bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Design of lean manufacturing systems using value stream mapping with simulation
Authors: Gurumurthy Anand , Kodali Rambabu 
Published: May 2011

PurposeGenerally, the implementation of lean manufacturing (LM) starts with the development of value stream maps. However, it has been found that value stream mapping (VSM) suffers from various shortcomings. Hence, researchers have suggested the use of simulation along with VSM. The purpose of this paper is to present an application of VSM with simulation during the design of lean manufacturing systems (LMS) using a case study of an organisation following a job shop production system to manufacture doors and windows.Design/methodology/approachSimulation models were developed using QUeuing Event Simulation Tool for the case organisation to demonstrate how the case organisation will be changed after implementing various LM elements, apart from analysing the impact of implementing these LM elements on the organisation's performance.FindingsSimulation studies were carried out for different scenarios such as “before LM” (current state VSM) and “after LM” (future state VSM). It was found that the case organisation can achieve significant improvement in performance and can meet the increasing demand without any additional resources.Practical implicationsIt is believed that this paper will enable practitioners to appreciate the role of simulation in helping them understand how the operations department of the case organisation will be transformed during the design of LMS.Originality/valueAccording to the authors' knowledge, no case study exists in the literature that discusses the application of VSM with simulation in an organisation that manufactures doors and windows using a job shop production system. Furthermore, the paper simulates the impact of those LM elements which were not considered by other researchers on the performance measure of the case organisation.
The enterprise system as a part of an organization's administrative paradox
Authors: Melin Ulf 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe main purpose of this paper is to discuss whether an enterprise system (ES) is a part of an organization's administrative paradox. The paper aims to question which role the ES has in organizing, focusing aspects of flexibility and stability.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is a qualitative, longitudinal, case study of how an ES maintains, and even reinforces, existing administrative organizational structures. The theoretical lens used is mainly structuration theory.FindingsAn ES can take the part of an organization's administrative paradox. An administrative paradox is two sides of the same coin when coordinating organizations – the concurrent striving for flexibility and stability. The studied ES even centralizes control, creates norms, and enhances power for actors in positions of authority (top management). Because of its structure and configuration the ES is a powerful tool to coordinate. The ES is considered to be organizationally ungainly, but at the same time indispensable.Practical implicationsThe paper provides valuable insights on how the studied organizations try to deal with standardization/stability and flexibility that can be valuable for other system users or implementers to learn from, as well as the analysis as a whole.Originality/valueThe paper combines structuration theory and theories covering the administrative paradox and aspects of coordination in order to analyze and discuss the implementation and use of an ES.
Railroad productivity analysis: case of the American Class I railroads
Authors: Shi Feli X. , Hoon Lim Siew , Chi Junwook 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an economic assessment of the productivity growth and technical efficiency of US Class I railroads for the period of 2002‐2007.Design/methodology/approachThe US railroad industry has become increasingly concentrated with seven Class I railroads accounting for over 90 percent of the industry's revenue. Because the small sample size creates a dimensionality problem for data envelopment analysis (DEA) with contemporaneous frontiers, the authors use sequential DEA and calculate the Malmquist productivity indexes using sequential frontiers. Through a decomposition process, changes in productivity are attributed to technical efficiency change, technical change, and scale efficiency change.FindingsBurlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) led the industry in terms of productivity growth (4.6 percent) and consistently stayed on the production frontier in every period studied; both BNSF and Union Pacific (UP) are top innovators in the industry, but UP trailed BNSF in both productivity growth and technological innovations by wide margins; and Grand Trunk Corporation was very good at “catching up” or leading its peers in efficiency improvements.Research limitations/implicationsRailroads have invested heavily in technology over the years to enhance efficiency and productivity. However, two recent economic studies find that railroad productivity has slowed in recent years. The authors' benchmarking analysis sheds light on how individual railroads performed relative to their peers, and what they could learn from industry best practice.Originality/valueThe benchmarking study enables the authors to report each railroad's performance instead of reporting industry‐wide aggregate indexes or industry averages which tend to mask performance variations. The paper also examines the causal factors of recent productivity growth and provides useful information for the industry and its regulators.
