Search results

Many governments are working toward a vision of government-wide transformation that strives to achieve an open, transparent and accountable government while providing responsive services. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concept of transparency-by-design to advance open government.

The opening of data, the deployment of tools and instruments to engage the public, collaboration among public organizations and between governments and the public are important drivers for open government. The authors review transparency-by-design concepts.

To successfully achieve open government, fundamental changes in practice and new research on governments as open systems are needed. In particular, the creation of “transparency-by-design” is a key aspect in which transparency is a key system development requirement, and the systems ensure that data are disclosed to the public for creating transparency.

Although transparency-by-design is an intuitive concept, more research is needed in what constitutes information and communication technology-mediated transparency and how it can be realized.

Governments should embrace transparency-by-design to open more data sets and come closer to achieving open government.

Transparency-by-design is a new concept that has not given any attention yet in the literature.

Healthcare innovation, exemplified by genomic medicine, requires increasingly sophisticated understanding of the interdisciplinary-organizational context in which new innovations are implemented. Deliberative stakeholder consultations are public engagement tools that are gaining increasing traction in health care, as a means of maximizing the diversity of roles and interests vested in a particular policy or practice issue. They engage participants from different knowledge systems (“cultures”) in mutually respectful debate to enable group consensus on implementation strategies. Current deliberation analytic methods tend to overlook the cultural contexts of the deliberative process. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This conceptual paper proposes adding ethnographic participant observation to provide a more comprehensive account of the process that gives rise to deliberative outputs. To underpin this conceptual paper, the authors draw on the authors’ experience engaging healthcare professionals during implementation of genomics in the care for pediatric oncology patients with treatment-resistant glioblastoma at two tertiary care hospitals.

Ethnography enabled a deeper understanding of deliberative outcomes by combining rhetorical and non-rhetorical analysis to identify the implementation and coordination of care barriers across professional cultures.

This paper highlights the value of ethnographic methods in enabling a more comprehensive assessment of the quality of engagement across professional cultures in implementation studies.

Henry Richard Tedder was associated with the Athenaeum in an official capacity for nearly fifty years. He went there in 1874 with a glowing recommendation from Lord Acton, and at the age of twenty‐four secured the appointment of librarian. Fifteen years later he combined the librarianship with the secretaryship. In the latter capacity he followed, longo intervallo, in the steps of Michael Faraday and Edward Magrath.

The first indication that traditional lecture-style teaching is not very effective was provided by Dr Donald Bligh in the 1980s and 1990s. As empirical evidence about this fact has continued to accumulate, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in the USA has undergone a significant change in emphasis away from lecture-based approaches in favor of systems emphasizing more interactive learning. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A wide range of experimental research has employed the principles of scientific teaching to investigate the efficacy of an ever widening range of pedagogical methods. For STEM education, the most successful of these has been active learning.

At its core, active learning is a redesign of in-class activities to maximize interactivity and feedback through facilitated problem-solving environments. Although the efficacies of both scientific teaching and active learning have been verified in a wide range of empirical works, the dissemination of these platforms, in general, teaching has been slow, even in the USA.

The first significant impediment has been an overall lack of awareness coupled with general skepticism about alternative learning methods.

This paper first reviews the education literature behind scientific teaching and active learning before reviewing some of the challenges to their implementation on an institutional level.

These challenges and known solutions are then applied to the European and East Asian contexts to examine why scientific teaching and active learning remain predominantly an American phenomenon.

For East Asian countries, the authors offer a commentary on how certain aspects of Confucian classroom culture may interact negatively with efforts to install scientific teaching and active learning systems.

This paper aims to introduce, conceptualize and demonstrate a software tool named “Blockchain-Enabled Beer Game” (BEBG) for familiarizing the application of blockchain in inventory management, one of the critical components of supply chain management.

This paper follows a methodology of design-based research and develops a software tool in the form of a role-play simulation game. The proposed game adopts the theme of the traditional beer distribution game to establish a blockchain-enabled scenario for inventory management. A decentralized application (DApp) was prototyped on the Ethereum blockchain to demonstrate the tool.

