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The ramp-up in humanitarian logistics operations is a stage when the demand surges, often at the start of an emergency. In response, agility is a key strategy used by the humanitarian organizations (HOs). However, the HOs are constrained by their existing resources and have to respond in the ramp-up process under their resource dependency. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework on agility-building strategies used by HOs for the ramp-up.

This study applies both the dynamic capabilities perspective and resource dependence theory to humanitarian relief operations, and develops four testable propositions to explore the agility-building strategies of the HOs for the ramp-up process. A multiple-case study is conducted on six international HOs operating in Indonesia to verify them, in addition to an extensive literature search.

The case study shows that the human resource management, pre-positioning, standardization and supplier management of the HOs are all related to their resources and environment in the ramp-up process. The authors highlight the practical differences between the few super large, resource rich and centralized HOs with the second-tier HOs.

Given the small sample size and single country as the site of study, some findings may not be applicable to the other HOs or in other regions.

The propositions could be applicable to other HOs operating under similar environments, and potentially to the commercial enterprises operating in a highly volatile environment with severe resource scarcity.

This study provides new insights into ramp-up operations and into how HOs build their agility and reduce their resource dependencies. Theoretically, the paper applies two established theories in the strategic management literature to a new field.

Although MOOCs have become a pervasive online learning model, the problem of high dropout rates still persists. Gathering the reasons for the high dropout rate can help to improve the platform design and management of the MOOCs.

A total of 74 studies was extracted from the Web of Science and Scopus. Following the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, the open-source program CiteSpace is employed to review and induce the studies on the antecedents of MOOC dropout.

The antecedents of the MOOC dropout rate are the psychological, social, personal, course-related, and time factors, and the unexpected hidden cost. Motivation and interaction, which have a decisive impact on the dropout rate of MOOCs, interact with each other. Interaction helps to strengthen the motivation, and appropriate course design enhances the degree of interaction.

From the perspective of a learner, the more knowledge and skills the learners acquire, the more likely they will complete the course. Possessing adequate foundational knowledge is one way to arrest the dropout rate. On the part of the MOOC platform, better course design eases the dropout rate. Further, the course duration and hidden cost in MOOCs contribute to the dropout rate.

This paper explores the mechanism of organizational Pao culture in an Oriental cultural context and its impact on CSR implementation and outcomes.

Three short cases are presented to reveal how the traditional Chinese Pao culture influences CSR implementation and outcomes in Chinese firms.

The findings suggest that the traditional Chinese Pao culture is the driver behind the value orientation of the norms of passing on favors and doing good deeds will be rewarded. Knowing this can help leaders in such organizations to incentivize member participation in building organizational Pao culture.

Through the collaborative construction of the core of Pao culture and external evaluation standards of corporate social responsibility, enterprises can thus achieve the dual goals of self-development and social benefits.

Enterprises and managers can be encouraged to draw management wisdom from the essence of cultural norms, so as to achieve the goal of realizing the interests of all CSR participants.

This paper emphasizes the dynamics and outcomes of CSR implementation in the context of the traditional Chinese Pao culture and expands the boundary of CSR research beyond a Western cultural setting.

For entrepreneurship education issue, the purpose of this paper is to apply a novel four-step method of comparative education research and assessment items for university-based entrepreneurship ecosystems (U-BEEs), with a specific focus on universities in Taiwan and Singapore. In this paper, entrepreneurship education development is explored, and important implications for the further improvement of entrepreneurship education are provided.

This study is based on the comparative education research method and proceeds in four steps (i.e. description, interpretation, juxtaposition, and comparison). The U-BEE items are applied to exemplify the similarities and differences of the process by which entrepreneurship education developed in two universities each in Singapore (National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University) and Taiwan (National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University).

From the country-based standpoint, the findings include considering broader factors (i.e. history, education) in such a comparison of the similarities and differences among four universities, reflecting the reality in the Asian region and introducing the method application of comparative education research for the first time in entrepreneurship education. From holistic and specific perspectives of U-BEE, the findings consist of presenting similarities and differences based on the comparisons of each item and showing the classified findings.