Performance and risk management in strategic cooperation
Authors: Ehrengren Lars , Hörnsten Bengt 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate if business practices for performance through risk control methods can be applied by defence forces in peace missions called for by the United Nations (UN) in order to improve the efficiency of such missions.Design/methodology/approachExtensive studies of existing theories on business cooperation risk control were performed as well as studies of the organizational and legal structures for Swedish participation in international military missions. These studies were followed by interviews with politicians and military officers of high ranks regarding cooperation in such missions and the interviews were analyzed with respect to the theoretical methods and their validity for the military sector.FindingsThe authors' conclusion is that an adoption of some of the existing business risk control management methods could improve the efficiency of military risk management. The first step in such organizational knowledge transfer is to improve the form for and the formulation of more stringent objectives for the military mission.Originality/valueThe study indicates how the performance of international peace missions can be improved by application of risk control methods from the business sector.
Workplace innovation for better jobs and performance
Authors: Pot Frank 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe the need for workplace innovation policies and practices in Europe and evaluate programs that already have been developed.Design/methodology/approachThe paper describes the concept of workplace innovation and trends in society explaining its emergence. The paper then presents and discusses the results of evaluation research as far as this is available.FindingsA growing number of countries is conducting or developing some kind of programme on workplace innovation. These programmes differ in size and governance. Evaluation research shows that simultaneous improvement of performance and quality of working life is possible under certain conditions such as the participation of employees in change projects.Research limitations/implicationsConcepts and designs of evaluation research projects differ considerably. This gives new challenges for companies, trade unions, governments and researchers. In EU2020, little attention is paid to workplace innovation but there is a ray of hope in the draft integrated guidelines for employment policies and in the Flagship Initiative Innovation Union.Originality/valueSocial innovation in the workplace, or workplace innovation, is a new concept, covering to some extent new practices that appear to be relevant for organisations and governments.
The impact of ICT use on new millennium learners' educational performance
Authors: Kang Myunghee , Heo Heeok , Kim Minjeong 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) use on the educational performance of new millennium learners (NMLs). Even though many factors might influence individual performance besides ICT use itself, the research focus was on the relationship between the behavioral patterns of ICT use and educational performance.Design/methodology/approachA nation‐wide survey with 1,071 tenth graders considered as NMLs was conducted in Korea. The behavioral patterns of the learners' ICT use were identified in three dimensions of place, purpose and context, and the educational performance was measured in cognitive, affective and socio‐cultural domains.FindingsBased on correlation and regression analyses, the better use of ICT for NMLs and the directions for the future study related to ICT use and educational performance were suggested.Research limitations/implicationsMajor contribution of this study is to divide ICT use into place, purpose and context of using ICT and to investigate their relationships with educational performance refined with cognitive, affective and socio‐cultural domains. Limitations of the study are coined with the samples and self‐report survey tools. Continuing effort to validate the tools and various samples is needed.Practical implicationsPolicy makers could use the results of the study to implement the ICT diffusion and adaption process.Originality/valueThere is no such questionnaires related to ICT use and educational performance in Korea, as well as in other nations. More cross‐cultural studies would be a great help in the field of education.
TrAVis to enhance online tutoring and learning activities
Authors: May Madeth , George Sébastien , Prévôt Patrick 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThis paper presents a part of our research work that places an emphasis on Tracking Data Analysis and Visualization (TrAVis) tools, a web‐based system, designed to enhance online tutoring and learning activities, supported by computer‐mediated communication (CMC) tools. TrAVis is particularly dedicated to assist both tutors and students in the task of exploiting tracking data of communication activities throughout the learning process. This paper focuses on the technical aspects of TrAVis, the visualization of students' tracking data and the experiment we have conducted in an authentic learning situation.Design/methodology/approachA mixture of iterative and participative approaches has been adopted for the design of TrAVis. Different versions of TrAVis were built during the progress of our research. The major changes in each build have particularly involved the conceptual design of data indicators of students' activities and the visualization techniques of the data indicators. Both case studies and experiments have been made to evaluate TrAVis.FindingsThis paper demonstrates how TrAVis provides a new experience in visualizing and analyzing students' tracking data. While it shows the originality and novelty of the system, it also reveals the potential benefits of TrAVis to both tutors and students in their online tutoring and learning activities.Research limitations/implicationsThe result from the experiment is not sufficient to evaluate some specific aspects of TrAVis. As a matter of fact, the lack of user's feedback did not enable us to justify whether or not the proposed data indicators would be actually used by the users.Practical implicationsThe data indicators shown in this paper are computed based on the real needs of the participants in the learning process. Online questionnaires were used and face‐to‐face interviews have been made to study the needs of the users throughout this research work.Originality/valueOne of the particularities of this research is the proposed system, TrAVis, objectively designed to better support the tutors in the tasks of monitoring and evaluating students on CMC tools. Plus, TrAVis is distinguished from the existing systems by its capacity in computing substantial data indicators, allowing the tutors to efficiently visualize and analyze both the process and the product of students' activities.
