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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine the underlying dimensions of supply chain management (SCM) practices and to empirically test a framework identifying the relationships among SCM practices, operational performance and SCM‐related organizational performance with special emphasis on small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in Turkey.Design/methodology/approachData for the study were collected from a sample of 203 manufacturing SMEs operating in the manufacture of fabricated metal products and general purpose machinery (NACE codes 28 and 29) within the city of Istanbul in Turkey. The research framework was tested using partial least squares method, which is a variance‐based structural equation modeling approach.FindingsBased on exploratory factor analysis (EFA), SCM practices were grouped in two factors: outsourcing and multi‐suppliers (OMS), and strategic collaboration and lean practices (SCLP). The results indicate that both factors of SCLP and OMS have direct positive...

Despite growing interest in the knowledge economy, the work practice of its key workers has remained neglected. This article reviews the key sociological and managerial debates about ascendant knowledge workers. The authors argue that both debates assume, rather than empirically examine, changing work practices and through a leap of faith move on to discuss the enhanced class position of knowledge workers and the managerial challenges that they pose. The authors postulate that omission of work practice undermines such claims. They critique both debates, presenting an alternative, empirically sensitive research agenda to help overcome the existing analytical myopia.

This research consists of a formative evaluation designed to identify the steps necessary to revitalize a formerly successful Total Quality Management (TQM) process at a U.S. Navy engineering and logistics support organization. The research also developed a methodology to account for the fact that the investigator is a well-informed insider who served as one of the principle change agents for the TQM implementation. The research is based on the researcher's observation that the major cause for the waning implementation was due to senior management and leadership issues and the organization-wide processes with which they interface. The investigation consisted of an extensive review of the literature to identify, from a leadership perspective and theory framework, an ideal implementation for this organization. Then a case study was conducted to identify the espoused and actual implementation processes, again from a leadership viewpoint. The gaps or differences between ideal and es...

Most of the entrepreneurship literature has addressed the benefits and necessity of using social network ties as opposed to market methods in early venture finance, but it has largely understated the potential limitations and costs of doing so. Specifically, very sparse research has examined the factors that influence entrepreneurs’ choice between using networks versus market methods. In this study, we propose a contingent model of network utilization when approaching initial investors, based on the dimensions of human capital of the entrepreneurs. We test this model with primary field survey data from 226 new high–tech ventures in Singapore and Beijing. The results show that high occupational status and relevant industrial work experience are positively associated with the entrepreneurs’ propensity to utilize existing networks by enhancing the resourcefulness of their network ties (social capital); however, such influences are alleviated by entrepreneurs’ marketing or managerial ex...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the standardisation of the work breakdown structure (WBS) for building projects. This is based on the premise that buildings in general retain basic elemental options, and that there is a commonality of activities in the procurement of building projects.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the objective, the general practice of developing the WBS is investigated. This is achieved by means of an industry‐wide questionnaire survey designed to identify the most widely used criteria among UK construction organisations in segregating building works into packages. The survey also investigates the sequencing of these criteria across the WBS hierarchy.FindingsThe findings reveal that the most frequently used decomposition criteria in the formulation of WBS for building projects are elements, work sections, physical location and construction aids. The proposed framework is presented as a hierarchical decomposition of a building ...

By focusing on a half-century of recent Latin American economic history, this book presents a multidisciplinary approach to examining the relentless pursuit of development in the Global South and aims to revitalise the academic debate on whether having abundant natural resources is a blessing or a curse. Its pioneering diachronic comparative approach of analysing two Ecuadorian oil booms, those in 1972–1980 and 2003–2014, reveals processes of continuity and change in the capacity of this peripheral state to intervene in its national development process and the consequences of this on its social formation, framed by the contemporary trends of global capitalism and the irruption of environmental thinking into development policymaking.

Purpose This exploratory paper investigates gamification as a medium for knowledge workers to interact with each other. The purpose of this paper is to open the discussion around the sustaining impact that gamification might have on knowledge management (KM). Design/methodology/approach The paper employs an exploratory literature review investigating the current state of the art in relation to KM and gamification; this literature review serves as the starting point of subsequent theorizing. Findings Based on the literature review the authors theorize that the use of gamification in KM can go far beyond the motivational aspects. To name just a few uses of gamification, it can help in: supporting flexibility, facilitating transparency and therefore improving trust, visualizing skills and competences as well as generating requirements for new competences and promoting a collaborative environment among the knowledge workers. Research limitations/implications This paper opens the discuss...

