The paper aims to present a case study of multi award‐winning management team's methods used to profoundly increase staff performance through engagement.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to present a case study of multi award‐winning management team's methods used to profoundly increase staff performance through engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The model covers applied techniques in internal communication; management training; managing performance (underperformers and star performers); and staff wellbeing.
Findings
Results included a 20‐fold increase in output with only a three‐fold increase in staff; sick leave reduced by one third; and staff turnover reduced by more than half.
Originality/value
The paper presents practical, easy‐to‐follow, scalable methods of an employer described by a national judging panel as “exceptional […] astonishing […] determined to go the extra mile towards every employer's dream: a contented, highly motivated workforce”. It includes 12 tips for managers to become excellent people managers, and the ten common values of excellent teams.
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Julia Edwards, Alan McKinnon and Sharon Cullinane
This paper seeks to examine the various stages in online and conventional retail supply chains in order to assess their relative environmental impacts. With reference to boundary…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to examine the various stages in online and conventional retail supply chains in order to assess their relative environmental impacts. With reference to boundary issues, utilisation factors and carbon allocation, it seeks to highlight some of the difficulties in establishing a robust carbon auditing methodology.
Design/methodology/approach
Auditing issues are considered from the point of divergence in the respective supply chains (downstream of this point a product is destined either for conventional or online retailing channels, and will receive different treatment accordingly).
Findings
The paper explores methodological issues associated with carbon auditing conventional and online retail channels. Having highlighted the problems, it suggests resolutions to these issues.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is mostly conceptual in nature.
Practical implications
The approach outlined in this paper, once applied, allows the identification of inefficiencies in the respective retail supply chains.
Originality/value
The paper is the first to discuss carbon auditing in relation to upstream supply chain analysis for both conventional and online retail channels. Previous work has tended to focus on the last mile delivery.
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Henry Gyarteng-Mensah, De-Graft Owusu-Manu, David Edwards, Isaac Baidoo and Hatem El-Gohary
Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE), this study aims to better understand the job preference of postgraduate students studying at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and…
Abstract
Purpose
Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE), this study aims to better understand the job preference of postgraduate students studying at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology-Institute of Distance Learning, Ghana and also rank the attributes of a job they deem important.
Design/methodology/approach
The research adopted a positivist epistemological design contextualised within a deductive approach and case study strategy. Primary survey data was collected from a stratified random sample of 128 postgraduate students with multi-sectorial career prospects. Sample students were subjected to a DCE in which their stated preferences were collected using closed-ended questionnaires with 28 pairs of hypothetical job profiles. Respondents’ preferences from the DCE data were then modelled using the conditional logit.
Findings
The research reveals that: salary in the range GHC 2,800.00 to GHC 3,400.00 ($1 = GHS 5.3); supportive management; very challenging jobs; and jobs located in the city were the top attributes that were significant and had the most impact in increasing the utility of selecting a particular job. Interestingly, jobs with no extra hours workload were not significant hence, had a negative impact upon student preferences.
Originality/value
This novel research is the first to use a DCE to better elicit preference and trade-offs of postgraduate students in a developing country towards varying job characteristics that have an impact on their future employment decisions. Knowledge advancements made provide invaluable insight to employers and policymakers on the key criteria that should be implemented to retain the best candidate.
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Julia B. Edwards, Alan C. McKinnon and Sharon L. Cullinane
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the carbon intensity of “last mile” deliveries (i.e. deliveries of goods from local depots to the home) and personal shopping trips.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on the carbon intensity of “last mile” deliveries (i.e. deliveries of goods from local depots to the home) and personal shopping trips.
Design/methodology/approach
Several last mile scenarios are constructed for the purchase of small, non‐food items, such as books, CDs, clothing, cameras and household items. Official government data, operational data from a large logistics service provider, face‐to‐face and telephone interviews with company managers and realistic assumptions derived from the literature form the basis of the calculations. Allowance has been made for home delivery failures, “browsing” trips to the shops and the return of unwanted goods.
Findings
Overall, the research suggests that, while neither home delivery nor conventional shopping has an absolute CO2 advantage, on average, the home delivery operation is likely to generate less CO2 than the typical shopping trip. Nevertheless, CO2 emissions per item for intensive/infrequent shopping trips by bus could match online shopping/home delivery.
Research limitations/implications
The number of items purchased per shopping trip, the choice of travel mode and the willingness to combine shopping with other activities and to group purchases into as few shopping trips or online transactions as possible are shown to be critical factors. Online retailers and home delivery companies could also apply measures (e.g. maximising drop densities and increasing the use of electric vehicles) to enhance the CO2 efficiency of their logistical operations and gain a clearer environmental advantage.
Practical implications
Both consumers and suppliers need to be made more aware of the environmental implications of their respective purchasing behaviour and distribution methods so that potential CO2 savings can be made.
Originality/value
The paper offers insights into the carbon footprints of conventional and online retailing from a “last mile” perspective.
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Árni Halldórsson and Gyöngyi Kovács
This double special issue called for logistics solutions and supply chains in times of climate change. The purpose of this editorial is to investigate the current and future…
Abstract
Purpose
This double special issue called for logistics solutions and supply chains in times of climate change. The purpose of this editorial is to investigate the current and future implications of climate change, and in particular, energy efficiency for logistics and supply chain management (SCM).
Design/methodology/approach
Against the backdrop of climate change, a conceptual framework is constructed that reflects on the immediate and tangible effects of a sustainable agenda on logistics and SCM.
Findings
Energy efficiency has been largely neglected in logistics and SCM. At the same time, considering energy efficiency requires considerable rethinking on the operational level (from transportation emissions to the cold chain) as well as even the conceptual level. The energy agenda needs a further development of logistics theory and practice.
