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Traditionally, the distribution activities of a firm have been regarded solely as a cost of doing business. Because of this orientation, the analytical techniques applied to the solutions of problems in this area have tended to be optimising models aimed at reducing total cost subject to various constraints. Typically, service levels were incorporated either as an absolute level requirement so that the specific demand restricted the optimising technique or as an opportunity cost of lost sales with this cost included as a part of the total objective function to be minimised.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Details an empirical study of the measurement of stockout costs in a distribution system and examines the incidence of stockouts in the supply of spare parts to the motor trade. Comprehensive studies were conducted in three major car workshops in Sweden and cost data collected from a variety of sources, including structured observation, quasi‐experiments, interviews and secondary data from internal information systems. On the basis of this research, a typology of stockout cost situations has been constructed and central concepts and measurement models developed. Results reveal that stockout costs are measurable in the system under review; information about stockout costs can have a significant impact on managerial decision making.

Presently, existing electric car sharing platforms are based on a centralized architecture which are faced with inadequate trust and pricing issues as these platforms requires an intermediary to maintain users’ data and handle transactions between participants. Therefore, this article aims to develop a decentralized peer-to-peer electric car sharing prototype framework that offers trustable and cost transparency.

This study employs a systematic review and data were collected from the literature and existing technical report documents after which content analysis is carried out to identify current problems and state-of-the-art electric car sharing. A use case scenario was then presented to preliminarily validate and show how the developed prototype framework addresses the trust-lessness in electric car sharing via distributed ledger technologies (DLTs).

Findings from this study present a use case scenario that depicts how businesses can design and implement a distributed peer-to-peer electric car sharing platforms based on IOTA technology, smart contracts and IOTA eWallet. Main findings from this study unlock the tremendous potential of DLT to foster sustainable road transportation. By employing a token-based approach this study enables electric car sharing that promotes sustainable road transportation.

Practically the developed decentralized prototype framework provides improved cost transparency and fairness guarantees as it is not based on a centralized price management system. The DLT based decentralized prototype framework aids to orchestrate the incentivize monetization and rewarding mechanisms among participants that share their electric cars enabling them to collaborate towards lessening CO₂ emissions.

The findings advocate that electric vehicle sharing has become an essential component of sustainable road transportation by increasing electric car utilization and decreasing the number of vehicles on the road.

The key novelty of the article is introducing a decentralized prototype framework to be employed to develop an electric car sharing solution without a central control or governance, which improves cost transparency. As compared to prior centralized platforms, the prototype framework employs IOTA technology smart contracts and IOTA eWallet to improve mobility related services.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how food is used to create identity and community for gamers during core rituals. These meanings are to be explored within the broader context of subcultural experience in an investigation of the motives and the self‐concept dynamics underlying this symbolic consumer behaviour.

This paper uses an interpretive research strategy and adopts a multi‐method ethnographic approach that includes: netnography: multiple, in‐depth, ethnographic interviews; and prolonged participant observation. Interview informants are young Irish subcultural members aged between 18 and 23. Data analysis proceeds according to a constant comparative method.

The findings suggest that the social gaming ritual, when intersected with food, is closely linked to issues of identity, community, fantasy and escape, gustatory rebellion and prolonged hedonism. Commensality during the core social gaming ritual contributes to a sense of communitas, while the “junk” nature of the shared food products helps to manufacture the hedonism of the event. The social ritual then is sovereign and bound by its own subcultural parameters, which oppose mainstream culture's norms and dietary regulations. From its role in helping to create a Utopian and rebellious experience, food is then leveraged as part of the gamers' collective identity. Practitioner implications of the results are discussed.

This paper investigates contemporary food consumption behaviour within a postmodern community. The main contribution pertains to providing an insight into a previously neglected group of food consumers.

Transplantation extends and improves lives, but the shortage of organs is one of the main factors limiting the number of transplants in Italy, as well as in other countries. This study investigated the awareness about organ donation and the socio-demographic factors associated with donation will in a general population.

In 2019, a survey was carried out by computer-assisted web interviewing. A questionnaire was sent via e-mail to 39,360 individuals (i.e. students, administrative and teaching staff of the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy). The response rate was 10.6% and 4,191 weighted cases were used in the analysis.

