Search results

Integrated health care delivery (IHCD), as a major issue of managed care, was considered the panacea to rising health care costs. In theory it would simultaneously provide high-quality and continuous care. However, owing to the backlash of managed care at the turn of the century many health care providers today refrain from using further integrative activities. Based on transaction cost economics, this chapter investigates why IHCD is deemed appropriate in certain circumstances and why it failed in the past. It explores the new understanding of IHCD, which focuses on actual integration through virtual integration instead of aggregation of health care entities. Current success factors of virtually integrated hybrid structures, which have been evaluated in a long-term case study conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from July 2001 to September 2002, will elucidate the further development of IHCD and the implications for other industrialized countries, such as Germany.

Divestitures and other forms of organizational separation are not commonly associated with continuity and ongoing collaboration in inter-organizational relationships. Instead, separation is often equated with terminating relationships and gaining independence. Here, the authors argue that achieving separation does not require terminating relationships and that ongoing collaboration between separating entities may actually contribute to successful separation. The authors base this argument on the assertion that the objective of organizational separation is to achieve organizational autonomy for all entities involved and that separating entities can enable each other’s development of autonomy while remaining interdependent. The authors also discuss how collaborative separation may contribute to a range of benefits, as well as why it may nevertheless fail to emerge in practice. In this respect, the authors consider the relevance of ethical perspectives and emotional dynamics related to feelings of (dis)respect, (dis)trust, pride and shame. The authors conclude by discussing activities that may contribute to, and undermine, effective collaborative separation.

In a public-private partnership (PPP), the private sector is represented by a company termed the special purpose vehicle (SPV), which combines different stakeholders including designers, contractors and service providers under one umbrella. Correct SPV team selection is critical to ensure PPP success as the SPV must act as an integrated entity. In fact, unless the SPV takes an active role in developing trust and promoting integration principles, segmentation of interests, highly adversarial atmospheres, loss of value and economic inefficiency will prevail. Absence of awareness of such principles among stakeholders and the scarcity of literature investigating SPV stakeholder integration create great risks that jeopardize project success. Accordingly, to mitigate the aforementioned risks and provide stakeholders with both the knowledge and the tools to instigate and maintain integration, this paper aims to develop and test a framework to measure SPV stakeholder integration, inspired by the correlation between integrated project delivery (IPD) and SPV operations.

Following a design science research approach, a structured review is conducted to develop the SPV integration metrics and framework. The framework is then validated through face validation by a panel of industry and academic experts to assess its applicability in measuring SPV integration. Finally, the framework is tested on a well-recognized international PPP project to measure the SPV integration level, and the outcomes are discussed and analyzed.

The framework was able to assess the integration level of the studied SPV highlighting several areas of low-integration settings and providing guidance for achieving better integration.

This research is the first that develops a model to investigate the SPV’s integration level, from a holistic IPD perspective, to enable successful relationship management and enhance collaboration success. This study inspires practical recommendations for PPP practitioners to reduce the risks of segregated SPVs and their contribution to PPP failure.

The purpose of this paper is to present and test a methodology, extending the concept of hierarchical Petri nets, to discover conflicts in a distribution channel.

The approach involves linking different levels of the supply chain and detecting conflicts occurring when the single entities, each optimized for its own operations, are combined together in a supply chain. Specifically, a methodology is proposed for synthesizing individual Petri Net models combined with matrix equations in order to detect and manage conflicts in a supply chain. These conflicts may stem from differing goals, planning and resources.

The methodology offers the user the ability to investigate the potential for conflicts in the system and manage the system to avoid such conflicts before they occur. The proposed approach holds promise for both the short term and long term for effective supply chain management and design. This would enable the supply chain to put sufficient protection (e.g. buffers) in strategic locations relative to the potential conflict or contingency plans in place to handle the conflict when it occurs.

While the ability to discover and pre‐empt conflicts would be a valuable asset to the management and design of supply chains, there is little insight found, to date, in the research on effective methods to realize detection. The current paper provides a systematic approach through the development of a hierarchical Petri net extension to detect conflicts prior to occurrence in an integrated supply chain system.

