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This study defines service breakdowns, service breakdown prevention, and “servicide” as they relate to service-dominant logic. The study reviews relevant relevant literature on these three topics. This study categorizes real-life examples into five levels of dramatic turns toward service degradations and breakdowns that range from customer being aware but not mentioning service inadequacy to the service breakdown resulting in death of the customer or service provider. Taking initial steps in developing dramatic turn theory and improving the practice of service breakdown prevention are the major contributions of this study.

This study is a conceptual contribution that includes a dramatic turn role-playing exercise (at category 4 among five categories of dramatic turns for pedagogical/on-site enacting/practicing and training of service professionals. The study emphasizes and shows how to create and enact role-playing scenarios to increase requisite variety, provide training modules and increase skills/expertise in service enactment contexts.

Before explicit reviewing of the dramatic-turn performances, some of the participants as actors as well as audience members in role-play dramatic turns were quick to blame the customer behavior as the principal cause for the service breakdown. The study’s exposition stresses prevention of negative dramatic turns follows from experiencing and coaching a wide variety of customer and server interactions – achieving “richness” in enactments.

Research on service breakdown prevention needs to include field experiments on the efficacy of training programs for effective management of dramatic turns.

Training of service workers and service managers in experiencing/participating in dramatic turns is likely to be beneficial in reducing the severe adverse outcomes and unintended consequences of service breakdowns. Prevention, not only service failure recovery, needs to be an explicit focus in hospitality management training and assessment.

This study suggests tools and procedures to reduce the instances of the need for service breakdown recoveries.

The study calls attention and contributes a way forward in managing dramatic turns in hospitality service contexts. The study provides a nascent configurational theoretical foundation of dramatic-turn propositions. Given the severity of financial costs and loss of brand/firm reputation following the occurrence of extreme dramatic turns, a research focus on service breakdown prevention is necessary.

Discusses the development and evaluation of a forecasting model for inventory management in an advanced technology batch production environment. Traditional forecasting and inventory management do not adequately address issues relating to a short life cycle and to non‐seasonal products with a relatively long lead time. Limited historical data (fewer than 100 observations) is also a problem in predicting short‐term dynamic or unstable time series. A Bayesian dynamic linear time series model is proposed as an alternative technique for forecasting demand in a dynamically changing environment. Provides details of the important characteristics and development process of the forecasting model. A case study is then presented to illustrate the application of the model based on data from a multinational company in Singapore. It also compares the Bayesian dynamic linear time series model with a classical forecasting model (auto‐regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model).

The knowledge over the performance of cutting fluids when applied under different machining conditions (such as distinct work material and cutting parameters) is critical in order to improve the efficiency of most machining operations. This paper is concerned with the performance of cutting fluids employed under two distinct machining operations involving aluminium alloys: drilling of AA 1050‐O aluminium applying cutting fluid as a mist and turning of AA 6262‐T6 aluminium alloy using cutting fluids (as a flood) with distinct extreme pressure additives (chlorine, sulphur and phosphor).

This work reports on a experimental study of the performance of cutting fluids when machining aluminium alloys.

The results indicated an increase in the flow rate of the mist led to lower feed forces but higher torque, power consumption and specific cutting pressure in the drilling operation (AA 1050‐O aluminium). The surface finish was not drastically affected by the cutting fluid flow rate. When turning AA 6162‐T6 aluminium alloy, in general, best results were observed using 10 per cent fluid concentration applied at the tool‐workpiece interface. The cutting fluid containing chlorine as extreme pressure additive produced lower cutting forces and better surface finish at high cutting speed and low feed rate and depth of cut.

The novel element of this paper is the use of minimal lubrication (drilling) and cutting fluids with distinct extreme pressure (turning).

This study investigates the mediating role of organizational change capacity (OCC) in the relationship between the perception of extreme contexts and firm product and process innovation, which was not empirically investigated in the literature. In addition, this study explores the moderating role of the perception of extreme contexts-related variables, which were not operationalized in ordinary firms, on the relationship between OCC and firm product and process innovation.

