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1 – 10 of 59Eric Breitbarth, Wendelin Groβ and Alexander Zienau
This paper studies a concept for protecting vulnerable population groups during pandemics using direct home deliveries of essential supplies, from a distribution logistics…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper studies a concept for protecting vulnerable population groups during pandemics using direct home deliveries of essential supplies, from a distribution logistics perspective. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate feasible and resource-efficient home delivery strategies, including collaboration between retailers and logistics service providers based on a practical application.
Design/methodology/approach
A food home delivery concept in urban areas during pandemics is mathematically modeled. All seniors living in a district of Berlin, Germany, represent the vulnerable population supplied by a grocery distribution center. A capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) is developed in combination with a k-means clustering algorithm. To manage this large-scale problem efficiently, mixed-integer programming (MIP) is used. The impact of collaboration and additional delivery scenarios is examined with a sensitivity analysis.
Findings
Roughly 45 medically vulnerable persons can be served by one delivery vehicle in the baseline scenario. Operational measures allow a drastic decrease in required resources by reducing service quality. In this way, home delivery for the vulnerable population of Berlin can be achieved. This requires collaboration between grocery and parcel services and public authorities as well as overcoming accompanying challenges.
Originality/value
Developing a home delivery concept for providing essential goods to urban vulnerable groups during pandemics creates a special value. Setting a large-scale CVRP with variable fleet size in combination with a clustering algorithm contributes to the originality.
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The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organizations from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organizations from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's advanced phenomenology and ontology for understanding the role of the lived body and the embodiment of practices and change in organizational lifeworlds.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the literature review and phenomenology, the role of embodied and relational dimension, the concept of an emergent and responsive “inter-practice” in organizations is developed systematically.
Findings
Based on the phenomenological and relational approach, the concept of (inter-)practice allows an extended more integral and processual understanding of the role of bodily and embodied practices in organizational lifeworlds as emerging events. The concept of inter-practice(ing) contributes to conceiving of new ways of approaching how responsive and improvisational practicing, related to change, coevolves within a multidimensional nexus of organizations.
Research limitations/implications
Specific theoretical and methodological implications for exploring and enacting relational practices as well as limitations are offered.
Practical implications
Some specific practical implications are provided that facilitate and enable embodied practices in organizational contexts.
Social implications
The responsive inter-practice is seen as embedded in sociality and social interactions and links to sociocultural and political as well as ethical dimensions are discussed.
Originality/value
By extending the existing discourse and using an embodied approach, the paper proposes a novel orientation for reinterpreting practice that allows explorations of the emergence and realization of alternative, ingenious and more suitable forms of practicing and change in organizations.
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Wendelin Küpers and Desmond Wee
Walking is considered as a particular relationship for rhythmic moving in cityscapes and as method for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of…
Abstract
Purpose
Walking is considered as a particular relationship for rhythmic moving in cityscapes and as method for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of an embodied way of sensing and making sense, of knowing and learning that is relevant for tourism education and studies and other forms of experiential learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a conceptual, discursive and research-based approach based on a phenomenological understanding of embodied learning. Empirical “data” from two educational tours (Edutour) in Lisbon and Shanghai are presented, contextualized and interpreted.
Findings
Walking through cityscape related to projects is an “effective” embodied practice of learning in which senses “make sense.” The empirical material and experiences that emerged during Edutour demonstrated the significance of walking as form of embodied knowing, learning and interrelating to place and paces of a tourist city.
Originality/value
The idea of walking as method within tourist cities is hardly explored. Hence, this constitutes a unique, innovative and interpretative event in which new approaches, such as “fielding” and “reflactions” “in the feeld”, defy more traditional concepts. It emphasizes the role of the city as a medium and remains a valuable contribution for tourism and education research.
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Seppo Leminen, Mervi Rajahonka, Mika Westerlund and Robert Wendelin
This study aims to understand their emergence and types of business models in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand their emergence and types of business models in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper builds upon a systematic literature review of IoT ecosystems and business models to construct a conceptual framework on IoT business models, and uses qualitative research methods to analyze seven industry cases.
Findings
The study identifies four types of IoT business models: value chain efficiency, industry collaboration, horizontal market and platform. Moreover, it discusses three evolutionary paths of new business model emergence: opening up the ecosystem for industry collaboration, replicating the solution in multiple services and return to closed ecosystem as technology matures.
