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The results from this qualitative study suggest that CEOs of Faith-Based Nonprofit Organizations (FBNPOs) define and measure their organization's effectiveness primarily based on the outcomes achieved in meeting the immediate needs of their clients and in resolving root causes to those needs. Other indicators of organizational effectiveness- including financial reports, amount of services provided, client satisfaction, stake holder support and perceptions -were also used by the CEOs of FBNPOs to measure organizational effectiveness. The findings indicate that faith is the source of “why” and “how” these FBNPOs conduct their activities. Measuring the impact faith has on those whom they serve varies among the FBNPOs in this study along a continuum of not being measured to being intentionally measured.

Lean distributed manufacturing (LDM) is being considered as an enabler of achieving sustainability and resilience in manufacturing and supply chain operations. The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of how LDM characteristics affect the resilience of manufacturing companies by drawing upon the experience of food manufacturing companies operating in the UK.

The paper develops a conceptual model to analyse the impact of LDM on the operational resilience of food manufacturing companies. A triangulation research methodology (secondary data analysis, field observations and structured interviews) is used in this study. In a first step, LDM enablers and resilience elements are identified from literature. In a second step, empirical evidence is collected from six food sub-sectors aimed at identifying LDM enablers being practised in companies.

The analysis reveals that LDM enablers can improve the resilience capabilities of manufacturing companies at different stages of resilience action cycle, whereas the application status of different LDM enablers varies in food manufacturing companies. The findings include the development of a conceptual model (based on literature) and a relationship matrix between LDM enablers and resilience elements.

The developed relationship matrix is helpful for food manufacturing companies to assess their resilience capability in terms of LDM characteristics and then formulate action plans to incorporate relevant LDM enablers to enhance operational resilience.

Based on the literature review, no studies exist that investigate the effects of LDM on factory’s resilience, despite many research studies suggesting distributed manufacturing as an enabler of sustainability and resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure to design an experimental setup meant to validate an innovative approach for simulating, via computational fluid dynamics, a high-pressure gas release from a rupture (e.g. on an offshore oil and gas platform). The design is based on a series of scaling exercises, some of which are anything but trivial.

The experimental setup is composed of a wind tunnel, the instrumented scaled (1:10) mock-up of an offshore platform and a gas release system. A correct scaling approach is necessary to define the reference speed in the wind tunnel and the conditions of the gas release to maintain similarity with respect to the real-size phenomena. The scaling of the wind velocity and the scaling of the gas release were inspired by the approach proposed by Hall et al. (1997): a dimensionless group was chosen to link release parameters, wind velocity and geometric scaling factor.

The theoretical scaling approaches for each different part of the setup were applied to the design of the experiment and some criticalities were identified, such as the existence of a set of case studies with some release parameters laying outside the applicability range of the developed scaling methodology, which will be further discussed.

The resulting procedure is one of a kind because it involves a multi-scaling approach because of the different aspects of the design. Literature supports for the different scaling theories but, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, fails to provide an integrated approach that considers the combined effects of scaling.

The purpose of this paper is to map the service quality (SQ) of Airbnb, to provide additional insight for such top player of short-stay accommodation in the sharing economy context.

A mixed-method approach is used in two phases. In the qualitative phase, 112,138 online review comments of Airbnb guests were analyzed to generate the service attributes. In the quantitative phase, an online survey (n = 814) was conducted to calculate the performance and importance values of extracted attributes to plot them in an Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) matrix.

A holistic image of the Airbnb extracted service attributes was presented through the IPA plot. Four types of SQ strategies were proposed, considering the actions priority. “Price reasonability” was the most important service attribute of Airbnb for guests, whereas “Check-in flexibility” was the best performed one.

The results shed light on the most relevant SQ attributes of Airbnb and proposed suitable strategies that can prioritize relevant stakeholders’ actions and decisions. The study significantly contributes to all decision makers involved in the short-stay accommodation sharing industry to further understand and develop SQ.

This research, using a comprehensive hybrid method, opens a lens to see more clearly the positioning of different attributes of Airbnb service from importance and performance viewpoints. As a contribution, the SQ of Airbnb was mapped by conducting an IPA for the first time in the literature.

Quality 4.0 is a new paradigm of quality management, which emphasises the need to adapt to recent technological innovations by updating traditional quality approaches. Amongst the most important factors for adopting Quality 4.0 is the leveraging of big data to collect insights and quality perceptions from clients. Therefore, user reviews have emerged as a valuable source of information, which can be analysed through machine learning procedures to uncover latent quality dimensions.

