Search results

1 – 10 of 116
Open Access
Article
Publication date: 7 February 2023

Kim De Boeck, Maria Besiou, Catherine Decouttere, Sean Rafter, Nico Vandaele, Luk N. Van Wassenhove and Prashant Yadav

This paper aims to provide a discussion on the interface and interactions between data, analytical techniques and impactful research in humanitarian health supply chains. New…

1638

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provide a discussion on the interface and interactions between data, analytical techniques and impactful research in humanitarian health supply chains. New techniques for data capturing, processing and analytics, such as big data, blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, are increasingly put forward as potential “game changers” in the humanitarian field. Yet while they have potential to improve data analytics in the future, larger data sets and quantification per se are no “silver bullet” for complex and wicked problems in humanitarian health settings. Humanitarian health supply chains provide health care and medical aid to the most vulnerable in development and disaster relief settings alike. Unlike commercial supply chains, they often lack resources and long-term collaborations to enable learning from the past and to improve further.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a combination of the authors’ research experience, interactions with practitioners throughout projects and academic literature, the authors consider the interface between data and analytical techniques and highlight some of the challenges inherent to humanitarian health settings. The authors apply a systems approach to represent the multiple factors and interactions between data, analytical techniques and collaboration in impactful research.

Findings

Based on this representation, the authors discuss relevant debates and suggest directions for future research to increase the impact of data analytics and collaborations in fostering sustainable solutions.

Originality/value

This study distinguishes itself and contributes by bringing the interface and interactions between data, analytical techniques and impactful research together in a systems approach, emphasizing the interconnectedness.

Details

Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, vol. 13 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-6747

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 6 December 2022

Jonas Stumpf, Maria Besiou and Tina Wakolbinger

The research objective is to study the relevance of supply chain management in the humanitarian context, analyze supply chain expenditures and identify major cost-saving…

2961

Abstract

Purpose

The research objective is to study the relevance of supply chain management in the humanitarian context, analyze supply chain expenditures and identify major cost-saving potentials and future research directions.

Design/methodology/approach

Our research design integrates exploratory and inductive research approaches that are based on existing literature, discussions with supply chain leaders and extensive financial data collected through field studies.

Findings

Supply chain management is increasingly considered as a critical success factor for humanitarian operations and amounts on average to around 75% of the total response cost. Based on our findings, humanitarian supply chains bear tremendous potential for further improvements to provide more assistance with limited resources available.

Research limitations/implications

In particular, humanitarian supply chains in conflict situations and procurement processes offer potential for impactful and relevant research. Whilst our study focuses on international organizations, future research should give more attention to supply chain cost structures of local actors to reveal further untapped potential.

Practical implications

Our findings equipped supply chain leaders with fact-based evidence of the value of supply chain management and supported them in strategic meetings with their executive management and donors. Furthermore, we identified major cost-saving potentials.

Social implications

For researchers (and practitioners), our findings serve as motivation to intensify their efforts in studying and enhancing supply chain management in the humanitarian context.

Originality/value

This paper fulfils an identified need to study and provide empirical evidence of the value of supply chain management in the humanitarian context.

Details

Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-6747

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 26 November 2020

Abstract

Details

Macrofoundations: Exploring the Institutionally Situated Nature of Activity
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-160-5

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 30 September 2019

Abstract

Details

Generations Z in Europe
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-491-1

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 10 June 2021

Roma Madan-Soni

The purpose of this study/paper Manipulating Golden Wombs’ (2017) is to show the author’s non-site intervention of authoritarian – undemocratic maneuvering of both women’s and…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study/paper Manipulating Golden Wombs’ (2017) is to show the author’s non-site intervention of authoritarian – undemocratic maneuvering of both women’s and earth’s “golden” wombs. The burning fossil fuels in myriads of flame colors, signal the power and distress of Earth’s wounded womb, memories of war, environmental destruction and human fatality, and descend to decline as extinguished Oil Drops (2017), creating a void. Global warming poses a problem for fossil fuel systems and those who profit from them.