Originality/value
The editorial highlights the challenges of sustainability and energy in the context of logistics and SCM pertaining to their novelty, importance and interdependence. SCM needs to develop new performance measures that include measures of energy efficiency, in order to adapt to an environment where the old assumption of low fuel costs does not hold stand.
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Geoffrey C. Bowker, Julia Elyachar, Martin Kornberger, Andrea Mennicken, Peter Miller, Joanne Randa Nucho and Neil Pollock
Abrar Faisal, Julia N. Albrecht and Willem J.L. Coetzee
This paper aims to respond to the strong calls for interdisciplinary solutions to address the many and varied challenges that major disasters create in urban (tourism) spaces, and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to respond to the strong calls for interdisciplinary solutions to address the many and varied challenges that major disasters create in urban (tourism) spaces, and provide a holistic conceptualisation of organisational responses to disruptions in the external business environment. It argues that organisations need to actively (re)formulate a sustainable business proposition to passively adapt to environmental conditions and modify the selective environment.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses a qualitative approach to introducing and examining the concepts and theoretical constructs underpinning the proposed conceptual schemata. The content-driven inductive approach used here is based on an extensive review of the disaster recovery, crisis management, entrepreneurial strategy and urban tourism literature with a focus on organisational perspectives. It systematically brings together the theories and research findings from these separate strands of literature.
Findings
While the extant literature focuses on the importance of effective adaptability to survive and thrive in environmental uncertainties, some aspects of the relevant evolutionary processes are not addressed in the context of urban tourism. Indeed, a systematic approach that questions how urban tourism and hospitality businesses react to crises has been long overdue. This paper, therefore, introduces niche construction theory (NCT) as an alternative and proposes an integrated framework to understand the environmental conditions of urban tourism and organisational evolution during post-disaster turbulence.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed model emerging from a multidisciplinary literature review acknowledges boundary conditions in the tourism industry-specific interpretation of a crisis situation. The tenets of NCT need to be adopted flexibly rather than as part of a strictly prescriptive process to allow for all aspects of the related business responses to play out and become exposed to the emerging selection pressures.
Practical implications
The argument underpinned by the theoretical constructs of niche construction encourages and offers a framework for practitioners to actively (re)formulate business proposition and (re)construct organisational niche to survive post-disaster turbulence in the business environment and exert influence over their own evolution.
Originality/value
This paper offers different angles, filters and lenses for constructing and interpreting knowledge of organisational evolution in the context of crisis management. The conceptual schema (Figure 2) emerged as a novel contribution itself providing a necessary lens to interpret the empirical data and understand the complexities of the organisational responses to the disruptive post-disaster turbulence in an urban tourism business environment.
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Many components of infrastructure are technological: pipes, asphalt, routers, buildings and other artifacts. Others are social: organizations, standards, laws, budgets or…
Abstract
Many components of infrastructure are technological: pipes, asphalt, routers, buildings and other artifacts. Others are social: organizations, standards, laws, budgets or political arrangements. Finally, some components are individual human beings who contribute to infrastructure development and maintenance, or simply make use of it in their daily lives. Relationships among these elements often shift. One typical trajectory reduces the role of individual action (choices, skills and behavior) by replacing it with social mechanisms such as organizations, laws and standards, and/or technological elements such as sensors and software. Another trajectory, equally possible and sometimes desirable, moves in the other direction, replacing technological mechanisms with social ones and/or with individual choice and action. While both trajectories create “automatic” systems, in the second case the automaticity is embodied in people and/or organizational routines. All infrastructures require users to learn and adopt these behavioral regularities. Once rendered fully habitual or incorporated into widely diffused organizational routines, such regularities can be regarded as components of infrastructure. They play a key role in the phenomenon of invisibility or transparency in well-functioning infrastructures.
This chapter explores examples from several different nations that show how infrastructures depend on habits, norms and routines, and how the persistence of automaticity in social systems and individuals creates its own forms of path dependence and structural inertia. My title plays on Anthony Giddens’s notion of “structuration” to evoke the mutually constructive character of agency and structure.
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Chloe Finamore, Fiammetta Rocca, Jennie Parker, Julia Blazdell and Oliver Dale
Mental health professionals working with patients with personality disorder are at risk of burnout. Burnout can adversely affect workforce retention and the delivery of…
Abstract
Purpose
Mental health professionals working with patients with personality disorder are at risk of burnout. Burnout can adversely affect workforce retention and the delivery of high-quality care. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the three-day Knowledge and Understanding Framework (KUF) awareness-level personality disorder training on burnout, knowledge and attitudes in staff working in mental health settings.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 253 mental health professionals attended the KUF training, delivered through a co-production model (i.e. co-delivered by a mental health professional and service user consultant with lived experience). Questionnaires were administered at pre- and post-training to assess changes in burnout symptoms and understanding, perceived capabilities and emotional reactions concerning personality disorder.
Findings
There were improvements in two burnout domains: decreases in emotional exhaustion (p = 0.009) and increases in personal accomplishment (p < 0.001) between pre-and post-training. Significant improvements were found in understanding, perceived capabilities and emotional reactions (p < 0.001).
Research limitations/implications
This evaluation is limited by a lack of a control group and long-term follow-up. Further research is required to investigate the sustainability of reductions in burnout for mental health professionals attending training and supervision structures.
Originality/value
KUF training may contribute to reductions in the high levels of burnout often experienced amongst staff working in mental health settings and could form a part of a broader strategy focussing on continued supervision and opportunities to integrate learning into practice.