Search results

Access to high-quality data is a challenge for humanitarian logistics researchers. However, humanitarian organizations publish large quantities of documents for various stakeholders. Researchers can use these as secondary data, but interpreting big volumes of text is time consuming. The purpose of this paper is to present an automated quantitative content analysis (AQCA) approach that allows researchers to analyze such documents quickly and reliably.

Content analysis is a method to facilitate a systematic description of documents. This paper builds on an existing content analysis method, to which it adds automated steps for processing large quantities of documents. It also presents different measures for quantifying the content of documents.

The AQCA approach has been applied successfully in four papers. For example, it can identify the main theme in a document, categorize documents along different dimensions, or compare the use of a theme in different documents. This paper also identifies several limitations of content analysis in the field of humanitarian logistics research and suggests ways to mitigate them.

The AQCA approach does not provide an exhaustive qualitative analysis of documents. Instead, it aims to analyze documents quickly and reliably to extract the contents’ quantifiable aspects.

Although content analysis has been used in humanitarian logistics research before, no paper has yet proposed an automated, step-by-step approach that researchers can use. It also is the first study to discuss specific limitations of content analysis in the context of humanitarian logistics.

The purpose of the paper is to show that four plausible hypotheses can be formulated (positive linear, negative linear, convex curvilinear, and concave curvilinear) to explain the impact of democratization on the ability of police to produce security.

Multiple regression analyzing measures of police effectiveness from the Executive Opinion Survey (World Economic Forum) and indicators of democratization (Freedom House) for 59 countries was performed to evaluate the four hypotheses.

Results strongly supported the convex curvilinear hypothesis that democracy and police effectiveness maintained a U‐shape association. Undemocratic countries and the advanced democracies experienced the highest levels of police effectiveness, whereas middle‐range countries showed lower ratings of police performance.

Despite initial discontents with the police, emerging democracies could expect improved police effectiveness should they persist in the path of democratic consolidation, which strengthens law enforcement institutions in the long run. The use of cross‐sectional data on business analysts' perceptions precluded causal inferences and restricted the generalizability of the findings. Hypotheses should be tested with longitudinal data from more representative samples in future research.

Most comparative studies of police are qualitative and most quantitative police research focuses on single societies. This cross‐national quantitative comparison of policing analyzed the complex issue of police effectiveness and concluded that sustained global democratization portends transnational convergence in more effective policing.

The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

Narrative criminology has continued to expand as an important theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of crime and justice. However, the vast majority of narrative work focuses on the narrative development of those identified as criminal offenders, and little research has explored the narratives of those employed within the criminal justice system. This chapter examines the importance of police storytelling and the unique narratives vital to the cultural life and institution of policing. Police stories are an important part of the ‘meaning-making structure’ in policing and often convey particular power well beyond the limitations of formal organizational or agency policy. Police stories frequently influence understandings of the nature of social problems; community change and decay; and even understandings of race, class, and gender. Police narratives and stories also offer some unique methodological challenges for narrative scholars. Analysis of police stories must focus on the underlying plot details while still analysing the themes or metaphors provided by the narrative. This may require specific attention to the role the story plays in police culture, training, and development of organizational cohesion. Furthermore, narrative researchers must explore the shared narratives distinctive to the profession, while still examining unique meanings that stories convey to different departments and even specialized units. Finally, access to police organizations and individual officers can represent unique challenge for narrative researchers. By examining police narratives, we gain unique insight into the production and maintenance of police authority and culture accomplished through the storytelling process.

A system dynamics (SD)-based methodology is described for analysing the impact of lean manufacturing strategies on a company's business performance, using business model canvas (BMC) perspective.

A case study approach is used to describe the methodology which consists of conceptualising a SD model on the basis of BMC. The base SD model is elaborated to include variables and concepts that consider the effects of lean manufacturing metrics on business performance. In the modelling experimentation, the lean manufacturing metrics are made to take on likely values one would expect if certain lean practices are initiated or improved. The experimental results provide one with the likely impact on business performance, if one were to improve lean manufacturing practices.

The simulation results for the case study show that lean improvements, on the short-run, have a significant impact on business performance, but in the long run, the impact is only marginal.

The described methodology provides one with a structured format for investigating the impact of lean practices on business performance. Although the developed SD model was built with generality in mind, it remains to be reproduced in other settings to test its replicability.

The methodology enables an organisation target which lean improvements to initiate based on their strategic impact on the business.

Limited studies exist where SD and business models are combined to test the strategic impact of lean manufacturing.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the extant literature of humanitarian supply chain management (HSCM) which specifically use dynamic capabilities (DCs) view. By this means, the objectives of this study are to identify and assess the DCs used in the HSCM context, the factors positively and negatively affecting the DCs and how the DCs affect humanitarian supply chain (HSC) operations. Furthermore, this research aims to give directions for future research in the field of HSCM.

