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1 – 10 of 15Ahlam Ammar Sharif and Andrew Karvonen
Architectural theorists have a long tradition of acknowledging the centrality of building users to architectural production. This article contributes to the discourse on…
Abstract
Purpose
Architectural theorists have a long tradition of acknowledging the centrality of building users to architectural production. This article contributes to the discourse on architecture, actor–network theory (ANT), and users by proposing a typology of user translations ranging from supporting to tinkering to adjusting to resisting.
Design/methodology/approach
The research utilises an ANT-inspired ethnography of sustainable lighting scripts at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST). It comprises semi-structured interviews with MIST designers and students, and site visits and participant observation to understand how the users interpret the scripts and how they interact and change them on a daily basis.
Findings
There is a shared understanding that users do not simply receive architectural designs but interpret and change them to suit their preferences. The findings reveal the multiple ways that users interpret and respond to the assumptions of designers and in the process, recast the relations between themselves and their material surroundings.
Originality/value
The research contributes to acknowledging the centrality of users to architectural design processes and the interpretation of design scripts, addressing the limitation in current literature in demonstrating the diversity of ways that users react to such scripts. The research suggests that user actions have significant implications on long-term building performance. It accordingly points to the need for devising multiple means of user involvement in the design process and allowing greater flexibility in design scripts to improve the alignment with user preferences.
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Mohamad Shaharudin Samsurijan, Andrew Ebekozien, Noor Alyani Nor Azazi, Maslina Mohammed Shaed and Radin Firdaus Radin Badaruddin
Studies showed that a proactive delivery system employing innovative artificial intelligence (AI) in urban services might perform better. This has become an important national…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies showed that a proactive delivery system employing innovative artificial intelligence (AI) in urban services might perform better. This has become an important national policy for many countries. Thus, this study aims to explore the influence of AI in urban services in Malaysia.
Design/methodology/approach
Official documents such as Structure Plan and Government Transformation Programme Policy Document covering various levels of cities in Malaysia, articles related to urban studies mostly written by researchers regarding urban growth in Malaysia and the Urban Development Bulletin from the Federal Department of Town and Country Planning from 1957 to date were reviewed and analysed.
Findings
The findings show that the influence of AI in urban services has long existed and been carefully planned by local authorities since colonial times. The development of global digital technology influences the upgrading of AI in urban services in Malaysia. Also, the success of AI in these municipal services is influenced by the rate of information technology literacy among the urban population. These developments have led to the definition of a conceptual city.
Research limitations/implications
This paper's findings and conclusion were based on reviewed literature but did not compromise the strength of this paper. Thus, as part of the implications for future research, mixed-methods research design has been suggested.
Practical implications
As part of the implications, this article intends to promote AI in urban services in Malaysia and other developing countries with similar urban services challenges.
Originality/value
This paper encourages AI applications in urban services because it enhances service delivery performance. This intends to key stakeholders to promote AI via policies across Malaysia's urban services as part of the study implications.
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This paper aims to explore the past and future impacts of automation on family businesses, with a focus on the opportunities for human capital empowerment.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the past and future impacts of automation on family businesses, with a focus on the opportunities for human capital empowerment.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws upon a contemporary literature search to examine a range of scholarly and practitioner perspectives of the challenges and benefits of automation, exploring the evolvement towards hyperautomation and the empowerment of human capital in family businesses.
Findings
Automation, transforming to hyperautomation, general purpose artificial intelligence (AI) and beyond has the possibility of radically improving productivity. Fear of job obsolescence has been present since the birth of modern automation, and whilst some jobs are at risk of redundancy, a net gain towards higher-skilled labour is already evident. Family business leaders must be prepared to react appropriately to the accelerating war for talent by implementing a strategy for human capital empowerment.
Originality/value
This unique paper synthesises developments in automation and proposes a future perspective centred upon the empowerment of human capital in family businesses.
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Rob Kitchin, Paolo Cardullo and Cesare Di Feliciantonio
This chapter provides an introduction to the smart city and engages with its idea and ideals from a critical social science perspective. After setting out in brief the emergence…
Abstract
This chapter provides an introduction to the smart city and engages with its idea and ideals from a critical social science perspective. After setting out in brief the emergence of smart cities and current key debates, we note a number of practical, political, and normative questions relating to citizenship, social justice, and the public good that warrant examination. The remainder of the chapter provides an initial framing for engaging with these questions. The first section details the dominant neoliberal conception and enactment of smart cities and how this works to promote the interests of capital and state power and reshape governmentality. We then detail some of the more troubling ethical issues associated with smart city technologies and initiatives. Having set out some of the more troubling aspects of how social relations are produced within smart cities, we then examine how citizens and citizenship have been conceived and operationalized in the smart city to date. We then follow this with a discussion of social justice and the smart city. In the fifth section, we explore the notion of the “right to the smart city” and how this might be used to recast the smart city in emancipatory and empowering ways. Finally, we set out how the book seeks to answer our questions and extend our initial framing, exploring the extent to which the “right to the city” should be a fundamental principle of smart city endeavors.
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John Parnaby and Denis R. Towill
Taking the physician sourced observation that “wasting time is always more expensive than saving it” leads naturally to the conclusion that effective and efficient patient‐centred…
Abstract
Purpose
Taking the physician sourced observation that “wasting time is always more expensive than saving it” leads naturally to the conclusion that effective and efficient patient‐centred healthcare delivery systems are highly desirable targets for the National Health Service (NHS) and similar providers. But has “joined up healthcare” even been achieved, and if so, how? What procedures must be in place to maximise the chances of its occurrence? This paper aims to investigate these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper answers these questions experientially via “Insider Action Research” projects plus careful critique of published case studies.
