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1 – 10 of over 75000Lena Hallin‐Pihlatie, Jaana Rintala and Henning Sten Hansen
The objective of this paper is to describe an easily understandable integrated modelling framework for analysing the combined effects of changes in land‐use and climate on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this paper is to describe an easily understandable integrated modelling framework for analysing the combined effects of changes in land‐use and climate on the leaching of phosphorus using regional IPCC‐based land‐use and climate scenarios. In addition, the paper reflects on the added value of a geospatial data‐based modelling approach from a river basin management perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
Regional land‐use scenarios were simulated for the whole official river basin planning unit of the Oulujoki‐Iijoki River Basin District using a land‐use simulation model. The nutrient leaching modelling on phosphorus was carried out in another raster‐based freeware for a smaller sub‐basin, Temmesjoki river basin.
Findings
Regional land use scenarios could be simulated taking into account the local conditions, such as the vicinity to water, and development options in agriculture on regional scale. The magnitude and leaching pattern of phosphorus in the future is related to the overall share of agricultural land on drainage basin level. The authors’ results also indicate that the local spatial structure of built‐up and agricultural areas may play a central role in nutrient leaching assessment. If the spatial structure is of importance, this may have further implications for the environmental planners working with river basin management.
Originality/value
This research takes a step further in bringing the global scenario framework to the local and practical level for various practical purposes in river basin management. The research provides an approach to spatially identify the possible impact of changes in land‐use and in climatic conditions on nutrient leaching.
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This paper aims to examine the design and use of scenarios in planning and management control processes.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the design and use of scenarios in planning and management control processes.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on an exploratory case-study approach. Qualitative data have been collected between 2008 and 2011 from three energy companies operating in Italy.
Findings
The paper sheds light on three styles of designing and using scenarios. In the first (called “reactive”), scenarios provide a means for corporate actors to analyse past performance in the light of future expected performance. In the second (“proactive”), scenarios contribute to envision different future states of the world. In the third (“disciplined”), scenarios contribute to develop plausible, if not accurate, narratives about future outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
The study is comparative and exploratory. Possible areas for further work based on in-depth studies of scenarios within planning and control processes are identified.
Practical implications
The comparative analysis of the case-study material has implications for the ways in which flexible forms of management control can be mobilised by managers as a resource of action. It is shown that choices around the design and use of scenarios can mitigate some concerns with traditional planning and management control processes focused on the achievement of a single set of targets, but also raise new ones.
Originality/value
The paper sheds light on a scenario-based approach – called “disciplined flexibility” – that avoids the restrictive nature of budgetary controls without losing the benefits of setting a plan and a target for the future. The paper outlines elements that may support the use of “disciplined flexibility”, but also its potential limitations.
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Andrew Curry, Gill Ringland and Laurie Young
The paper explains how scenarios can be used to create alternative models of markets in way that is useful to marketing managers and the product development team.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper explains how scenarios can be used to create alternative models of markets in way that is useful to marketing managers and the product development team.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper outlines the how‐to process for developing and using marketing scenarios.
Findings
The paper finds that marketing scenarios can help leaders improve their understanding of future customer behavior; be used with focus groups to test reactions to different products in varying future contexts; be translated into physical environments that help focus groups to “live” in the future; be useful in developing brand strategy and in testing the sustainability of brands; uncover a wider range of choices than those perceived by competitors, facilitating customer preference and longer‐term relationships and explore uncertainty and can help to anticipate new value propositions.
Practical implications
One of the benefits of shorter‐term scenarios is that rather than pointing marketers towards a range of alternative possible industry futures, they are more likely to steer them towards a range of developing market opportunities. Several of the scenarios are likely to play out at the same time in different parts of the market. This means they can help marketers to identify both the sectors where their offering can be competitive and the sectors where it will flounder.
Originality/value
The paper presents several advantages of using marketing analysis tools to analyze a number of potential futures: for example, to gain a perspective beyond the current ones (timeframe, markets, organizational); and also to provide a framework for a discussion of priorities and assumptions that have all ready been made in the organization's “official future.”
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Corporate and institutional managers don’t get the full return on investment in scenarios that they should, nor do they employ scenarios on the full range of corporate issues…
Abstract
Corporate and institutional managers don’t get the full return on investment in scenarios that they should, nor do they employ scenarios on the full range of corporate issues suited to this methodology. Most often, scenarios are used by top management to provide a better understanding of the range of possible business environments they must contend with in the future. But mid‐level managers often grumble that these big picture “strategic scenarios” don’t address the competitive issues and the critical decisions that they face in the trenches of their business. To achieve more consistently productive uses of scenarios, there are several major challenges that must be addressed for the future of the scenario method: resolve the confusion over the definitions and methods of scenarios; and clarify and enlarge the appropriate application of scenarios. Beyond the confusion caused by the different definitions and methods of scenarios lies the uncertainty about when and how to apply scenarios in the business environment. In addition to planning and forecasting, scenarios can be used for market research and new product development. A major debate revolves around whether or not scenarios have successfully developed into a tool for investment and company decision‐making. One view has been that scenarios provide context, but not direct inputs for such decisions (R&D priorities, new products, and financial investments). This approach emphasizes the role of scenarios in team building, information gathering, learning, and strategic thinking. It advocates using scenarios primarily as a tool for corporate learning and for changing corporate culture. Another view, however, holds that scenarios can and should be used for near‐term business decision‐making. Scenarios need to be applied to the numerous operational issues that companies face. As such, they are a key method of analysis, especially for highly uncertain circumstances.
