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Distribution systems planning frequently involves two major decisions: facility location and vehicle routing. The facilities to be located may be “primary facilities”, e.g. factories, but more often, these are lighter “secondary facilities” such as depots, warehouses or distribution centres. Routing decisions concern the optimal movement of goods and vehicles in the system, usually from primary to secondary facilities, and from secondary facilities to users or customers. Studies which integrate the two areas are more often than not limited to the case where all deliveries are return trips involving only one destination. There exist, however, several situations where vehicles visit more than one point on the same trip. In such cases, relationships between location and routing decisions become more intricate. Strategies by which the two aspects of the problem are optimised separately and sequentially are often sub‐optimal. Also of importance is the trade‐off between the cost of providing service and customer inconvenience. A framework is proposed for the study of such combined location‐routing problems. A number of real‐life cases described in the literature are summarised and some algorithmic issues related to such problems are discussed.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) secondhand resale platforms (SRP) are competitive places where different value systems beyond market values interact. This study aims to investigate the conflicts that may arise in interactions between users on SRP and the extent to which these conflicts are (ir)resolved, by drawing on economies of worth theory.

The study takes a qualitative and interpretative approach to examine 22 active users on P2P resales platforms such as Vinted, including in-depth interviews. Following the Straussian view of grounded theory, the study uses constant comparison (open, axial and selective coding) to analyze data on SRP users’ experiences.

Drawing on the economies of worth theory, the study shows that SRP users rely on four different value systems or “worlds” when using the platforms (market, domestic, green and civic worlds) that come into conflict, at either an interactional (three conflicts identified) or an individual (two conflicts identified) level. The findings reveal that these conflicts are temporarily resolved at the interactional level and in a sustainable way at the individual level.

This study sheds further light on the relationship between consumers on SRP by offering a more nuanced perspective on these exchanges than market-oriented exchanges. It also analyzes the data through the economies of worth theory, which is an appropriate lens to better understand social interactions and conventions. Finally, the study offers recommendations on how managers can improve buyers’ and sellers’ experiences on these platforms and, thus, foster their satisfaction.

This research paper aims to explore the added value of knowledge management (KM) and its antecedents for innovation and organizational performance (OP) in marginal healthcare organizations.

Using insights from the resource-based view and knowledge-based theory of the firm, the model explains the effects of technology capabilities (TC) and organizational culture (OC) on the KM process, process innovation (PIN), administrative innovation (AIN) and OP. The authors used partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze data collected from 168 healthcare practitioners in Cameroon using a survey.

The authors reveal that TC and OC positively impact some KM components. Knowledge sharing (KS), knowledge acquisition (KA) and responsiveness to knowledge (RK) influence PIN, while only PIN and KA influence OP. FsQCA provided several configurations that lead to high OP within healthcare centers. As a result, the results are adaptable to any healthcare center that wishes to set up one or more KM processes.

Given that the results will help the health workforce make concerted decisions about medical care, the authors contribute significantly to the definition and optimization of KM in healthcare by implementing various processes and policies to ensure the continued existence of high-quality and outstanding healthcare systems. The KM propositions will enable healthcare centers to: (1) improve the quality of patient care through collegiality in medical practice; (2) optimize processes in the patient care chain; and (3) leverage knowledge gained though knowledge sharing among the medical team. The propositions open up avenues for future research in addition to providing practical implications for healthcare center practitioners.

This study sheds new empirical light on the relationships between KM antecedents and processes, innovation and OP in healthcare centers. This research is one of the few to examine the relationship between TC, OC, KM processes, innovation and OP in developing countries. This paper aims to fill this gap and inform future research concerning KM in the healthcare sector. Further, this study goes beyond testing the PLS-SEM approach's hypotheses by applying fsQCA to provide practical and comprehensive knowledge on how to increase the efficiency of a healthcare center through KM.

People who inject drugs (PWID) face multiple health problems, including infectious diseases and drug overdoses. Applying syndemic and risk environment frameworks, this paper aims to examine the co-occurrence and clustering of drug-related harms and their association with incarceration experience with or without in-prison drug injection.

The authors used data from a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2015 among 557 active opioid injectors. Self-reported data were collected through face-to-face or online questionnaires. They distinguished three harm categories, namely, viral infections, bacterial infections and overdoses, and built an index variable by summing the number of harm categories experienced, yielding a score from 0 to 3. Association between incarceration experience and co-occurrence of harms was modelled using a multinomial logistic regression.

