk evaluation methods and to specify a multi-level risk evaluation framework, in order to prepare customized risk evaluation and to enable effectively integrating the elements of risk evaluation.

A real case study of an electric motor manufacturing company is presented to illustrate the advantages of this new framework compared to the traditional and fuzzy failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) approaches.

The essence of the proposed total risk evaluation framework (TREF) is its flexible approach that enables the effective integration of firms’ individual requirements by developing tailor-made organizational risk evaluation.

Increasing product/service complexity has led to increasingly complex yet unique organizational operations; as a result, their risk evaluation is a very challenging task. Distinct structures, characteristics and processes within and between organizations require a flexible yet robust approach of evaluating risks efficiently. Most recent risk evaluation approaches are considered to be inadequate due to the lack of flexibility and an inappropriate structure for addressing the unique organizational demands and contextual factors. To address this challenge effectively, taking a crucial step toward customization of risk evaluation.

Earlier studies have generally shown a positive relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and the overall performance of the firm. The purpose of this paper is to understand in more detail how EO influences firm performance. It adds to the literature by distinguishing performances of different functions in a firm and by exploring how the dimensions of EO influence these functional performances and, in turn, overall firm performance.

This study examined the relationship between three dimensions of EO (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking), three types of functional performances of firms (R&D performance, production performance, marketing and sales performance) and the overall performance of firms. The data are collected from 279 high-tech small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using a postal survey. The proposed hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results indicate that the dimensions of (EO) are related in different ways to the performance of functions in a firm. A positive relationship is observed between innovativeness and R&D performance and between proactiveness and marketing and sales performance. A negative relationship exists between risk-taking and production performance. The results also show a sequential positive relationship from R&D via production and marketing and sales to overall performance of firms. Therefore, it is concluded that the R&D, production and marketing and sales functions reinforce each other in a logic order and are complementary in their effect on overall firm performance.

The results imply that the three functions, R&D, production and marketing and sales, in a firm play different roles, both in the firm’s EO and in their contribution to overall performance. Managers can use the findings to monitor and influence the performance of different functions in a firm to increase overall firm performance.

The first contribution of this study is that it unravels (i) which dimensions of EO have an effect on the performance of separate functions in a firm, indicating that functions contribute in different ways to entrepreneurial orientation of the firm. A second contribution is assessing how the performance of these functions influence the firm’s overall performance. This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring internal firm variables mediating the relationship between EO and overall firm performance and contributes to the discussion on the contradictory results regarding the relationship between risk-taking and firm performance.

Limited facilities operating and modernization budgets require organizations to carefully identify, prioritize and authorize projects to ensure allocated resources align with strategic objectives. Traditional facility prioritization methods using risk matrices can be improved to increase granularity in categorization and avoid mathematical error or human cognitive biases. These limitations restrict the utility of prioritizations and if erroneously used to select projects for funding, they can lead to wasted resources. This paper aims to propose a novel facility prioritization methodology that corrects these assessment design and implementation issues.

A Mamdani fuzzy logic inference system is coupled with a traditional, categorical risk assessment framework to understand a facilities’ consequence of failure and its effect on an organization’s strategic objectives. Model performance is evaluated using the US Air Force’s facility portfolio, which has been previously assessed, treating facility replicability and interruptability as minimization objectives. The fuzzy logic inference system is built to account for these objectives, but as proof of ease-of-adaptation, facility dependency is added as an additional risk assessment criterion.

Results of the fuzzy logic-based approach show a high degree of consistency with the traditional approach, though the value of the information provided by the framework developed here is considerably higher, as it creates a continuous set of facility prioritizations that are unbiased. The fuzzy logic framework is likely suitable for implementation by diverse, spatially distributed organizations in which decision-makers seek to balance risk assessment complexity with an output value.

This paper fills the identified need for portfolio management strategies that focus on prioritizing projects by risk to organizational operations or objectives.

The present paper aims to understand the influence of consumer's functional, psychological and emotional barriers to the use of digital banking services.

The authors carried out a quantitative study in which data were collected through a self-administered online questionnaire. A final sample of 202 Brazilian adults, with and without experience in using digital banking services, enabled the test of research hypotheses by means of a structural equation modeling approach.

The authors found statistical evidence that supports the hypothesis that psychological barriers, emotional barriers and user experience positively influence the resistance to the use of digital banking services. However, there is no empirical evidence supporting that the influence of functional barriers affects the resistance to the use of digital banking services.

Efforts to understand the mechanisms that lead consumers to adopt or reject innovative products or services are important to prevent investments in these innovations, avoiding revenue failures. The results provide managerial implications by favoring the creation of communication programs capable of reducing the possibilities of innovation failure.

The main theoretical contribution of this work is the identification of the predominant influence of emotional barriers, in comparison to functional barriers, on the resistance to innovation in digital banking services. Currently, the models that illustrate resistance to innovation tend to focus solely on functional aspects; however, these models can be improved by incorporating emotional aspects.

This paper aims to fill a gap in the existing literature by shedding the light on four main issues. First, the relationship between child-at-risk protection and sustainable development and the key factors contributing to the failure or success of child-at-risk protection systems. Second, the main characteristics and limitations of the current institutional arrangements of the child-at-risk protection system in Egypt. Third, the budget allocations to child protection-relevant entities in Egypt. Fourth, the way forward to enhance the effectiveness of the child-at-risk protection system in Egypt.

The methodology used in this paper is of a qualitative nature. The authors relied on desk review of the international and national reports (including the un-published ones) and the relevant literature on the topic. Additionally, the authors reviewed the relevant laws and regulations and analyzed the fiscal data extracted from Egypt’s State budget. Also, semi-structured interviews were conducted with some officials from the different governmental entities covered by the study.

From the institutional perspective, the authors find that the current child-at-risk protection system in Egypt needs effective institutional arrangements, as it is attributed with the limited activation of the child protection committees, lack of coordination mechanisms and overlapping mandates with regards to case management. Hence, the authors propose two institutional approaches that could help in enhancing the performance of the current system. While the first approach has decentralized nature, the other is centralized. From the fiscal perspective, the authors analyze the trend and composition of the budget allocations to the child protection-relevant entities in Egypt. They show that such allocations are relatively small especially when items not related to child protection are excluded.

The paper analyzes the main characteristics and limitations of the current institutional arrangements of the child-at-risk protection system in Egypt. Moreover, it proposes two alternative institutional approaches to deal with such limitations and enhance the effectiveness of the current system. The paper also provides an analysis of the budget allocations to the child protection-relevant entities in Egypt. These issues have not been addressed sufficiently in the Egyptian context.