bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Building a high‐commitment lean culture
Authors: Angelis Jannis , Conti Robert , Cooper Cary , Gill Colin 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe characteristics of successful lean operations make a committed workforce a necessity. However, there is an ongoing debate over whether lean characteristics inherently enhance or impede commitment. The purpose of this paper is to help settle the debate, as well as provide insights into the role specific work practices play.Design/methodology/approachBased on responses from 1,391 workers at 21 lean sites, the authors examined the relationship between the degree of lean implementation and worker commitment; as well as the commitment effects of 21 lean work practices.FindingsThe paper examines relationships between worker commitment and lean production, sheds light on the lean commitment debate and provides guidance for designing lean systems that complement high‐commitment work practices.Practical implicationsThe results will be of value to readers with interests in operations, human resources and high‐performance work practices, as well as the management and implementation of lean and its associated practices.Originality/valueThe study described in the paper is unique in that it establishes a statistically valid relationship between lean production and worker commitment and associated work practices.
Learning to be lean: the influence of external information sources in lean improvements
Authors: Boyle Todd A. , Scherrer‐Rathje Maike , Stuart Ian 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the role of management exposure to external information sources, such as training sessions, plant visits, and conferences, in helping manufacturing organizations achieve lean goals.Design/methodology/approachA model is proposed highlighting the relationship between various key drivers of lean, external information sources, management commitment to lean, and lean thinking. To empirically test the model, 1,000 surveys were mailed to Canadian manufacturers with 109 usable surveys returned. Analyzing the data using partial least squares, the common sources of management information on lean and their effectiveness for lean improvements are discussed.FindingsThe final model confirms that management exposure to external information sources and commitment to lean both influence lean thinking within organizations. However, the direct relationship between external information sources and lean thinking is not supported. Instead, an indirect relationship exists, where increased exposure to sources of lean information, increases management commitment to lean, and ultimately the extent of lean thinking in the organization.Practical implicationsThe practical implications of this research are that it will help manufacturing managers identify both organizational and environmental factors that may facilitate or inhibit the extensive use of lean in their organization, and the impact that their own understanding of lean and commitment to lean improvements will have on the overall success of a lean program.Originality/valueThe paper should help improve understanding of the differences in the extent of lean thinking between plants in the same company, organizations in the same industry, and organizations across industries.
Analysis and modeling of maintenance operations in the context of an oil filling plant
Authors: Savsar Mehmet 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present models and practical procedures for the analysis of maintenance operations and development of maintenance policies in the context of an oil filling factory. Basic maintenance models, maintenance policy selection and optimum spare part quantity determination procedures are illustrated with a specific case application in a factory.Design/methodology/approachMaintenance formulas are constructed and applied in a factory to determine down time due to various types of failures and maintenance practices in the system. Based on the analysis of the current system, a new preventive maintenance policy is proposed and its effect on reducing down time due to random failures is estimated by using the formulation developed. Procedures for spare part requirements and optimum order quantities with respect to total costs are outlined for critical spares.FindingsModels and case study results presented in this paper demonstrate that selection of appropriate maintenance policy and optimum spare part order quantities should be based on scientific procedures since the results can significantly affect system performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe results obtained in this paper are specific to the case application. However, the models and procedures presented are general and can be applied to any similar problems.Practical implicationsFormulations and procedures outlined in this paper can be used to determine effects of various types of maintenance activities and related policies on system performance. They can be valuable tools for maintenance engineers and operational managers in improving system productivity.Originality/valueThe paper considers a management problem related to maintenance policy selection and spare part order quantity determination in a factory. Detailed procedures outlined in this paper can be highly valuable tools for maintenance managers.
Teaching 2.0: (re)learning to teach online
Authors: Bullock Shawn Michael 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to document and analyse the author's first two years of developing a pedagogy that meaningfully incorporates the content creation and social collaboration functions of digital technologies.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses self‐study methodology to describe, interpret, and challenge excerpts from the author's teaching journal to develop warranted assertions for how and why digital technologies are used in particular ways during undergraduate and graduate level courses.FindingsOne finding of the paper is the relative ease with which the author slipped into a comfort zone of using digital technologies in rather superficial ways, since the major hurdle of ubiquitous access that he had previously encountered was removed due to the fact he was now teaching at a mobile‐enabled institution. The paper also reports on the relative success the author experienced using blogging tools to further develop relationships with undergraduate and graduate students and engage them in meaningful discussions outside of class time.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough this study focuses on the author's experiences as a new academic in a mobile‐enabled institution, and thus might initially seem limited in applicability, the practical implications of this research are inherent in the methodology and methods used to critique is pedagogical approach and to challenge himself to find ways to integrate digital technologies into his teaching.Originality/valueThe paper will be of interest to anyone who has ever struggled with questions of relevancy in the use of digital technologies in both off‐ and online post‐secondary classroom environments.
