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1 – 10 of 226Mehmet Kursat Oksuz and Sule Itir Satoglu
Disaster management and humanitarian logistics (HT) play crucial roles in large-scale events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis. Well-organized disaster response…
Abstract
Purpose
Disaster management and humanitarian logistics (HT) play crucial roles in large-scale events such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis. Well-organized disaster response is crucial for effectively managing medical centres, staff allocation and casualty distribution during emergencies. To address this issue, this study aims to introduce a multi-objective stochastic programming model to enhance disaster preparedness and response, focusing on the critical first 72 h after earthquakes. The purpose is to optimize the allocation of resources, temporary medical centres and medical staff to save lives effectively.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses stochastic programming-based dynamic modelling and a discrete-time Markov Chain to address uncertainty. The model considers potential road and hospital damage and distance limits and introduces an a-reliability level for untreated casualties. It divides the initial 72 h into four periods to capture earthquake dynamics.
Findings
Using a real case study in Istanbul’s Kartal district, the model’s effectiveness is demonstrated for earthquake scenarios. Key insights include optimal medical centre locations, required capacities, necessary medical staff and casualty allocation strategies, all vital for efficient disaster response within the critical first 72 h.
Originality/value
This study innovates by integrating stochastic programming and dynamic modelling to tackle post-disaster medical response. The use of a Markov Chain for uncertain health conditions and focus on the immediate aftermath of earthquakes offer practical value. By optimizing resource allocation amid uncertainties, the study contributes significantly to disaster management and HT research.
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Lucas Prata Feres, Alex Wilhans Antonio Palludeto and Hugo Miguel Oliveira Rodrigues Dias
Drawing upon a political economy approach, this article aims to analyze the transformations in the labor market within the context of contemporary capitalism, focusing on the…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing upon a political economy approach, this article aims to analyze the transformations in the labor market within the context of contemporary capitalism, focusing on the phenomenon of financialization.
Design/methodology/approach
Financialization is defined as a distinct wealth pattern marked by a growing proportion of financial assets in capitalist wealth. Within financial markets, corporate performance is continuously assessed, in a process that disciplines management to achieve expected financial results, with consequences throughout corporate management.
Findings
We find that this phenomenon has implications for labor management, resulting in the intensification of labor processes and the adoption of insecure forms of employment, leading to the fractalization of work. These two mechanisms, added to the indebtedness of workers, constitute three elements for disciplining labor in contemporary capitalism.
Originality/value
We argue that these forms of discipline constitute a subsumption of labor to finance, resulting in an increase in labor exploitation. This formulation of the relationship between financialization and changes in the realm of labor also contributes to understanding the unrealizing potential of social free time in contemporary capitalism.
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Štefan Karolčík and Michaela Marková
This research study explores the perceptions of the importance and meaning of innovation in education by qualified teachers. The authors deliberately selected geography teachers…
Abstract
Purpose
This research study explores the perceptions of the importance and meaning of innovation in education by qualified teachers. The authors deliberately selected geography teachers for the research because the extraordinary dynamics of changes and innovations the teacher has to deal with are significantly reflected, particularly in geography teaching.
Design/methodology/approach
The main aim of the research was to determine geography teachers' views on the importance, role and meaning of innovation in teaching. The research group consisted of 12 qualified teachers, and a semistructured interview was chosen as the research method. The research was conducted over six months, from October 2020 to March 2021.
Findings
This research confirmed the interest in introducing innovations into teaching by the teachers interviewed. Teachers mainly think of innovation as new ways of teaching that aim to revive and make teaching more attractive, to increase the motivation of all actors in the learning process. While teachers with more ample teaching experience connect innovations mainly with presentations, education games, and excursions, teachers-beginners and teachers with shorter teaching experience understand innovations mainly as the application of new trends in education, such as research projects and working with GIS and digital technologies. The research confirmed that lectures supported by presentations are the most frequently used teaching method for explaining the geography curriculum in primary and secondary schools. Presentations in which teachers focus on linking relationships and explaining connections more deeply replace existing textbooks and teaching texts for most teachers interviewed.
Research limitations/implications
The number and qualifications of the teachers involved in the research.
Practical implications
Teachers see the quality of the school environment and the education system as the significant barriers to providing better geography education. They often come to innovations through their own study and activities and feel a significant lack of available materials for the practical application of innovations in teaching. They also perceive the support for creation by state authorities and educational institutions as insufficient. Most teachers interviewed would welcome regular training courses and vocational education on the appropriate introduction and use of innovations in the classrooms in the form of practical examples and developed methodologies.
