Search results

The study sets out to demonstrate how a lifecycle perspective on complex, public-sector procurement projects can be used for making qualitative assessments of procurement policy and practice and reveal those procurement capabilities that are most impactful for operating effectively.

Agency theory, institutional theory and the lifecycle analysis technique are combined to abductively develop a framework to identify, analyse and compare complex procurement policies and practices in public sector organisations. Defence is the focal case and is compared with cases in the Nuclear, Local Government and Health sectors.

The study provides a framework for undertaking a lifecycle analysis to understand the challenges and capabilities of complex, public-sector buyers. Eighteen hierarchically-arranged themes are identified and used in conjunction with agency theory and institutional theory to explain complex procurement policy and practice variation in some of the UK’s highest-profile public buyers. The study findings provide a classification of complex buyers and offer valuable guidance for practitioners and researchers navigating complex procurement contexts.

The lifecycle approach proposed is a new research tool providing a bespoke application of theory by considering each lifecycle phase as an individual but related element that is governed by unique institutional pressures and principal-agent relationships.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) offer courses and programmes focusing on sustainability in economics, as courses on sustainable development (SD), which examine the economic, social and environmental dimensions of SD. This paper aims to examine sustainability integration in economics degree programmes.

Through an extensive literature review in Web of Science (WoS) and information search in Google, conducting to 28 relevant case studies, this paper elucidates the emphasis given to sustainability as part of economics degree programmes in HEIs.

The results suggest that, whereas the inclusion of sustainability components in this field is a growing trend, much still needs to be done to ensure that matters related to SD are part of the routine of university students studying economics.

It is worth noting that the literature review conducted in WoS was primarily aimed at assisting in the selection of university case studies. The 28 university case studies scrutinised in this study may lack sufficient representation from numerous developing countries.

This study highlights challenges in integrating the SD into economics degree programmes, suggesting the need for curriculum adjustments as underscoring operational issues, acting as barriers. The inclusion of sustainability in economics programmes must navigate operational issues stemming from packed timetables and busy schedules, requiring innovative solutions.

As far as the authors are aware, this study holds substantial importance in its emphasis on implementing sustainability within HEIs’ economics programmes, assisting in pursuing SD.

The novelty of this study lies in addressing sustainability with the specific economics focus programmes within the HEIs context.

The purpose of this literature review paper is to explore the concept of organization agility and its relevance in today's dynamic business environment. By conducting an in-depth review of existing academic and industry literature on organization agility, this study aims to identify the key factors that influence an organization's agility and the benefits and drawbacks associated with fostering agility.

Through the technique of bibliometric analysis, we provide the growth trajectory of the field by identifying the publication trends, prominent authors and countries and most prolific journal publishing in the concerned domain. We also provide the intellectual structure of the organization agility research by identifying the prominent themes that have been worked upon till date. In addition, with the backing of the theories, contexts, characteristics and methodology (TCCM) framework, we identify the most frequently applied theories, constructs and methods in organization agility research and provide new avenues for future research by analyzing the most frequently used theories, methods, constructs and research contexts.

With the ever-increasing ambiguity and need for change (why), organization agility serves as the organization's backbone. It acts as a springboard for the organization, an anchor point that remains constant while other functional aspects constantly fluctuate and change. Organization agility can be defined (what) as the ability of organizations to quickly respond to market needs by sensing, renewing, adapting and succeeding in a turbulent market. To summarize, organizational agility matters at three fundamental aspects (where): strategic level or the market capitalizing level, internal operational level and individual level.

This paper is unique in the sense that it is the first comprehensive literature review in the field of organization agility research to use a hybrid methodology (bibliometric review with TCCMs).

The purpose of this paper is to explore and disseminate knowledge about quantum-inspired computing technology's potential to solve complex challenges faced by the operational agility capability in Industry 4.0 manufacturing and logistics operations.

A multi-case study approach is used to determine the impact of quantum-inspired computing technology in manufacturing and logistics processes from the supplier perspective. A literature review provides the basis for a framework to identify a set of flexibility and agility operational capabilities enabled by Industry 4.0 Information and Digital Technologies. The use cases are analyzed in depth, first individually and then jointly.