This study adopts systematic literature review (SLR) approach proposed by Denyer and Tranfield (2009). Based on a SLR, this study synthesizes and compares the evidence, has a specific focus and research questions, has certain inclusion and exclusion criteria and provides evidence-based implications to the researchers and practitioners. This is a method which is replicable, transparent and auditable. The SLR methodology provides scholars and practitioners a basis for comprehending the current situation of relevant topic and taking correct steps in their future actions.

This SLR deduces that applying DCs view is still in its infancy in the HSCM literature. The result of this SLR reveals that supply chain agility (SCA), supply chain resilience (SCR), reconfiguration/transformation, integration, (short-term) collaboration, sustaining, sensing, seizing and knowledge access DCs have been used in the HSCM literature. In addition, it is determined that only one paper analyzed the influence of DCs on predisaster performance while rest of the papers focused on the postdisaster performance.

The result of the exhaustive literature search indicates that this is the first SLR that specifically analyzes the application of DCs view in the HSCM domain. This investigation determined the DCs used in HSCM and revealed the relations between the dependent and independent variables through the comprehensive model. In this way, this review provides a guidance to researchers in conduct their future investigations and practitioners to carry out supply chain (SC) operations by considering the factors affecting their operations.

It appears as if a gap exists between objective environmental conditions and the respective managerial perception of those conditions. This situation poses severe problems for executives deriving effective strategies and initiating successful organizational change. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop and provide a deeper understanding of the factors that lead to such a gap.

On the basis of the literature from psychology and strategic management, this paper develops a conceptual framework of the cognitive model with the perception process and potentially moderating factors. Furthermore, more precise mechanisms and relationships within the perception of environmental conditions are proposed.

The perception process consists of three stages, attention, encoding and storage/retrieval, which all may explain variations in how individuals interpret the environment. Moreover, dispositional factors (such as cognitive styles, cognitive structures, intelligence and motivation) as well as situational factors (such as emotion and stress) further cause variations between and within individuals, which ultimately leads to a gap between objective and perceived environmental conditions.

This study not only highlights the existence and the severe consequence of a misperception of environmental conditions, but also offers a variety of factors that could lead to this undesirable effect. Furthermore, while previous research has typically focused on single factors that might influence the perception process, this study assumes a holistic view on the cognitive model and provides more detailed and specific mechanisms on a perceptual gap.

The purpose of this paper is to extend the concept of agility in humanitarian logistics beyond emergency operations. Since the humanitarian logistics literature focuses primarily on emergencies and sees longer term and regular operations as being conducted in relatively stable and predictable environments, agile practices are usually not associated with humanitarian protracted operations. Therefore, this paper explores the logistics and supply chain environment in such operations in order to identify their basic features and determine if agility is an important requirement.

Using a case study of the United Nations World Food Programme, the authors collected and analysed qualitative and quantitative data on the characteristics of protracted operations, the risks and uncertainties most frequently encountered, their impact, and the ways that field logisticians manage contingencies.

The research demonstrates that unpredictability and disruptions exist in protracted operations. Therefore, short-term operational adjustments and agile practices are needed in order to support the continuity of humanitarian deliveries.

Future research should focus on a wider range of humanitarian organisations and move from a descriptive to a prescriptive approach in order to inform practice. Notwithstanding these limitations, the study highlights the need for academics to broaden the scope of their research beyond emergencies and to address the specific needs of humanitarian organisations involved in longer term operations.

This paper is the first empirical research focusing exclusively on the logistics features of humanitarian protracted operations. It provides a more concrete and complete understanding of these operations.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the employee well-being of police officers in different investigative groups. This paper analyses crime investigators’ employee well-being from four perspectives: organisational commitment, job satisfaction, exhaustion and turnover intentions.

The analysis is based on Finnish Police Personal Survey data (n=6,698), and qualitative and quantitative analysis methods are utilised.

Significant differences between investigative groups were found, and the police officers working in short-term investigations had the lowest level of well-being. The qualitative results revealed the employee- and organisational-level reasons behind these attitudes. One major issue is the lack of meaningfulness in work as the respondents describe their jobs as boring and monotonous and report that they do not have the appropriate resources to do their work as well as they wish.

To enhance the well-being of the investigators, police forces should improve the ways of leadership and invest more resources especially on short-term investigation to diminish the insecurity and ensure the quality and continuity of the work.

Research on the well-being of police officers has mostly focused on officers conducting surveillance or emergency operations, and there is very little knowledge of the well-being of crime investigators. This research adds to the limited knowledge on employee well-being of crime investigators.