The proposed software tool is effective in teaching and training the application of blockchain in inventory management. While interacting with BEBG, players witness how each inventory-related transaction gets secured with blockchain. A basic understanding of the fundamentals of blockchain is a prerequisite for using this tool. BEBG is not self-explanatory, and an instructor is essential for assisting the players.

Software tools currently available to familiarize with blockchain technology cannot convey its practical applications. Addressing this gap, BEBG allows the users to experience the application of blockchain in inventory management. Academic institutions, especially business schools, can use this tool to teach the students the practical use of blockchain technology. Industries can adopt BEBG for training the employees. The research community can devise BEBG to infer the impact of blockchain in supply chain management.

The aim of this paper is to investigate which integrative planning and control practices are used in hospitals and what their effects are on patient flow.

The study is based on a three‐hospital multi‐case study carried out in The Netherlands. The main findings are based on over 40 in‐depth interviews and the analysis of detailed patient flow data. The analysis of the flow data is used to explore the effects of integrative practices on lead times and patient flow.

Based on the various patient groups examined in the different hospitals, four integrative practices stand out: sharing waiting list information, sharing planning information, cross‐departmental planning, and combining appointments. In line with earlier studies, the overall level of integration in hospitals was found to be low. However, patient flow performance is significantly better in those hospitals that employ more of the above‐mentioned integrative practices.

The study was limited to three major patient groups within the orthopedic supply chain. The deliberate choice for these patients groups was based on the expectations that integration in hospitals is relatively low and that the highest levels of integration would be found in high volume – low variety patient groups. Further research should include patient groups with less favorable characteristics such as lower volumes and/or greater variety.

This study provides clear support for the value of integration initiatives in healthcare operations. The performance of hospitals, in terms of patient flows, benefits from cooperation between the various members of an internal supply chain. Hospital administrators and medical professionals could learn from these results and attempt to abandon their silo mentality and start integrating for and their patients' and their own benefit.

Despite the importance of integration in hospitals, little is known about the integrative practices hospitals actually employ. Most existing studies on patient flows are confined to a single stage in the care process. In this study, the effects of integration in the internal supply chain from the first visit to the end of treatment are examined.

Based on experiential learning theory (ELT), this study explores the cross-level effect of team reflexivity on employee innovative behavior. The authors especially focus on the mediating effect of individual intellectual capital (IIC) and the moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between the two constructs.

This study collects data from 76 work units, which include 362 employees and their direct supervisors. A cross-level moderated mediation model was tested by using multilevel path analysis.

The results show that team reflexivity significantly contributes to employee innovative behavior. IIC mediates the above relationship. Empowering leadership not only positively moderates the relationship between team reflexivity and IIC but also reinforces the linkage of team reflexivity → IIC → employee innovative behavior.

The study suggests that organizations should invest more in promoting team reflexivity and empowering leadership in the workplace. Furthermore, managers should make members aware of the importance of IIC for employee innovative behavior. They need to make efforts to enhance IIC via internal communication channels or open discussions, which facilitate IIC and employee innovative behavior.

This research tests the relationship between team reflexivity and employee innovative behavior and identifies IIC as a key mediator that links team reflexivity to employee innovative behavior. It also highlights the moderating role of empowering leadership in the process.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the use of blockchain for identity management (IdM) in the context of the Internet of things (IoT) while focusing on privacy-preserving approaches and its applications to healthcare scenarios.

The paper describes the most relevant IdM systems focusing on privacy preserving with or without blockchain and evaluates them against ten selected features grouped into three categories: privacy, usability and IoT. Then, it is important to analyze whether blockchain should be used in all scenarios, according to the importance of each feature for different use cases.

Based on analysis of existing systems, Sovrin is the IdM system that covers more features and is based on blockchain. For each of the evaluated use cases, Sovrin and UniquID were the chosen systems.

This paper opens new lines of research for IdM systems in IoT, including challenges related to device identity definition, privacy preserving and new security mechanisms.

