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Mental disorders are common and associated with substantial levels of work disability. Relative to persons with most types of physical impairments, persons with mental disorders have lower employment rates and lower mean wages, and experience greater discrimination in the workplace (Baldwin, 1999, 2000; Baldwin & Johnson, 1995, 2000). Persons with mental disorders have lower socioeconomic status, on average, and greater risk of living in poverty, than persons with physical disorders (Dohrenwend et al., 1992). By 1999, mental disorders had supplanted back cases as the health condition most frequently cited in employment discrimination charges filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Moss et al., 1999).

This paper aims to highlight some learning and teaching challenges in relation to universities and colleges in the Gulf region, including students' learning preferences, and cultural aspects. It explores the sequential‐global learning styles profile of undergraduate students as part of a continuous research in Information Systems Design with a particular focus on the design of Interactive Learning Systems (ILS).

The paper examines the learning style profile of undergraduate students for a cohort of Management Information Systems at a regional university in the UAE. It uses the Index of learning styles instrument as a tool for measuring the sequential‐global learning styles dimension. Also, the paper conducts a literature review of different aspects related to current challenges facing undergraduate students in the Gulf region as well as design principles related to the interactivity of learning systems.

The results show overall equal tendency towards both the sequential and global styles, different from a previous paper conducted in UK university. The paper highlights some students' differences that should be catered for in ILS design.

The paper is expected to provide further insights into some of the challenges facing many students doing their undergraduate degrees as well as the importance of a carefully balanced design of ILS (balance and bend model) to cater for students' different preferences and needs. A discussion and recommendations on how these findings can be reflected on the design of ILS are provided.

This paper reviews the changing nature of construction design and the potential for e‐procurement to respond to these changes. With the emphasis shifting from supply‐driven to demand‐driven product design the trading relationships within the industry must become more complex. This paper hypothesizes an electronic market in design and supply capability to exploit distributed design knowledge within the supply chain. In their current form, e‐commerce and brokering systems are too immature to support such relationships, but many elements of a technical solution are available. However, how they will reshape working practices is uncertain and this poses architectural and human organization problems for information systems (IS) developers. They must anticipate and address changes in working practices across a whole group of industries competing within a complex market place. We postulate a development approach that uses simulation models supported by soft systems methods to explore these process re‐engineering options and human issues. The simulation of new business processes, combined with prototype IS designs, offers a powerful mechanism for evaluating the effects of proposed architectures for “design transactions” in e‐procurement. The open learning that occurs in simulation experiments is also a key element in helping the management of the individual organizations in understanding how to shape their particular contribution to the new collaborative process. A major barrier to enhancing construction industry performance in this way is the defensive nature of existing contracts and lack of trust between parties; we therefore propose the use of COLA process in parallel with the simulation work to engender trust and improved working relationships between the collaborating organizations.

Green supply chain (GSC) modelling is still evolving, yet according to the literature, there is no standard and comprehensive approach for modelling GSCs. This chapter attempts to examine this remarkable gap in research by proposing a standard approach for industrial supply chain (SC) modelling, which allows integrating all relevant environmental constraints. This new approach is inspired from other methodologies proposed earlier regardless of their area of study and implemented via a case study in fish canning industry. The steps of the proposed approach are based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which has become a mainstream trend nowadays. The proposed approach may help managers and researchers and could provide a guideline for GSC modelling.

The design of manufacturing systems is a complex and expensive task for both SMEs and large organisations alike. Many problems relating to the design and operation of manufacturing systems are too complex to allow for mathematical treatment, and as a result there is increasing recognition of the applicability of simulation in the manufacturing environment. This has in turn resulted in a growth in simulation software products available in the marketplace, and manufacturers of such products are naturally keen to extol the virtues of what they sell. In a rapidly changing workplace, there is some suggestion that simulation tools may not have developed to deal with the new demands, and so it is timely to review what is on offer. This paper presents the results of a survey of European simulation specialists, both working in industry and in an academic environment, on the use of simulation software. The main purpose of this survey was to determine how satisfied users are with simulation software and to highlight the most positive and negative features. The findings offer an insight into current software, and how this can be further enhanced.

Introduces the special issue. Focuses first on concepts of knowledge in knowledge management before discussing the importance and role of knowledge in learning and the learning organisation. Discusses the role of knowledge and learning with regard to organisational change and the challenges that this poses with regard to benchmarking. Focuses then on information and communication technologies and to the role that these play in the complexities of business organisational change. Concludes with a discussion of the importance of the human aspects before outlining the contribution of the seven papers which comprise this special issue.