This study applies a combination of text mining techniques to analyse Airbnb reviews, identifying service quality attributes and assessing their relation to the users' sentiment. More than two million reviews written by guests in four European cities are analysed. First, topic modelling is applied to find the quality attributes mentioned by reviewers. Then, sentiment analysis is used to assess the positiveness/negativeness of the users' feedback.

A total of 37 quality attributes are identified. Four of them show a significant positive relation to the guest's sentiment: apartment views, host tips and advice, location and host friendliness. On the other hand, the following attributes are negatively correlated with user sentiment: sleep disturbance, website responsiveness, thermal management and hygiene issues.

This paper provides a practical example of how Quality 4.0 can be implemented, proposing a data-driven methodology to extract service quality attributes from user-generated content. Additionally, several attributes that had not appeared in existing Airbnb studies are identified, which can serve as a reference to extend previous quality assessment scales.

The mammoth proportions of Public Expenditure, its accountability, its control, must be one of the biggest problems any government has had to meet. Despite all its counselling to the public spenders, its massive efforts to scale down the spending, there is extremely little to show for it. The Departments and State Services have become so large, they have outgrown government control; they are in fact forms of government in themselves. When a body established with a definite role becomes so big and powerful, as many of the authorities in the country have become, they tend to resent any form of control over them. History has many such examples in one form or another. Where an ocean divides them, the subordinate power may seek a separate nationhood for itself, as the American colonies did a couple of centuries or more ago. They chose the right moment to rebel when the home government sought to pass on extra levy on the importation of tea, which the Colonists turned into a slogan “no taxation without representation”. The truth, however, was they had outgrown the mother country and saw themselves as a new nation in a new land immensely rich in natural resources, riches all theirs for the taking. Much of the old country understood their aspirations and in the final settlement, the British were more than generous to them.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term Slow Tech as a way of describing information and communication technology (ICT) that is good, clean and fair. These are technologies that are human centred, environmentally sustainable and socially desirable.

The paper's approach is based on a qualitative discourse that justifies the introduction of Slow Tech as a new design paradigm.

The limits of the human body, and the need to take into account human wellbeing, the limits of the planet and stakeholders' interests in decision making, all suggest the need for a new paradigm, Slow Tech, in the design of ICT and ICT systems. Three scenarios are described as case studies.

In order to prepare the next generation of researchers and computer professionals, many different actions need to be taken. Universities and colleges need to redesign education programmes for computer scientists and engineers by introducing subjects related to the social and ethical implications of computing (currently, only few countries, like the UK, have already done this), and computer professionals' associations need to introduce a code of ethics or ethical analysis into their members' career development. As a result, future computer professionals who are familiar with the Slow Tech approach will be able to collaborate much more easily across the kind of cross disciplinary teams suited to design human centred, sustainable and desirable technologies.

Rather than simply focusing on the role of computer professionals, all members of society are called to play a new role in the design of future ICT scenarios. Starting a societal dialogue that involves computer professionals, users, researchers, designers, ICT industrialists, and policy makers is very much needed.

The value of this paper is in its call for reflection followed by action. Based on an holistic approach to the design of new ICT systems, the paper advocates a new starting point for systems design: it should be based on a long-term view of the desirability and social importance of technologies, their environmental impact and sustainability, and the fairness and equity of the conditions of workers involved in the computing manufacturing processes.

This paper aims to explain the relationships between three dimensions of stakeholders’ integration and competitiveness focusing on 226 industrial corporations. It aims to investigate the influences of stakeholders’ integration on three dimensions of competitiveness.

The study adopts a cross-sectional study using a self-reported questionnaire. The collected data are analysed using structural equation modelling technique based on AMOS.

The results revealed that knowledge of the stakeholders per se will not provide any contribution to the different dimensions of competitiveness. Companies should extend their focus to adapt behaviours in line with stakeholders’ interests to gain competitive advantages. The data showed that in line with the stakeholders’ theory concept, adaptive behaviour dimension positively affects the three dimensions of competitiveness.

There are several limitations that should be taken into consideration. First, the study used a self-reported questionnaire filled in by managers in the study sample; therefore, survey data might be subject to social desirability bias. Second, this study was conducted in Libya, which is considered a developing country, and, thus, caution should be taken when generalizing the results of the study.

To date, there is no an empirical evidence on how environmental stakeholders’ integration might affect firm competitiveness. Previous literature has investigated this issue using different environmental practices. However, none have used stakeholders’ integration in the environmental domain as a predictor to competitiveness. Therefore, the paper contributes to the body of knowledge by stating and testing the potential contributions of stakeholders’ integration to the multidimensional approach of competitiveness.