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The purpose of this study is to determine how individual competencies, team collaboration and clear assignment of tasks and roles predict the decision speed of temporary task forces employed to handle the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

This study analyzes COVID-19 task forces and bases of previous research on the performance of temporary teams and human and social capital literature. Linear multilevel regression is used with data from a factorial survey, covering six different continents, various industries and leadership levels from chief executive officers (CEOs) to specialist task force members.

The study reveals that all analyzed predictors (individual competencies, team collaboration and assignment of tasks and roles) are positively associated with the task force decision speed, with the individual competencies standing out in importance.

Team member selection is likely to be one of the first tasks necessary when such a temporary task force is created. Additionally, competent individuals might be successful even when not embedded in clear structures and even when not working in their own specialist roles.

The sudden pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted governments, corporations and individual people alike. As handling a pandemic is new for most involved people, and many such task forces are shown to be manned by personnel not formally trained in crisis management, this study's results represent important contributions to team performance, decision-making and crisis management literature in general. Furthermore, avenues for further research into the comparative analysis of predictors are revealed.

Committees and Task Forces are Omnipresent and Necessary, Esfandiary and other analysts of social trends and future scenarios have noted that the problems to be solved in the world—by nations, communities, and organizations, are becoming more and more complex and require the use of more varied expertness to find creative solutions.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new algorithm based on programming by demonstration and exception strategies to solve assembly tasks such as peg-in-hole.

Data describing the demonstrated tasks are obtained by kinesthetic guiding. The demonstrated trajectories are transferred to new robot workspaces using three-dimensional (3D) vision. Noise introduced by vision when transferring the task to a new configuration could cause the execution to fail, but such problems are resolved through exception strategies.

This paper demonstrated that the proposed approach combined with exception strategies outperforms traditional approaches for robot-based assembly. Experimental evaluation was carried out on Cranfield Benchmark, which constitutes a standardized assembly task in robotics. This paper also performed statistical evaluation based on experiments carried out on two different robotic platforms.

The developed framework can have an important impact for robot assembly processes, which are among the most important applications of industrial robots. Our future plans involve implementation of our framework in a commercially available robot controller.

This paper proposes a new approach to the robot assembly based on the Learning by Demonstration (LbD) paradigm. The proposed framework enables to quickly program new assembly tasks without the need for detailed analysis of the geometric and dynamic characteristics of workpieces involved in the assembly task. The algorithm provides an effective disturbance rejection, improved stability and increased overall performance. The proposed exception strategies increase the success rate of the algorithm when the task is transferred to new areas of the workspace, where it is necessary to deal with vision noise and altered dynamic characteristics of the task.

Reports on the process by which the Bank of Montreal became an organization fully committed to workplace equality and workforce diversity. The idea arose during the development of the new corporate strategic plan, when it became clear that competitive advantage lay in this direction. The vision was therefore incorporated into the plan. This was followed by the setting up of four task forces, looking at the advancement of women, the employment of aboriginal people and people with disabilities, and the needs of visible minorities. Describes the findings of each of the task forces and how the recommendations of each were put into practice. Summarizes the changes that have taken and are taking place at the bank as a result of this initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive description, justification and modus operandi for implementation of cellular operations within healthcare delivery supply chains. The methodology outlined has a sound theoretical basis, has been proven in a wide range of market sectors (including hospitals) and hence qualifies for consideration as a contribution to “new management theory”.

Approach is based on the well established management‐by‐projects (MBP) methodology for analysis, design and effective implementation of change. There is detailed coverage of the five‐step MBP programme with specific applications in healthcare. The importance of “people involvement” as a core requirement is demonstrated via the set‐up of task forces to design and operate such cells. These groups integrate cognate activities so as to provide seamless patient flow within the healthcare delivery process. MBP is derived from a systems perspective. This in turn is concerned with maintaining quality, reducing uncertainty, smooth transference, synchronisation, schedule adherence, and minimisation of throughput times.

