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Shorter lead time with low price and quality product demand is pivotal in the garment industry. Pressure on production lead time stresses the importance of reducing style changeover time in manufacturing factories, and this paper aims to contribute to solving the challenge by showing how the single minute exchange of die (SMED) methodology in practice can be adapted to garment factories in developing countries.

The paper investigates three cases of SMED implementation integrated with responsible, accountable, consulted, informed (RACI) matrices in garment factories in an action research approach. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are applied.

The study shows a reduction of 50% to 64% of changeover time with SMED implementation measured with two key indicators – throughout time and time to reach peak production. Moreover, the implementation depends on the application of the RACI matrix for the distribution of responsibility as well as integration with the basic production flow before and after the application of SMED.

The study can guide better SMED implementation in garment factories with limited investment by stressing the need to adapt to the specifics of the garment industry, secure the division of responsibility and integrate SMED in the production flow before and after the changeover.

Limited research on the application of SMED in the garment industry. This paper contributes to understanding the specific conditions for successful implementation in the garment industry in developing countries and addresses additional activities that help secure a sustainable implementation process.

Lean manufacturing has the potential for simultaneously improving the competitiveness and the social sustainability of the apparel industry in developing countries. However, there is limited research on the ways to a successful lean implementation in developing countries and with an emphasis on occupational health and safety (OHS) improvement.

The paper investigates four cases of lean implementation in garment factories and uses the design science research strategy, building on the context-intervention-mechanism-outcome (CIMO) framework to identify explanatory mechanisms that can be used for designing future action.

The study identifies tangible mechanisms that can lead to successful lean implementation. The most important mechanisms relate to practical top management support, worker involvement, application of lean tools and training.

The findings of this study can guide better lean implementation for the many garment factories in developing countries.

While the lean literature provides general recommendations for lean implementation, knowledge about the transfer mechanisms in developing countries as well as the connections between lean and OHS is limited. This paper contributes to lean implementation theory and to the discourse of positive lean by integrating efficiency and working conditions. In addition, the paper identifies transfer mechanisms for lean implementation in the garment industry in a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and with which mechanisms health care professionals in practice design for collaboration to solve collective hospital tasks, which cross occupational and departmental boundaries.

An in-depth multiple-case study of five departments across four hospitals facing fast to slow response task requirements was carried out using interviews and observations. The selected cases were revealing as the departments had designed and formalized their daily hospital operations differently to solve collaboration and performance issues.

Local collaboration across occupational and departmental boundaries requires bundles of behavioral formalization elements (e.g. standardized plans, resource allocation decisions, assigned formal roles, and handoff routines), and liaison devices (e.g. huddles, boards, and physical proximity), which are used in parallel or sequence. The authors label this “designed collaboration bundles.” These bundles supplement the central organizational structures, processes, and support systems less capable of ensuring fluent coordination at the front line.

Health care professionals and hospital managers can consider designing bundles of organizational design features to proactively develop and ensure collaboration capable of solving collective tasks and bridging departmental and occupational silos to improve health care delivery.

This research paper addresses the fundamental organizational challenge of how to achieve efficient collaboration by studying how formal structures and processes are used in combination on the hospital floor, thereby going beyond previous research that studies these mechanisms individually.

Investigate the potential of using “lean” in garment supplier factories to enhance productivity and compliance capability, so as to fulfill a buyer's expectation of lower price, shorter lead time, and higher occupational health and safety (OHS) standards.

By means of an intervention, lean tools integrated with OHS elements were introduced in four Bangladeshi key garment suppliers of a Danish buyer. By employing a qualitative approach, both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used to collect data on productivity, OHS, and buyer–supplier efforts.

This study demonstrates that lean tools, integrated with OHS elements, can be used to improve the productivity and compliance capabilities of supplier firms, which meet a buyers' changing demands for lower prices, shorter lead times, and higher compliance standards. This study suggests that the improvement of productivity and OHS in supplier firms through lean implementation could be a better choice for buyers than switching to new suppliers with uncertainties in productivity and delivery, as well as OHS compliance problems.

The findings of this study suggest that garment suppliers can benefit from implementing lean, thereby improving their capacity to meet buyers' expectations. Therefore, both suppliers and buyers have a mutual interest in the application of lean in suppliers' production facilities.

By considering both buyer and supplier perspectives, this research is a unique attempt to investigate the possibilities of lean implementation at the shop-floor level to meet the market challenges in the context of a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate frontline meetings in hospitals and how they are used for coordination of daily operations across organizational and occupational boundaries.

An in-depth multiple-case study of four purposefully selected departments from four different hospitals is conducted. The selected cases had actively developed and embedded scheduled meetings as structural means to achieve coordination of daily operations.

Health care professionals and managers, next to their traditional mono-professional meetings (e.g. doctors or nurses), develop additional operational, daily meetings such as work-shift meetings, huddles and hand-off meetings to solve concrete care tasks. These new types of meetings are typically short, task focussed, led by a chair and often inter-disciplinary. The meetings secure a personal proximity which the increased dependency on hospital-wide IT solutions cannot. During meetings, objects and representations (e.g. monitors, whiteboards or paper cards) create a needed gathering point to span across boundaries. As regards embedding meetings, local engagement helps contextualizing meetings and solving concrete care tasks, thereby making health care professionals more likely to value these daily meeting spaces.