Research limitations/implications
Identifying business models in rapidly evolving fields such as the IoT based on a small number of case studies may result in biased findings compared to large-scale surveys and globally distributed samples. However, it provides more thorough interpretations.
Practical implications
The study provides a framework for analyzing the types and emergence of IoT business models, and forwards the concept of “value design” as an ecosystem business model.
Originality/value
This paper identifies four archetypical IoT business models based on a novel framework that is independent of any specific industry, and argues that IoT business models follow an evolutionary path from closed to open, and reversely to closed ecosystems, and the value created in the networks of organizations and things will be shareable value rather than exchange value.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of embodied dimensions and relational possibilities of (serious) play at work. It shows how a phenomenological and processual…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of embodied dimensions and relational possibilities of (serious) play at work. It shows how a phenomenological and processual approach can help in developing an integral understanding of (serious) play and its paradox in relation to work and practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the literature review and phenomenology, the role of embodied dimension, and the nexus of playful practitioners, practices and playgrounds are discussed. Systematically, then the concept of “inter-playing” is proposed as a specific embodied and processual practice. Subsequently, the in-between is shown to be a medium and transrelational nexus for (serious) play that allows a more comprehensive understanding and implications.
Findings
Based on the phenomenological and relational approach, the concept of (inter-)play allows an extended understanding of serious play and its paradox as a form of an inter-practice. The mediating in-(ter-)between is revealed as decisive for playful practices and playgrounds in organizations. Serious play is linked to practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations.
Research limitations/implications
Specific theoretical and methodological implications for exploring and enacting play are offered. It is suggested to take research itself as a form of inter-practice and to enact a more integral epistemology and methodological pluralism, including body-related and art-based approaches and critical issues.
Practical implications
Some specific practical implications are provided that facilitate and enable embodied play and play-spaces in an ongoing, arts-based learning and development process in organizational and educational contexts.
Social implications
The corporeality of responsive inter-play is seen as connected to sociality and social interaction as self and others are considered as a nexus. In particular, poetic phrónêsis in professional playful practice is linked to social creativity that includes attention and recognition of others and otherness as well as social inclusivity.
Originality/value
By extending the existing discourse and using an embodied approach, the paper proposes a novel orientation for re-interpreting serious play. Equally, it offers the new processual concepts of inter-play and inter-practice that allow more explorations and connections to discourses and practices of phronesis and art(istry).
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Seeks to argue for a phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations and show the significance of experiential dimensions of implicit and narrative…
Abstract
Purpose
Seeks to argue for a phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations and show the significance of experiential dimensions of implicit and narrative knowing and their mutual interrelations in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
For this the advanced phenomenology of Merleau‐Ponty will be used as a framework for clarifying the relational status of tacit, implicit and narrative knowing and their embedment.
Findings
Implicit and narrative processes of knowing are inherently linked. Moreover, both forms of knowing in organizations and its implications can be integrated in a Con‐+‐Text.
Practical implications
Some limitations and practical implications will be discussed critically. In conclusion some perspectives of further phenomenological research on embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations are presented.
Originality/value
This approach contributes to a processual, non‐reductionist and relational understanding of knowing and offers critical and practical perspectives for creative and transformative processes in organizations, bridging the gap between theory and practice. It provides innovative perspectives with regard to the interrelation of embodied and narrative knowing in organizations.
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This paper aims to propose to rehabilitate prâxis and revive possibilities of practical wisdom (phrónêsis) and a reinterpret excellence as an ethically committed way for…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to propose to rehabilitate prâxis and revive possibilities of practical wisdom (phrónêsis) and a reinterpret excellence as an ethically committed way for responsible and sustainable form of living, while operating in the midst of a systematically constrained world of neoliberal regimes.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a literature review, this essay first presents some basic understandings of prâxis, practices and its architecture as well as phrónêsis and its interconnection. Further, possibilities for integrating excellence in prâxis and success in poiêtic practice are suggested in form of a critical poiêtic phrónêsis, and some implications are outlined in conclusions.
