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1 – 10 of 119Enrico Fontana, Muhammad Atif and Mark Heuer
This article encourages novel approaches in the SSCM literature to create transformative change for workers in developing countries' apparel supply chains. It examines how…
Abstract
Purpose
This article encourages novel approaches in the SSCM literature to create transformative change for workers in developing countries' apparel supply chains. It examines how suppliers' implementation of social sustainability is moderated by buyers' pressures (through dyadic ties) and by similar suppliers' pressures (through extended ties).
Design/methodology/approach
The article adopts a qualitative method design based on fieldwork and 21 face-to-face interviews with suppliers' senior managers. The data were collected between 2017 and 2020 in the factory premises of suppliers in Pakistan.
Findings
This article distinguishes the pressures that moderate suppliers' implementation of social sustainability positively (top-down encouragement, informal exchange and competitive convergence) and negatively (unrewarded commitment) through social ties. Hence, it shows how suppliers experience constrained proactivity as a state of tension.
Originality/value
The article primarily contributes to the SSCM literature by informing how similar suppliers' pressures in the business community constitute important processes of social governance and are key to create transformative change upstream in apparel supply chains. Against this backdrop, it cautions about buyers' opposite pressures and misuse of their negotiation power, which indirectly holds back and dilutes transformative change.
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Enrico Fontana, Mark Heuer and Lisa Koep
The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the way the cross-sector collaboration (CSC) process can foster gender-focused sustainability initiatives to improve female…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the way the cross-sector collaboration (CSC) process can foster gender-focused sustainability initiatives to improve female workers’ conditions in developing countries. The study does so by introducing and examining the influence of nonprofit boundary work during the CSC process.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on thirty-four interviews and qualitative fieldwork. It draws on a case analysis of a regional CSC between multiple organizations operating locally in the apparel industry of Bangladesh, a developing country.
Findings
Scaffolding work in the CSC formation stage – performed by development agency implementers who construe boundaries – and sensitization work in the CSC implementation stage – performed by a non-governmental organization (NGO) implementers who blur and expand boundaries – emerge as two conceptual categories of nonprofit boundary work. This allows NGO implementers to identify and enable the agency of sustainability envoys or socially privileged individuals who capitalize on their social credentials to support female workers in the factory and in the community.
Originality/value
The study offers novel insights into the CSC process. It contributes to the CSC literature and the literature on boundary work, with a focus on gender-focused sustainability initiatives for female workers in developing countries.
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IN view of the ever‐increasing application of time and motion study techniques in this country it is difficult to understand why so few manufacturers of time and labour‐saving…
Abstract
IN view of the ever‐increasing application of time and motion study techniques in this country it is difficult to understand why so few manufacturers of time and labour‐saving equipment advertise the very items required by work study engineers.
Clive Beggs and Alexander John Bond
Despite being a widely used management technique, cumulative sum (CUSUM) analysis remains almost unheard of in professional sport. To address this, CUSUM analysis of soccer match…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite being a widely used management technique, cumulative sum (CUSUM) analysis remains almost unheard of in professional sport. To address this, CUSUM analysis of soccer match data from the English Premier League (EPL) was performed. The primary objective of the study was to evaluate CUSUM as a tool for assessing “on-field” team performance. As a secondary objective, the association between managerial change and team performance was evaluated.
Design/methodology/approach
CUSUM was applied retrospectively to goal difference data for six EPL teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham) over 23 consecutive seasons from 1995 to 2018. This was supplemented with change point analysis to identify structural changes in mean goal difference. Succession was evaluated by mapping historical managerial changes onto the CUSUM plots for the respective clubs.
Findings
CUSUM analysis revealed the presence of structural changes in four clubs. Two structural change points were identified for both Chelsea and Everton, one for Manchester United and Tottenham and none for Arsenal and Liverpool. Relatively few managerial changes coincided temporally with structural changes in “on-field” performance, with most appointments having minimal impact on long-term team performance. Other factors (e.g. changes in ownership) appear to have been influential.
Research limitations/implications
The study was limited by the fact that only successful teams were investigated.
Practical implications
CUSUM analysis appears to have potential as a tool for executive decision-makers to evaluate performance outcomes in professional soccer.
Originality/value
The study is the first of its kind to use CUSUM analysis to evaluate team performance in professional soccer.
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In the mature stage of product and technology life cycles, major breakthroughs in performance are difficult to achieve. However, a series of small incremental improvements may…
Abstract
In the mature stage of product and technology life cycles, major breakthroughs in performance are difficult to achieve. However, a series of small incremental improvements may cumulatively make a significant difference. At this stage, execution of the best organizational practices becomes even more important. Uses team New Zealand’s extremely successful 1995 America’s Cup program to illustrate how these practices and success factors can be brought together in an effective high technology product design process. Identifies these factors and practices as high quality human assets, participatory leadership, sufficient resources, a climate of innovation, external scanning, interactive involvement with sophisticated users, and technology strategy and competitive strategy match.
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Victor Diogho Heuer de Carvalho and Ana Paula Cabral Seixas Costa
This article presents two Brazilian Portuguese corpora collected from different media concerning public security issues in a specific location. The primary motivation is…
Abstract
Purpose
This article presents two Brazilian Portuguese corpora collected from different media concerning public security issues in a specific location. The primary motivation is supporting analyses, so security authorities can make appropriate decisions about their actions.
Design/methodology/approach
The corpora were obtained through web scraping from a newspaper's website and tweets from a Brazilian metropolitan region. Natural language processing was applied considering: text cleaning, lemmatization, summarization, part-of-speech and dependencies parsing, named entities recognition, and topic modeling.
