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1 – 10 of 611Jan Sher Akmal, Mika Salmi, Roy Björkstrand, Jouni Partanen and Jan Holmström
Introducing additive manufacturing (AM) in a multinational corporation with a global spare parts operation requires tools for a dynamic supplier selection, considering both cost…
Abstract
Purpose
Introducing additive manufacturing (AM) in a multinational corporation with a global spare parts operation requires tools for a dynamic supplier selection, considering both cost and delivery performance. In the switchover to AM from conventional manufacturing, the objective of this study is to find situations and ways to improve the spare parts service to end customers.
Design/methodology/approach
In this explorative study, the authors develop a procedure – in collaboration with the spare parts operations managers of a case company – for dynamic operational decision-making for the selection of spare parts supply from multiple suppliers. The authors' design proposition is based on a field experiment for the procurement and delivery of 36 problematic spare parts.
Findings
The practice intervention verified the intended outcomes of increased cost and delivery performance, yielding improved customer service through a switchover to AM according to situational context. The successful operational integration of dynamic additive and static conventional supply was triggered by the generative mechanisms of highly interactive model-based supplier relationships and insignificant transaction costs.
Originality/value
The dynamic decision-making proposal extends the product-specific make-to-order practice to the general-purpose build-to-model that selects the mode of supply and supplier for individual spare parts at an operational level through model-based interactions with AM suppliers. The successful outcome of the experiment prompted the case company to begin the introduction of AM into the company's spare parts supply chain.
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Pernilla Gluch, Ingrid Svensson and Jan Bröchner
This study aims to investigate practitioners’ perceptions of strategic work in municipal facilities management: how public facilities management is changing, what is included in…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate practitioners’ perceptions of strategic work in municipal facilities management: how public facilities management is changing, what is included in strategic public facilities management and who leads the strategic work.
Design/methodology/approach
A literature review begins with mainstream studies of strategy management, ultimately concentrating on municipal facilities management. Findings are based on a 2020/2021 questionnaire targeting 356 practitioners in municipal facilities management across Sweden (50% response rate). The statistical treatment includes factor analysis.
Findings
Most respondents indicated changed ways of managing facilities in the past five years; most reported that they were in an organization with an explicit goal of working more strategically. Respondents associated strategic facilities management with governance, facilities, sustainability, technology change and communication. Frequently, it was the management team of the facilities management department that led strategic work.
Research limitations/implications
Research into municipal facilities management is dominated by studies in Northern Europe, and more studies from other regions are needed. How strategies and work roles evolve in parallel appears to be a fruitful direction of further research.
Practical implications
Facilities managers need stronger competences and more resources to engage in strategic facilities management. Findings indicate a need to integrate sustainability aspects better into long-term strategic work.
Social implications
More strategic municipal facilities management is of obvious social value.
Originality/value
This is the first study of practitioner perceptions of work on strategic facilities management in municipalities.
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Tuotuo Qi, Tianmei Wang, Yanlin Ma and Xinxue Zhou
Knowledge sharing has entered the stage of knowledge payment with the typical models of paid Q&A, live session, paid subscription, course column and community service. Numerous…
Abstract
Purpose
Knowledge sharing has entered the stage of knowledge payment with the typical models of paid Q&A, live session, paid subscription, course column and community service. Numerous knowledge suppliers have begun to pour into the knowledge payment market, and users' willingness to pay for premium content has increased. However, the academic research on knowledge payment has just begun.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors searched several bibliographic databases using keywords such as “knowledge payment”, “paid Q&A”, “pay for answer”, “social Q&A”, “paywall” and “online health consultation” and selected papers from aspects of research scenes, research topics, etc. Finally, a total of 116 articles were identified for combing studies.
Findings
This study found that in the early research, scholars paid attention to the definition of knowledge payment concept and the discrimination of typical models. With the continuous enrichment of research literature, the research direction has gradually been refined into three main branches from the perspective of research objects, i.e. knowledge provider, knowledge demander and knowledge payment platform.
Originality/value
This paper focuses on discussing and sorting out the key research issues from these three research genres. Finally, the authors found out conflicting and contradictory research results and research gaps in the existing research and then put forward the urgent research topics.
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Alfred Larm Teye, Michel Knoppel, Jan de Haan and Marja G. Elsinga
This paper aims to examine the existence of the ripple effect from Amsterdam to the housing markets of other regions in The Netherlands. It identifies which regional housing…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the existence of the ripple effect from Amsterdam to the housing markets of other regions in The Netherlands. It identifies which regional housing markets are influenced by house price movements in Amsterdam.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper considers the ripple effect as a lead-lag effect and a long-run convergence between the Amsterdam and regional house prices. Using the real house prices for second-hand owner-occupied dwellings from 1995q1 to 2016q2, the paper adopts the Toda–Yamamoto Granger Causality approach to study the lead-lag effects. It uses the autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL)-Bounds cointegration techniques to examine the long-run convergence between the regional and the Amsterdam house prices. The paper controls for house price fundamentals to eliminate possible confounding effects of common shocks.
