Search results

This paper explores Lean Six Sigma principles and the DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) methodology to propose a new Lean Six Sigma 4.0 (LSS 4.0) framework for employee occupational exams and address the real-world issue of high-variability exams that may arise.

This study uses mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative data collection. A detailed case study assesses the impact of LSS interventions on the exam management process and tests the applicability of the proposed LSS 4.0 framework for employee occupational exams.

The results reveal that changing the health service supplier in the explored organization caused a substantial raise in occupational exams, leading to increased costs. By using syntactic interoperability, lean, six sigma and DMAIC approaches, improvements were identified, addressing process deviations and information requirements. Implementing corrective actions improved the exam process, reducing the number of exams and associated expenses.

It is important to acknowledge certain limitations, such as the specific context of the case study and the exclusion of certain exam categories.

The practical implications of this research are substantial, providing organizations with valuable managerial insights into improving efficiency, reducing costs and ensuring regulatory compliance while managing occupational exams.

This study fills a research gap by applying LSS 4.0 to occupational exam management, offering a practical framework for organizations. It contributes to the existing knowledge base by addressing a relatively novel context and providing a detailed roadmap for process optimization.

The article explores to what extent party politics has influenced the different trajectories in Spain and Italy in terms of gendered active social policies (ASPs) (i.e. ALMPs and WLBPs). Second, it investigates how social and political modernization in the two countries has facilitated or hindered party competition on gendered ASPs.

To investigate to what extent parties support gendered ASPs, the article relies on an original content analysis of party manifestos issued during the 2010s national elections. A total of 1387 quasi-sentences have been coded. The results were then quantified to graphically show how positions differentiate across parties and countries.

The content analysis of party manifestos displays that party politics matters: gendered ASPs are backed in a very different way by the Spanish and Italian parties. While in Spain all political parties have strongly championed ALMPs and WLBPs, this is not the case for the Italian parties. The research has also stressed that the specific path of social and political modernization is an important intervening variable that alters positively or negatively parties' support for gendered ASPs.

The article contributes to widen theoretically and empirically the literature on ASPs in the Southern European countries. Theoretically, it questions the supposed homogeneity of the Southern social model and investigated the alleged bifurcation between Italy and Spain, focusing on those policies – ASPs – that constitute the foundations of the Southern model: familialism and dualization. Furthermore, this bifurcation was analyzed adopting a gender perspective, and exploring adherence to or departure from the Southern model. Third, the article focuses on the politics of ASPs demonstrating that inspecting the political arena can contribute to explain policy change.

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

There has recently been much interest in analysing the creation of personalised tourism services and studying their effect on organisations. However, there still needs to be more work in analysing their effect on happiness and the role that emotions play in these processes. This paper aims to analyse, in the context of personalised and innovative tourism services, which factors can encourage and improve managers' happiness.

A model of analysis is presented with five variables: tourism managers' happiness (TMH), innovative personalised tourism services, internal factors: emotions (IFE), organisational factors (OF) and personal factors (PF). Eight hypotheses are proposed and tested with a structural equation model.

The results allow the authors to affirm that personalised technological advances applied to tourism services not only contribute to improving the happiness of hotel managers but also in generating emotions that contribute to improving their attitude towards the company.

This scientific work has some limitations. Firstly, this study was carried out exclusively in Spain due to the relevance of this country in the international tourism sector, according to the World Tourism Organisation. The results achieved in this research should be contrasted with other studies in other territories. Secondly, the interviews and surveys were carried out at specific time intervals. It has not led to problems of significant bias in the variance of the standard method. Therefore, it is desirable to undertake longitudinal or cross-sectional studies for future research. Thirdly, it is interesting to develop theoretical models that include other psycho-directive or leadership style constructs to determine whether they holistically enhance the subjective well-being of hospitality managers. Moreover, other types of factors of a social or strategic nature can be considered, which can positively or negatively impact the analysed variables. Finally, future research can deepen the empirical analysis of the relationship between managerial competencies and digital innovation from the perspective of happiness management. These findings would contribute to a greater cognitive understanding of the implications of personalised and innovative tourism services on hotel establishments' happiness and economic benefits.

This paper shows the fundamental role of a happy leadership style in creating responsible, green and innovative environments in today's digital society. Furthermore, the happiness of tourism managers can contribute to the generation of high quality and excellent services that are in line with the principles of sustainable development.