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When an organization needs to use scenarios as a framework for logically discussing internal and external issues, it should be aware of the two predominant causes of failure of…
Abstract
When an organization needs to use scenarios as a framework for logically discussing internal and external issues, it should be aware of the two predominant causes of failure of scenario projects: (1) a lack of agreement on the purpose of the effort; and (2) a lack of understanding about how scenarios might help different organizational cultures and styles. To avoid these pitfalls, leaders need to first assess the potential usefulness of scenarios using the culture of their organization and the goals of the effort as context. This article discusses three organizational cultures and illustrates how each uses scenario planning for three different purposes (directional strategy, contingency planning, and learning and team building). “Leader‐driven organizations”: if the purpose of scenario planning is for setting direction, then scenarios are used to structure debate; however, in the end, the leader decides the direction and everyone follows, leaving the debate behind. If the purpose of the scenario work is for contingency planning, then scenarios would primarily be used to sensitize the leadership group to possible changes; not decision making on a specific topic. When learning and team building, then the leader driven culture use scenarios to open up the idea space in search of the out‐of‐the‐box ideas. Ideally, leaders make scenarios a way for people to work new ideas into the planning and decision‐making system. “Plan‐driven cultures”: such companies value stability. If the scenario work is for setting direction, then the outcome will only be valued if the events leading to an endstate are treated as critical path lists. “Evidence‐driven cultures”: develop in highly capital‐intensive industries that have long time horizons. Because long‐term commitments cannot be changed quickly, real evidence is of paramount value to these cultures. Scenarios provide a framework of expectations to match up with the real world as it develops.
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Obinna Chimezie Madubuike, Chinemelu J. Anumba and Evangelia Agapaki
This paper aims to focus on identifying key health-care issues amenable to digital twin (DT) approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to focus on identifying key health-care issues amenable to digital twin (DT) approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a DT and then discusses potential applications of DT solutions in healthcare facilities management (FM) using four different scenarios. The scenario planning focused on monitoring and controlling the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system in real-time; monitoring indoor air quality (IAQ) to monitor the performance of medical equipment; monitoring and tracking pulsed light for SARS-Cov-2; and monitoring the performance of medical equipment affected by radio frequency interference (RFI).
Design/methodology/approach
The importance of a healthcare facility, its systems and equipment necessitates an effective FM practice. However, the FM practices adopted have several areas for improvement, including the lack of effective real-time updates on performance status, asset tracking, bi-directional coordination of changes in the physical facilities and the computational resources that support and monitor them. Consequently, there is a need for more intelligent and holistic FM systems. We propose a DT which possesses the key features, such as real-time updates and bi-directional coordination, which can address the shortcomings in healthcare FM. DT represents a virtual model of a physical component and replicates the physical data and behavior in all instances. The replication is attained using sensors to obtain data from the physical component and replicating the physical component's behavior through data analysis and simulation. This paper focused on identifying key healthcare issues amenable to DT approach. It starts with a description of the concept and enabling technologies of a DT and then discusses potential applications of DT solutions in healthcare FM using four different scenarios.
Findings
The scenarios were validated by industry experts and concluded that the scenarios offer significant potential benefits for the deployment of DT in healthcare FM such as monitoring facilities’ performance in real-time and improving visualization by integrating the 3D model.
Research limitations/implications
In addition to inadequate literature addressing healthcare FM, the study was also limited to one of the healthcare facilities of a large public university, and the scope of the study was limited to IAQ including pressure, relative humidity, carbon dioxide and temperature. Additionally, the study showed the potential benefits of DT application in healthcare FM using various scenarios that DT experts validated.
Practical implications
The study shows the practical implication using the various validated scenarios and identified enabling technologies. The combination and implementation of those mentioned above would create a system that can effectively help manage facilities and improve facilities' performances.
Social implications
The only identifiable social solution is that the proposed system in this study can manually be overridden to prevent absolute autonomous control of the smart system in cases when needed.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that has addressed healthcare FM using the DT approach. This research is an excerpt from an ongoing dissertation.
