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The main purpose of this study is to investigate Ishikawa’s statement that “95% of problems in processes can be accomplished using the 7 Quality Control (QC) tools” and explore its validity within the health-care sector. The study will analyze the usage of the 7 QC tools in the health-care service sector and the benefits, challenges and critical success factors (CSFs) for the application of the 7 QC tools in this sector.

In order to evaluate Ishikawa’s statement and how valid his statement is for the health-care sector, an online survey instrument was developed, and data collection was performed utilizing a stratified random sampling strategy. The main strata/clusters were formed by health-care professionals working in all aspects of health-care organizations and functions. A total of 168 participants from European health-care facilities responded to the survey.

The main finding of this study is that 62% of respondents were trained in the 7 QC tools. Only 3% of participants in the health-care sector perceived that the seven tools of QC can solve above 90% of quality problems as originally claimed by Dr Ishikawa. Another relevant finding presented in this paper is that Histograms, Cause and Effect diagrams and check sheets are the most used tools in the health-care sector. The least used tools are Stratification and Scatter diagrams. This paper also revealed that the 7 QC tools proposed by Dr Ishikawa were most used in hospital wards and in administration functions. This work also presents a list of CSFs required for the proper application of the 7 QC tools in healthcare.

This research was carried out in European health-care facilities – and there is an opportunity to expand the study across global health-care facilities. There is also an opportunity to study the use of the tools and their impact on hospital performance using the Action Research methodology in a health-care organization.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the very first research within the health-care sector that focused on investigating the usage of all the 7 basic tools and challenging Dr Ishikawa’s statement: “95% of problems in processes can be accomplished using the 7 Quality Control (QC) tools” from his book “What is Quality Control?” The results of this study represent an important first step toward a full understanding of the applicability of these tools in the health-care sector.

Problem-solving, systems thinking and design thinking are disciplines practiced by all human beings and is also innate in other living objects with limited use of symbolic structures. They are necessary to achieve the goals and survive. Interpretation of problem-solving as a change in equilibrium makes it applicable throughout the inanimate world. The aim is to describe the proposed empirical systems theory that integrates problem-solving and systems thinking through design thinking.

A brief historical background describes why comprehensive empirical systems theory has not been attempted before except as a restricted version in engineering systems. The methodology of the general theory follows that of conventional science, but with systemic content. Interference by required mental or physical product/systems changes states which is subject to discussion, creativity, innovation and inspiration accomplished by iteration as necessary.

A problem-solving structure has been created, which is implemented in a methodical way to aid the innate ability of individuals and organisations, and is open to modifications and the use of quantitative methods. Processed natural language allows for implementation at the operational level.

The proposed systems theory is an empirical theory that uses the structural properties of parts of the world. The integration makes “systems” the driver of change of state and offers fundamental concepts. The implementation shown in Figure 2 is methodical and can be applied by individuals and organisations subject to peer review and development. The method clarifies the roles of product/artifact and systems designers.

This chapter aims to contribute to the literature on sustainability in the public sector by discussing how human resource and human resource management can help to integrate environmental management into organizations and improve environmental performance. Public sector scholars have neglected the study of Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) until now. Nevertheless, implementing such practices could lead to positive outcomes regarding awareness of environmental issues, organizational reputation and attractiveness, job satisfaction and organizational performance. The authors discuss the relevance and the necessity of developing a field of research on GHRM in public organizations. Starting from a conceptual review of the main literature on GHRM, this chapter provided some directions for future research.

The paper is built upon the conceptual framework of ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) to identify the effect of the high performance work system (HPWS) on the voice behaviour of the organisation.

The human resource department of the steel plants was approached to facilitate the data collection. A standardised questionnaire was used to collect responses from 169 full-time employees working at different levels and departments in the steel plant in India. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to validate and examine the model identifying the relationship of AMO enhancing practices with the voice behaviour in the organisation.

AMO was found to affect voice behaviour in the organisation. The positive and significant effect of ability enhancement practices was examined on the acquiescent voice and the opportunity enhancing practices on the acquiescent and defensive voice in the organisation.