Originality/value
The selection of teachers for the research was deliberate and included active teachers of both genders working in primary and secondary schools. The selected teachers had varying teaching experiences and studied different combinations of teaching subjects with geography.
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Stephen Kehinde Medase and Ivan Savin
Although employees' creativity is vital for firm innovation and overall performance, little is done to examine the potential association between creativity and employment. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Although employees' creativity is vital for firm innovation and overall performance, little is done to examine the potential association between creativity and employment. This paper investigates the contribution of employees' creativity, process and product innovations to firm-level employment growth.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use data from World Bank Enterprise Survey and Innovation Follow-up Survey on 9503 firms covering the period 2012–2015 in 11 countries from sub-Saharan Africa and Heckman's two-stage estimation model.
Findings
This study's results indicate a positive role of creativity on firm-level employment growth. In addition, the authors find evidence for a complementary effect arising from the combination of creativity with managerial experience, staff level of education and their associated skills, in contrast, combining creativity with internal or external R&D results in a substitution effect. Interestingly, these synergy effects are pronounced for SMEs but absent for large firms.
Practical implications
Policy makers in developing economies of sub-Saharan Africa should stimulate company management to use free time offered to employees to be creative in the workplace as one of their key strategies to stimulate employment growth. This strategy is expected to be particularly fruitful among SMEs having some managerial experience and skilled stuff.
Originality/value
In contribution to innovative work practices and workforce creativity, the authors demonstrate that providing employees with free time could be an alternative way to enhance the focal firms' performance.
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Healthcare systems receive criticism from both providers and recipients. The diversity in these systems throughout the world makes innovation and change difficult. However, a…
Abstract
Purpose
Healthcare systems receive criticism from both providers and recipients. The diversity in these systems throughout the world makes innovation and change difficult. However, a structured analysis of healthcare systems is crucial to identify areas for improvement and to share best practices for the betterment of healthcare throughout the world.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses organizational theory as an unbiased tool for evaluating healthcare systems. This theory analyses healthcare systems across five dimensions: environment, culture, social structure, physical structure and technology. This analysis provides an in-depth understanding of the organization's surroundings, formation and function. It offers a lens through which healthcare systems can be envisioned and establishes a vocabulary for communication.
Findings
Organizational theory presents a multifaceted approach to initiate assessments aiming to enhance existing healthcare systems and customize them to serve all stakeholders within the focused ecosystem. It alters the dynamics of criticism and presents an opportunity to sustainably address unforeseen healthcare challenges in the future. As the author proceeds to understand healthcare organizations through the perspective of organizational theory, the author also uncovers subtle yet crucial issues such as resource dependence, cultural clashes, organizational silence, bureaucracy, hierarchy, ethics, values, engagement and burnout.
Originality/value
This paper was crafted from a collaborative paper for the final of a master's degree. A collaboration was conceptualized using organisation theory as the tool to align processes and achieve successful outcome. The narrative of the collaboration has been edited and paper presented highlighting the importance of the tool of organisation theory in healthcare systems.
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Raul Beal Partyka and Ely Laureano Paiva
This paper aims to present the vertical integration state-of-the-art and propose an expansion of the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) field by identifying gaps and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present the vertical integration state-of-the-art and propose an expansion of the operations and supply chain management (OSCM) field by identifying gaps and bottlenecks.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a systematic literature review based on a sample of 173 OSCM field articles, collected from Scopus and Web of Science databases.
Findings
There are no single factors, such as future costs, structures or skills development, in the decision to vertically integrate operations. It is necessary to combine the vision of production costs with the perspective of governance and transaction costs. In addition, it is essential to consider the competency perspective and its impact on capability building.
Research limitations/implications
Few studies have attempted to understand how vertical integration is used in terms of OSCM research themes and theories. Vertical integration can help companies face challenges and serve as a potential solution for achieving better prices, demand control and quality management.
Practical implications
The significant role of vertical integration mechanisms in supply chains is crucial for managers evaluating a firm's reconfiguration with more vertical operations. Policymakers interested in supporting the smoothness of vertical integration decisions in regulatory agencies play a key role as contingencies.
Social implications
In times of global challenges, vertical integration is a strategy known to be more effective for firms to obtain a competitive advantage, making them more resilient.
Originality/value
This paper addresses gaps in the vertical integration theme and provides insights for future research development.
