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Meetings with colleagues are an essential activity in workplace collaboration. The iterative nature of collaborative work demands spaces that team members can access quickly and easily. Creating suitable meeting spaces will become more critical if the hybrid work model continues and the workplace environment becomes the hub for face-to-face collaborative time, learning and training. Workspace and fit-out is expensive so it is crucial that the investment in meeting spaces supports employees’ collaboration activities.

This paper presents a case study of a corporate organisation undertaken in New Zealand to investigate how employees from two business units use their workspace to collaborate within their own team and across other teams in their organisation. The study uses ethnographic techniques, including participant observation and in-depth face-to-face interviews.

The findings show that the frequency and nature of small group work in collaboration was underestimated in the initial planning of the new workspace. Although participants found the design and fit-out of the formal meeting rooms supportive of collaborative work, the meeting rooms were in high demand, and it was difficult to find a room at short notice. The breakout spaces were confusing because they lacked key design attributes identified by the participants as conducive to small group work. Design shortfalls together with fit-out features perceived as supportive of collaborative work are identified.

The research reports on employees’ perceptions and experiences across two functionally diverse business units, reflecting their different needs and concerns.

This paper aims to offer evidence-based findings on the under-researched role of finance in the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process, aiming to guide academics and practitioners towards successful S&OP implementations.

The research builds upon a multiple case study, embracing five Latin American subsidiaries of four global manufacturing corporations from the consumer goods, chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Following an exploratory approach, the case study results are analysed in within- and cross-case analyses.

The research findings are synthesised into a framework, demonstrating relevant benefits from the engagement of finance along the S&OP process and the implications of its interactions with traditional S&OP functions as sales, marketing and operations. The paper shows how finance adds value in supporting the process, enabling decisions on costs, margins, capital expenditures and return on investments. Finance strengthens S&OP when assessing demand- and supply-related risks and facilitates comparing the functional business areas' plans to budget. While finance participation is highlighted as necessary for supporting successful S&OP implementations, it also receives valuable inputs in return, characterising a two-way communication role that benefits the entire organisation.

This is the first research paper focusing on empirically exploring the role of finance within S&OP, going beyond initial insights from practice and academia. It provides practitioners and scholars with an in-depth, evidence-based view of finance's integration along the S&OP process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what potential benefits may be achieved by using advanced planning and scheduling (APS) systems in the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process.

The paper investigates benefits at the S&OP process level by interviewing APS experts and APS users. Several methods have been used; literature review, Delphi study, and a case study at a company in the chemical industry which uses APS system support in the S&OP process.

Three types of potential benefits were found to be achieved when using APS systems in the S&OP process; benefits concerning decision support, planning efficiency and learning effects. The most common type was decision support benefits according to APS users and APS experts. The results from the case company showed that the benefits perceived in the different S&OP activities differed. In the activities concerning the preparation and generation of delivery plans, the perceived benefits mainly concerned learning effects. In the activities concerning the generation of a production plan, the benefits were foremost found in planning efficiency. In the S&OP meeting decision support benefits were highest valued. The reason for the different results can be explained by the aim of the activity, how APS was used in the activity, the user characteristics and the design of the model and access and quality of planning data.

The focus of this paper is on potential benefits of APS systems in the S&OP process only, not the costs. It has established a typology of potential benefits. No validation in form of statistical analysis has been done. The empirical analysis is mainly based on findings from a single case study.

The findings about the types of APS potential will assist companies in understanding the benefits they can expect from its use in the S&OP process. The case study analysis gives further insight into how APS can be employed and what benefits different APS user categories can expect when it is used in an appropriate way.

The knowledge about which benefits that can be achieved when using APS in the S&OP process is quite unexplored. This paper fills some of these gaps.

Maintaining and protecting employee well-being and health is of paramount importance for organizations in order to prevent financial losses due to illness, absenteeism, and fluctuation. This chapter discusses the role of team meetings for employee well-being. As the contemporary workplace is shaped by team work, team meetings increasingly shape employees’ experiences at work. As such, team meetings may also have a major influence on employee well-being as they consume large amounts of time and thus strongly influence workers’ schedules. While previous research has predominantly focused on negative aspects of meetings and mainly considered them as a workplace stressor, this chapter advances a positive perspective on meetings as opportunities for boosting rather than impairing employee well-being. Upon reviewing the extant evidence about linkages between workplace meetings and well-being, the authors highlight the role of team dynamics during meetings for individual well-being and suggest new perspectives for future research. The authors also discuss actionable implications for structuring and facilitating meetings in order to avoid negative and increase positive effects of team meeting interactions on employee well-being.

Risks can easily disrupt the demand–supply match targeted by sales and operations planning (S&OP). As surprisingly little is known of how organizations identify, assess, treat and monitor risks through tactical planning processes, this paper zooms in on the S&OP set-up and process parameters to explore how risks are managed through S&OP.

A multiple case study analyzes the S&OP processes of seven organizations in the process industry, drawing on 17 in-depth interviews with high-ranking representatives, internal and external documents, and a group meeting with participating organizations.