Even though the organisation has tried to improve the employee's ability through proper training and development efforts, the organisation still fails to develop confidence in the employee for giving the suggestion or opinions without hesitation. The research papers try to provide valuable suggestions to the human resource management (HRM) and other managers for improving the voice behaviour of the employees based on the current study that identifies the effect of AMO practices on the voice behaviour of the employees.

Factors affecting voice behaviour are not yet extensively studied in the Indian context. The researcher examined the effect of HPWS, considering the AMO framework on the organisation's acquiescent voice, defensive voice, and prosocial voice behaviour.

Recent trends in total quality management (TQM) argue in favor of incorporating environmental concerns into TQM and considering external stakeholders. The aim of this study is to bring environmental consciousness in the soft TQM dimension of human resource management (HRM) and assess its interrelationship with stakeholder integration towards achieving a competitive advantage.

An empirical study was conducted in the transportation sector, specifically targeting managers in Greek shipping companies involved in global cargo transport and vessel operations. A structured questionnaire was administered, yielding 109 responses. The collected data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal the positive effect of both green HRM (GHRM) and stakeholder integration on the innovation differentiation advantage and market differentiation advantage of shipping companies. Results confirm the complementary (partial) mediating effect of GHRM in the relationship between stakeholder integration and both types of competitive advantage.

The primary limitation resides in data collection exclusively from shipping companies in Greece. A longitudinal approach would be beneficial for examining how the relationship between variables changes over time.

The findings of the study could assist shipping managers in their decisions to allocate resources for developing GHRM practices and for involving stakeholders in organizational practices to overcome competition.

This study contributes to the discourse on TQM by empirically investigating the combined impact of GHRM and stakeholder integration on competitive advantage – an aspect that has been relatively overlooked in existing literature.

Environment concerns and climate changes have led organizations to reorient their processes with a focus toward sustainability. Organizations recognize that incorporating greening in HR practices has the potential to address environmental concerns. The present study aims to focus on investigating the relationship between green human resource management (GHRM) practices and environmental performance (EP). It is premised that the adoption of green human resource practices facilitates the development of a green organizational culture (GOC) that helps the organization to gain strategic business advantage with respect to the competitors. The literature suggests that the adoption of green human resource practices among organizations is at a nascent stage. The present study focusses on understanding the mediating role of three dimensions of GOC, that is, degree, diffusion and depth in the relationship between green human resource practices and EP that has not been addressed in the empirical literature.

The present study developed a model consisting of GHRM practices as an independent variable, the three dimensions of culture (degree, diffusion and depth) as mediators, and EP as the dependent variable. The study followed a quantitative exploratory research approach. The sample consisted of 278 employees from private and public sector organizations located in India. The hypothesized model was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The study found the green human resource practices to be significantly related with EP of the organization. Results of parallel mediation confirmed that the “degree” dimension of GOC played a significant mediating role in the relationship between green human resource practices and EP of the organization. The other two dimensions of GOC, diffusion and depth, did not have a significant mediating role in this relationship. The findings of the study have been explained in the context of social identity theory, resource based view and ability–motivation–opportunity theory.

The study provides practical insights for researchers and managers who seek to adopt sustainability objectives in the organization. The findings have the potential to encourage human resource managers to adopt green human resource management practices toward promoting a culture of greening in the organization. The importance of developing and measuring EP targets for industry leadership is also emphasized.

The originality of the study lies in classifying and understanding GOC in terms of three dimensions, that is, degree, diffusion and depth, following the model proposed by Harris and Crane (2002). The three dimensions help in assessing the current level of GOC. This assessment promotes the judicious application of resources by the organization and adopts green practices to foster the organizational EP.

This study sought to determine the role of green human resource management (GHRM) in fostering employees' environmental performance (ENVP). This study aims to advance knowledge related to the role of firms’ GHRM activities in cultivating eco-responsible behaviors among employees, considering green innovation (GI) as a mediator.

