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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the tradeoffs between efficiency and flexibility in production processes involve a cross-trained workforce. The study quantifies production losses that stem from worker learning and forgetting in a cross-training environment.

The paper examines multiple levels of cross-training in the context of several workplace factors including absenteeism, turnover, process change frequency, and process change magnitude using discrete event simulation. The parameters of the simulation model are informed by data from a operating manufacturing system.

Results suggest that productivity gains obtained from a moderate level of cross-training (e.g. two tasks) can outweigh the production losses from additional training, and that adding further cross-training beyond this may negatively affect system performance.

Production systems exist in an environment of process change and competitive pressure. Cross-training is an often-used operational technology for managing process knowledge in an environment of change as well as providing employees with a richer work environment. While the potential benefits of enriching the workplace experience include greater motivation, less boredom and fatigue, greater task vigilance, and other effects generally regarded as beneficial, productivity losses brought about by training and retraining disruptions associated with cross-training have not been examined as widely.

The structure of the economy continues to change; where once they are dependent on the productivity of a manual workforce, companies increasingly depend on the productivity of knowledge workers. Today, knowledge workers account for more than two‐thirds of the workforce, and thus should be the focus of strategic plans to improve productivity. Currently there are no universally accepted methods to measure knowledge worker productivity, or even generally accepted categories. This paper provides a taxonomy of knowledge worker productivity measurements, and identifies a number of productivity dimensions that are used to categorize the findings of previous research. Also describes the relative density of discussions along these dimensions and identifies critical areas for future research.

The purpose of this study is use a bibliometric analysis to explore the relational nature of knowledge creation in WFM in operations. Companies live under constant pressure to find the best ways to plan their workforce, and the workforce emangement (WFM) is one of the biggest challenges faced by managers. Relevant research on WFM in operations has been published in a several range of journals that vary in their scope and readership, and thus the academic contribution to the topic remains largely fragmented.

To address this gap, this review aims to map research on WFM in operations to understand where it comes from and where it is going and, therefore, provides opportunities for future work. This study combined two bibliometric approaches with manual document coding to examine the literature corpus of WFM in operations to draw a holistic picture of its different aspects.

Content and thematic analysis of the seminal studies resulted in the extraction of three key research themes: workforce cross-training, planning workforce mixed methods and individual workforce characteristics. The findings of this study further highlight the gaps in the WFM in operations literature and raise some research questions that warrant further academic investigation in the future.

Likewise, this study has important implications for practitioners who are likely to benefit from a holistic understanding of the different aspects of WFM in operations.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the internal dynamics of cross-functional teams (CFTs) in different organizational processes in a service company.

A case study from a Brazilian service company was conducted. CFTs in five different organizational processes (strategy development, product development, portfolio management, sales channels management and business analysis) were analyzed through in-depth interviews, documents and non-participant observation.

A framework with four pillars was constructed: constitution of the CFT, task drivers, behavior and attitudes of the team and personal motivators. It was possible to analyze the process of how a group acts and reacts under changing circumstances based on the pillars included in the framework.

The study is focused on creating analytical generalizability. Several insights in the 12 propositions presented in this study may be investigated in future research to validate the identified relationships among the pillars included in the framework. Moreover, the proposed framework allows the teams to be analyzed through a multidimensional view: structure, processes and impacts.

If the semantic boundaries of the communication are not well delineated, the differences in understanding can generate manifest conflicts. Moreover, the workload in a CFT seems to be larger and more complex than working in a functional activity; however, members perceive that it reduces the risk of unemployment and increases motivation.

The present study contributes to the extant literature with the proposal of a set of new exploratory propositions that can support future quantitative research about the use of CFTs in the service industry context.

A growing number of academics relocate abroad to work as expatriates in the university sector. While this employee group seems to have a highly constructive influence on the performance of university organizations, some problems in relation to effective inclusion of these individuals have been noted. In order to further advance the theoretical understanding regarding integration efforts in international university organizations, the purpose of this paper is to explore how two types of inclusive management, empowering management (identity-blind) vs English management communication (identity-conscious), affect local and expatriate academics.