This study provides helpful insights based on the perspectives of academics and practitioners. First, the authors urge the necessity of the theoretical base of teaching and learning in education when universities plan for entrepreneurship education. Second, the authors stress the critical impact of the government on the execution of entrepreneurship education in the higher education context.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on social capital theory to develop a model to explain the determinants of a supply chain management scholar’s academic research impact.

Drawing from a database of 450 supply chain management scholars in different countries collected from ResearchGate and the World Bank, the bootstrapping method was applied on the moderated mediation analysis.

Analysis of the mediating role of a scholar’s social capital suggests that social capital theory has a strong explanatory power on the relationship between a scholar’s research skill and academic impact. To account for the boundary effect at the country-level, the authors further examine if this mechanism differs by country in the supply chain management research context.

The findings from this study are from a single research area, which limits the generalizability of the study. Although the data are collected from different sources, including ResearchGate and the World Bank, it is cross-sectional in nature. The variables in this model do not have strong causal relationships.

The results suggest that supply chain management scholars can reap the benefits of their social capital. Specifically, scholars can enhance their academic impact by increasing their social capital.

The results provide a reference for supply chain management scholars keen on enhancing their academic research impact. It also provides a reference to explain why country-level differences can influence these scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of logistics management research in Asia. The study focuses on the research agenda, the topics of interest, and the extent of research collaboration in logistics theory building and knowledge specific to Asia.

This study uses a mixed methods approach namely, content analysis drawn from the articles found in six well-recognized peer-reviewed logistics management related journals from 2003 to 2013, followed by social network analysis which is applied on the selected articles to provide a structure of the collaboration relationship.

Initial findings suggest that there are some scholars in Asia who are instrumental in research collaboration and in building a body of knowledge on logistics management focused on Asia. More co-production of knowledge from deeper and tightly knit industry-academic collaboration is needed to progress this domain. Most of the published work use an empirical instrument drawn from the resource-based view to explore firm level supply chain collaboration and strategy. This suggests a positivist research tradition within logistics. There is a shortage of studies conducted on the supply chain as a network of enterprises.

The review of the articles is limited to six logistics specific journals and the authors only concentrate on logistics management research focused on Asia. The contributions from the other journals may have been missed. More collaboration at the institutional, national, and international levels is called for especially on cross-collaboration between practice and theory.

Though the analysis is restricted to 260 articles found in six journals, this paper can shed light on the research needs from different perspectives and facilitate the progress of logistics management research in Asia.

This is the first paper to discuss the state of logistics management research collaboration in Asia, and provides an overview of the research issues, topics, and approaches undertaken thus far. Through this work, this study hopes that it will encourage greater research collaboration between industry and academia, and academics themselves.

This study aims to systematically map the state of work on human–machine collaboration in organizations using bibliometric analysis.

The authors used a systematic literature review to survey 111 articles on human–machine collaboration published in leading journals to categorize the theories used and to construct a framework of human–machine collaboration in organizations. A bibliometric analysis is applied to statistically evaluate the published materials and measure the influence of the publications using co-citation, coupling and keyword analyses.

The results inform that the research on human–machine collaboration in the organizational field is targeted at four aspects: performance, innovation, human resource management and information technology (IT).

This work is the first exploratory piece to assess the extent and depth of research on human–machine collaboration.

Risk response decisions (RRDs) are vital for project risk mitigation. Although past research has focused on RRDs for independent single projects, it has scarcely explored how to make RRDs for single projects in project portfolios (SPPPs). Consequently, this study aims to bridge the gap in extant literature by developing an integrated approach to select risk response strategies (RRSs) for SPPPs considering objective adjustments and project interdependencies (PIs).