Health care professionals and managers can use formal meeting spaces aided by objects and representations to support solving daily and interdependent health care tasks in ways that IT solutions in hospitals do not offer today. Implementation requires local engagement and contextualization.

This research paper shows the importance of daily, operational hospital meetings for frontline coordination. Organizational meetings are a prevalent collaborative activity, yet scarcely researched organizational phenomenon.

The aim of this paper is to present the literature which identifies the characteristics of small enterprises and outlines the opportunities to utilise them in working with small businesses to prevent and reduce exposures to hazardous substances.

A search of a variety of data sources, including Medline, PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, was conducted which combined the keyword search terms “small business”, “small enterprise”, “management”, “health and safety management”, “hazardous substances”, “hazardous chemicals”, “management of hazardous substances”. High quality studies were selected and combined with studies known to the authors.

A strong body of evidence exists which shows that the management of OSH in small enterprises has been extensively reviewed and the most recurring theme is the identification of problems and challenges. A growing body of literature also confirms that models for chemical risk management and social responsibility issues can play a key role in managing hazardous chemical exposures in small enterprises. Furthermore, studies have shown that there are certain characteristics of small business that potentially provide positive opportunities for the implementation of preventive interventions.

The paper identifies these characteristics and features and suggests these can be effectively utilised in the design and development of interventions to prevent and reduce exposures to hazardous substances in small enterprises. Few interventions, however, have been developed utilising these positive characteristics.

Research shows that socially responsible practices in small enterprises are mainly directed at employees, and the work environment is a target. The practices are mainly informal and non‐reported. However, studies of health and safety initiatives within a corporate social responsibility (CSR) context in small firms are absent. This paper aims to focus on the issues surrounding the debates.

Case studies of CSR and work environment in 21 small Danish firms obtained from three industries have been designed to generate insight into CSR motives and practices directed at health and safety. The investigation applied qualitative methods and theoretical approaches to CSR, small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), and occupational health and safety.

The CSR initiatives are mainly motivated by ethical reasoning and by creating attractive workplaces to retain employees. The initiatives are particularly directed at employees' health and the psychosocial issues, and in most cases not applied strategically. External reputation outside the local community is not a motive.

Future research might expand on the influence of CSR on the work environment, from supplier demands or on quantitative designs.

CSR occurs ad hoc as a coincident of internal needs, external requirements and a committed intrapreneur. CSR initiatives seem to strengthen the business case, particularly in the service sector.

There are prospects for improved attention to health and safety through information shared in social enterprise networks or requirements from large customers.

There seems to be a potential for strengthening health and safety through a more formalised and strategic use of CSR, especially related to health and psychosocial issues.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the risks and potential risks that may lead to accidents. It aims to look at how to improve risk assessment within SMEs for the benefit of all staff.

The research included results from a Dutch project which identifies accident risks and safety barriers that are presented in a huge database and risk calculator. The method was first to develop a simple way of accessing this enormous amount of data, second, to develop a tool to observe risks and safety barriers in SMEs and to investigate the usefulness of the developed tools in real life, third, to collect data on risks and safety barriers in SMEs for two occupations by following 20 people for three days each and to create a risk profile for each occupations.

The result is a simple way to go through all types of risks for accidents – a tool for risk observations for external safety experts, and useful for SMEs and for risk profiles for two occupations. Finally some experiences about the needs and difficulties in risk awareness in small enterprises as well as requirements for the employer and the employees.

The limitation of the project is that the results have not been tested in SMEs and that the number of people observed and observations days are limited mainly because there was limited time for the project.

The article considers the dilemma that although accident frequency is higher in SMEs, most small companies experience no serious accidents; thus, they are not challenged to focus on safety, neither being aware of the risk of accidents nor being able to identify risk before the accident happens with the purpose of acting and taking action to prevent accidents.

The value of the project is the observation tool and the identification of risks, and being aware of what an employer and employee can do to minimise such risks.

The purpose of this paper is to articulate cutting-edge conceptions of the relationship between local processes in the here-and-now, and the broader influences on those processes, that are both organic and overtly designed, and to discern the implications of this relationship for future research, policy and practice.

A focused and structured approach was taken to give effect to this purpose by reviewing the chosen articles in this collection, which from the 2018 Organizational Behavior in Health Care conference papers.

Research in coordination within and across health care boundaries increasingly recognizes: the multilevel influences on human action and interaction in health care delivery; the challenge of balancing individual or local agency with overt interventions; the everchanging the local circumstances of healthcare delivery; and the need to foster reflexivity, that is, self-improvement capacity, in healthcare organizations.

Interventions to improve care coordination must be grounded in the reality of changing local circumstances and incentives for action from the broader environment.

This paper articulates the implied tension in health care delivery between individual and local agency, and imposed structures that may contradict, but are at the same time necessary, to foster such agency.