This paper contributes to the ongoing research in IdM systems for IoT. The adequacy of blockchain is not only analyzed considering the technology; instead the authors analyze its application to real environments considering the required features for each use case.

The purpose of this paper is to devise an experimental lab like infrastructure in the higher education connecting social innovation with sustainable tourism.

In order to model a laboratory of social innovation and sustainable tourism lab (SISTOUR-LAB), the method of agile research was employed. This method involves the creation of successive and accumulative prototypes of four kinds: conceptual, relational, functional and transferable. Thus, agile research enables the integration of different social perspectives into the same prototype in a recursive manner.

The SISTOUR-LAB is a work-based learning strategy that allows for the development of a mapping process on tourism vulnerabilities (linked to opportunities for social innovation); the development of experimental training in prototyping social innovations on sustainable tourism; the design of hybrid social innovation business models linked to sustainable tourism; and the development of a relational model of evaluation linking together social innovation competencies with processes of transition toward sustainable tourism.

The SISTOUR-LAB is a prototypical lab that combines social innovation and sustainable tourism in an experimental setting. The SISTOUR-LAB has been modeled based on the agile research method, but it will be necessary to test it empirically to stabilize the model. Once stabilized, the model shall lead to a better understanding of the relationship between work-based learning, social innovation and sustainable tourism in the area of higher education.

The SISTOUR-LAB has four implications: teachers: the SISTOUR-LAB provides teachers with a setting for the development of experimental education models that connect the problems of conventional tourism with social innovation in order to foster new learning environments oriented toward sustainable tourism; students: the SISTOUR-LAB enhances the employability of students since it connects them with agents and demands of touristic transition, while also fostering entrepreneurial development by means of improving the acquisition of social entrepreneurship competences for sustainable tourism; organizations: the SISTOUR-LAB provides an experimental setting for the prototyping of social innovations so as to assist organizations in the formulation of models, prototypes and evaluations that facilitate the transition toward sustainable tourism; policymaking: the SISTOUR-LAB promotes the design of evidence-based public policies, which fosters inclusive models of innovation and the regional monitoring of transitions toward sustainable tourism.

There exist little reference to the link between social innovation and sustainable tourism in the academic and institutional literature. The SISTOUR-LAB is a work-based learning strategy that fosters the structuring of experimental relations between social innovation and sustainable tourism by integrating touristic organizations to the development of competencies in higher education. The SISTOUR-LAB has programmatic and prospective value. It can be considered as a guide for the development of generative competencies, i.e. competencies that generate social innovations that impact chain triggers transitions toward sustainable tourism.

At the end of 2011, one of the largest food retailers in Brazil, Grupo Pão de Açúcar, or GPA (a subsidiary of Companhia Brasileira De Distribuição, or CBD), was reviewing its accounts payable terms with suppliers in search of additional value. Manager of analytics Maria Cristina Santos was examining the trade credit terms GPA had with Oalem Ltda, a family-owned melon grower located in northeastern Brazil. Oalem, like most small family businesses, was financed with bank loans and equity that was held predominantly by the family. The case examines how accounts payable (trade credit) terms should be set or negotiated between a large retailer and a small supplier, especially when the bargaining power between the two may not be equal. The case demonstrates that trade credit terms can be as important as the terms of more traditional forms of financing.

After analyzing and discussing the case, students should be able to:

• Determine when it is efficient or value-increasing for one nonfinancial firm to borrow from another nonfinancial firm through trade credit, as opposed to borrowing from financial institutions (e.g., banks) or financial markets

• Understand how competition or relative bargaining power can influence feasible and optimal trade credit terms

• Explain why trade credit can be a cheaper form of financing than the alternative forms of financing available to small family businesses like Oalem Ltda

Determine when it is efficient or value-increasing for one nonfinancial firm to borrow from another nonfinancial firm through trade credit, as opposed to borrowing from financial institutions (e.g., banks) or financial markets

Understand how competition or relative bargaining power can influence feasible and optimal trade credit terms

Explain why trade credit can be a cheaper form of financing than the alternative forms of financing available to small family businesses like Oalem Ltda