Design/methodology/approach

The title of this paper has been inspired by Cara New Dagget’s book, The Birth of Energy (2019), posited in the nascent realm of energy “mortalities.” Now, confronting a world warmed by sweltering fossil fuels, the book provides us with a direction to thinking energy beyond the “Calvinist view” of everlasting work. Spellbound by Manipulating Golden Wombs’ (2017), the audience canter around the outer surface of the centrally positioned, circulating luminous “acrylic” oil drops highlighted by hundreds of mono-frequency lamps impregnated with desert biodiversity. A closer look takes spectators through a fiery desert, across the fossil fuel fields into the depths of its scorching oil wells, its womb, as they sense the “real-time” catastrophe that had occurred beyond the gallery wall.

Findings

These artists’ objective with their interventions is to “root it to the contour of the […] land, so that it’s permanently there and subject to the weathering,” so the audience is “sort of curious to see what will happen to this” (Schmidt, 1996, 225) through the course of time. The works resists the resistance of nature and social culture, as well as of body and intellect by emphasizing the intransience, however complex, of human beings with the ecosphere in which they survive (Novak 2002, 23). The surfacing of the under-surface of the land and ocean life triggers the idea of the private space, which involves role-play, gender norms and the control over women's lives in the capitalist and Gulf societies. Authoritarianism, fossil fuel capital, high-energy use and militarism make the climate politics critical to planetary security. This combustible convergence gave birth to Manipulating Golden Wombs’ (2017).

Research limitations/implications

Ganz reminds us that devouring less energy appears to be almost unharmonious with the current politics of being “Modern.” Sacrificing energy resonances with abstinence at best, and widespread death and injustice at worst. But, consuming an overload of energy is incompatible with a multispecies existence on Earth. Scientists caution “a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway,” the consequence of which could be an uninhabitable, unsafe globe for beings (Steffen et al., 2018). Even though it sounds vivid, it is hard to overstate the crisis in the midst of what environmentalists and biologists term as a sixth extinction event (Kolbert, 2014), in line with a “biological annihilation” that paints “a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life” (Ceballos et al., 2017).

Practical implications

It is not only the land’s womb that we have hurt; we have miffed the hearts of the water network, and “Othered” and the wombs of many women and most surfaces of the Earth have been penetrated, unconsented! To sustain a biodiverse sphere, to pause the deaths of the planet’s flora and fauna and to thrive on Earth, we need to work on renewable sources of energy based on “new collectively shared values, principles, and frameworks” (Steffen et al., 2018). We need to stop Manipulating Golden Wombs’ (2017). Are we ready to accept the challenge? (Lau and Traulsen, 2016)

Social implications

Petro-masculinity has multiple global dimensions and manifests in multiple and locally specific ways (Dagget, 2018). This encourages the geographically diverse artists discussed in this paper to embrace alternative visions, to make bold and explicit statements on gender and global diversity, equity and rights. Through history, women, in specific, embodied the entirety of the Ecocene and its life cycle and explored it in the context of their own relationships, health, sexuality, fertility, reproduction, childbirth, illness and inescapably death. The artists’ interventions’ visual physiognomies and intentions point toward a comprehensive agenda of action that leads to remedial courses toward reinstating the biome to a healthy condition.

Originality/value

Manipulating Golden Wombs’ (2017) enacts the historic all-consuming fires, penetrating the “shared environment,” burning the fossilized fuels exuding from Earth’s penetrated womb. The higher cone-shaped oil drops irradiate the intense dazzling images of oil wells in flames and the desert flora and fauna nestled within the scorching inner arena. This aligns with the private space provided to women. The wombs are smothered in the fuming fires of the Gulf war. The darker, narrower lower oil drops, iconic of the remnants of fossil fuel, are the residual sludge within which the land and water species are enmeshed and ensnared to death. The potency of the enactment of the drops “enables the viewer to see [him/]herself seeing, to become aware of how she perceives the world around [him/]her and in doing so participates in shaping it” (Eliasson, 2009, p. 25) as a form of engagement, which involves an “attention to time, movement and changeability” (pp. 18–21).

Details

Ecofeminism and Climate Change, vol. 2 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2633-4062

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 28 January 2022

Jana Olivia Dreyer, Silke Lichtenstein and Eleonore A. Heil

The purpose of this study is to investigate what consumers think about food waste, best before date (BBD) and appreciation of food in the context of a model project in the…

2635

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate what consumers think about food waste, best before date (BBD) and appreciation of food in the context of a model project in the food-retailing sector. The focus was on the following key questions: How is the issue of food waste itself perceived by consumers? What understanding of the BBD was present in the sample and what do consumers imagine under the term appreciation in the context of food? The study also included an evaluation of the acceptance of the model project by customers. In this project, food no longer suitable for sale was distributed free of charge to visitors of a supermarket via a freely accessible refrigerator.