A questionnaire-based research was conducted to test the suggested hypotheses. The data were gathered from 90 firms during the peak period of COVID-19.

This study shows that OCC, which covers contexts, process and learning dimensions, fully mediates the relationship between the perception of extreme contexts and firm product and process innovation. Also, this study discovers that the perception of extreme contexts, including temporal ordering of extremity, the magnitude of consequences, proximity among people and operational deficiencies, positively moderate the relationship between OCC and firm product innovation.

This study has constraints inherited in survey design, primarily sampling and country context.

This study identifies, conceptualizes and operationalizes the term extreme context, conceptually argued for particular organizations/units in ordinary/mundane organization settings so far. In addition, this study extends the current understanding of how the perception of extreme contexts interacts with a firm's capability to increase innovation efforts. Further, this study shows how OCC mediates the relationship between extreme contexts and firm product and process innovation.

The proposed theoretical model offers a systematic approach to synthesize the fragmented research on organizational crisis, disasters and extreme events.

This paper offers a theoretical model of organizational responses to extreme threats.

The paper explains that organizations choose between hypervigilance (freeze), exit (flight), growth (fight) and dormancy (fright) when faced with extreme threats. The authors explain how the choice between these responses are informed by the interplay between slack and routines.

The study’s theoretical model contributes by explaining the nature of organizational responses to extreme threats and how the two underlying mechanisms, slack and routines, determine heterogeneity between organizations.

The authors advance four key managerial considerations: the need to distinguish between discrete and chronic threats, the critical role of hypervigilance in the face of extreme threats, the distinction between resources and routines during threat mitigation, and the recognition that organizational exit may sometimes be the most effective means for survival.

The novelty of this paper pertains to the authors’ use of the comparative developmental approach to incorporate insights from the study of individual responses to life-threatening events to explain organizational responses to extreme threats.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze whether supply networks may be validly treated as complex adaptive systems (CAS). Finding this to be true, the paper turns into the latest concerns of complexity science like Pareto distributions to explain well‐known phenomena of extreme events in logistics, like the bullwhip effect. It aims to introduce a possible solution to handle these effects.

The method is a comparative analysis of current literature in the fields of logistics and complexity science. The discussion of CAS in supply networks is updated to include recent complexity research on power laws, non‐linear dynamics, extreme events, Pareto distribution, and long tails.

Based on recent findings of complexity science, the paper concludes that it is valid to call supply networks CAS. It then finds that supply networks are vulnerable to all the nonlinear and extreme dynamics found in CAS within the business world. These possible outcomes have to be considered in supply network management. It is found that the use of a neural network model could work to manage these new challenges.

Since, smart parts are the future of logistics systems, managers need to worry about the combination of human and smart parts, resulting design challenges, the learning effects of interacting smart parts, and possible exacerbation of the bullwhip effect. In doing so, the paper suggests several options concerning the design and management of supply networks.

The novel contribution of this paper lies in its analysis of supply networks from a new theoretical approach: complexity science, which the paper updates. It enhances and reflects on existing attempts in this field to describe supply networks as CAS through the comprehensive theoretical base of complexity science. More specifically, it suggests the likely vulnerability to extreme outcomes as the “parts” in supply networks become smarter. The paper also suggests different ways of using a neural network approach for their management – depending on how smart the logistics parts actually are.

Highly deprived urban contexts, such as informal settlements in the global south, can turn into niches of extreme innovation and sparkle ingenuity out of necessity. But what are the rationales behind the participation of disadvantaged communities in social innovations? Why do they engage in grassroots innovations? What is it that makes these grassroots try novelties and continue experimenting with them, even when the perceived benefits are not clear yet? This paper aims to examine and conceptualize the rationales for engaging in grassroots financial innovations in the context of extremely deprived urban settings.

