bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Theory to practice: Canalside Studio, a case study
Authors: Taylor Ruth , De Luca Damian 
Published: January 2014

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to look at the experiences of university academic staff setting up a small computer games studio to provide work placement opportunities for undergraduate students and the supporting role of industry.Design/methodology/approach– The case study uses sense making to explore the boundaries between “simulated” and “real” work in an educational setting.Findings– For students and teachers to work together in a commercial setting, relationships have to be reconstructed. Teaching focusses on developing the individual and personal attainment, the work environment prioritises the team so that organisational and business needs are met. Differences in culture and working practices between industry and academia and the organisational constraints of a university, present challenges for academic staff engaged in enterprise.Research limitations/implications– The authors recognise the limitations of a single institution case study and intend further investigation into factors around employability, enterprise education and the availability of work experience for students studying in the creative technologies including experiences in other institutions.Practical implications– Practical experience and business knowledge gained through the studio development process by the student and staff, has informed the curriculum through the introduction of team-working modules. The studio provides a unique interface between the university and games industry partners.Originality/value– The study shows the value of a university-based games studio in providing work experience for students and enhancing employability and provides insights into university/industry partnering.
Generating organisational performance
Authors: Bourne Mike , Pavlov Andrey , Franco-Santos Monica , Lucianetti Lorenzo , Mura Matteo 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– This paper aims to advance the current debates on the effect of performance measurement (PM) in the operations management domain. In order to accomplish that, it investigates the contribution of business PM and human resource management (HRM) practices to business performance.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper is based on ten case studies conducted across both manufacturing and service organisations capturing evidence from both the human resource function and line management.

Findings
– In the PM and HRM literatures, there is a debate about the contribution these practices make to the overall performance of the organisation. In particular, the results from the PM literature are inconclusive. This paper argues that performance is a result of employee engagement and that the PM system is a communication and guiding mechanism, which if implemented well and used appropriately, can channel the efforts of employees striving to perform.

Originality/value
– This paper contradicts the performance drivers approach to PM by providing new insights into the roles PM and HRM practices play in delivering business performance. Additionally, the paper develops a set of propositions as a means of clearly stating the findings and for encouraging future research in this area.
Supply chain professionals
Authors: Prajogo Daniel , Sohal Amrik 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– This paper aims to report the results of a study focusing on the competencies and skills of supply chain managers, their use of supply chain technologies and future challenges in supply chain management (SCM), including issues relating to globalisation, environment, and supply chain integration.

Design/methodology/approach
– The study uses a questionnaire survey to collect data from Australian supply chain professionals. A total of 921 surveys were mailed out and 148 responses were received, giving a response rate of 16 per cent.

Findings
– Communication and teamwork is identified as the most important competencies for successful supply chain integration. Knowledge of a broad range of technologies is considered essential; however, their use remains somewhat low. Environmental issues relating to the management of scarce resources are identified as having a significant impact on supply chain strategies.

Research limitations/implications
– The study adds to the literature on the above issues by providing empirical findings from an Australian context which can be used for comparative assessment against similar studies from other countries.

Practical implications
– The study provides insights for firms, industry associations, and governments by identifying the competencies and skills that are required to be developed for supply chain professionals. The findings also indicate the level of awareness and the extent of the adoption of information and communication technologies as well as the perceptions of supply chain professionals on the future challenges of SCM.