The role of project‐based learning in IT
Authors: Hogue Andrew , Kapralos Bill , Desjardins Franc¸ois 
Published: June 2011

PurposeProblem/project‐based‐learning (PBL) approaches have traditionally been shown to be effective for learning within many professional programs that are directly related to the students' future career. The PBL approach has been adopted for over four decades in such fields as medicine and engineering and studies have demonstrated that students working in a PBL context have improved their skill levels over students enrolled in traditional lecture‐based classes. In spite of these successes, PBL has not yet been often considered in computer science/IT‐related academic programs. This is due to a variety of factors, including lack of support from faculty, historical approaches precluding such innovation, and lack of motivation to innovate beyond the dominant and more traditionally known approaches. This paper presents a case study that outlines a particular approach that was adopted to attempt to overcome these limitations in order to introduce PBL to IT‐related studies. The context of this study is a particular program that involves students in industry‐relevant practices while learning the necessary theory and honing their skills. It aims to discuss how PBL has been integrated into the IT Game Development and Entrepreneurship program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, a laptop‐based institution. It also aims to provide qualitative results that would support the effective applicability of this PBL approach.Design/methodology/approachA novel method for learning technical game development (theory and practice) is illustrated using a PBL pedagogical approach. The primary objective is to maintain academic integrity, improve critical thinking and problem‐solving skills, and introduce students to the theory of designing and developing video games.FindingsPreliminary results indicate that the proposed PBL method has improved students' skills and expanded their knowledge both theoretically and practically within their area of study. With the integration of this approach into the curriculum, the authors have seen a higher retention rate, increased motivation, and the development of higher quality work from students.Originality/valueThis paper provides a discussion on the role of PBL in IT settings with practical and positive implications on student learning, involvement, and retention. The approach is innovative in higher education and provides a framework that can be easily adapted to other fields of study.
An experimental system for measuring the credibility of news content in Twitter
Authors: Al‐Khalifa Hend S. , Al‐Eidan Rasha M. 
Published: June 2011

PurposeOwing to the large amount of information available on Twitter (a micro blogging service) that is not necessarily true or believable, credibility of news published in such an electronic channel has become an important area for investigation in the field of web credibility. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachA system was developed to measure the credibility of news content published in Twitter. The system uses two approaches to assign credibility levels (low, high and average) to each tweet. The first approach is based on the similarity between Twitter posts (tweets) and authentic (i.e. verified) news sources. The second approach is based on the similarity with verified news sources in addition to a set of proposed features.FindingsThe evaluations of the two approaches showed that assigning credibility levels to Twitter tweets for the first approach has a higher precision and recall. Additional experiments showed that the linking feature has its impact on the second approach results.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed system is experimental; thus further experiments are needed to prove these findings.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the research on web credibility. It is believed to be the first which provides a proposed system to evaluate the credibility of Twitter news content automatically.
Exploring web neighbours in exploratory search
Authors: Efe Kemal , Asutay Alp , Lakhotia Arun 
Published: June 2011

PurposeAccess to related information is a key requirement for exploratory search. The purpose of this research is to understand where related information may be found and how it may be explored by users.Design/methodology/approachEarlier research provides sufficient evidence that web graph neighborhoods of returned search results may contain documents related to users' intended search topic. However, in the literature, no interface mechanisms have been presented to enable exploration of these neighborhoods by users. Based on a modified web graph, this paper proposes tools and methods for displaying and exploring the graph neighborhood of any selected item in the search results list. Important issues that arise when implementing such an exploration model are discussed and utility of the proposed system is evaluated with user experiments.FindingsIn user experiments first, information related to intended search topic was often found in the web neighborhood of search results; second, exploring these graph neighborhoods with the proposed tools improved users' ability to reach the information they sought.Research limitations/implicationsThe test participants are computer science graduate students. Their skills may not be representative of the broad user population.Originality/valueThe lessons learned from this research point to a potentially fruitful direction for designing new search engine interfaces that support exploratory search.