Study results suggest that quantum-inspired computing technology has the potential to harness and boost companies' operational flexibility to enhance operational agility in manufacturing and logistics operations management, particularly in the Industry 4.0 context. An exploratory model is proposed to explain the relationships between quantum-inspired computing technology and the deployment of operational agility capabilities.

This is study explores the use of quantum-inspired computing technology in Industry 4.0 operations management and contributes to understanding its potential to enable operational agility capability in manufacturing and logistics operations.

This study aims to examine the implementation of agile practices in Industry 4.0 to assess the financial performance measurements of manufacturing firms. It also investigates the relationship between supply chain performance and financial performance.

The study is based on an experimental research design by collecting data from 329 responses from key officials of manufacturing firms. The analyses are carried out to explore this modern concept with the help of the SPSS program, which is used to conduct a confirmatory factor and reliability analysis and Smart-partial least square (PLS) version 4.0 with structural equation modeling.

This research demonstrates the positive effect agile supply chain strategies in Industry 4.0 may have on manufacturing companies' financial performance as a whole. Everything throughout the supply chain in Industry 4.0, from the manufacturers to the end users, is taken into account as a potential performance booster. The values obtained from the model's study show that it is both dependable and effective, surpassing the threshold for such claims. The research is supported by factors like customer involvement (CUS), continuous improvement (CI), integration (INT), modularity (MOD), management style (MS) and supplier involvement (SI) but is undermined by factors including postponement (PPT).

According to the findings of the study, Industry 4.0 firms' financial performance and overall competitiveness are significantly improved when their supply chains are more agile. A more agile supply chain helps businesses to more rapidly adapt to shifts in consumer demand, shorten the amount of time it takes to produce a product, enhance product quality and boost customer happiness. As a consequence of this, there will be an increase in revenue, an improvement in profitability and continued sustainable growth.

There are literary works available on agile practices in various fields, but the current study outlines the need to understand how supply chains perform financially under the mediating effect of agile supply chains in Industry 4.0 which contribute most to the organization's success. The study will aid companies in understanding how agile practices will further the overall performance of the organization financially.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the conceptual confusion in the extant literature about organizational agility and explore its role in different relationships in the context of digital transformation.

An integrative review of the relevant literature on agility was conducted. The literature on organizational agility and other variables in recent quantitative research was also examined to explore its role in different relationships.

Organizational agility is the ability to quickly respond and proactively embrace unanticipated changes in dynamic environments through effective resource reconfiguration and rapid decision-making. The role of organizational agility in achieving digital transformation has not been addressed from a holistic conceptual perspective. This paper addresses that gap and proposes that organizational agility is the underlying mechanism for an organization to fully use and engage its workforce, operation and network in the process of digital transformation.

This research is an integrative review of the existing literature on the concept of agility and its relationships. The next phase of research needed for theory building will be the operationalization of constructs.

Organizations should strive to strategically develop both the reactivity and proactivity sides of organizational agility in achieving digital transformation that involves fundamental changes at different levels of the organization.

This paper explores the role of organizational agility in digital transformation through an integrative review of the relevant literature.

The study aims to equip robots with the ability to precisely maintain interaction forces, which is crucial for tasks such as polishing in highly dynamic environments with unknown and varying stiffness and geometry, including those found in airplane wings or thin, soft materials. The purpose of this study is to develop a novel adaptive force-tracking admittance control scheme aimed at achieving a faster response rate with higher tracking accuracy for robot force control.

In the proposed method, the traditional admittance model is improved by introducing a pre-proportional-derivative controller to accelerate parameter convergence. Subsequently, the authors design an adaptive law based on fuzzy logic systems (FLS) to compensate for uncertainties in the unknown environment. Stability conditions are established for the proposed method through Lyapunov analysis, which ensures the force tracking accuracy and the stability of the coupled system consisting of the robot and the interaction environment. Furthermore, the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control algorithm are demonstrated by simulation and experiment.