The study finds that organizations proactively design their S&OP based on their main risk focus stemming from the planning environment. In turn, such designs proactively support organizations' risk identification, assessment, treatment and monitoring through their S&OP execution. Reactively, a crisis S&OP meeting – making use of the structure of S&OP – can be used as a risk-treatment tool, and S&OP design can be temporarily adapted to deal with emerging risks.

This study is among the first to empirically elucidate risk management through S&OP. S&OP design, execution and adaption are identified as three interconnected strategies that allow organizations to manage risks. The design enables risk management activities in the monthly execution of S&OP. The reactive role of S&OP in risk management is particularly novel.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

This study seeks to determine factors that encourage post‐meeting work activity in a software development group by assessing attendee diversity (functional, staffing and tenure), meeting size, and meeting history.

One year's worth of meeting data from a software development group in a US‐based financial services company were collected and analyzed. A binary logistic regression analysis was utilized to determine the impact of diversity, meeting size, and meeting history on the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

Tenure diversity and meeting history for each meeting event significantly contribute to the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity.

A lack of variance in the data does not allow for the examination of staffing diversity. Further, generalizability of findings is limited since data come entirely from one organization. Findings suggest that meeting characteristics, specifically tenure diversity and meeting history, can improve the likelihood of post‐meeting work activity occurring.

Findings illustrate that management can leverage tenure diversity and meeting history within a software development group to encourage post‐meeting work activity.

All organizations employ meetings, and research that clarifies how to extract maximum value from meeting events is critical. This study provides a first step in uncovering specific meeting characteristics which are most likely to impact post‐meeting work activity.

The thesis of this book is that library measurement needs to move on and away from the idea that it is a process of counting and comparing the resources deployed by our libraries. The current emphasis on output measurement is an improvement but not the answer, refreshing as it is to judge a library by the quantity of what comes out instead of by the quantity of what is put in. The author believes that the nature of the library service is that of a “broad aim” social programme, best judged (evaluated) by gathering “politically significant information on the consequences of political acts”. “Political” here implies that the aims and intentions of those funding, organising and using libraries arise from more than one set of social values and from more than one definition of what the library is, and that they differ in priorities even when they do not directly conflict. Information about the library service will be in the form of a spectrum of measures reflecting the inputs, the processes, the outputs and the impact of the library, relating the various values in various ways. The difficulty in measuring library services, it is argued here, arises from the conflicts and lack of clarity about the aims of the service, and from uncertainty about how the process affects the outcomes. The technical problems of measurement are secondary. Chapter One aims to survey the range of measures available, whilst the rest of the book discusses how they might be used.

Key components of the logistics mix are described in an effort to create an understanding of the total logistics concept. Chapters include an introduction to logistics; the strategic role of logistics, customer service levels, channel relationships, facilities location, transport, inventory management, materials handling, interface with production, purchasing and materials management, estimating demand, order processing, systems performance, leadership and team building, business resource management.

The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge of the transformative potential of big data on city-based transport models. The central question guiding this paper is: how could big data transform smart city transport operations? In answering this question the authors present initial results from a Markov study. However the authors also suggest caution in the transformation potential of big data and highlight the risks of city and organizational adoption. A theoretical framework is presented together with an associated scenario which guides the development of a Markov model.

A model with several scenarios is developed to explore a theoretical framework focussed on matching the transport demands (of people and freight mobility) with city transport service provision using big data. This model was designed to illustrate how sharing transport load (and capacity) in a smart city can improve efficiencies in meeting demand for city services.

This modelling study is an initial preliminary stage of the investigation in how big data could be used to redefine and enable new operational models. The study provides new understanding about load sharing and optimization in a smart city context. Basically the authors demonstrate how big data could be used to improve transport efficiency and lower externalities in a smart city. Further how improvement could take place by having a car free city environment, autonomous vehicles and shared resource capacity among providers.

The research relied on a Markov model and the numerical solution of its steady state probabilities vector to illustrate the transformation of transport operations management (OM) in the future city context. More in depth analysis and more discrete modelling are clearly needed to assist in the implementation of big data initiatives and facilitate new innovations in OM. The work complements and extends that of Setia and Patel (2013), who theoretically link together information system design to operation absorptive capacity capabilities.

The study implies that transport operations would actually need to be re-organized so as to deal with lowering CO₂ footprint. The logistic aspects could be seen as a move from individual firms optimizing their own transportation supply to a shared collaborative load and resourced system. Such ideas are radical changes driven by, or leading to more decentralized rather than having centralized transport solutions (Caplice, 2013).

The growth of cities and urban areas in the twenty-first century has put more pressure on resources and conditions of urban life. This paper is an initial first step in building theory, knowledge and critical understanding of the social implications being posed by the growth in cities and the role that big data and smart cities could play in developing a resilient and sustainable transport city system.

Despite the importance of OM to big data implementation, for both practitioners and researchers, we have yet to see a systematic analysis of its implementation and its absorptive capacity contribution to building capabilities, at either city system or organizational levels. As such the Markov model makes a preliminary contribution to the literature integrating big data capabilities with OM capabilities and the resulting improvements in system absorptive capacity.