This is a speculative paper in which the requirements of IR systems to support relatively creative, as well as more convergent thinking are discussed. The nature of creative thinking is explored, as is the extent to which a range of current information systems is able to support key intellectual processes associated with it. The development of IR systems capable of providing more direct support for creative thinking will depend on the greater integration of high order knowledge representations and flexible, fuzzy pattern‐matching techniques. Such developments may enhance the ability of information seekers to place before themselves a range of information sufficiently – but not excessively – rich in diversity to facilitate the development of relatively divergent – as well as more convergent – ideas.

Vendors who are implementing the Standard Network Interconnection (SNI) protocols for computer to computer communications can now test their implementation against the LSP/SNI Test Facility, which has been developed by the Library of Congress. The facility is intended to verify the correct functioning of the SNI protocols for the Open System Interconnection (OSI) layers. The development and use of the Test Facility are discussed.

Argues that there is more to planning a factory or office block than buying a piece of land and building. Considers other questions including: should it be single‐ or multi‐storey?: where should each manufacturing or other facility be located in respect of related departments to ensure optimum utilization?: what considerations should be borne in mind when locating employee facilities such as washrooms or dining halls? Suggests that these problems and others can be made easier to solve by the use of such aids as facility relationship, travel, functional relationship and other charts. Describes and illustrates these aids. Explains that, when applied in practice, they provide much help in achieving the desired operating effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the content and determinants of voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures within chief executive officer (CEO) letters and social media tools.

Published CEO letters and the presence of global pulp and paper manufacturing companies in the social media in 2012 are analysed in this study using content analysis. Furthermore, multiple regression analysis is used to investigate the impact played by headquarter location, firm size and lagged profitability as a measure of slack resources on the quality of CSR disclosure.

Company size and slack resources were found to increase the quality of traditional sustainability communication, whereas company size was the only significant factor explaining communication quality in social media usage. Environmental issues were the most common disclosure topic, accompanied by community issues. A curvilinear association was interestingly found between slack resources and communication quality.

The sample frame was selected from the 100 largest pulp and paper companies globally, and for better generalization, future research should aim at also analyzing data from small and medium enterprises and from other industries.

Findings of the paper are useful for firm self-evaluation and benchmarking of disclosure activities by other businesses across the pulp and paper industry.

Slack company resources improve communication quality and the effective utilization of multiple channels.

This paper incorporates the framework of the new ISO 26000 standard in CSR implementation and illustrates the growing importance of social media in communicating CSR.

As manufacturing gets ever more competitive, integration will come to be seen as a means whereby performance can be improved while flexibility is, at the same time, also being enhanced. Takes a fundamental look at the concept of integration to determine its essential properties. It is expected that this will lead to a better understanding of the concept, and also to applications in manufacturing environments which might ultimately lead to a full realization of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM).

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of the initial perceptions of chief audit executives (CAEs) on the role of internal audit function (IAF) in integrated reporting (IR) in South Africa. This paper draws attention to possible challenges and barriers to internal audit’s (IAs) involvement in the integrated reporting process (IRP).

Detailed interviews were carried out in 2016 with 10 CAEs from the EY Excellence in Integrated Reporting Awards for South Africa. An interpretive approach involving thematic content analysis was used to construct key themes which provided the CAE’s initial perception of the IAF’s role in IRP.

Despite the current role being limited, the findings suggest that the IAF has unexploited potential to improve the IRP. These roles include: providing assurance on data integrity; reviewing risks and opportunities; evaluating the adequacy of governance and risk management controls and giving assurance on the IRP. A benefit to the IAFs involvement in the IRP relates to their extensive knowledge of the business. The lack of skills in the IA profession is an area of concern, as there is a shortage of capacity and specialist skills.

The interpretive style will assist IAFs to understand and define their role in the IRP, as well as to follow best practice in the IRP.

This paper is the first to explore the views and make recommendations on the role of the IAF in the IRP. This paper can be seen as an important contribution to academic research as the role of IAF in the IRP is exploratory in a global context.