Managing failures in web services atomic commitment protocols
Authors: Puustjärvi Juha 
Published: June 2011

PurposeWS‐ReliableMessaging specification describes a protocol that allows messages to be delivered reliably between distributed applications in the presence of software component, system, or network failures. However, it ensures reliable communication only in the context of two sites – it does not provide any means for consistent termination of the executions spanning over more than two sites. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents the Reliable WS‐AtomicTransaction protocol, and illustrates its implementation by exploiting WS‐Coordination, which describes an extensible framework for providing protocols that coordinate the actions of distributed applications. The paper also presents the ontology of the log, which is maintained by the Reliable WS‐AtomicTransaction protocol. The ontology is presented in a graphical form and in OWL.FindingsThe introduction of an atomic commitment protocol and its termination protocol increase the reliability of the executions of distributed applications in service‐oriented architectures. On the other hand, it complicates the management of distributed applications as the atomic commitment protocol has to maintain the log that is used by its termination protocol.Originality/valueThe paper presents an atomic commitment protocol and its termination protocol, which is failure resilient and non‐blocking as long as a failed site can communicate with a process that has received sufficient information to know whether the transaction will be committed or aborted. Decreasing the amount of blockings is important because blocking can cause processes to wait for an arbitrarily long period of time.
Examining the role of various psychographic characteristics in apparel store selection: a study on Indian youth
Authors: Narang Ritu 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe current study aims to identify the role of psychographic characteristics in apparel store selection among Indian youth of a tier‐II city.Design/methodology/approachThe research instrument was based on focus group discussions and in‐depth interviews of young people and retailers. It consisted of a psychographic scale and a store scale. Data were collected from young students aged between 19 and 24 years.FindingsCluster analysis found four psychographic clusters: “Get Going Adopters”, “Disinterested Introverts”, “Confused Followers” and “Independent Life Lovers”, and the differences between these segments were found to be statistically significant. The findings suggest that “Independent Life Lovers’ consider apparel shopping to be a recreational activity, whereas “Get Going Adopters” prefer to spend less time in stores; both these segments were driven by layout, ambience and the availability of the latest designs and styles in apparel store selection. “Confused Followers”, who struggle to maintain their old dress style, consider convenience, entertainment and recommendations from friends/relatives to be important in store patronage, while “Disinterested Introverts”, the fashion‐resistant group, are lured by attractive sales promotion techniques and the availability of preferred brands.Research limitations/implicationsThe study was confined to the city of Lucknow, and the use of students from educational institutes neglects those who are college and school dropouts.Practical implicationsThe current study provides valuable insights into the apparel store selection criteria adopted by Indian youth.Originality/valueKnowledge of the different psychographic clusters of Indian youth and the criteria adopted by them in making store choice decision encourages a better understanding of customers and provides valuable guidelines to the modern marketer/retailer in designing the retail‐mix strategy in one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
How organizational slack affects new venture performance in China: a contingent perspective
Authors: Pang Changwei , Shen Hao , Li Yuan 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between organizational slack, environmental characteristics, and new venture performance in China. The paper focuses on how different types of organizational slack, such as absorbed slack and unabsorbed slack, impact Chinese new venture performance. And it also examines the moderating effects of environmental characteristics, such as munificence and dynamism, on the slack‐performance linkage in Chinese transitional context.Design/methodology/approachA literature review on organizational slack and institutional environment characteristics provides the model and hypothesis. Using a sample of 91 Chinese new ventures, the authors conduct the examination on the theoretical model and hypotheses.FindingsThe results show that the relationship between absorbed slack and new venture performance is negative and unabsorbed slack has an inverse U‐shaped effect on new venture performance. Furthermore, the institutional environments, such as munificence and dynamism in transitional economies have different moderating effects on the relationship between organizational slack and new venture performance.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focuses on the new ventures of China, which is context specific. It is necessary to replicate this research in other transitional economies because of some specific differences between China and other transitional economies.Practical implicationsThe results of the study suggest that new ventures should strengthen the management of resources and decrease absorbed slack in order to reduce the managerial cost, and then raise the level of resource utilization. In addition, how the new ventures make better utilization of organizational slack to deal with institutional environment uncertainty would be a core task in future business operations.Originality/valueThe paper is original in its investigation of the effect of organizational slack on new venture performance in contingent transitional environments. The paper explains the relationship between different types of organizational slack and new venture performance from a contingent perspective, thus extending the extant research.
