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Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence and digitalization have got a momentum in health care. However, scholars and practitioners do not agree on their implications on health services' quality and effectiveness. The article aims at shedding light on the applications, aftermaths and drawbacks of industry 4.0 in health care, summarizing the state of the art.

A systematic literature review was undertaken. We arranged an ad hoc research design, which was tailored to the study purposes. Three citation databases were queried. We collected 1,194 scientific papers which were carefully considered for inclusion in this systematic literature review. After three rounds of analysis, 40 papers were taken into consideration.

Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence and digitalization are revolutionizing the design and the delivery of care. They are expected to enhance health services' quality and effectiveness, paving the way for more direct patient–provider relationships. In addition, they have been argued to allow a more appropriate use of available resources. There is a dark side of health care 4.0 involving both management and ethical issues.

Industry 4.0 in health care should not be conceived as a self-nourishing innovation; rather, it needs to be carefully steered at both the policy and management levels. On the one hand, comprehensive governance models are required to realize the full potential of health 4.0. On the other hand, the drawbacks of industry 4.0 should be timely recognized and thoroughly addressed.

The article contextualizes the state of the art of industry 4.0 in the health care context, providing some insights for further conceptual and empirical developments.

The primary objective of this paper is to show a systematic and methodological approach for the digitalization of critical clinical pathways (CPs) within the healthcare domain.

The methodology entails the integration of service design (SD) and action research (AR) methodologies, characterized by iterative phases that systematically alternate between action and reflective processes, fostering cycles of change and learning. Within this framework, stakeholders are engaged through semi-structured interviews, while the existing and envisioned processes are delineated and represented using BPMN 2.0. These methodological steps emphasize the development of an autonomous, patient-centric web application alongside the implementation of an adaptable and patient-oriented scheduling system. Also, business processes simulation is employed to measure key performance indicators of processes and test for potential improvements. This method is implemented in the context of the CP addressing transient loss of consciousness (TLOC), within a publicly funded hospital setting.

The methodology integrating SD and AR enables the detection of pivotal bottlenecks within diagnostic CPs and proposes optimal corrective measures to ensure uninterrupted patient care, all the while advancing the digitalization of diagnostic CP management. This study contributes to theoretical discussions by emphasizing the criticality of process optimization, the transformative potential of digitalization in healthcare and the paramount importance of user-centric design principles, and offers valuable insights into healthcare management implications.

The study’s relevance lies in its ability to enhance healthcare practices without necessitating disruptive and resource-intensive process overhauls. This pragmatic approach aligns with the imperative for healthcare organizations to improve their operations efficiently and cost-effectively, making the study’s findings relevant.

Healthcare supply chains (HCSCs) face severe challenges when compared to regular chains. Besides avoiding bankruptcy, they must accomplish their goal which is to save lives. Since 2019 the COVID-19 pandemic evidenced that a HCSC disruption generates disruptions to other SCs. Therefore, the objective of this paper is threefold: conduct a systematic literature review to build a HCSC operational excellence (HSCOE) definition; build a conceptual framework by mapping the antecedents of HSCOE and formulate hypotheses; test the hypotheses using a fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) combined with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) techniques to obtain empirical validation.

Given this context, this paper conducted a systematic literature review to build a HSCOE conceptual framework and used a fsQCA combined with PLS-SEM techniques to obtain empirical validation.

The paper revealed a relationship between important variables to achieve HSCOE, such as Supply chain 4.0, SC risk management, SC integration, SC resilience (antecedents) and HSCOE (consequent).

The literature contributions of this paper are as follows: validating a new scale for each of the constructs; finding evidence of the causal relationships between the latent variables; measuring how the constructs influence the HSCOE; in addition, the results address important literature gaps identified by researchers and serve as a guide to organizations that need to implement these practices. Furthermore, this study recommends that HCSC managers consider the implementation of robust initiatives concerning the latent variables presented in this work.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Knowledge Management (KM) and Intellectual Capital (IC) can increase the organizational performance of ambulatory healthcare providers and how such performance can be assessed.

Following the PRISMA guidelines, a structured review of peer-reviewed English-speaking articles up to 31^st December 2019 was conducted. A search of ACM Digital Library, Cochrane Library, DARE, EBSCOHost, Medline, ProQuest, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Web of Science produced 8,391 results. All studies that did not examine the impact of KM initiatives on organizational performance in an ambulatory healthcare provider setting were eliminated. The final sample of 31 studies was examined regarding the design of the KM initiatives as well as the performance concepts and indicators employed.

A range of KM tools and methods (Electronic Health Records, Clinical Decision Support, Health Information Technology, Training, Communities of Practice) have been shown to improve healthcare processes but evidence of an impact on outcomes remains mixed. Performance indicators focus on medical quality but rarely capture economic or social performance. Indicators have been adapted from the medical field, but do not adequately capture IC and KM-induced performance.

This review provides an overview of KM initiatives in ambulatory healthcare and assesses the associated performance metrics through an IC lens. Thereby, it enables further research on the interplay of IC, KM and performance in ambulatory care and points to several research gaps. It provides managers with guidance for designing KM initiatives in their organizations

The purpose of this paper is to show the existence results for adapted solutions of infinite horizon doubly reflected backward stochastic differential equations with jumps. These results are applied to get the existence of an optimal impulse control strategy for an infinite horizon impulse control problem.

The main methods used to achieve the objectives of this paper are the properties of the Snell envelope which reduce the problem of impulse control to the existence of a pair of right continuous left limited processes. Some numerical results are provided to show the main results.

In this paper, the authors found the existence of a couple of processes via the notion of doubly reflected backward stochastic differential equation to prove the existence of an optimal strategy which maximizes the expected profit of a firm in an infinite horizon problem with jumps.