Findings
Considering the systemic constrains of contemporary neoliberal regimes, this paper has shown the significance of a reviving the inter-relational nexus between prâxis, embodied practices, phrónêsis and sustainable action. An integral holonic approach of constrained prâxis was discussed, by which the macro-level is holonically connected to meso-level of likewise constrained practices to micro-level of action and vice versa. In particular, constrained excellence-oriented practical wisdom was connected with constraining result- and success- poiesis in a critical poietic phrónêsis and creative actions in inter-practices as part of inter-prâxis discussed.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is a meta-reflective paper and view point, but links to “prâxis-related research” are offered.
Practical implications
Some practical and political implications are provided.
Social implications
Some links to social and societal implications are discussed.
Originality/value
The proposed integration of prâxis, embodied practices, sustainable actions and practical wisdom for organisation and in relation to society is genuine and critical. It is orginal in that it provides possibilities to re-assess, re-vive and further investigate the relevance of embodied forms of an integral prâxis, practicing, phronesis and action in and through organizations as well as stakeholder towards a flourishing unfoldment.
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Based on showing the significance of embodied and relational learning, this paper aims for contributing to a more comprehensive and integral approach to learning in and of…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on showing the significance of embodied and relational learning, this paper aims for contributing to a more comprehensive and integral approach to learning in and of organizations and its underlying dynamics.
Design/methodology/approach
Methodologically, advanced phenomenology and an integral framework are used for generating a more comprehensive analysis and relational understanding of learning in organizations.
Findings
Learning in and by organizations is an ongoing embodied, responsive and relational practice. As such it is covering internal and external as well as individual and collective dimensions entangled within an interdependent nexus and developmental context and integral cycle. Based on these findings perspectives on an “inter‐learning” are presented.
Research limitations/implications
Some theoretical and methodological implications are discussed as well as avenues for future research outlined.
Practical implications
Some practical implications and specific measurements for different domains of learning are outlined briefly.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to a needed non‐reductionist, integral and relational understanding of learning in and by organizations. Following a process‐oriented turn, the article provides innovative perspectives on embodied learning as an inter‐relational process, including interior and exterior as well as individual and collective dimensions within an intertwined nexus.
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Jari Salo, Teck Ming Tan and Hannu Makkonen
The purpose of this paper is to cast light on the nature of the digitalization process that occurs when digital technologies are adopted in buyer–seller relationships.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to cast light on the nature of the digitalization process that occurs when digital technologies are adopted in buyer–seller relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The study features a case study from the steel processing industry.
Findings
The present research builds on and extends the interaction approach to the context of buyer–seller relationship digitalization process. The study explicates the interrelated elements of digital infrastructure, digital communication and degree of digitalization of the buyer–seller relationship.
Research limitations/implications
The study aims at theoretical generalization and thus produces conceptual understanding that is to some extent applicable to various contexts. The generalization of the empirical insights to other process-focused industries is to some extent possible. However, further research in versatile empirical contexts is needed to validate the results.
Practical implications
For managers, the study presents a success case of digital technologies use for improving a buyer–seller relationship.
Originality/value
The originality of the present research is in the way it depicts how a buyer–seller relationship is gradually digitalized in successive digital technology adoptions, that is, a virtuous cycle of digitalization, that creates and alters the digital infrastructure and digital communication processes between the buyer and the seller resulting in different outcomes (degrees of digitalization in the buyer–seller relationship).
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The purpose of this paper is to create an audit method for analyzing and improving business relationships. This is accomplished by specifying bonds on a lower abstraction level…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to create an audit method for analyzing and improving business relationships. This is accomplished by specifying bonds on a lower abstraction level than in earlier theory regarding bonds in order to classify the different types of bonds and analyze their strength.
Design/methodology/approach
The findings are based on 14 case studies in seven different industries. The methodology used is systematic and based on the abductive approach. Qualitative interviews were conducted.
Findings
Bonds were found to be important regulators of business relationships in this study. The main finding is that a bond audit can be used as a tool for analyzing business relationships and for consulting activity with the aim of strengthening or weakening business relationships.
Practical implications
By influencing the bonds using bond management, companies can strengthen or weaken the business relationship.
Originality/value
The paper describes an audit method for analyzing business relationships by stringently analyzing all parts of it using the bond‐auditing tool, and thus auditing bonds more specifically than has been done previously.
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