Design/methodology/approach

The research design was based on a mixed methods approach in an explorative sequential design. First a qualitative survey was conducted via interviews (n = 8) with customers, and the results were used for a subsequent quantitative survey (n = 88) in the supermarket.

Findings

The majority of those questioned were sensitized to the topics of food waste, BBD and appreciation of food. The results of the interviews and the questionnaires revealed a consistently positive opinion about the model project. These results indicate potential for reducing food losses among consumers and in food retailing and for improving appreciation.

Originality/value

This was the first study conducted as part of a model project in the retail sector in the context of food waste. The study also investigated within in the project what people think about the BBD, food losses and appreciation. At the same time, the acceptance of the project was assessed.

Details

British Food Journal, vol. 124 no. 13
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0007-070X

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 15 September 2021

Roma Madan-Soni

The purpose of this article is to collectively work towards understanding and resolving the COVID-19 pandemic issues based on Messersmith's (2018) song, We All Do Better When We…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to collectively work towards understanding and resolving the COVID-19 pandemic issues based on Messersmith's (2018) song, We All Do Better When We All Do Better. Furthermore, Our Identity should not Remain Marked to understand and overcome the workings of a virus whose Identity [DOES NOT] Remain Marked!

Design/methodology/approach

Practice-based creation coalesced with analytical writing.

Findings

We All Do Better When We All Do Better! The COVID-19 pandemic corresponds to crucial fundamental assumptions which have appeared from adversity anthropology over the past epochs. First, that environmental catastrophes infrequently surface, because calamities are communal and reliant on trans-species relationships. Furthermore, they appear from a blend of threat and susceptibility, with susceptibility as the causal issue. Second, the disaster occurs at manifold ranks concurrently, with responses to a threat; it endangers all the weak issues along with the original threat (Kelman, 2020).

Research limitations/implications

Throughout COVID-19 much of the media left cavernous time gaps, masks turned into tools of rebellion, and power and violence were exercised indirectly on the vulnerable. The virtual campuses of WhatsApp, Facebook and conventional broadcasting are disseminating specialist knowledge in pandemic science; now everyone is certified. They voice a nouveau-vindictive biopolitical language, so we rise towards COVID-19 denialism. And, we turn into unthinking puppets who speed up the transfer of misinformation that moves like an “asymptomatic” cough through an overcrowded bar or beach as all inhale-consume it.

Practical implications

Part of pandemic planning and dealing with the consequential calamity is to integrate instantly the disastrous aspects caused by lockdowns. In this surge of terror and apprehension, we cannot afford to isolate people, even more through shame and prejudice. Each one of us is accountable to support each other and advocate for an all-inclusive healthy community.

Social implications

Unescapably, as an immigrant, I had never dreaded this “home away from home” and stay anyhow, and I always had something to write home about. But recently I have had “Nothing to Write Home About,” (Madan-Soni, 2019). Migrant employees in most countries including international students were not much more than uninvited guests positioned in a conventional neighbourhood. It is as if your every expatriate-neighbour was plague-ridden and waiting to infect you. But the virus required no genomic or national identity or visa rank, it could cut all lines to get to you. The virus's Identity Is [Not] Marked.

Originality/value

Our Identity Remains Marked (2020) is my probing visual description of how Our Identity Remains Marked, layered, and stratified in stone under authoritarian structures of patriarchy. I read and researched about how Our Identity Remains Marked when humans are othered through the colours of race, gender, national and immigrant status, including all Earth others. Crafting things, creating something engages with a developing field of ecofeminist research on visual and embodied approaches and creativity (VEM Network, n.d; Reynolds, 2021). Painting offered me a therapeutic way of thinking and of using my senses.

Details

Ecofeminism and Climate Change, vol. 2 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2633-4062

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 9 November 2018

Therese Ferguson, Dzintra Iliško, Carmel Roofe and Susan Hill

Abstract

Details

SDG4 – Quality Education
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-423-1

Content available
Article
Publication date: 1 March 2004

Jon Rigelsford

79

Abstract

Details

Assembly Automation, vol. 24 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-5154

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 8 March 2021

Abstract

Details

Corruption in the Public Sector: An International Perspective
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-643-3

1 – 10 of 116