Search results

Social, physical and temporal characteristics are known to influence the eating experience and the effectiveness of nutritional policies. As the school meal service features prominently in UK nutritional and health promotion policy, the paper's aim is to investigate the characteristics of the primary school dining context and their implications for eating behaviours.

A case study of one local authority in Wales was conducted involving 11 primary schools stratified into socio‐economic quartiles. Focussed observations were carried out over two to three lunchtimes per school to explore their social, physical and temporal characteristics. These were supplemented by semi‐structured interviews with catering staff and midday supervisors.

The dining halls had numerous generic attributes (e.g. accommodation, equipment, length of lunchtime, social actors). These interacted to have a direct, but not necessarily positive, bearing on food choice and consumption. Overcrowded, multi‐purpose dining halls coupled with time pressures and dynamic social situations detracted from the eating experience and the ability of staff to encourage children to eat.

Without addressing these underlying issues, school nutritional policy may only play a limited role in influencing what children eat. It is recommended that policy places a greater emphasis on factors such as the eating environment; the time available for eating; and the role of the midday supervisor.

Previous studies of dining halls have generally been part of process evaluations of nutritional interventions. This study adds value by conducting a focussed investigation into the relationship between the dining hall environment and eating behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the implementation of the Welsh Network of Healthy School Schemes (WNHSS) at national, local and school levels, using a systems approach drawing on the Ottawa Charter.

The approach takes the form of a single‐case study using data from a documentary analysis, interviews with Healthy Schools Co‐ordinators (n=23) and stakeholder (n∼93) discussion of interim findings at three regional workshops.

There was almost universal adherence to a national framework based on Ottawa Charter principles. Substantial progress had been made with advocacy and mediation, although the framework provided less specific guidance regarding enablement. All‐Wales training for co‐ordinators, the commitment of co‐ordinators to working across administrative and professional boundaries, and support from local education and health partnerships, were important determinants of healthy school schemes' growth and efficiency. Primary schools were more successful than secondary schools in embedding health‐related changes.

Although findings are largely based on indirect evidence, the use of a social‐ecological model of evaluation provided valuable insights into implementation processes at multiple levels. Findings suggest that strong national support benefits programme development and dissemination and should include effective monitoring of local performance. The national strategic environment was influential at all levels of programme implementation. Priorities for further research include application of the social‐ecological model and organisational theory to investigate indicators of sustainability and influences on inequalities in health in school health promotion programmes.

The review illustrates the importance of evaluating health promotion programmes at multiple levels using a systems approach.

The Rock Challenge is a school‐based performing arts programme that that aims to promote healthy lifestyles amongst secondary school students. This paper reports on teacher perspectives on the implementation of The Rock Challenge in nine English schools. This study highlights how performing arts programmes, such as The Rock Challenge, are unlikely to have a simple relationship between guidance and practice in spite of their being popular and sustainable.

Despite the advantages that the VoFI approach offers compared with traditional capital budgeting methods, its application for the appraisal of information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) investments in both research and practice is not widespread to date. Given the static nature of the generic VoFI table, the method reaches its limits in its financial plan form because it is unable to investigate the dynamic behaviour of complex investment calculations. To date, there has been no attempt to address these shortcomings to advance the use of VoFI as a useful and valid capital budgeting method in finance and accounting. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to address this research gap and aim at developing a ‘dynamic’ VoFI model that integrates all input variables and target measures of a VoFI table and visualises the causal relationships among these variables.

The ‘dynamic’ VoFI model is developed through System Dynamics (SD) modelling to enhance the strength of the VoFI concept as an instrument for visualising the financial implications of investments in IT and IS at the corporate level. Case study research is used as a research method to study the behaviour of the developed model. The validity of the model is demonstrated by conducting simulation runs in Vensim software. In addition, probabilistic sensitivity analyses are performed to account for the impact of uncertainty on the main model variables.

The results demonstrate the usefulness of SD modelling for extending the generic VoFI concept by integrating risk analyses and providing a new strategy of data analysis and data presentation different from the typical financial plan form. Furthermore, the dynamic VoFI model enables the visualisation of interdependencies among the various variables incorporated in the VoFI financial plan, which significantly enhances the conceptual understanding of the investment and its financial consequences.

The integration of the VoFI concept into an SD model helps researchers and practitioners to enhance their conceptual understanding of this method. This thus increases its acceptance and popularity as a practical capital budgeting method, especially for the financial assessment of IT and IS investments. The VoFI model proposed in this paper should also enable analysts and decision makers to become more conscious of the interdependencies between the assumptions made for an appraisal and the quantitative results.

This chapter discusses a new understanding of how leadership is performed and internalized, from which a sustainable model of supporting and promoting educational leadership at the institutional level can be developed. It focuses on what is actually happening in an institution to capture “leadership” in an English higher education institution (HEI). It considers leadership in the context of a continuous professional development route for Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) at a Post-1960 English HEI. HEA Fellowship and the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) are increasingly used within British HEIs to support the professional formation of university teachers. The SFHEA is an internationally recognized accreditation for experienced university staff (academics/support/administrative) able to provide evidence of a sustained record of effectiveness in their practice, incorporating leadership of specific aspects of teaching and learning provision. Participants are evaluated against the criteria and dimensions of practice set by the UKPSF (UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education), which identifies the areas of competence that need to be demonstrated to achieve Descriptor 3, Senior Fellow. In the UK, it is increasingly the case that HE teacher development programs for new and experienced staff are accredited by the HEA against the UKPSF (Land & Gordon, 2015). There is a dearth of literature on program leadership and sustainable leadership in higher education. This chapter is, therefore, particularly timely and suggests that continuing professional development programs “model” good practice, which participants transfer to their own teaching.

