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School improvement planning has been a central part of school improvement initiatives for decades. Evidence suggests, however, that traditional planning processes are regularly superficial. In the USA, some principals have begun developing short-cycle planning designed to encourage school leadership teams and staff to develop, monitor and adjust plans throughout the academic year.

In this study of eight schools in one urban district, the authors analyzed multiple rounds of short-cycle improvement plans and principal interview data to assess the progress schools made implementing plans over the course of a semester, the ways in which plans were monitored and adjusted and the extent to which principals embraced short-cycle planning.

The authors found that many tasks from first semester plans were completed, which informed the development of plans for the second semester. Observational data were primarily used to monitor plan completion, although principals engaged in monitoring but relied on their leadership team to do so. Principals reported regular engagement with plans throughout semester, but plans were seldom adjusted within a semester.

The findings suggest that short-cycle planning is potentially a viable alternative to traditional annual planning as principals communicated being more engaged and adaptive. Still, the evidence also indicated that old habits might be hard to break as school leaders did not monitor and adjust plans frequently enough to guide improvement efforts in relative “real time.”

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV), this study investigates how tax planning affects the likelihood of financial default in different stages of the corporate life cycle.

Collecting a large sample of US firms between 1989 and 2016, hypotheses are tested using a hazard model. Several robustness and endogeneity checks corroborate the main findings.

The results show that tax-planning firms are less likely to default in the introduction and decline stages, while they are more likely to default in the growth and maturity stages. The findings suggest that introductory and declining firms use cash resources obtained from tax planning efficiently to meet their needs and acquire other useful resources. In growing and mature firms, tax aggressiveness generates unnecessary slack resources, weakens managerial discipline and increases reputational risks.

The results shed light on the benefits and costs associated with tax planning throughout firms' life cycle, holding great significance for managers, investors, lenders and other stakeholders.

This study contributes to the literature that examines resource management at different life cycle stages by showing that cash resources from tax planning are managed in distinctive ways in each life cycle stage, having a varied impact on the likelihood of default. The authors shed light on underexplored cash resources. Furthermore, this study shows the potential linkages between the agency theory and RBV.

Purpose – This chapter reflects on the role of cycling in India, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, discusses and compares explanatory factors of cycling behaviour and provides three methods of spatial analysis that can feed into local transport policy and planning.

Approach – The chapter compares important relevant contextual issues and challenges and presents examples of ongoing research on three continents.

Findings – The findings are in the first instance methodological in nature. Methods have been developed to assess the effect of barriers on access by bicycle, to quantify the avoided carbon emission associated with cycling and to help plan a demand-based cycling network.

Practical implications – Three different spatial analysis methods are presented: the planning of new bicycle infrastructure, the evaluation of existing cycling in terms of avoided carbon emission and the role of the physical environment in levels of cycling accessibility. The methods can be easily replicated and integrated into transport policy and planning at the local level.

Social implications – Effective cycling-inclusive planning in developing countries is expected to lead to higher levels of cycling that positively affect people's welfare, health and the environment.

Value of chapter – The chapter affirms that a thorough understanding of physical, social, economic and cultural factors of the developing city context are important in effective cycling-inclusive planning. It provides three relatively simple and replicable methods that are considered particularly appropriate for data scarce developing cities.

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.

For robot motion planning there exists a large number of different algorithms, each appropriate for a certain domain, and the right choice of planner depends on the specific use case. The purpose of this paper is to consider the application of bin picking and benchmark a set of motion planning algorithms to identify which are most suited in the given context.

The paper presents a selection of motion planning algorithms and defines benchmarks based on three different bin-picking scenarios. The evaluation is done based on a fixed set of tasks, which are planned and executed on a real and a simulated robot.

The benchmarking shows a clear difference between the planners and generally indicates that algorithms integrating optimization, despite longer planning time, perform better due to a faster execution.

The originality of this work lies in the selected set of planners and the specific choice of application. Most new planners are only compared to existing methods for specific applications chosen to demonstrate the advantages. However, with the specifics of another application, such as bin picking, it is not obvious which planner to choose.

In a world where continuous operations are essential for business survival, action must be taken to ensure that information and the business processes that use the information are continuously available. This usually involves the selection and implementation of a suitable business continuity plan. Implementing such a plan is, however, not always a simple task. This especially holds true for small to medium‐sized organizations. An implementation method that could be applied to most business continuity planning methodologies would, therefore, be a welcome tool, especially for small to medium‐sized organisations. This paper presents a theoretical model for such an implementation method.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated approach to process integration, automation, and optimization through enhanced business process models.