This study showed a strong, positive attitude towards donation: over 96% of respondents stated to be keen on organ donation. Of the respondents, 40.8% considered themselves informed on medical procedures involving organ donation, and only 15.8% thought to have sufficient legal information. Overall, only 17.7% of respondents thought that the information available was sufficient to make informed decisions. According to the respondents, ethical and religious implications were the main reasons (30% of answers) that limited the level of information. Just 57.9% of respondents had already recorded their willingness to donate. Among them, renewal of the identity card was the most common motivation (55.8%) and the main motivation reported for lack of expression of donation will was the lack of opportunity or time (61.5%).

A positive attitude towards donation demands a wide public education programme and opportunities to declare one's will to donate to increase the population of potential organ donors.

The aim of the research work presented in this paper is to investigate a mechanism that can recognise high level activities (for example, going for a walk, travelling on the bus, doing evening activity, etc.) and behaviour of low entropy people (people with regular daily life routines, e.g. elderly people with dementia, patients with regular routines) in order to help them improve their health related daily life activities by using wireless proximity data (e.g. Bluetooth, Wi‐Fi).

The paper adopted a tiered approach to recognise activities and behaviour. Higher level activities are divided into sub‐activities and tasks. Separating the tasks from the raw wireless proximity data is achieved by designing task separator (TASE) algorithm. TASE takes wireless proximity data as an input and separates it into different tasks. These detected tasks and the high level daily activity plans that are made in a planning language Asbru, are then fed into the activity recogniser that compares the detected tasks with the plans and recognises the high level activities that the user is performing.

The paper provides an insight to how only wireless proximity data can be utilised to recognise high level activities and behaviour of individuals. A number of scenarios and experiments are designed to prove the validity of the proposed methodology.

This paper focussed on relatively low entropy individuals with regular routines and behavioural patterns which can be improved by increasing the level of entropies in behavioural routines.

The paper includes implications for the utilisation in health care environments for elderly people and physically impaired individuals.

This paper provides a detailed and original study of algorithms and techniques that can be used to recognise high level activities and behaviour of individuals by using only wireless proximity data.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework and key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the sustainability of the manufacturing organizations along the integrated supply chain.

A systematic literature review of existing peer-reviewed articles has been carried out to understand the strengths and weaknesses of current frameworks. A sustainability assessment framework has been proposed for the manufacturing sector. KPIs to assess sustainability performance of manufacturing organizations are identified. An empirical study is carried out for the cement industry to test the proposed framework and KPIs.

The existing frameworks on sustainability assessment lacks an integrated assessment consisting product life cycle, resources, critical factors (product, process and policy), KPIs and their interrelationship with sustainability dimensions. In total, 121 KPIs are identified for sustainability assessment of manufacturing organizations. The empirical study of the Indian cement industry identifies 52 KPIs (17 social, 15 economic and 20 environmental), which are classified into 13 factors using exploratory factor analysis.

The proposed framework is tested for the cement sector. More studies are required to validate and refine the framework to make it generalized for the manufacturing sector.

This study has developed for the first time a close interrelation among life cycle engineering, resources, critical factors, KPIs and sustainability dimensions.

Despite the intense social media (SoMe) campaigns promoting organ donation, the direct impact on registration and transplantation rates remains unclear among Sunni Muslims who constitute a significant portion of Muslim population. Given the observed tendency to avoid engaging with SoMe content focused on organ donation promotion, this study aims to comprehend the reasons for reluctance among Sunni Muslims.

A qualitative approach comprising focus group and individual interviews was conducted among community manager of SoMe campaigns interested in promoting organ donation, Sunni Muslims subscribed on those SoMe platforms and certain members of the medical staff involved in transplant operations.

The results indicate that reluctance toward SoMe campaigns about organ donation is justified because of the creation of irrelevant content that does not align with the sociocultural characteristics of the majority Sunni Muslims who are the intended audience. Additional discussions are required concerning religious beliefs, the culture of altruism and the credibility of SoMe appeals.

This research could serve as a foundation upon which social organizations and associations, focused on public health promotion through SoMe, can build specific content designs tailored for Sunni Muslims.

The distinctive aspect of this research is founded upon the diverse perspectives of various stakeholders, which have the potential to impact the registration of Muslim users on SoMe as organ donors.