To improve organizational performance and sustain a competitive advantage many Australian businesses have begun to embrace e‐commerce. For example, businesses from the automotive, banking, insurance and retail industries have been able to leverage the benefits of information and communication technologies. Yet, those from the construction industry have been slow, perhaps even reluctant, to implement information and communication technologies to support ecommerce. Thus, this paper aims to determine the barriers that small‐medium sized contractors are experiencing when confronted with the need to implement e‐commerce to sustain their competitiveness. Unstructured interviews were undertaken with managers from 20 small‐medium sized contractors from the State of Victoria in Australia, which had annual turnovers ranging from $1‐50 million. The financial, organizational, technical and human barriers that were identified from findings are presented and discussed. The paper concludes by proposing strategies that small‐medium sized contractors may adopt if they to leverage the benefits of e‐commerce.

Entrepreneurship is not limited to managing and creating a business; other diverse domains have been explored by various scholars. The concept has been defined and explored in various aspects including cultural entrepreneurship (Gupta & Anandaram, 2022) ethnic, feminist, institutional, and various others. To obtain further insights into entrepreneurship, Krueger and Welpe (2014) sought to collaborate on the cognitive and emotional aspects and termed it neuro-entrepreneurship. Literature trends on neuro-entrepreneurship are generally confined to opportunity recognition, risk-taking measures, and decision patterns. It is too early to reach any conclusion as no empirical research has been undertaken on the topic yet. Neuroscience techniques such as fMRI and Magneto-encephalography (MEG) are trying to reveal the hidden phenomenon behind the decision-making process in entrepreneurs. The COVID-19 pandemic forced entrepreneurs to face a new reality: That is not only the crisis in physical resources but also caused a disrupted mental state. Entrepreneurs are seeking new ways to get back on track and potentially neuroscience will assist them. This chapter discusses the background literature on neuro-entrepreneurship and an overview of the rationales of neuro-entrepreneurship in organisational settings. It explains the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the brain controlling decision-making in entrepreneurs. This chapter establishes a connection between decision-making and creativity at the workplace with the help of neuroscience techniques of entrepreneurs and future directions towards achieving a creative entrepreneurial system by amalgamating neuroscience techniques and decision-making for improving entrepreneurial activities.

This paper seeks to understand effects of ASP utilization on organization performance measured in terms of satisfaction and educational effectiveness on the part of the customer firm.

This study follows the positivist approach. After a research framework was developed and hypotheses defined, based on a thorough ASP literature review, data were collected from small firms which use ASP services. Results were discussed to suggest strategic directions of ASPs.

The results show that when customer firms perceive good service at a reasonable fee, they exhibit a high level of satisfaction with the service provider. Customer satisfaction is found to be significantly related to organizational performance. Also, the education content of training programs significantly influences educational effectiveness, which in turn contributes to organizational performance by impacting customer service.

The results of the study would help practitioners and researchers better understand ASP customers. The scope of this study is limited to leading IT adoption countries.

Based on the customer perspective, this paper delineates factors of ASP services that support small firms to be more successful.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out the business process re‐engineering (BPR) of a surgical ward in a hospital in order to improve the efficiency of the ward.

This work was developed using a case study on a surgical ward. In this type of ward, in which scheduled and unscheduled operations often have to coexist and be managed, ways to minimise patient inconvenience need to be studied. A framework based on event‐driven process chains (EPCs) methodology, the entity‐relationship model and discrete event simulation is presented to define and analyse the current state of a surgical ward and design a future system. The modelling of the processes, activities and sub‐activities, which took up a great amount of ward resources, allowed a what‐if analysis to be developed which simulates various scenarios and assesses their performance.

Using Delphi methodology, it was possible to identify a number of areas for improvement: number of operating sessions, preparation of the operating rooms for each operation, availability of specific surgical instruments. Moreover, the discrete event simulation approach led to an understanding of the most efficient management choices.

The decision to use Delphi methodology for the information collection stage before starting the BPR process is not found in other studies in the literature. Moreover, the use of models based on EPCs methodology allowed the panel of experts to develop models to examine and understand the resource requirements of medical assessment units and to provide a framework or develop standards that hospital developers and clinical managers can consult.