Using responses generated from a survey of 792 local and 620 expatriate academics, this paper assesses the effects of inclusive management on job engagement and stress among the two groups.

The results show that one type of inclusive management, empowering management (identity-blind), has a favorable influence on job engagement and stress in both subsamples. The other type, English management communication (identity-conscious), increases stress for local academics but has no effect on the expatriates. These findings are useful for theory development in relation to employee inclusion in international organizations.

The authors have little knowledge about how inclusive management functions in international organizations. Testing the effect of identity-blind and identity-conscious inclusive management practices among two different groups of local and expatriate academics provides new insight to this area. In particular, the use of English management communication provides new knowledge on the integration of majority and minority groups in international organizations.

Organizations learn semi-automatically through experience or consciously through deliberate learning efforts. As there seems to be a “black-box” in the possible linkages between deliberate learning and new practice implementation, this paper aims to develop and test a process model, linking deliberate learning and new practice implementation through complementary competencies of task and environmental flexibility.

As part of a field study, health-care improvement program (to transfer the improvement training program for new practice implementation) of 186 HCUs was used for testing our hypothesis. In addition to descriptive statistics, multiple hierarchical regressions and bootstrapping were used to test the study hypotheses.

Findings suggest that deliberate learning is positively and significantly related with new practice implementation, and dynamic capabilities in the form of task and environmental flexibility mediates this relationship.

The present study makes theoretical and practical contributions by linking literature from new practice, organizational learning and dynamic capabilities; and by delving into the deliberate learning activities undertaken by health-care units.

Organizational learning in health care has almost become inevitable today due to the ever-changing dynamics of the industry. Barring handful of studies, the current state of literature is almost entirely tilted towards experience-based learning and deliberate learning is not well studied. To address this gap, the study aims to develop and test a process model linking development of dynamic capabilities with deliberate learning and new practice implementation. Further, findings of this study will help organizations and managers to understand and thereby effectively manage new practice implementation process through the use of deliberate activities.

At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public health) and other industry sectors, began to recognize the limitations of the current fragmented healthcare system paradigm. Primary stakeholders, including employers, insurance companies, and healthcare professional organizations, also voiced dissatisfaction with unacceptable health outcomes and rising costs. Grand challenges and wicked problems threatened the viability of the health sector. American health systems responded with innovations and advances in healthcare delivery frameworks that encouraged shifts from intra- and inter-sector arrangements to multi-sector, lasting relationships that emphasized patient centrality along with long-term commitments to sustainability and accountability. This pathway, leading to a population health approach, also generated the need for transformative business models. The coproduction of health framework, with its emphasis on cross-sector alignments, nontraditional partner relationships, sustainable missions, and accountability capable of yielding return on investments, has emerged as a unique strategy for facing disruptive threats and challenges from nonhealth sector corporations. This chapter presents a coproduction of health framework, goals and criteria, examples of boundary spanning network alliance models, and operational (integrator, convener, aggregator) strategies. A comparison of important organizational science theories, including institutional theory, network/network analysis theory, and resource dependency theory, provides suggestions for future research directions necessary to validate the utility of the coproduction of health framework as a precursor for paradigm change.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify complexity in translational research. The impact of major operational steps and technical requirements is calculated with respect to their ability to accelerate moving new discoveries into clinical practice.

A three-phase integrated quality function deployment (QFD) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to quantify complexity in translational research. A case study in obesity was used to usability.

Generally, the evidence generated was valuable for understanding various components in translational research. Particularly, the authors found that collaboration networks, multidisciplinary team capacity and community engagement are crucial for translating new discoveries into practice.

As the method is mainly based on subjective opinion, some argue that the results may be biased. However, a consistency ratio is calculated and used as a guide to subjectivity. Alternatively, a larger sample may be incorporated to reduce bias.

The integrated QFD-AHP framework provides evidence that could be helpful to generate agreement, develop guidelines, allocate resources wisely, identify benchmarks and enhance collaboration among similar projects.

Current conceptual models in translational research provide little or no clue to assess complexity. The proposed method aimed to fill this gap. Additionally, the literature review includes various features that have not been explored in translational research.