Findings
The cumulative evidence suggests that Amsterdam house prices have influence on (or ripple to) all the Dutch regions, except one. In particular, the Granger Causality test concludes that a lead-lag effect of house prices exists from Amsterdam to all the regions, apart from Zeeland. The cointegration test shows evidence of a long-convergence between Amsterdam house prices and six regions: Friesland, Groningen, Limburg, Overijssel, Utrecht and Zuid-Holland.
Research limitations/implications
The paper adopts an econometric approach to examine the Amsterdam ripple effect. More sophisticated economic models that consider the asymmetric properties of house prices and the patterns of interregional socio-economic activities into the modelling approach are recommended for further investigation.
Originality/value
This paper focuses on The Netherlands for which the ripple effect has not yet been researched to the authors’ knowledge. Given the substantial wealth effects associated with house price changes that may shape economic activity through consumption, evidence for ripples may be helpful to policy makers for uncovering trends that have implications for the entire economy. Moreover, the analysis controls for common house price fundamentals which most previous papers ignored.
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Akram Hatami, Jan Hermes and Naser Firoozi
To succeed in today’s dynamic and unpredictable business world, businesses are increasingly required to gain the trust of and inform the society in which they operate about the…
Abstract
Purpose
To succeed in today’s dynamic and unpredictable business world, businesses are increasingly required to gain the trust of and inform the society in which they operate about the social and environmental consequences of their actions. Corporations’ claims regarding the responsibility and ethicality of their actions, however, have been shown to be contradictory to some degree. We define corporations’ deceitful implementation of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies as pseudo-CSR. We argue that it is the moral characteristics of individuals, i.e. employees, managers and other decision-makers who ignore the CSR policies, which produce pseudo-CSR.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper.
Findings
The authors conceptualize the gap between true CSR and pseudo-CSR on a cognitive individual level as “moral laxity,” resulting from organization-induced lack of effort concerning individual moral development through ethical discourse, ethical sensemaking and subjectification processes. The absence of these processes prohibits individuals in organizations from constructing ethical identities to inhibit pseudo-CSR activities.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature on CSR by augmenting corporate-level responsibility with the hitherto mostly neglected, yet significant, role of the individual in bridging this gap.
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Jan Riezebos and Babette Huisman
Teachers of primary education experience high levels of stress but lack rational coping strategies to reduce their work stress. The paper develops a value stream mapping for…
Abstract
Purpose
Teachers of primary education experience high levels of stress but lack rational coping strategies to reduce their work stress. The paper develops a value stream mapping for education approach and examines its use as a rational coping strategy for teams of teachers and other employees to overcome work-related stressors.
Design/methodology/approach
The research process consists of two phases. First, a value stream mapping approach for education is developed, based on literature research. Next, the approach is validated in an action research study to reduce work stress of teachers in educational services. The processes that have been selected by the teachers relate to coping with increased variety, long and uncertain throughput times and unclear specifications.
Findings
Value stream mapping for education (VSM4EDU) is a well-structured improvement method based on principles of visualization, participation and process thinking, which helps teachers without background in lean thinking to analyse their processes. Using this method has enabled the team to develop rational coping strategies to reduce their work-related stress.
Research limitations/implications
VSM4EDU has been validated using action research at a single school, which implicates deep insight, but further testing at other schools is welcome. Moreover, VSM4EDU has not been used to develop a future state map.
Practical implications
Value stream mapping is useful in educational settings as long as the educational context is respected in the approach.
Social implications
VSM4EDU empowers teachers and helps to develop co-operation in teams.
Originality/value
The validation of value stream mapping for education is well-documented and original.
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Jan Svanberg, Tohid Ardeshiri, Isak Samsten, Peter Öhman, Presha E. Neidermeyer, Tarek Rana, Frank Maisano and Mats Danielson
The purpose of this study is to develop a method to assess social performance. Traditionally, environment, social and governance (ESG) rating providers use subjectively weighted…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a method to assess social performance. Traditionally, environment, social and governance (ESG) rating providers use subjectively weighted arithmetic averages to combine a set of social performance (SP) indicators into one single rating. To overcome this problem, this study investigates the preconditions for a new methodology for rating the SP component of the ESG by applying machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) anchored to social controversies.
Design/methodology/approach
This study proposes the use of a data-driven rating methodology that derives the relative importance of SP features from their contribution to the prediction of social controversies. The authors use the proposed methodology to solve the weighting problem with overall ESG ratings and further investigate whether prediction is possible.
Findings
The authors find that ML models are able to predict controversies with high predictive performance and validity. The findings indicate that the weighting problem with the ESG ratings can be addressed with a data-driven approach. The decisive prerequisite, however, for the proposed rating methodology is that social controversies are predicted by a broad set of SP indicators. The results also suggest that predictively valid ratings can be developed with this ML-based AI method.