Of the 557 participants, 30% reported lifetime experience of drug-related viral infection, 46% bacterial infection and 22% drug overdose. Multinomial logistic models showed that those who injected drugs during incarceration were more likely to report two (aOR = 2.35, 95% CI: 1.03–5.36) and three (aOR = 9.72, 95% CI: 3.23–29.22) harm categories than those who had never been incarcerated. They were also more likely to report three harm categories than formerly incarcerated respondents who did not inject drugs in prison (aOR = 5.14, 95% CI: 1.71–15.48).

This study provides insights of the syndemic nature of drug-related harms and highlights that drug injection during incarceration is associated with co-occurring harms. Public health interventions and policy changes are needed to limit the deleterious impact of prison on PWID.

With the increasing urbanization rates in emerging countries such as the ones in Latin America and the Caribbean, urban logistics solutions and initiatives are widely needed. Urban planners often consider only passenger transportation and leave freight transportation unattended, thus increasing externalities and degrading the transportation of goods. This chapter presents three urban logistics solutions, which intend to tackle problems related to urbanization and last mile delivery operations challenges by evaluating location models for loading and unloading bays, urban transfer centers location models, and freight trip generation models. The presented solutions were proposed by several researchers of the Institute of Innovation in Productivity and Logistics CATENA-USFQ over the last four years and remain theoretical at the moment. However, we present estimated results of potential implementations in three districts of Quito: Historic Center, Entertainment District, and Corporate District. This chapter not only presents the mentioned urban logistics solutions in Quito but also gives an overview of the followed methodology, which can be replicated in countries and cities of similar characteristics of the region.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the 174th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held 14‐18 February 2008 in Boston, MA, USA.

Conference report.

The conference theme was science and technology from a global perspective, which emphasized the power of science and technology as well as education to assist less‐developed segments of the world society, to improve partnerships among already developed countries and to spur knowledge‐driven transformations across a host of fields.

Overviews of six conference symposia are presented, which will be of interest to this journal's readers.

This book is a policy proposal aimed at the democratic left. It is concerned with gradual but radical reform of the socio‐economic system. An integrated policy of industrial and economic democracy, which centres around the establishment of a new sector of employee‐controlled enterprises, is presented. The proposal would retain the mix‐ed economy, but transform it into a much better “mixture”, with increased employee‐power in all sectors. While there is much of enduring value in our liberal western way of life, gross inequalities of wealth and power persist in our society.

The current review aims to focus on how risk and protective factors for self-harm in secure mental health hospitals are captured in the literature.

Fifty-seven articles were included in a systematic review, drawn from an initial 1,119 articles, post duplicate removal. Databases included Psycinfo, Psycarticles, Psycnet, Web of Science and EBSCO host. A thematic analysis was used, which included a meta-ethnographic approach for considering qualitative papers.

There was a clear focus on risk factors, with eight identified (in order of occurrence): raised emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation; poor mental health; traumatic experiences; personality disorder diagnosis and associated traits; increased use of outward aggression – dual harm; constraints of a secure environment and lack of control; previous self-harm and suicide attempts; and hopelessness. Protective factors featured less, resulting in only three themes emerging (in order of occurrence): positive social support and communication; positive coping skills; and hope/positive outlook.

This includes a proposal to move focus away from “risk” factors, to incorporate “needs”, in terms of individual and environmental factors. There is also a need for more attention to focus on developing high quality research in this area.

The research captures an area where a synthesis of research has not been comprehensively undertaken, particularly with regards to capturing protective as well as risk factors.

Researchers’ competencies are directly related to the quality and effectiveness of the research they produce. However, training opportunities for education and conducting research seem to be limited for the growing research culture in Pakistan. The purpose of this study is to assess the research-related training needs of postgraduate researchers (PGRs) of Pakistan.

A quantitative research approach was used to conduct the study using a questionnaire. Non-random sampling technique was used to collect the data from the postgraduate (MPhil/MS and PhD) researchers enrolled in the two well renowned Pakistani Universities.

Results of the study confirmed that PGRs were interested in developing their skills in various areas of a research project such as topic selection, research design and use of data analysis software. Findings also highlighted that respondents were interested in learning reference management tools for citing and managing the sources of information in their research work.

This is the first study, which investigated the training needs assessment of PGRs enrolled in two major Pakistani universities. The results may help in designing training programs, promoting a conducive research culture in the country and improving the quality of research being produced. This study provided a framework likely to be beneficial for quality enhancement cells, universities and organizations in organizing effective research training and development programs for researchers of Pakistan.