Originality/value
– The study is timely given the highly dynamic environment that businesses currently operate in and the challenges that it presents to supply chain professionals.
A study of Chinese quality circle effectiveness
Authors: Li Jing , L. Doolen Toni 
Published: January 2014

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to understand and measure the impact of goal clarity, goal difficulty, and management support on five social and technical outcomes for quality circles (QCs) in a Chinese company.Design/methodology/approach– Survey scales were developed based on previous research and validated using principal component analysis. Analysis of variance confirmed the validity of aggregating individual responses to team-level measures. Models for five outcomes (team member understanding of continuous improvement, team member skills, team member attitudes, team member motivation, and technical success) were developed using multiple regressions.Findings– Goal clarity was found to impact all outcomes. Goal difficulty was found to impact QC team member attitudes. Management support was related to employee's understanding of the value of continuous improvement and to the technical success of QC activities.Research limitations/implications– All the QCs included in the study were part of a single manufacturing organization. To generalize the findings, data from additional companies are needed.Practical implications– The results imply that management support is critical to improvement of processes. Even if employees wish to learn new skills, employee's efforts need to be directed, so they are closely aligned with the company's goals and objectives.Originality/value– This appears to be the first published research study to identify the role of goal clarity, goal difficulty, and management support on both social and technical systems outcomes for Chinese QCs. The findings highlight the value of and need for clearly defined, challenging goals for QC members work on and the need for management support of QC members and QC activities.
The impact of organizational citizenship behavior on enterprise resource planning success
Authors: Narimani Mehdi , Tabaeian Elham , Khanjani Maral , Soltani Farzaneh 
Published: January 2014

Purpose– Although the research on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) has increased dramatically in diverse fields during the past decade, little is known about the OCBs in the information systems area. The purpose of this study was to explore whether total quality management (TQM) mediates between OCB and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system success.Design/methodology/approach– Data were collected with a questionnaire from subordinates of leaders in steel melting industry in Iran and were used to test the model introduced.Findings– The authors discovered the relationship between OCB and ERP success and the mediating role of TQM in this model.Research limitations/implications– Based on the findings of this study, managers who try for the success of ERP systems can revise their assessment systems through TQM to identify and reward employees who have positive impact in the field of OCB.Originality/value– Limited knowledge is available on the mediating role of TQM between OCB and ERP success in the managing field. The authors prepare a model and test this model in that company.
Management control systems for business processes in uncertain environments
Authors: Eldridge Stephen , van Iwaarden Jos , van der Wiele Ton , Williams Roger 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– This paper aims to explore the application of management control systems (MCS) to business processes when an organisation is operating in an uncertain environment. The limitations of conventional process control in this context are described, and the opportunities to exploit current MCS ideas are considered.

Design/methodology/approach
– One such model, Simons' levers of control, is used for case study research in a European high technology start-up company.

Findings
– The findings suggest that the organisation responded to its uncertain environment with a package of formal and informal control systems for its strategically important business processes. The relative importance of individual business processes was observed to positively influence the rigour of control systems' implementation. Also, the inherent uncertainty or unpredictability of an individual business process was observed to influence the type of control systems employed. The use of guiding or enabling systems, particularly interactive control systems, was more pronounced in those business processes which were inherently unpredictable.

Originality/value
– These findings illustrate that adopting a MCS perspective to address business process control issues can yield new useful insights for managers when dealing with uncertainty.
TQM practices and employees' role stressors
Authors: Fallah Ebrahimi Zahra , Wei Chong Chin , Hosseini Rad Reza 
Published: January 2014

Purpose– The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of total quality management (TQM) practices on role stressors in Iranian manufacturing SMEs in order to determine the relationship between the multidimensionality of TQM practices and role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload.Design/methodology/approach– Questionnaires are administrated to 410 employees of 100 different manufacturing SMEs in Iran.Findings– The results support important negative association among some of TQM practices (such as employee involvement, information analysis, process management, supplier management, strategic planning and customer focus) and role conflict, role ambiguity, role overload. By utilizing multiple regression analysis, information analysis, supplier management, employee involvement, process management, customer focus, strategic planning are found to have significant and negative relationship with role stressors. Leadership and human resource focus are found to have significant and positive relationship with role stressors.Practical implications– This model is perfect for practical usage by SME managers to estimate the perceptions of role stressors of employees in TQM oriented firms. The findings recommend that manufacturing should look into ways of improving the major roles of TQM practices in order to decrease the negative role stressors of employees.Originality/value– TQM practices emerge to be related to role stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload), attending to an obvious noticeable gap in the previous studies of TQM and the psychological welfare of employees.
A thematic analysis of research on global sourcing and international purchasing in retail firms
Authors: Jonsson Anna , Tolstoy Daniel 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to offer a thematic analysis of global sourcing and international purchasing issues in international retail firms.