Practical implications
This study offers practical solutions to ESG rating problems that have implications for investors, ESG raters and socially responsible investments.
Social implications
The proposed ML-based AI method can help to achieve better ESG ratings, which will in turn help to improve SP, which has implications for organizations and societies through sustainable development.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first studies that offers a unique method to address the ESG rating problem and improve sustainability by focusing on SP indicators.
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Iryna Reshetnikova, Katarzyna Sanak-Kosmowska and Jan W. Wiktor
The purpose of this paper was identification and empirical assessment of the differentiation of consumers' attitudes in Ukraine and Poland to Russian brands and other brands…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was identification and empirical assessment of the differentiation of consumers' attitudes in Ukraine and Poland to Russian brands and other brands offered on the Russian market after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Design/methodology/approach
The main research methods include a systematic literature review and the authors' own surveys conducted in November 2022. The research sample comprised 950 consumers – 67% of them were Poles, 30% – Ukrainians and 3% from other countries.
Findings
A respondents' country (Poland and Ukraine) does not impact attitudes to brands offered on the Russian market after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Moreover, it does not affect and differentiate emotional engagement in the conflict and assistance to war victims. Cluster analysis resulted in identifying two groups on the basis of consumers' declared emotional reactions to the war. The first group was smaller (N = 353, 37.2%), referred to as “indifferent consumers”, and was characterized by a greater inclination to purchase brands offered in Russia. The other cluster, referred to as “sensitive consumers” (N = 597, 62.8%), comprises those engaged in offering assistance to war victims, showing strong emotions in connection with the aggression and military activities and characterized by a clearly negative attitude to Russian and other offered brands and an inclination to boycott these brands.
Research limitations/implications
A short time horizon, the study confined to two countries, difficulties in reaching Ukrainian respondents due to power failures in Ukraine in the period of conducting the survey (November 2022), a non-representative research sample – overrepresentation of people aged 18–25 years.
Practical implications
The research study contributes to the knowledge about consumer brand attitudes and preferences under unique social, economic and market conditions. These conditions were created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as the international and global character of the war in Ukraine. The significant implications of the study refer to brand communication policies and companies' CSR-related declarations. A number of consumers' errors were recorded, resulting from wrong brand retrieval, which were rectified at a later stage as a result of international restrictions imposed on Russia, harsh media criticism and social international embargoes imposed on brands offered in Russia. The marketing communication of contemporary global brands should give consideration to the informative function of CSR activities, and the communication process should be continuous. Critical attitudes and an inclination to boycott brands point to the possible consequences faced by inconsistent and ethically doubtful brand policies. This implication is clearly confirmed by the results of the study.
Social implications
The authors also wish to highlight the implications for practice and society. As mentioned earlier, Polish consumers involved in providing aid to victims of the war also expressed their opposition to the war by boycotting Russian products and international brands remaining in Russia. Popularization of the research results obtained by the authors can be a form of sensitizing the public to the need for long-term relief, awakening global awareness of the essence and importance of sanctions imposed on Russia, as well as the possibility of expressing opposition through individual purchasing decisions and boycotting brands still present in Russia.
Originality/value
The study allowed for identifying consumers' differentiated brand attitudes in two countries: a country inflicted by war (Ukraine) and a front-line country, strongly supporting Ukraine (Poland). The research contributes to consumer behavior theories and studies of consumer attitudes and preferences from the perspective of international corporations' CSR activities under the unique conditions of war. Also, it contributes to the knowledge of the mechanism of forming attitudes to Russian and international brands offered in Russia among CEE consumers.
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Predicting effects of artificial intelligence on service occupations can be supported by a long historical perspective. Historical databases and archaeology help reconstructing…
Abstract
Purpose
Predicting effects of artificial intelligence on service occupations can be supported by a long historical perspective. Historical databases and archaeology help reconstructing the service sector in ancient societies. Here, the purpose of this paper is to analyse occupational specialization within services in cities of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, as well as how the service sector is reflected in architectural remains, to identify differences and similarities with today’s Europe.
Design/methodology/approach
Occupational titles are traced in epigraphical and literary sources, sorted according to ISCO-08. Secondary sources are used for the architectural evidence of service activities, as well as for the role of contests and entertainment in antiquity.
Findings
Compared to current European service employment, professionals were fewer in classical Athens and imperial Rome, which had a greater proportion of specialized salespersons. There were few office buildings and no civic hospitals, but heavy investment in facilities for entertainment and well-being. Quality assessments for goods were little developed; contests for cultural and sports activities assessed entertainment service quality.
Research limitations/implications
This study covers two periods in classical antiquity and is restricted to Mediterranean cultures, although findings may help understanding the service sector in poor countries with informal employment.
Originality/value
While particular services provided in ancient cities have been studied, there has been no broad comparative overview of their service occupations. Services in earlier societies with primitive information and communication technologies can provide clues for current developments.
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