This paper is based on the case of grassroots organizations which have started experimenting with the development of a community currency in Kisumu, Kenya. This paper is informed by in-depth interviews with members of three grassroots organizations involved in the community currency, together with observations and meeting participation since 2019.

The rationales argued by the participants for engaging in this grassroots innovation are framed in various ways: as a means for seeking poverty alleviation (the development framing); as a challenge to conventional imaginaries of innovations (the digital framing); and as an innovation embedded in community and trust relations (the community framing). These framings have a mobilizing effect that initially draws participants into the innovation. Yet, what explains persistent participation despite the decreasing influence of these framings over time is the organizational space and strategies of incompleteness accommodating these experiments.

This paper contributes to the emerging body of grassroots innovations movements literature. While research has progressed in its understandings of the challenges of scaling up innovative practices, the examination of the grassroots initiatives stemming from extremely deprived settings, and the rationales and framings behind, have been under examined. This paper comes to bridge this gap.

Illustrates the impact of major events on UK share prices/returns in the last 35 years and the time series trends of Asian stock markets. Looks at the impact of the 1997 Asian crisis on Asian financial markets from the US investor’s point of view, comparing 1994‐1999 data for the “tiger markets” with the mature markets of the USA, UK and Japan using a conservative investment strategy to “minimize the probability of loss”. Shows that a mixed portfolio gave higher returns than US domestic returns with less risk. Confirms this using the tail index based on extreme value theory; and shows that correlation has a positive relationship with volatility but a negative relationship with returns. Adds that, during stock market downturn, the increase in correlation and volatility may cancel out the benefits of diversification.

Business conditions of electronics manufacturers are demanding due to ever shortening product life‐cycles, higher variety and increased outsourcing activity. Even though companies could manage the increasing amount of purchased items with modularity, software‐based customization and well designed product platforms; the case is often so that item count in purchasing is increasing with high rates. On the top of this, time of the purchasing is being largely spent in new component search and management of end of product life cycle components/products. Therefore, organizations are faced to automate all of the possible manual ordering phases in order to increase the productivity of this function. Our purpose in this paper is to reveal how electronics manufacturers could achieve this challenging objective, and what are the possible causes for implementation success/failure.

The paper uses case study findings and obtained data from four year period, when middle‐sized electronics manufacturer started to use automated purchasing with some of its high volume purchasing components. Case study also contains brief introduction for the supply chain and business environment of electronics, and highlights the important role of component distributors.

The research results reveal following outcomes: in a majority of automated ordering components inventory turns were higher as compared to manual mode results, the demand fluctuation in different components showed lower deviation and in limited number of cases internal and external factors caused inventory turn decrease.

Research results provide needed practical evidence for the middle‐sized electronics manufacturers that automated purchasing implementations are valuable for them, and highlight the importance of different services provided by the component distributors. So, the implementation success is a combination of ERP system integration as well as supply chain solutions. Mostly for academics this paper provides empirical evidence from the applied ordering algorithms, and identified caveats of purchasing automation.

Generalization ability of genetic programming (GP) models relies highly on the choice of parameter settings chosen and the fitness function used. The purpose of this paper is to conduct critical survey followed by quantitative analysis to determine the appropriate parameter settings and fitness function responsible for evolving the GP models with higher generalization ability.

For having a better understanding about the parameter settings, the present work examines the notion, applications, abilities and the issues of GP in the modelling of machining processes. A gamut of model selection criteria have been used in fitness functions of GP, but, the choice of an appropriate one is unclear. In this work, GP is applied to model the turning process to study the effect of fitness functions on its performance.

The results show that the fitness function, structural risk minimization (SRM) gives better generalization ability of the models than those of other fitness functions.

This study is of its first kind where two main contributions are listed addressing the need of evolving GP models with higher generalization ability. First is the survey study conducted to determine the parameter settings and second, the quantitative analysis for unearthing the best fitness function.