Findings
Several results were obtained based on the methodology used, highlighting some: an example of a summarization using an automated process; dependency parsing; the most common topics in each corpus; the forty named entities and the most common slogans were extracted, highlighting those linked to public security.
Research limitations/implications
Some critical tasks were identified for the research perspective, related to the applied methodology: the treatment of noise from obtaining news on their source websites, passing through textual elements quite present in social network posts such as abbreviations, emojis/emoticons, and even writing errors; the treatment of subjectivity, to eliminate noise from irony and sarcasm; the search for authentic news of issues within the target domain. All these tasks aim to improve the process to enable interested authorities to perform accurate analyses.
Practical implications
The corpora dedicated to the public security domain enable several analyses, such as mining public opinion on security actions in a given location; understanding criminals' behaviors reported in the news or even on social networks and drawing their attitudes timeline; detecting movements that may cause damage to public property and people welfare through texts from social networks; extracting the history and repercussions of police actions, crossing news with records on social networks; among many other possibilities.
Originality/value
The work on behalf of the corpora reported in this text represents one of the first initiatives to create textual bases in Portuguese, dedicated to Brazil's specific public security domain.
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Mutual Investigation. There seems to be a refreshing, open breeze blowing through the ranks of time and motion study technicians these days. Gone are the ponderous exponents of…
Abstract
Mutual Investigation. There seems to be a refreshing, open breeze blowing through the ranks of time and motion study technicians these days. Gone are the ponderous exponents of the mystic art and, instead, we find the experts vying with each other, almost, in telling their audiences how easy time and motion study really is if you only sit down and think about it.
Victor Diogho Heuer de Carvalho, Thiago Poleto, Thyago Celso Cavalcante Nepomuceno and Ana Paula Paula Cabral Seixas Costa
Understanding the relational factors in information technology outsourcing (ITO) processes is essential for managers to exercise successful governance over their relationship…
Abstract
Purpose
Understanding the relational factors in information technology outsourcing (ITO) processes is essential for managers to exercise successful governance over their relationship. Based on this premise, this paper aims to present a study about relational factors using judgments of managers from small and medium-sized supplying and contracting companies involved in ITO relationships, helping to understand the differences between what they believe to be relevant for maintaining the relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The analytical approach consisted of applying fuzzy sets theory elements, converting the managers' judgments into crisp values through a defuzzification process, and the multicriteria method ELECTRE IV that created the rankings of the relational factors according to the defuzzified judgments. The approach was applied with 16 managers from supplying companies and 34 from contracting companies, in both cases located in a large Brazilian pole of information technology.
Findings
The main findings indicate that suppliers are initially more concerned with contractual aspects, being in the highest positions in the ranking: detailed contract, service level agreement and costs. Only after these elements, suppliers prioritize aspects less linked to the contract. For contractors, customer relationship management is the most important, followed by costs and commitment by managers, which indicates more openness to issues-oriented to relational development.
Originality/value
The approach adopted in this article is differentiated by prioritizing relational factors that are not always directly perceived in ITO relationships. Another important consideration is that most studies focus only on the perspective of supplier selection by contracting companies. In this paper, both suppliers' and contractors' judgments on the importance of ITO relational factors were analyzed, creating rankings that supported understanding the difference between the two perspectives.
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Robert S. Peirce and Dean G. Pruitt
This research concerned preference and choice among six procedures commonly used to resolve disputes. Two experiments revealed that, compared to complainants, respondents liked…
Abstract
This research concerned preference and choice among six procedures commonly used to resolve disputes. Two experiments revealed that, compared to complainants, respondents liked inaction and disliked arbitration. However, the most striking findings concerned general preferences among the procedures: consensual procedures (negotiation, mediation, and advisory‐arbitration) were best liked, followed by arbitration, with inaction and struggle least liked. Further analysis suggested that perceptions of self‐interest and societal norms underlie these procedural preferences, with the latter perceptions apparently more important. An examination of choices among the procedures revealed that negotiation was by far the most common first choice of action. If negotiation failed to resolve the conflict, the following escalative sequence of actions was typically endorsed: mediation, then advisory arbitration, then arbitration, and finally struggle.
Eunju Suh, Matt Alhaery, Brett Abarbanel and Andrew McKenna
This study aims to examine Millennials and generational differences in online gambling activity by comparing online gambling behavior across four different generations: Silent…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine Millennials and generational differences in online gambling activity by comparing online gambling behavior across four different generations: Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and Millennials.
Design/methodology/approach
The sample comprised tracked gambling data at the individual player level provided by an online casino accepting real money wagers in a major US gambling market. Attributes of gambling behavior were examined and compared across different generations using Kruskal–Wallis test and pairwise comparisons.
Findings
Generational differences were observed in 13 of the 16 behavioral variables. Millennials spent the least amount of time on gambling and exhibited the lowest scores on the number of days for slot gambling, trip length and trip frequency among all generations. However, their average table gaming volume per play day was greater than those of other generations.
Practical implications
The results of this study provide a better understanding of the generational differences in online gambling behavior. They also help casino operators and gaming machine manufacturers develop casino games and products that can appeal to different generational groups in the online gambling market.
Originality/value
Despite the on-going industry discussion about Millennials and their potential influence on the online gambling market, there appears to be a paucity of empirical research on the online gambling behavior of the Millennial generation. This study fills that gap in empirical evidence, addressing generational differences in online gambling.
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