The approach is based on a framework of process integration for functional applications, automation for business workflows, and additional functionalities for process optimization. The proposed approach is illustrated using enhanced process models over business integration, automation, and optimization with data elements, structures, and organizational elements. The standard sales order process cycle, quotation approval process, and production order cycle are chosen for illustrating process integration, automation, and optimization, respectively.

The proposed approach combines applications and workflows using integrated process/data models and forms a foundation for business process optimization. It is shown that the integrated approach can improve existing business processes in enterprise resource planning (ERP), beyond business process re‐engineering (BPR) principles, once enhanced business process models are implemented. This approach eliminates need for a hierarchical representation of business processes and highlights the flexibility and visibility of business process implementation in ERP system environment.

Although process integration, automation, and optimization are illustrated using selected business process examples, it requires generalization of these enhancements over entire business blueprint of ERP system. Thus, one key limitation of this research is that it is not generalized for the entire business blueprint of ERP. This also requires changes to data structures beyond current relational data in many ERP systems.

This research provides an integrated approach to business process modeling beyond traditional functional and workflow applications by eliminating hierarchical nature of process and data elements.

Limited research on root cause analysis exists in educational leadership. Accurately diagnosing and detailing root causes—the why—of organizational failure, as is relatively common in other fields, could improve principals' ability to devise situationally- and contextually-responsive solutions in their improvement plans. In this study, the authors analyze school improvement plans to provide insight into how principals use root cause analysis to identify their and their school's failures as a way to respond strategically with goals and action steps.

In this exploratory qualitative study, the authors develop coding schemes and leverage an existing rubric of school improvement plan quality to assess what principals identify as root causes for 216 priorities across 111 school improvement plans.

The overall quality of root causes submitted by principals was low, typically between “beginning” and “developing” stages. The majority of root causes aligned with priorities and desired outcomes, but fewer than one-third had a systems focus. Moreover, less than half of root causes suggested that school leaders played a part in the organizational failures. The vast majority of plans instead identified teachers as the root cause, foundational fault or “why” of the problem.

An increased understanding of root cause analysis conceptualization and development seems necessary if improvement planning is to be a strategic response to a school's most serious organizational challenges. The predominant approach to school improvement planning has focused almost exclusively on how to succeed or become better with little investment in identifying root causes of organizational decline or failure. This initial study of root cause quality in school improvement planning is a key first step in critically thinking about how improvement is to be achieved when failure is unconceived.

In today's highly dynamic, unpredictably changing business environment, traditional strategic‐planning approaches are of doubtful value. In 1995, the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) began a series of consortium benchmarking studies on strategic planning. The first study, completed in 1996, identified several innovative practices and surfaced challenges faced by companies in highly dynamic business environments. Consequently, strategic planning in fast‐cycle environments became the focus of the second study, “Reinventing Strategic Planning for a Dynamic Environment,” which was completed in February 1997.

Investigating the beginning of project management (app. 30 BC) with a focus on business models similar to the “PDCA” cycle, the purpose of this paper is to find an approach which could be used as a new standard procedure for the eradication of projects in Lean project management.

Based on literature research of models similar to Walter A. Shehwart’s three-step and Edward W. Deming’s four-step (PDC(A)) wheel, the investigated models are interconnected to form a new concept which represents an innovative cycle logic proposed to be applied in Lean project management. This new cycle logic is rolled out on three different levels, which are transferred from the Lean management hoshin kanri model to Lean project management. In addition to literature research, semi-structured interviews were performed to get an indication as to the integration of Lean management (with a focus on PDCA) in project management today.

It was found that the “Check Plan Do” cycle is a Lean variant of the “Plan Do Check Act” model that is already used in consulting projects in practice, partially appears in project management standards, in governance models of ambulance, fire services, human aid and military forces and in quality management models of Six Sigma, design for Six Sigma and an excellence model of the European Foundation for Quality Management. To ensure continuous improvement it was found that the new CPD cycle can be used on different “planning” levels in analogy to the hoshin kanri logic.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, a discussion as to how the PDCA cycle can be adapted to Lean project management, considering the implication of business models similar to the PDCA wheel, has not yet been conducted within the field of project management.