Capitalism and transparency
Authors: Murphy Jonathan 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to critically examine the international NGO Transparency International's (TI) role in combating corruption, focusing particularly on TI's response to the global financial crisis of 2008.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a review of scholarly articles, newspaper reports, and TI publications.FindingsThe paper concludes that TI's uncritical approach to the functioning of international capitalism limits its ability to understand and challenge the systemic causes of corruption. Further, TI's attention to the manifestations rather than causes of corruption leads it to unfairly identify corruption as a failing of the global South rather than an inherent feature of international capitalism.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates how TI's failure to address the widespread unethical conduct which was at the root of the global financial crisis derives from the organization's partial, legalistic and superficial definition of corruption.
Of legitimate and illegitimate corruption
Authors: Luis Rocha Jose , Brown Ed , Cloke Jonathan 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe concept of corruption is frequently represented as relating to social practices that violate established rules and norms. This paper, however, seeks to demonstrate that corrupt practices are often only possible because they in fact draw on existing institutional mechanisms and cultural dispositions that grant them a certain social approval and legitimacy. The paper aims to explore these issues through a detailed exploration of corruption in Nicaragua, which outlines how competing élite groups have been able to use different discourses to appropriate resources from the state in quite different ways, reflecting the use of contrasting mechanisms for justifying and legitimizing corruption.Design/methodology/approachThe paper focuses on two key periods of recent Nicaraguan political history: that which occurred during the administration of ex‐President Arnoldo Alemán and the events that unfurled in the aftermath of a chain of bank bankruptcies that occurred in Nicaragua during 2001. These events are explored in the context of David Harvey's ideas of “accumulation by dispossession.”FindingsIn contrast with more classic practices of corruption in Nicaragua that have openly violated existing formal rules and norms but appealed to an ethos of redistribution and a historically‐specific concept of “the public” in order to imbue their actions with legitimacy, the corrupt practices related to recent banking bankruptcies engaged in an extensive instrumentalization of formal state institutions in order to protect élite parochial interests and to achieve “accumulation by dispossession” through appealing to the legitimating support granted by multilateral financial institutions.Originality/valueThe paper illustrates sharply the inadvisability of perspectives that narrowly define corruption in legalistic terms. Such perspectives focus exclusively on the state as the location of corruption, whereas clearly, in Nicaragua as elsewhere, corruption is a far more complicated phenomenon which crosses the artificial boundaries between private and public sectors. It also evolves and takes a myriad different forms which are intimately connected with the ongoing struggles for control of accumulation processes, suggesting a much more integral role for corruption within accumulation strategies than often allowed for in both orthodox economic and Marxist literatures on capital accumulation.
The looting continues: tax havens and corruption
Authors: Christensen John 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the activities of tax havens in the global financial markets and explore their role in providing a supply‐side stimulant for corrupt practices. It aims to argue that the corruption debate needs to shift to a second phase in which the role of tax havens as supply‐side stimulants features more prominently.Design/methodology/approachBased on the author's original research into the practices and activities of tax havens, the paper explores the operational features of tax havens, with particular focus on their role in providing opaque and complex offshore structures through which illicit financial flows can be routed to disguise their origins, method of transfer and true beneficial ownership. The paper explores how bankers, lawyers and accountants create complex and opaque offshore structures to facilitate economic crime and impede investigation.FindingsDespite severe limitations imposed by the absence of rigorously researched statistical data on capital flows into and out of tax havens, the paper argues that the available data support the view that tax havens have become prominent features of the globalised capital markets, and their activities create a criminogenic environment in which illicit financial flows are easily disguised and hidden amongst legitimate commercial transactions. The paper notes that effective remedies are available to reduce financial market opacity, but political will is lacking to take effective action.Originality/valueThis paper tackles a new and under‐researched subject. Drawing on the author's experiences of working on a prominent tax haven for a total of 14 years, the paper brings attention to the impact of tax havens on international development.