The outputs from case studies executed in a large UK teaching hospital confirm the substantial benefits accruing from cellular operation. In both materials supplies and urology admission processes significant improvements result form adoption of the MBP change methodology. This includes substantive 50 per cent reduction in patient throughput times, plus 25 per cent increase in bed utilisation. Measurable cost benefits are achieved in materials supply, especially via simplification of ordering systems.

The healthcare applications demonstrate the applicability of MBP within this specialised scenario. However, the solutions depend on the innovatory capability of the relevant task forces who execute the projects. Since these necessarily include participation by coal‐face “players”, i.e. doctors, nurses, support staff, etc. advised by internal “change experts” the solutions adopted are shaped to be the best and most appropriate “local” schema.

It is essential that task forces be properly constituted, well trained, well advised, and actively practice the plan‐do‐check‐act cyclic route of well‐tested improvement. “Train‐Do” is the key. However, in healthcare especially, the “Elephant Must Be Eaten in Bite Sized Chunks”. In other words the organisation needs visible progressive change, unit‐by‐unit, thus avoiding saturation of scarce resources.

Brings together the MBP methodology and cellular organisational concepts into an integrated, sustainable, systems based approach to the analysis, design and implementation of effective change.

This paper aims to develop a pose/force coordination method for a redundant dual-arm robot to achieve a symmetric coordination task.

A novel control strategy of dual-arm coordination is proposed that associates pose coordination with force coordination. The spatial in-parallel spring and damping model is built to regulate the relative pose error of two end-effectors in real time, and force coordination factor is introduced to realize the dynamic distribution of loadings to limit the object’s internal force in real time.

The proposed method was verified on a real dual-arm robot platform. The symmetric coordination task is performed and the experiment results show that a good behavior on the regulation of the relative pose errors between two arms to achieve the object’s trajectory tracking, and the distribution of the two end-effectors’ loadings to limit the object’s internal force.

The benefits of the proposed method are to improve the object’s tracking performance and avoid the object damage during the symmetric coordination task.

This paper aims to investigate the “buzz” about the University of California's Bibliographic Services Task Force report Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California and begins to explore Task Force findings from a public service perspective.

Members of the University of California's Bibliographic Services Task Force were interviewed about their report published in December 2005, Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California.

Establishes that “search and retrieval” are of primary importance to today's library users, and that the design and delivery of bibliographic services are of equal import to public services librarians.

Informs and stimulates discussion about the value of “search” as service, and reinforces the importance of bibliographic services in today's information marketplace.

Challenges librarians and library workers to think about their roles and responsibilities with regards to the care for and tending of the entire bibliographic information space.

Given a specific job, this paper aims to examine if the tasks change when moving from one country to another, and if so, whether such changes are at least partly a function of environmental factors.

A mixed-method approach (surveys and interviews) with professional-level expatriates based in the UAE.

The results indicated that the “same” job often required different tasks depending on the country. Given a matching job between home and host countries, 66 per cent of respondents indicated that the job was different and on average, 20 per cent of the job was perceived to be different. Environmental forces did account for meaningful task differences. Legal and regulatory forces were a particularly important driver of task differences.

It is important to consider potential task differences in connection with expatriate assignments. Attending to task differences can have a positive impact on staffing, development and management processes.

Given the “same” job, the specific tasks may be different depending on the country.

The objective is to develop a flexible robot assembly system capable of economically switching between a wide range of product assemblies. Towards this goal, this paper introduces grasping as a principle issue in designing for flexibility in a robot system. The task, sensing, and certainty about actions are the primary factors in grasp decisions and not where to grasp the part. Identifying finger features, which satisfy a broad range of tasks reduces the likelihood of re‐tooling, and improves certainty about part location and relative orientation. Aided by the ability to address a broad range of tasks, design rules are established which assimilate grasps to part design.

The Asian Development Bank has played a significant role as an important source of development finance in the Asian and Pacific region for the past 20 years. In 1987, a study was approved of the bank′s staffing requirement in the 1990s. A model was developed to provide a basis for exploring a number of demand/supply possibilities and illustrating the relative importance of key factors affecting staffing requirements. The form taken by the number of combinations of the variables involved indicated that the appropriate framework should be a computerised input/output model called STAFFPLAN.