In this paper, the authors found new tools in stochastic analysis. They extend to the infinite horizon case the results of doubly reflected backward stochastic differential equations with jumps. Then the authors prove the existence of processes using Envelope Snell to find an optimal strategy of our control problem.

In this paper, we explore the technical challenges to automatically generate computer‐aided design models of existing vehicle parts using laser range imaging techniques. We propose a complete system that integrates data acquisition and model reconstruction. We discuss methods to resolve the occlusion problem and the associated registration problem. We also present our reconstruction algorithm. This range image‐based, computer‐aided reverse engineering system has a potential for faster model reconstruction over traditional reverse engineering technologies. Finally, we present results derived from the system.

To evaluate the effect of synthesised calixarenes as new inhibitors on the corrosion of steel in HCl media at various temperatures.

Calixarenes have been synthesised and tested as corrosion inhibitors. Gravimetric technique and potentiodynamic polarisation and impedance spectroscopy methods were used.

Calixarenes exhibited a good inhibition. Their efficiency decreases slightly with temperature.

It was found that the inhibition efficiency increases with the concentration of inhibitors to reach 92 per cent at 10⁻⁴M.

The efficiency of calixarene derivatives increases with the concentration and falls slowly with temperature to attain 84 per cent at 353 K range. Calixarenes can be used in chemical cleaning and pickling processes.

The originality of this work is to find an inhibitor to give protection close to 100 per cent.

Culture is considered as one of the variables that influence the total quality management (TQM) adoption process. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between cultural dimensions and the strategy of the firms in TQM implementation. These relationships are the subject of prior research. Furthermore, the authors make a comparative analysis of cultural dimensions on strategic choices of the firms, i.e. innovators, prospectors and defenders in TQM implementation.

From the existing literature review on TQM practices and organizational culture, 14 cultural dimensions were employed with organizational strategy in this present study. By using survey data collection method, 111 Indian firms were selected. The authors considered three strategy parameters and six structural attributes to identify the strategy of the firms, namely innovators, prospectors and defenders identified using cluster analysis. Furthermore, the relationship between organizational culture and strategy was examined using one-way ANOVA approach.

The results of the study revealed that eleven of the fourteen hypotheses supported which relating the cultural dimensions to TQM implementation with the strategic orientation. With the help of significant related values of cultural dimensions to the particular strategic firms, it is also found that implementation of TQM is easy or not. Some of the organizations with a particular strategic orientation will be able to implement TQM easily and successfully but some organizations will have difficulty to implement it successfully.

The firms hold their importance with respect to the different strategic orientation toward the various aspects of organizational cultures and TQM approaches in its implementation. Managerially, due to increased business competitiveness and economic pressures, top management sees the way in adopting TQM practices to achieve a competitive advantage. Apparently, it is evident that matching of TQM practices for a different strategy of the firms with various cultural dimensions leads to the smooth functioning of the organization. This study helps to the current organizations in implementing TQM with their respective culture.

This research can be useful for three strategic firms, namely innovators, prospectors and defenders to achieve effective implementation of TQM practices with consideration and understanding of the advantage of each culture dimension. The framework of the current study represents the effectiveness in assessing the TQM practices in individual cultural dimensions and its significant role.

The importance of e-literacy of staff in the digital life is fundamentally very crucial, to such an extent that it is considered as one of the primary conditions for successful utilization of knowledge management processes using social technologies within organizations. This study aims to explain and test a novel conceptual model to show the impact of applying social technologies on knowledge management (KM) processes in the context of Iranian organizations, considering the moderator role of e-literacy of employees.

Based on an in-depth study of the relevant literature, a questionnaire was designed. The sound questionnaires obtained from our sample size was 207 and respondents were experts in the field of information technology (IT) within the Central Office of Insurance companies in Tehran. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and path analysis.

The results indicate that the use of social technologies with the factor loading of 0.57 has the highest impact on knowledge exchange and 0.61 on knowledge utilization. In addition, the results indicate that e-literacy with the factor loadings of 0.69 and 0.74 has the highest impact on knowledge exchange and knowledge utilization, respectively. In addition, the impact of social technologies with the factor loading of 0.82 has the highest impact on e-literacy.

One of the limitations of this study was the generalizability of the findings, which may be limited, as it is focused on one developing country. Also, the lack of full implementation of KM and the use of social technologies in the insurance industry may affect the obtained results.

To the best knowledge of the authors, this study is among the first of its kind which examines the impact of social technologies usage on the KM processes considering an important variable, i.e. e-literacy of employees.

Gossip spreads like wildfire, damaging relationships, decaying trust and creating a negative work environment. This study aims to investigate the relationship between negative workplace gossip (NWG) and quiet quitting (QQ), while considering the mediating effects of workplace stress and emotional exhaustion (EE).

Drawing upon the conservation of resource theory, the study aimed to comprehend this association in the context of 267 employees from diverse sectors in India, including health care, IT, banking and education. Through a three-wave time lagged survey design, using partial least squares structural equation modeling, significant findings were uncovered.

The results revealed a positive link between NWG and QQ. There was also a positive correlation between NWG and workplace stress. In addition, workplace stress and EE were found to mediate the relationship between NWG and QQ.

The findings have implications for both theory and practice. Organizations should consider implementing strategies to mitigate the prevalence of negative gossip and foster a healthier work environment, promoting employee well-being and retention.

The study reveals the “black box” between NWG and QQ, adding to the body of knowledge on the novel concept of QQ. Second, the study expands the literature on NWG, by examining impact path of how it leads to stress and EE, leading to QQ.