A snapshot of key information systems (IS) issues in Estonian organizations for the 2000s
Authors: Ifinedo Princely , Ifinedo Airi 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight key information system (IS) issues in Estonian organizations for the mid‐2000s. This research is a follow‐up to an initial effort in the country in 1993, in which a similar theme was investigated. The primary objective of this present study was to compare and contrast the findings in the previous study with the present effort.Design/methodology/approachThe Delphi method was used. Viewpoints of both information technology (IT) professionals and non‐IT professionals (business managers) in the country were sought across two rounds of the Delphi method.FindingsThe findings suggest the following: the past decade has produced salient changes in the ranking of key IS issues for Estonia; it appears that there is a convergence of opinions on key IS issues in both the Estonian public and private sectors; and there are significant differences in key IS issues across professional groupings (IT and non‐IT).Research limitations/implicationsThe ranking of issues as opposed to rating issues was used in the data analysis. Ranking items is more challenging to participants and might be a limiting factor. The sample size of this study is small and perhaps a larger sample would yield better insights.Practical implicationsThose in charge of IT resources in Estonian organizations, as well as policy makers in the country, may benefit from the information provided herein. Such insights may facilitate better understanding of current key IS issues in the country.Originality/valueThis research offers a snapshot of key IS issues in Estonian organizations for the mid‐2000s. More importantly, this work complements a prior study on the same topic that was conducted in the country in the 1990s.
Organisational innovativeness in Estonian biotechnology organisations
Authors: Jaakson Krista , Tamm Dorel , Hämmal Gerli 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe biotechnology sector provides business‐to‐business service and continuous innovation is an imperative for biotechnology organisations in order to survive. The aim of this paper is to outline the elements in Estonian biotechnology organisations that inhibit them from becoming more innovative, and based on that, suggest how managers can increase their organisational innovativeness (OI).Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on single‐respondent structured interviews that were carried out in 15 biotechnology organisations in Estonia. The questions were divided into five categories: strategic orientation to innovation, processes related to resource allocation, processes related to work organisation, behaviour related to innovation initiation and behaviour related to innovation implementation. For each category OI the score was calculated and analysed.FindingsThe study hypothesised that OI is about half of its potential and the lowest scores were expected to emerge in the resource allocation to innovation and processes related to work organisation categories. The authors found that OI was higher than expected among the study sample and the only resource allocation score was significantly lower than the scores of other categories. Surprisingly, the score of strategic orientation to innovation was the next lowest after resource allocation.Practical implicationsThe results imply that Estonian biotechnology organisations could increase their innovativeness by better integrating innovation into their formal strategy and rewarding employees for innovative ideas. Also, specific aspects in other categories are elevated (rotating employees across functions/regions, introducing development discussions, etc.) that would enhance OI.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper lies in its profound overview of recent literature on OI, and the development of an interview questionnaire that covers a range of relevant issues assumed to support innovation.
A construct of META‐RELQUAL: measurement model and theory testing
Authors: Svensson Göran , Mysen Tore 
Published: May 2011

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test a measurement model of a META‐RELQUAL construct.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based upon a survey and random sample of small‐ and medium‐sized companies in Norway. Respondents were contacted by phone and a total of 581 surveys were mailed. In total, 212 surveys were returned generating a response rate of 36.5 percent.FindingsThe goodness‐of‐fit measures of the tested measurement model of the META‐RELQUAL construct were all found to be within the recommended guidelines. The recommended guidelines for convergent, discriminant and nomological validity, as well as construct reliability, were all met. It is concluded that the measurement properties of the META‐RELQUAL construct applied in Norwegian manufacturer‐supplier relationships indicate acceptable validity and reliability.Research limitations/implicationsThe tested META‐RELQUAL construct appears to be accurate for those Norwegian business relationships studied, but only further testing in other companies will verify its universal application if it is to be seen as a valid and reliable measurement for other companies' business relationships too. Suggestions for further research are provided.Practical implicationsThis study is of managerial interest to executives since it provides a framework of constructs to be considered in corporate efforts in maintaining satisfactory levels of relationship quality in business relationships.Originality/valueThe META‐RELQUAL construct makes a contribution to theory since it outlines a higher order construct and measurement instrument for the benefit of other researchers and practitioners in the field.