Generation Y as young wine consumers in New Zealand: how do they differ from Generation X?
Authors: Fountain Joanna , Lamb Charles 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe primary aim of this research is to identify the wine consumption behaviour of Generation Y in New Zealand to explore whether differences exist in the wine behaviour of Gen Y in comparison to Generation X and to seek possible explanations for these differences, in terms of cohort, age and period.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative survey was conducted with a random sample of residents of Christchurch, New Zealand in 1998 and again in 2008. Three forms of analysis were undertaken: time lag (comparing Gen Y, aged 18‐29 in 2008 with Gen X, aged 20‐29 in 1998), cross‐sectional (comparing Gen Y in 2008 with Gen X, aged 30‐39 in 2008) and longitudinal (comparing Gen X in 1998 and 2008).FindingsIn relation of wine consumption, there is no difference in the proportion of Gen X and Gen Y in New Zealand consuming wine as young adults, which is remarkably similar to the proportion of wine drinkers in the population as a whole. In terms of the evidence reported elsewhere that Generation Y are consuming more wine, and at a younger age, than their Gen X counterparts, this research supports this contention; New Zealand Gen Y are drinking wine more frequently, and in more everyday contexts than their older counterparts were at a similar age, although they are less likely to consume wine on special occasions.Research limitations/implicationsThe research focuses on a relatively small sample within a specific urban New Zealand setting and further application to the country as a whole may be useful. Qualitative research, perhaps using a recall methodology to explore previous consumption behaviour, would help to provide more explanation for the findings.Originality/valueThis is the first research project to explore the wine behaviour of Gen Y in a New Zealand context. This research has used a random and representative sample and has been able to analyse cross‐sectional, longitudinal and time‐lag data for Gen Y and Gen X; an approach that has not previously been used in generational research on wine consumption behaviour and which provides insights not available using one method alone.
Do Millennial generation's wine preferences of the “New World” differ from the “Old World”?
Authors: de Magistris Tiziana , Groot Etiénne , Gracia Azucena , Miguel Albisu Luis 
Published: June 2011

PurposeThe aim of this study is to analyse Millennial generation's preferences for wine attributes in two countries, one from the “New World” (USA) and the other from the “Old World” (Spain), in order to see whether they are different. Heterogeneity in attribute importance is investigated, with wine consumers classified into different segments according to attribute importance.Design/methodology/approachThe Best‐Worst choice method was used with information obtained from a survey conducted in two cities of Spain and the USA (Zaragoza and Fayetteville), respectively. Then, attribute importance heterogeneity was modelled and consumers were classified with a latent class model.FindingsThe results indicate that American and Spanish Millennial consumers present some similarities but also some differences in wine preferences. While Millennial consumers in the USA attributed more importance to “I tasted the wine previously”, Spanish Millennials ascribed more importance to the “designation of origin”. Moreover, heterogeneity in attribute importance in both countries was detected and five consumer segments were identified showing clear differences in terms of the importance attached to different wine attributes: “Traditionalists”, “Wine seekers”, “Label fans”, “Insecure” and “Price conscious”. These wine consumer segments could be characterized by traditional socio‐demographic profiles and only differed in wine consumer preferences.Originality/valueThe Best‐Worst method, used to compare wine consumers from the “New World” and the “Old World”, asks them to choose among hypothetical wines defined by a mix of traditional and novel attributes, according to previous studies.
Islamic investment behaviour
Authors: Tahir Imran , Brimble Mark 
Published: June 2011

PurposeIn the past decade, there has been strong growth in Islamic finance and banking across the globe, there is little empirical evidence on the impact of religiosity on financial decisions. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses an experimental design to investigate the investment behaviours of a group of Muslims.FindingsThe paper finds that Islam does influence investment behaviour, however, the degree to which it does this is influenced by the degree of religiosity of the individual. In addition, evidence is found of “Western style” wealth maximisation amongst Muslim investors as well as a desire to consider sustainable investment principles in asset allocations.Research limitations/implicationsThese findings have implications for investors, financial advisors, and policy makers.Originality/valueThe paper is original its use of the experimental design to test the impact of religiosity in the context of investment decisions by Muslims.