For this study, data of 579 respondents were collected from employees working in the manufacturing industry in India. In all, 579 employees from the manufacturing sector in India participated in the study. The proposed model was tested using SMART PLS 3.3.

The findings of this study stated that GHRM was found significantly to predict ENVP in the Indian manufacturing industry, and GI exhibited partial mediation. This study emphasizes that GHRM activities carried out by firms encourage employees to engage in innovation to develop green products and find novel green operation processes to improve firms’ ENVP.

As this study is limited to manufacturing organizations in India, the results of this study cannot be generalized; future studies may examine the proposed model in different contexts to generalize findings.

This study encourages policymakers to devise laws to enable organizations to implement GHRM practices. This study contributes to the existing literature on the environmental aspects of corporate social responsibility and environmental management. This study is one of the few attempts that seek to assess the relationship between GHRM, ENVP and GI in the Indian manufacturing industry. The contribution of this paper is significant to limit GHRM literature, as it empirically investigates the association between GHRM and ENVP.

Problem-solving” is the most crucial key insight of scientific research. This study focuses on constructing the “problem-solving” knowledge graph of scientific domains by extracting four entity relation types: problem-solving, problem hierarchy, solution hierarchy and association.

This paper presents a low-cost method for identifying these relationships in scientific papers based on word analogy. The problem-solving and hierarchical relations are represented as offset vectors of the head and tail entities and then classified by referencing a small set of predefined entity relations.

This paper presents an experiment with artificial intelligence papers from the Web of Science and achieved good performance. The F1 scores of entity relation types problem hierarchy, problem-solving and solution hierarchy, which were 0.823, 0.815 and 0.748, respectively. This paper used computer vision as an example to demonstrate the application of the extracted relations in constructing domain knowledge graphs and revealing historical research trends.

This paper uses an approach that is highly efficient and has a good generalization ability. Instead of relying on a large-scale manually annotated corpus, it only requires a small set of entity relations that can be easily extracted from external knowledge resources.

This study aims to investigate the role of team problem-solving creativity in new product development (NPD) in the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) in business-to-business firms. This study synthesizes perspectives from NPD, creativity and leadership to examine how work-related factors such as NPD managers’ role ambiguity and individual-related factors such as CEO’s ambidextrous leadership style interact to determine team problem-solving creativity and its effect on new product performance (NPP).

The hypotheses are tested using data from a multi-informant survey of 274 middle-level managers within 137 local BoP manufacturing firms in a sub-Saharan African country.

The results show that an NPD team’s ability to solve problems creatively determines NPP in BoP markets. The findings also show that NPD managers’ role ambiguity has a negative effect on team problem-solving creativity. However, a CEO’s ambidextrous leadership neutralizes the negative impact of role ambiguity on problem-solving creativity.

This study combines three distinct streams of literature, including NPD, creativity and leadership, to explore the antecedents and outcomes of problem-solving creativity. Drawing on creativity and leadership theories, this study reports that the success of creative idea exchanges depends heavily on a supportive environment for NPD team members and minimizing the NPD manager’s role ambiguity.

We investigated the relationship between personality and managerial assessment center (AC) dimensions, emphasizing age’s moderating role within volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity (VUCA) simulations.

We analyzed 327 managers and applied the AC method, examining areas like social skills, problem-solving, management and goal striving, openness to change, employee development using the VUCA framework.

We assessed personality metatraits through a questionnaire based on the circumplex model (CPM; Strus, Cieciuch, & Rowinski, 2014), identifying four bipolar metatraits. Results highlighted passiveness and disharmony as negatively correlated with all managerial AC dimensions, with passiveness adversely affecting social skills and problem-solving.

Age’s moderating role emerged as pivotal in the relationship between personality and managerial AC dimensions, especially in specific VUCA contexts. This underscores age’s influence on the interplay between personality and managerial efficacy, suggesting varying predictive capabilities across age groups. The research illuminates the complexities of these relationships, spotlighting age’s nuanced impact.