Design/methodology/approach
– We review literature that addresses purchasing/sourcing activities of retail firms in foreign markets. We categorize this literature into different themes and analyse how these themes are conceptually or empirically linked to performance. We then use the thematic analysis as a foundation for suggesting potential avenues for future research.

Findings
– Four distinct themes emerge from our literature review.

Originality/value
– There is a lack of research that addresses how retail firms can extract value from global sourcing and international purchasing activities. A thematic review, along with a careful classification of different themes, could lead to an enhanced understanding of the processes and objectives that underpin global sourcing and international purchasing activities in retail firms.
EVA (ErwerbungsVorschlags-Assistant) assists in collection building! Using ILL data for patron-driven acquisition
Authors: López Ania , Mayr Peter 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to describe the “ErwerbungsVorschlags-Assistent” (EVA), its underlying concepts and first usage statistics and experiences at the University Library of Duisburg-Essen, and explore its methodology of patron driven acquisition in regard to printed material, specifically interlibrary loan requests.

Design/methodology/approach
– The authors use a case study approach, describing the effects of the new system on existing ILL workflows and collection development decision-making.

Findings
– EVA has been in production in several German university libraries since October 2011. ILL requests are automatically compared to specific criteria in regard to their suitability as an acquisition, enriched with external data, and presented to the appropriate subject librarian.

Originality/value
– This paper was originally presented at the 2012 IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Helsinki, Finland, session 139, “Treating print in an increasingly digital collection: issues, dilemmas, and directions”, 14 August 2012. ILL, collection development, and ILL system developers will find the content useful.
Co-creating business value of information technology
Authors: Jiang Yi , Zhao Jing 
Published: January 2014

Purpose– IT-based supply chain performance is co-created through inter-organizational business processes. This research is motivated to explore how business value of IT in supply chain is co-created in downstream process and probe into the possible complementary effect of relational resources from retailers and customers during the cooperative process. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– A model is proposed to conceptualize the process with three dimensions and six constructs, which emerges a causal link between organization resources application, e-supply chain capability (ESCC) and process performance. And then the research model was validated using partial least squares with data collected from 128 manufacturing firms in China.Findings– The results provide broad support for the following: the casual relationship among inter-organizational resources interaction, ESCC and process performance; the mediating role of ESCC in the e-CRM process is more significant than that in e-ordering process; and there is the moderating effect between relational resources and internal resources in e-CRM process.Practical implications– It offers guidelines for managers to plan the roles played by resource, capabilities and performance for e-supply chain success in multi-firm environments.Originality/value– This study provides a novel perspective and offers important implications for e-supply chain research and practice, by exploring intermediate factors and shedding light on the process of co-creating business value of IT in supply chain.
A firm's post-adoption behavior: loyalty or switching costs?
Authors: Park Jun-Gi , Park Kijun , Lee Jungwoo 
Published: January 2014

Purpose– This study aims to investigate the influences of loyalty and switching costs toward a firm's overall post-adoption behavior in using information system.Design/methodology/approach– A research model is developed around two constructs found in the literature – loyalty and switching costs – that are most critical in firms' decisions on continued use of the same IS service providing company. It is empirically tested using a survey of IT decision makers in total 102 companies in South Korea. Partial least squares method is used to assess the relationships specified in research model.Findings– The findings suggest that both loyalty and switching costs have positive influences on the continuous intention to use and the inattentiveness of alternatives.Research limitations/implications– Findings are based on a single point cross-sectional survey. To further investigate the continuance of specific IT service firms, triangulation will be necessary with longitudinal and qualitative data concerning the process of decision-making, including political and contractual situation.Originality/value– The study fills the research gap in studying post-adoption behavior at the firm level by empirically testing the duality of loyalty and switching costs.
Integrating production planning and maintenance: an iterative method
Authors: Zhao Shixiong , Wang Liya , Zheng Yu 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– Making decisions on production and maintenance separately, as is often done in practice and research literature, may not result in overall optimization. This paper aims to propose a joint method that better integrates production planning and maintenance at the tactical level. The potential of improving the performance of the classic planning method is also explored.