Findings
Recurring themes for effective improvement of healthcare delivery organisations emerge in the paper, as do identification of the inevitable barriers to change.
Originality/value
The paper takes stock of NHS service developments in a broader theoretical light.
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Mehrdokht Pournader, Kristian Rotaru, Andrew Philip Kach and Seyed Hossein Razavi Hajiagha
Based on the emerging view of supply chains as complex adaptive systems, this paper aims to build and test an analytical model for resilience assessment surrounding supply chain…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the emerging view of supply chains as complex adaptive systems, this paper aims to build and test an analytical model for resilience assessment surrounding supply chain risks at the level of the supply chain system and its individual tiers.
Design/methodology/approach
To address the purpose of this study, a multimethod research approach is adopted as follows: first, data envelopment analysis (DEA) modelling and fuzzy set theory are used to build a fuzzy network DEA model to assess risk resilience of the overall supply chains and their individual tiers; next, the proposed model is tested using a survey of 150 middle- and top-level managers representing nine industry sectors in Iran.
Findings
The survey results show a substantial variation in resilience ratings between the overall supply chains characterizing nine industry sectors in Iran and their individual tiers (upstream, downstream and organizational processes). The findings indicate that the system-wide characteristic of resilience of the overall supply chain is not necessarily indicative of the resilience of its individual tiers.
Practical implications
High efficiency scores of a number of tiers forming a supply chain are shown to have only a limited effect on the overall efficiency score of the resulting supply chain. Overall, our research findings confirm the necessity of adopting both the system-wide and tier-specific approach by analysts and decision makers when assessing supply chain resilience. Integrated as part of risk response and mitigation process, the information obtained through such analytical approach ensures timely identification and mitigation of major sources of risk in the supply chains.
Originality/value
Supply chain resilience assessment models rarely consider resilience to risks at the level of individual supply chain tiers, focusing instead on the system-wide characteristics of supply chain resilience. The proposed analytical model allows for the assessment of supply chain resilience among individual tiers for a wide range of supply chain risks categorized as upstream, downstream, organizational, network and external.
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Despite the growing importance and complexity of modern supply chains, little scholarly attention has been devoted to cognitive processes in supply chain management (SCM). In…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the growing importance and complexity of modern supply chains, little scholarly attention has been devoted to cognitive processes in supply chain management (SCM). In particular, we know little about the structure of supply chain managers’ cognitive frames and how differences between frames affect sustainable supply chain management (SSCM).
Design/methodology/approach
Given the relative scarcity of the topic, this paper uses a conceptual approach. Building on prior literature from cognitive psychology and related areas, it develops ideal types of cognitive frames with which supply chain managers approach sustainability-related decisions.
Findings
This study first develops three ideal-type cognitive frames – unidimensional, hierarchical and paradoxical. This paper then shows that it makes a difference which one of these a supply chain manager holds when addressing issues related to sustainable supply. Thereafter, this study discusses the antecedents that can explain why a manager holds a particular cognitive frame.
Research limitations/implications
This paper represents one of the first analyses of how the structure of a supply chain manager’s cognitive frame impacts their firm’s sustainable supply initiatives. Although developed with regard to SSCM, the arguments have implications for other management areas too, not least for the education of future SCM professionals.
Originality/value
Given their boundary-spanning role, attention to the cognitive processes of supply chain managers is crucial to understanding the conditions under which firms can address sustainability challenges in their supply chains.
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Luenda E. Charles, Cecil M. Burchfiel, Desta Fekedulegn, Michael E. Andrew, John M. Violanti and Bryan Vila
This study aims to look at the prevalence of obesity and its association with sleep problems among police officers.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to look at the prevalence of obesity and its association with sleep problems among police officers.
Design/methodology/value
The authors conducted a cross‐sectional study of the relationship between obesity and sleep disorders among 110 randomly selected police officers from the Buffalo, New York, Police Department in 1999. Participants, who ranged in age from 26 to 61 years (mean±SD=39.5±7.5), responded to sleep related questions and had anthropometric measurements taken.
Findings
Results show that several measures of obesity were significantly associated with sleep‐disordered breathing in police officers, but not with other sleep problems.
Originality/value
A major strength of the study was that it was conducted in a cooperative and motivated study population. It was possible to assess a wide range of anthropometric measurements, including many that are important but are rarely used to measure obesity in epidemiologic studies such as abdominal height, neck circumference, and neck‐to‐height ratio. In addition, the assessment of the anthropometric indices was performed by trained clinic staff using standardized procedures.
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Udechukwu Ojiako, Maxwell Chipulu and Andrew Graesser
This paper aims to contribute to extant research which emphasises the need for service suppliers to be able to leverage firm‐customer relationships through an understanding of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to extant research which emphasises the need for service suppliers to be able to leverage firm‐customer relationships through an understanding of the correlation between service touch‐points and engagement parameters.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors utilised multivariate methods (CATPCA and Pro‐fit) to analyse the data. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey of 238 respondents, sampled through the social networking site, “Facebook”.
Findings
It was found from the analysis of data that within the context of customer engagement, four critical parameters (“satisfaction”, “loyalty/advocacy”, “recruitment/retention” and “customer losses”) impact on customer touch‐points.
Research limitations/implications
The study is characterised by two limitations. The first is that the respondents' simultaneous utilisation of multiple touch‐points was not accounted for in the study. Second, the authors acknowledge that the narrow demographic spread of the respondents is a possible limitation of the study.
Originality/value
The study findings are grounded in empirical findings which is a departure from traditional scholarship on customer touch‐points which has been based on case observations and anecdotal evidence.
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