The paper explores differences as well as commonalities in corporate risk management practices and risk exposures in the large non-financial Slovenian and Croatian companies. Comparative analysis of survey results have revealed that the majority of analysed companies in both ...

OVERVIEW: Every new product development (NPD) team learns a unique set of lessons in solving the many problems that arise in a typical project, and it is impor-tant to ensure that these lessons are shared. Since much of the learning is tacit in nature, it is difficult to articulate, to ...

In contrast to previous results combining all ages, we find positive effects of comparison income on happiness for the under 45s and negative effects for those over 45. In the UK, these coefficients are several times the magnitude of own income effects. In West Germany, they cancel out to give no effect of comparison income on life satisfaction in the whole sample when controlling for fixed effects, time-in-panel, and age-groupings. Pooled OLS estimation gives the usual negative comparison effect in the whole sample for both West Germany and the UK. The residual age-happiness relationship is hump-shaped in all three countries. Results are consistent with a simple life cycle model of relative income under uncertainty. Jel codes D10, I31, J10

Since 2007, the Belgian School at Athens has undertaken excavations on the Kefali or Buffo hill, east of the village of Sissi, on the north coast of Crete where a Minoan site was occupied approximately between 2500 and 1200 BC. This volume is the follow-up of an earlier one on the 2007-2008 excavations (published as Aegis 1) and presents a preliminary report on the excavations carried out in 2009 and 2010. It concentrates on the different zones examined within the cemetery and settlement. There are also reports on the Late Minoan pottery, site conservation and environmental analysis as well as a paper on the use of GIS at Sissi

This article explores the legacy of the demise of the deep coal mining industry in Scotland. It places particular emphasis on the cultural scars of this process as witnessed through miners' and managers' memories, positioning these within the context of occupational socialization, conflict, and alienation. The piece explores the enduring importance of these cultural scars in shaping broader collective narratives of decline in Scotland, and how responses were manifest in shifting political outlooks and the emergence (at both a local and national level) of a resurgent nationalism from the early 1960s onward. Drawing on the notion of the “cultural circuit,” the article examines how and why personal experience of the loss of the coal industry informed and conformed to the politics of the miners' union in Scotland, the National Union of Mineworkers Scottish Area (NUMSA). As the article makes clear, the program of closures in the industry has left profound psychological scars ...

Taalproblemen veroorzaken onveiligheid op het werk. Deze studie inventariseert welk wetenschappelijk onderzoek in een aantal economische sectoren is gedaan. Deze studie laat zien dat wetenschappelijk onderzoek naar 'taal en veiligheid' nog pril is en meer aandacht op de wetenschappelijke onderzoeksagenda verdient.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical model for assessing the performance of supplier relationships (SRs). The majority of performance measurement models incorporate hard quantitative measures that are not appropriate for the soft features of business relationships. As they are usually designed by the customer organisation, they are imposed on suppliers, they do not take into account the relationship as a unit of analysis and therefore they carry a bias in their interpretation.Design/methodology/approachFor the development of the model, the nature of a SR is conceptualised in terms of two typologies: one based on the level of its analysis and one based on its genesis and development and the methodology of gap analysis is used.FindingsThe performance of SRs is assessed in terms of several disparities that exist between the participating parties' perceptions of the nature and their performance to the relationship as well as their perception of their partners...