A variety of unstructured simulations and experimental scenarios are designed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in force control. The outcomes demonstrate that this control strategy excels in providing fast response, precise tracking accuracy and robust performance.

In real-world applications spanning industrial, service and medical fields where accurate force control by robots is essential, the proposed method stands out as both practical and straightforward, delivering consistently satisfactory performance across various scenarios.

This research introduces a novel adaptive force-tracking admittance controller based on FLS and validated through both simulations and experiments. The proposed controller demonstrates exceptional performance in force control within environments characterized by unknown and varying.

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has severely disrupted businesses around the world. To address the impact of operational and strategic business disruptions, this paper contributes to the practice of a firm's management in terms of identifying the determinants of organizational resilience (OR) and creating a hierarchical model of the potential sources of a firm's adaptive capability.

A novel research framework integrating Pareto analysis, grey theory and total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) has been applied to, first, identify the sources of a company's resilience and, second, to determine contextual relations among these sources of OR.

The findings of the survey highlight three primary sources that allow companies to build companies' resilience: access to financial resources, digitization level and supply chain (SC) collaboration. The authors' model shows that resilience cannot be viewed as a particular feature but rather as a dynamic intertwined network of different co-dependent sources.

The proposed hierarchical model indicates that the most crucial sources of company's resilience in the recent pandemic are access to financial resources, digitization level and SC collaboration.

The study takes an original investigation on cognitive grounds, touching on the problem of firms' resilience to the unique nature of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also represents one of the few attempts to use integrated Pareto analysis, grey theory and TISM to examine this critical area of firm management.

The purpose of this paper is to determine if companies in the modular and offsite construction (MOC) industry are agile or not and its level of application for agility principles, which allows for quick responses to the increasingly dynamic nature of industry environments.

This paper proposes an agility assessment framework for MOC that uses 48 assessment attributes organized into four categories: metrics, drivers, enablers and capabilities. A questionnaire approach was used to disseminate the framework globally in 19 countries and synthesize its relevance to the MOC industry. The questionnaire had 55 complete responses, majority of respondents work in managerial positions for MOC manufacturing facilities and onsite general contractors.

It was found that the lowest metric score for adapting to change was for cost since controlling cost would be difficult for any changes required after the design freeze stage. The top agility driver was found to be the need to respond to the wide variety of customer expectations, while the lowest driver was the existence of competing priorities. The top agility enabler was vendor partnership, which can be related to current postpandemic supply chain disruptions. Regarding technological capabilities, Europe and the USA acquired better scores compared to Asia, Latin America and Africa.

This study contributes to the MOC body of knowledge by creating an agility assessment tool for MOC firms to analyze their agile approach and environment, identifying the preliminary importance of agility assessment attributes and determining significant agile differences between the main MOC industry groups.

This study aims to compare the social support among patients with schizophrenia or methamphetamine dependency with healthy individuals.

Using convince sampling, the authors recruited 80 patients (schizophrenia, n = 40; methamphetamine dependency, n = 40) and their companions (healthy individuals, n = 40) who were referred to a psychiatric hospital in a cross-sectional study in Sari, Iran. In in-person interviews, the authors collected data on demographic characteristics and measured social support using a standardized questionnaire.

The three groups were similar regarding age and marital status, but different in gender distribution (p = 0.001). The average social support score was 58.0 in the schizophrenia group and 42.3 in the methamphetamine-dependent group, both significantly lower than 63.6 in the healthy group (p = 0.001). The social support scores in schizophrenia and methamphetamine-dependent groups were significantly lower than those in the healthy group across all subgroups of gender (p < 0.04), age (p < 0.05) and marital status (p < 0.001). The methamphetamine-dependent group had the lowest score overall and across all demographic groups and social support subdomains.

This study had two main limitations. First, the study samples were from one city and one hospital in the north of Iran and so may not be generalizable to other population and settings. Second, the authors did not study the causes or predictors of low social support like social stigma which should be studied in future studies.

Despite the limitations, this study found low social support for people diagnosed with schizophrenia or methamphetamine dependency. Intervention to increase social support for them, especially for those with substance use, is required.