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In servitization research, there has been a call to move further toward the development of business models based on a service approach. This article aims to answer this call by…
Abstract
Purpose
In servitization research, there has been a call to move further toward the development of business models based on a service approach. This article aims to answer this call by adopting service logic (SL) and developing strategies and organizational resources and processes to create a service-centric business model called servification, defined as the process of identifying and developing strategies and organizational resources and processes to create a business model based on SL.
Design/methodology/approach
This article is conceptual and extends servitization in the direction of service-centric business model innovation by drawing on and extending SL.
Findings
The article defines service as a higher-order concept according to SL and develops the concept of a helping strategy as the foundation for a service-based business model. Further, it develops a typology of organizational resources and processes that must be developed for the emergence of such a business model.
Research limitations/implications
Since this article is the first to conceptually develop servification, more both theoretical and empirical research is naturally required. The development of servification takes servitization in the direction of service-based business model innovation and also contributes to the research on SL.
Practical implications
Servification enables the development of service-centric strategies and organizational resources and processes and service-based business models.
Originality/value
This article is the first to adopt SL in studies of business model innovation.
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Although proactive fault handling plans are widely spread, many unexpected data center outages still occurred. To rescue the jobs from faulty data centers, the authors propose a…
Abstract
Purpose
Although proactive fault handling plans are widely spread, many unexpected data center outages still occurred. To rescue the jobs from faulty data centers, the authors propose a novel independent job rescheduling strategy for cloud resilience to reschedule the task from the faulty data center to other working-proper cloud data centers, by jointly considering job nature, timeline scenario and overall cloud performance.
Design/methodology/approach
A job parsing system and a priority assignment system are developed to identify the eligible time slots for the jobs and prioritize the jobs, respectively. A dynamic job rescheduling algorithm is proposed.
Findings
The simulation results show that our proposed approach has better cloud resiliency and load balancing performance than the HEFT series approaches.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the cloud resilience by developing a novel job prioritizing, task rescheduling and timeline allocation method when facing faults.
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Karunamunige Sandun Madhuranga Karunamuni, Ekanayake Mudiyanselage Kapila Bandara Ekanayake, Subodha Dharmapriya and Asela Kumudu Kulatunga
The purpose of this study is to develop a novel general mathematical model to find the optimal product mix of commercial graphite products, which has a complex production process…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a novel general mathematical model to find the optimal product mix of commercial graphite products, which has a complex production process with alternative sub-processes in the graphite mining production process.
Design/methodology/approach
The network optimization was adopted to model the complex graphite mining production process through the optimal allocation of raw graphite, byproducts, and saleable products with comparable sub-processes, which has different processing capacities and costs. The model was tested on a selected graphite manufacturing company, and the optimal graphite product mix was determined through the selection of the optimal production process. In addition, sensitivity and scenario analyses were carried out to accommodate uncertainties and to facilitate further managerial decisions.
Findings
The selected graphite mining company mines approximately 400 metric tons of raw graphite per month to produce ten types of graphite products. According to the optimum solution obtained, the company should produce only six graphite products to maximize its total profit. In addition, the study demonstrated how to reveal optimum managerial decisions based on optimum solutions.
Originality/value
This study has made a significant contribution to the graphite manufacturing industry by modeling the complex graphite mining production process with a network optimization technique that has yet to be addressed at this level of detail. The sensitivity and scenario analyses support for further managerial decisions.
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Lauri Lepistö and Sinikka Lepistö
This study aims to explain how negative workplace interactions are formed by the application of a performance management system (PMS).
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explain how negative workplace interactions are formed by the application of a performance management system (PMS).
Design/methodology/approach
The study draws from unique in-depth interviews with service workers who resigned from an accounting shared service centre (SSC), discussing the reasons behind the resignations. Following an abductive approach, organisational justice theory is used to analyse the service workers' perceptions of negative interactions and to link the negative interactions to the use of the PMS.
Findings
The findings suggest that negative workplace interactions are characterised by cost consciousness, inequality and competitiveness. These interactions are attributed to the use of a PMS in the centre and are related to perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional injustice.
Practical implications
Managers and leaders of shared service–type organisations should not rely on PMSs as an all-encompassing solution; instead, they should acknowledge the fairness of the use of PMSs. Moreover, HR professionals should choose and train employees to apply PMSs fairly. Fairness is important in work allocation, resourcing, monitoring, giving feedback, recognising good performance, promotion and interaction between peers.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature by taking an overall perspective on PMSs to analyse and explain the unintended negative consequences of a PMS in a highly scripted and monitored work environment that is usually considered appropriate for such a system's use. Through the analysis, the study highlights pitfalls in the use of a PMS and the importance of interactional injustice not only between but also within organisational levels.
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