Des premiers documents acquis au cours des fouilles anciennes dans les tourbières aux résultats obtenus plus récemment par l’analyse dendrochronologique de champs de pieux en contexte littoral, la recherche palafittique dans le sud-ouest de l’Allemagne dispose d’un large inventaire de structures de maisons plus ou moins complètes pour la période néolithique comprise entre 4200 et 2400 av. J. -C. Par combinaison des données plus générales de l’archéologie de l’habitat en milieu humide et de celles plus spécifiques de la dendroarchéologie, nous proposons une étude de la maison sous les trois dimensions de l’architecture, de la sociologie et de l’écologie. Ceci permet une approche de la variabilité dimensionnelle du bâti en fonction des choix technologiques, de l’organisation de l’espace domestique, du statut social des résidents et également en fonction des ressources ligneuses à disposition et de l’évolution du couvert forestier.From the first documents given by earlier excavations in the bog sites to the recent tree-ring investigations in the pile fields at Lake Constance, Southwest German pile-dwelling research disposes nowadays of numerous plans of house structures, more or less complete, for the Neolithic period between 4200 and 2400 BC. From both perspectives of wetland archaeology and dendroarchaeology, the house is considered in this paper under three dimensions related to architecture, sociology and ecology. So, its dimensional variability can be approached with respect to different aspects like technological choices, organisation of the domestic space, social status of the residents, as well as disposal of timber and woodland management.Die südwestdeutsche Pfahlbauforschung verfügt über ein umfangreiches Inventar mehr oder weniger komplett erhaltener Hausgrundrisse aus dem Zeitraum 4200 bis 2400 v. Chr., das aus neueren dendrochronologischen Untersuchungen in Pfahlfeldern des Bodensees gewonnen wurde und – unter Heranziehung älterer Grabungen-auch umfangreiche Baustrukturen in Mooren umfasst. Durch Kombination der archäologischen Beobachtungen im feuchten Milieu mit spezifischen Ergebnissen der Dendroarchäologie, stellen wir hier eine Studie der neolithischen Pfahl-und Moorhäuser unter den Gesichtspunkten der Architektur, Soziologie und Ökologie vor. Dieser Ansatz erlaubt eine Annäherung an Fragen zur Größenvariabilität der Gebäude in Abhängigkeit angewandter Technologien, unterschiedllicher Organisation der Wohn-und Wirtschaftsfläche und des sozialen Status der Bewohner, aber auch in Relation zu verfügbaren Holzressourcen und waldwirtschaftlichen Maßnahmen

In this paper we look into the modes for enhancing intuition suggested in the literature. Our starting point is that although the various intuition-enhancing techniques often work, it is rarely clear why. This also makes more systematic development of further techniques more difficult. First we provide a quick overview of the features of intuition followed by reviewing the intuition-enhancement techniques from the literature. We attempt grouping these techniques into coherent categories by speculating (in the style of Gestalt psychology drawing on well-known phenomena, empirical studies as well as lessons from the history of art and science) about why they work and relating them to the features of intuition to help deeper understanding and also to make identifying areas where further techniques would be needed. We do not currently aim for a final model that classifies all the intuition-enhancement techniques, we only want to make the first step on this road. For our exploration we c...

Gamification is an emerging area in research and practice that has sparked considerable interest in management studies. The attention to gamification is amplified by the ubiquitous nature of digital technologies and augmented reality which touches on how people work and learn socially. Consequently, gamified tools’ affordances affect situated learning in working environments through their implications on human relations in practice. However, the dynamics between gamification and situated learning have not been considered in the literature. Thus, drawing on the synthesis of gamification and situated learning literatures, we offer a model of gamifying situated learning in organisations. Thereby, our discussion explains the role of gamified affordances and their socio-material characteristics, which blend with situated learning as people indwell on such tools in their work. Moreover, gamified tools can afford the technological support of community-building and networking in organisatio...

This article reviews the effect of two post-training transfer interventions (relapse prevention [RP] and goal setting [GS]) on trainees’ ability to apply skills gained in a training context to the workplace. Through a review of post-training transfer interventions literature, the article identifies a number of key issues that remain unresolved or underexplored, for example, the inconsistent results on the impact of RP on transfer of training, the lack of agreement on which GS types are more efficient to improve transfer performance, the lack of clarity about the distinction between RP and GS, and the underlying process through which these two post-training transfer interventions influence transfer of training. We offer some recommendations to overcome these problems and also provide guidance for future research on transfer of training.

PurposeThe paper aims to assess the impact of corporate strategy on shareholder value in decline and turnaround situations.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 45 turnaround firms was selected and matched against a control sample which did not face continuous decline over the time period studied. The impact of corporate strategy on shareholder value was tested using cumulative beta excess return measures to capture the long‐term basis of corporate strategy.FindingsThe paper finds that the beta excess return measures captured the hypothesized relationships between strategy and shareholder value for the sample firms studied.Practical implicationsBeta excess return measures are superior to case studies or event studies for identifying the long‐term effects of corporate strategy.Originality/valueRelatively few studies have compared the strategies of turnaround firms with a matched sample of non‐declining firms. The use of cumulative beta excess returns to assess long‐term valuation of...