Design/methodology/approach
– An integrated production planning and maintenance model is proposed. The production capacity losses resulted from both preventive and corrective maintenance activities are considered. Meanwhile, the reliability deterioration of the machine is considered to be operation dependent. An iterative approach is presented to find a solution for the nonlinear model through iteratively solving a sequence of mixed integer linear programming instances, accompanied by modification of some parameters prior to each iteration. Computational experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method compared with three other methods, including two methods based on separate planning and one integrated model.

Findings
– The superiority of the proposed method compared with all the other three methods is demonstrated. Thus, the values of both integrated planning and considering operation-dependent failures are testified. The advantage of the proposed method is highlighted in the cases of high capacity utilization, long maintenance durations and low maintenance costs. The performance of the two methods based on separate planning is sensitive to the system utilization, and when utilization is high, the one with an availability-sensitive objective function defined for the maintenance problem performs better.

Originality/value
– Few studies have been carried out to integrate decisions on production lot and maintenance. Their considerations are either incomplete or not realistic enough. A more comprehensive and realistic integrated model is proposed in this paper, along with an iterative solution algorithm for it. A potential way to improve the performance of the classic planning method with its simplicity preserved is also presented.
EuRathlon: the autonomous robot challenge
Authors: Bogue Robert 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– This article aims to describe euRathlon 2013, the first competitive event in a three-year, EU-funded programme for autonomous robots, which was held in Germany in September 2013.

Design/methodology/approach
– Following an introduction, this describes the teams and their robots, the scenarios in which they had to compete, the results and details of the winning robots. It concludes with a short discussion.

Findings
– Thirteen academic and corporate teams competed in five tasks that simulated a range of challenging terrestrial disaster response scenarios. Performance was assessed and scored by a panel of judges and prizes were awarded to the teams that performed best.

Originality/value
– This provides details of an important competition that seeks to enhance Europe's autonomous robot capabilities.
Marketing of works as a source of the new hybrid offerings in widened marketing of goods, works and services
Authors: Eugene Pogodayev Sergiy 
Published: January 2014

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is the justification of a new conception of the marketing of works. The paper supports this new conception of the marketing of goods, works, and services instead of the existing conception of the marketing of goods and services. The paper also introduces new concepts of hybrid offerings.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper develops hypotheses on the basis of a hypothetical-deductive method, the application of analysis and synthesis for justification of the proposed concepts, and interviews with top marketing managers of shipyards to substantiate the necessity of marketing of works.

Findings
– Marketing of works is a new line of marketing activity and a source of new hybrid offerings. A widened marketing of goods, works, and services must replace the existing marketing of goods and services, which does not apply completely in the sale of works. The main difference between works and services is an ability to change the market value of objects. “Goods+works” and “works+services” are the new particular hybrid offerings and “goods+works+services” is the new general hybrid offering.

Practical implications
– Marketing of works plays a key role in many branches of industry, including house building, airplane production, the repair of vessels, the reclamation of land, and so on. Works are elements of the new hybrid offerings and the new marketing of goods, works, and services.

Originality/value
– Initially, the new marketing of works appeared as a part of the marketing of industrial services. Conceptions of the marketing of works and the marketing of goods, works, and services are new results that develop the existing marketing of goods and services. The particular hybrid offerings “goods+works” and “works+services” and the general hybrid offering “goods+works+services” are also new results.