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The purpose of the paper is to report on a novel approach to assessing long‐term policy and technology impacts. This approach combines a qualitative forecast with a tri‐level…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to report on a novel approach to assessing long‐term policy and technology impacts. This approach combines a qualitative forecast with a tri‐level quantitative projection to provide a broadly socio‐economic analysis. It is aimed at forecasting problems, such as impact assessment for future policy formulation in the light of socio‐economic, technological and market developments.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a variety of research methods including scenario planning, and techniques taken from analysis of stochastic processes to identify and correlate behaviour, combined with the concepts meso‐economics, in order to produce more robust tri‐level quantitative estimations, driven by qualitative analysis.
Findings
The paper finds that it is possible to join micro‐economic behaviour to macro‐economic, using meso‐economics to attack what was previously seen as a difficult gap between the two. It also finds that quantitative forecasting, based on socio‐economic behaviour using the qualitative assessment from a scenario – i.e. from stories about the future – can form a basis for quantitative forecasting. Different scenarios may be linked to corresponding quantitative economic estimations using key indicator parameters at each economic level, those which are the most relevant to the scenarios, and so exploit statistical techniques across the three levels in a balanced fashion.
Originality/value
This paper summarises a novel approach, taking a fresh look at forecasting economic impacts assessments by shaping the quantitative form with a qualitative tool, while introducing the linking powers of meso‐economics. General economic theories in widespread use today seem to be weak when dealing with the non‐deterministic nature of real markets and economies and especially in linking micro‐economic parameters to macro‐economic. The approach attempts to resolve this dilemma. An example is presented of its use in a recent study.
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Knut R. Fossum, Wenche Aarseth and Bjorn Andersen
The purpose of this paper is to explore scenario development (SD) as a method for engaging known challenges in collaborative research projects, i.e. SD is the construct under…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore scenario development (SD) as a method for engaging known challenges in collaborative research projects, i.e. SD is the construct under investigation.
Design/methodology/approach
Criticism of the dominant, rational approach to project management (PM) and its underlying hypotheses highlights a considerable PM research gap for research projects (research problem). The authors undertake a six-step constructive research approach to investigate if SD (the construct) constitutes a fruitful method to support the management of collaborative research projects. A two-part literature review summarizes known challenges in collaborative research projects and introduces the history and application of SD methodology. The work includes participatory action research (PAR) in two case studies, constituting a qualitative research method.
Findings
The authors found the SD method to be useful for structuring and analyzing intuitive project processes. However, using SD in the management of single projects presents some fundamental challenges. SD, like PM, struggles with issues related to myopic decisions, a “predict and provide” attitude with clear aspects of path dependency in the project front-end as well as inconsistent and/or missing identification of success criteria among different stakeholders.
Research limitations/implications
This paper does not provide any comprehensive, normative account of scenario techniques or compare SD with other foresight and future studies methods. Although PAR is in itself a research method that demands systematic description and execution, the focus of this paper is the overall constructive research approach.
Practical implications
The paper offers a broadened repertoire of methods to describe and analyse project stakeholder situations (collaborative aspects) and to structure and balance the need for both rational and intuitive project processes (research aspects). The SD method also supports development of graphical storylines and facilitates the use of influence diagrams, event trees and cost/benefit analysis.
Originality/value
Although PM literature contains several references to SD, the practical application of SD at single-project level has, to the authors’ knowledge, never been described in the PM literature.
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Peter Bishop, Andy Hines and Terry Collins
The paper aims to review all the techniques for developing scenarios that have appeared in the literature, along with comments on their utility, strengths and weaknesses.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to review all the techniques for developing scenarios that have appeared in the literature, along with comments on their utility, strengths and weaknesses.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was carried out through an electronic search using internet search engines and online databases and indexes.
Findings
The paper finds eight categories of techniques that include a total of 23 variations used to develop scenarios. There are descriptions and evaluations for each.
Practical implications
Futurists can use this list to broaden their repertoire of scenario techniques.
Originality/value
Scenario development is the stock‐in‐trade of futures studies, but no catalog of the techniques used has yet been published. This list is the start at developing a consensus list of techniques that can be refined as the field matures.
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John C. Navarro and Michael A. Hansen
The purpose of this study is to explore the ideological gaps on police use of force.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to explore the ideological gaps on police use of force.
Design/methodology/approach
In a national-level survey distributed via Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (n = 979), the authors explore the role that respondents' political ideology plays in the approval of police use of force across a range of scenarios.
Findings
Across all scenarios, self-identified conservative respondents maintain strong approval of police use of force. In comparison, liberal respondents provide more variance in their views on approval of police use of force based on the scenario. The scenarios where there are small gaps in approval between the two ideologies are when reasonable force is used toward a violent threat.
Social implications
There are specific circumstances where the messaging surrounding use of force can create agreement (reasonable) or disagreement (excessive) among conservatives and liberals.
Originality/value
Conservatives and liberals demonstrate gaps across an even larger set of use of force scenarios.
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