An integrated quality function deployment (QFD) method was used throughout this study. More so, a balanced score card (BSC) and stratified-Z-numbers-full consistency method (SZFUCOM) was applied to identify SPPP success criteria (SP3SC) to determine their weights. In addition, a spherical fuzzy set-design structure matrix (SFDSM) was used to quantify the correlation between the risks and the relationship between the risks and the predecessor projects. Consequently, the relationships between the risks and SP3SC and RRSs were described by the spherical fuzzy set (SFS) and Z-numbers, respectively. Besides, the results are weaved into QFD to transform SP3SC into risks and then into RRSs, while a linear optimization model is used to obtain the optimal RRSs. Lastly, a construction project portfolio (PP) was used to test the veracity of the results to prove their validity.

The approach to RRDs for single projects is observed to be different from that of SPPPs. In addition, this study finds that project portfolio objective adjustments (PPOAs) and PIs have significant impacts on RRDs given that they influence the risk priorities of independent single projects and SPPPs. Moreover, the application of an integrated QFD effectively synthesized the results from the findings of this study, as well as enabled companies to determine robust RRSs. Finally, the consistency results of the SZFUCOM were better than those of the triangular fuzzy number-full consistency method.

The study innovatively explores the method of RRDs for SPPP, which has been ignored by past research. SP3SC highly compatible with PP success is determined. Z-numbers are first used to evaluate the effect of RRSs to enhance the robustness of RRDs. The study proposes a method of RRDs comprehensively considering PPOAs and PIs, which provides robust methodological guidance for SPPP managers to control risks.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a decision support framework for locations identification to address network design in the domain of disaster relief supply chains. The solution approach is then applied to a real-life case about Indonesia.

An approach integrating geographic information system technology and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process has been used.

For the Indonesian case, distribution centers should be located in Pekanbaru, Surabaya, Banjarmasin, Ambon, Timika, and Manado.

The main limitation of this work is that facilities being sited are incapacitated. Inclusion of constraints over capacity would elevate the framework to a further level of sophistication, enabling virtual pool of inventory that can be used to adsorb fluctuation in the demand due to disasters.

The use case provided in this paper shows a practical example of applicability for the proposed framework. This study is able to support worldwide decision makers facing challenges related with disaster relief chains resilience. In order to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in relief operations, strategic logistics planning in preparedness is key. Hence, initiatives in disaster preparedness should be enhanced.

It adds value to the previous literature on humanitarian logistics by providing a real-life case study as use case for the proposed methodology. It can guide decision makers in designing resilient humanitarian response, worldwide. Moreover, a combination of recommendations from humanitarian logistics practitioners with established models in facility location sciences provides an interdisciplinary solution to this complex exercise.

The purpose of the paper is to develop a hybrid method to prioritize risk factors (RFs) of sustainable supply chain (SSC) considering sustainable customer requirements (CRs) and uncertain evaluation.

In the proposed method, fuzzy Kano model (FKM) is applied to prioritize sustainable CRs considering customer satisfaction (CS) and objective weight of each CR, the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy (IVIF) set theory is integrated with quality function deployment (QFD) to translate the sustainable CRs into RFs of SSC under uncertain environment and the IVIF cross-entropy is used to conduct objective analysis to prioritize RFs. Finally, a case in air-conditioner-manufacturing company is presented to demonstrate the proposed method.

A case study of SSC risk management, the comparative analysis and associated discussions are conducted to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. The results obtained from the case study shows that RF5 (market share reduction) is the most important RF in the SSC. Compared with the existing methods, the proposed method can integrate sustainable CRs into SSC's RFs, handle uncertain information effectively and obtain objective importance of RFs.

Theoretically, the paper develops a customer-oriented model based on the FKM, QFD, IVIF sets and entropy theory to prioritize RFs of SSC under uncertain environment. The model enables to integrate sustainable CRs into RFs managements and is efficient to deal with the subjectivity and conduct objective analysis to prioritize RFs. In practice, the systematic and correct RFs' priorities analysis provides reliable decision support for the managers to take measures to avoid or mitigate the critical RFs.