Personalised technological advances applied to tourism services not only contribute to improving the happiness of hotel managers but also to generating emotions that contribute to improving their attitude towards the company. On the other hand, it has been observed that personalised and innovative tourism services generate positive effects at organisational, internal and personal levels. The following reflections are advanced: The development of internal factors such as the emotions of awe and gratitude or the generation of trust can enhance the happiness of tourism managers. The happiness of tourism business managers can be enhanced by developing OF such as smart-personalised tourism services and data protection. The happiness of tourism managers can be enhanced by the development of PF such as travellers' desires, expectations and needs, or other factors such as disposable income, health status or family situation.

This is the first empirical study that focuses on investigating how personalised and innovative tourism services affect managing happiness.

This article aims to examine how users' involvement in value co-creation influences the development and orchestration of well-being ecosystems to help tackle complex societal challenges. This research contributes to the public management literature and answers recent calls to investigate novel public service governances by discussing users' involvement and value co-creation for novel well-being solutions.

The authors empirically explore this phenomenon through a case study of a complex ecosystem addressing increased well-being, focussing on the formative evaluation stage of a longitudinal evaluation of Sweden's first support centre for people affected by cancer. Following an abductive reasoning and action research approach, the authors critically discuss the potential of user involvement for the development of well-being ecosystems and outline preconditions for the success of such approaches.

The empirical results indicate that resource reconfiguration of multi-actor collaborations provides a platform for value co-creation, innovative health services and availability of resources. Common themes include the need for multi-actor collaborations to reconfigure heterogeneous resources; actors' adaptive change capabilities; the role of governance mechanisms to align the diverse well-being ecosystem components, and the engagement of essential actors.

Although using a longitudinal case study approach has revealed stimulating insights, additional data collection, multiple cases and quantitative studies are prompted. Also, the authors focus on one country but the characteristics of users' involvement for value co-creation in innovative well-being ecosystems might vary between countries.

The findings of this study demonstrate the value of cancer-affected individuals, with “lived experiences”, acting as sources for social innovation, and drivers of well-being ecosystem development. The findings also suggest that participating actors in the ecosystem should utilise wider knowledge and experience to tackle complex societal challenges associated with well-being.

Policymakers should encourage the formation of well-being ecosystems with diverse actors and resources that can help patients navigate health challenges. The findings especially show the potential of starting from the user's needs and life situation when the ambition is to integrate and innovate in fragmented systems.

The proposed model proposes that having a user-led focus on innovating new solutions can play an important role in the development of well-being ecosystems.

The purpose of this study is to introduce new tools to develop a more precise and focused bibliometric analysis on the field of digitalization in healthcare management. Furthermore, this study aims to provide an overview of the existing resources in healthcare management and education and other developing interdisciplinary fields.

This work uses bibliometric analysis to conduct a comprehensive review to map the use of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) research models in healthcare academic studies. Bibliometric studies are considered an important tool to evaluate research studies and to gain a comprehensive view of the state of the art.

Although UTAUT dates to 2003, our bibliometric analysis reveals that only since 2016 has the model, together with UTAUT2 (2012), had relevant application in the literature. Nonetheless, studies have shown that UTAUT and UTAUT2 are particularly suitable for understanding the reasons that underlie the adoption and non-adoption choices of eHealth services. Further, this study highlights the lack of a multidisciplinary approach in the implementation of eHealth services. Equally significant is the fact that many studies have focused on the acceptance and the adoption of eHealth services by end users, whereas very few have focused on the level of acceptance of healthcare professionals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to conduct a bibliometric analysis of technology acceptance and adoption by using advanced tools that were conceived specifically for this purpose. In addition, the examination was not limited to a certain era and aimed to give a worldwide overview of eHealth service acceptance and adoption.

This paper aims to explore the potential explanatory mechanisms linking leader–member exchange (LMX) and a perceived supportive environment for corporate entrepreneurship. Specifically, this paper develops and tests a hypothesized moderated mediation model of the relationship between LMX and a perceived supportive environment for corporate entrepreneurship through psychological empowerment as conditional upon the level of control orientation.

Data were collected from a sample of 682 full-time working adults in the USA and were examined in a moderated mediation model in PROCESS.

The findings suggest that higher LMX augments perceptions of a supportive environment for corporate entrepreneurship with a mediating role for psychological empowerment and a moderating role for control orientation on that conditional relationship.

This research suggests that high quality LMX relationships may enrich the human capital of firms, helping them to innovate and outperform competitors in the context of modern competitive dynamics. The study findings are limited by several factors including a cross-sectional design and a student-recruited sampling approach.

The study offers unique contributions to the leadership and entrepreneurship literature by being among the first to empirically investigate the relationship between LMX and a perceived supportive environment for corporate entrepreneurship as mediated by psychological empowerment and moderated by control orientation, yielding important insights regarding effective leadership practices for facilitating innovative behaviors and corporate entrepreneurship.