This paper sets out to examine the conditions of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations on the basis of research conducted among practitioners dealing with ERP projects.

This paper builds on the research conducted among a few dozen practitioners dealing with ERP projects. The queried respondents include both ERP adopters and experts representing system suppliers. The study discusses how the researched projects were linked with enterprise strategy, how their efficiency was measured and to what extent they defined implementation goals. The analysis takes into consideration various types of projects and success levels achieved.

The results show that adopters experience different conditions depending on the project type. The findings suggest that practitioners should be more focused on the business benefits. The outcome shows that implementers from very complicated projects are more aware of the overwhelming challenge at large, while, on the other hand, the relatively simpler projects seem to be underestimated.

This study suggests that ERP researchers should take into account the particular type of project being studied. Further research can develop a methodology by which implementation projects can be evaluated. This methodology could cover a broader range of conditions.

Illustrating the conditions of real ERP projects, this study gives insight into the actual problems experienced by the ERP adopters. Drawing on these results, the practitioners may better anticipate possible problems and assess potential threats in their projects.

This paper investigates the conditions that surround the different projects and how they relate to successful performance. These findings will then in turn shed light on the mechanisms that determine the results of ERP.

Identifying the benefits arising from implementations of enterprise systems and realizing business value remains a significant challenge for both research and industry. This paper aims to consolidate previous work. It presents a framework for investigating enterprise systems benefits and business change, which addresses the identified limitations of previous research and provides a more detailed analysis of benefits and their contextual variation.

Drawing on data gathered from 31 real‐world organizations (case studies) of differing size, maturity, and industry sector, the study adopts an iterative content analysis to empirically derive a comprehensive benefits framework.

The content analysis provides a detailed classification of expectations and benefits, which is described in a four‐level framework. The four levels (areas) are further subdivided into aspects and criteria plus an attributed appraisal value. The resulting scheme for the “three‐level benefit codes” provides a greater level of detail about the nature of expected and realized benefits.

The high level of detail and the code scheme comprising 60 different codes and the method for deriving the codes allows companies to identify and define benefits as well as to assess the outcome of enterprise systems implementation projects.

The paper empirically develops an applicable benefits framework, which addresses the lack of detail of previous frameworks.

This paper aims to revisit the adoption reasons of enterprise systems (ES) and supply chain management systems (SCMS) and to explore the new dimensions of sustainability required to be added in the whole process of adoption of these systems. Moreover, it aims to explore the benefits of ES to organizations and to relate these benefits to the ES adoption in future sustainable city settings. Future cities will have micro-industries requiring dynamic interactions and will be dependent on efficient supply chains. The recent developments in information and communications technology (ICT) such as cloud computing through its dynamic, on-demand and service-based delivery are making it possible to achieve those goals for supply chains. The ES in general and more specifically SCMS have integrated organizations into one seamless mesh.

This paper presents a framework for adoption of sustainable ES in a smart city setting. The framework, firstly, is presented at a macro-level, particularly incorporating the relative significance of motivational factors for sustainable ES adoption. Subsequently, The authors study the benefits of ES as perceived by large and small and medium enterprise (SME) organizations using 100 case studies and discuss how these benefits can be realized for smart cities by projecting the ES benefits onto the proposed framework. The benefits are estimated with the Shang and Seddon’s (2002) framework.

The adoption of ES initiated with environmental factors and mediated with business and technical factors will bring benefits in all the dimensions of triple bottom line in addition to the firm’s performance. ES will have pivotal role in future smart city settings and will be able to offer social, environmental and economic sustainability in addition to traditional organizational performance indicators.

The proposed framework for ES adoption will bring ES packages (particularly, the required relative significance of adoption reasons) into the perspective of sustainable development. Moreover, the study of its benefits in relation to the proposed sustainable ES adoption framework presented in this paper will help in motivating organizations to incorporate social, economic and environmental sustainability into their core business objectives.

Case studies examining long‐term ERP system success/failure are scarce. However, there is a clear need for critical knowledge in this field. This paper aims to address this issue through providing evidence from a case study completed in an after‐sales division of a multinational corporation.

Data were collected from ERP users in two phases: during the so‐called shakedown phase and two years after system implementation. Data gathering was done by means of a questionnaire based on the DeLone and McLean model.

Overall, user evaluations were more negative in the shakedown phase. However, problems were still identified two years after system implementation. For example, the quality of user support was considered to have worsened during this time. Evaluations also differed depending on the user's respective business process and user type. For instance, data integration was generally identified as a positive issue, but at the same time others considered it a downside of the new system.

The research results are based on data from one organization, which naturally limits the generalizability of the findings.

Although the study relies on case‐based evidence, it underlines the value of using user evaluations in identifying problem areas during the ERP implementation process. Results elaborate on the effects that ERP system inflexibility and integration may have in a complex business environment.

The study is seminal in its field as evidence covers multiple points in time. The results are valuable for improving the quality of ERP evaluation in companies as well as for developing research in this curriculum.