Patricio Vera, Christopher Nikulin, Monica Lopez-Campos and Rosa Guadalupe G. Gonzalez Ramirez
The purpose of this paper is to propose a combination of forecasting methods that enables a holistic understanding of a future situation, given certain influencing variables by a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a combination of forecasting methods that enables a holistic understanding of a future situation, given certain influencing variables by a combination of real data and expert knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
The proposal combines two well-known methods: first, system archetypes that correspond to generic structures, allowing us to handle model management issues, and second, system dynamics that offers technical support on a computational level to assess different scenarios or problem solutions.
Findings
The case study considers the situation of the mining industry in Chile and its related variables, including four different scenarios. Based on the proposed methodology, the results indicate that: first, the price of copper is paramount for the industry and its effects are not limited to company profits; second, a long period of downfall in copper prices could halt exploration and development projects.
Research limitations/implications
Systemic archetypes are still a subject of research and their application in different fields of knowledge continues to increase to improve this simulation approach.
Practical implications
The case study illustrates the combination of a Vester matrix and initial system archetype models that are enriched using the system dynamics approach. Indeed, the case study aims to understand the consequences of different scenarios based on the problem-driven approach provided by Vester.
Social implications
The goal of prospective studies of large-scale and complex situations is to model the real situation to obtain solutions that may enhance social welfare.
Originality/value
The proposed methodology contributes to the existing literature by integrating techniques such as the Vester matrix, system archetype modelling and system dynamics simulation, all of which were proposed previously in the literature as independent techniques.
Propósito
Este artículo propone una combinación de métodos de pronósticos que permite una comprensión holística de una situación futura, dadas ciertas variables de influencia mediante una combinación de datos reales y conocimiento de expertos.
Diseño/metodología/enfoque
La propuesta combina dos métodos conocidos: (i) arquetipos de sistemas que corresponden a estructuras genéricas, lo que nos permite manejar los modelos, y (ii) la dinámica de sistemas que ofrece soporte técnico a nivel computacional para evaluar diferentes escenarios o soluciones de problemas.
Resultados
El caso de estudio considera la situación de la industria minera en Chile y sus variables relacionadas, incluidos cuatro escenarios diferentes. Según la metodología propuesta, los resultados indican que i) el precio del cobre es primordial para la industria y sus efectos no se limitan a las ganancias de la empresa; ii) un largo período de caída en los precios del cobre podría detener los proyectos de exploración y desarrollo.
Limitaciones en la investigación/implicaciones
Los arquetipos sistémicos siguen siendo un tema de investigación y su aplicación en diferentes campos del conocimiento continúa aumentando para mejorar este enfoque de simulación.
Implicaciones prácticas
El estudio de caso ilustra la combinación de una matriz de Vester y los modelos de arquetipos del sistema inicial que se enriquecen utilizando el enfoque de dinámica de sistemas. De hecho, el caso de estudio apunta a comprender las consecuencias de diferentes escenarios basados en el enfoque orientado a los problemas proporcionado por Vester.
Implicaciones sociales
El objetivo de los estudios prospectivos para situaciones de gran escala y complejas es modelar la situación real para obtener soluciones que puedan mejorar el bienestar social.
Originalidad/valor
La metodología propuesta contribuye a la literatura existente mediante la integración de técnicas como la matriz de Vester, el modelado de arquetipos del sistema y la simulación de dinámica de sistemas, todo lo cual se propuso anteriormente en la literatura como técnicas independientes.
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Javier Monllor, Ignacio Pavez and Stefania Pareti
Examine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster.
Abstract
Purpose
Examine and understand how an informal volunteer’s goals and actions develop from the moment they first learn about a disaster.
Design/methodology/approach
We examine informal volunteerism (the activities of people who work outside of formal emergency and disaster management arrangements) through the theoretical lens of entrepreneurial effectuation to explain informal volunteer behavior and cognition and gain insight on how they develop their disaster relief ventures.
Findings
We find that informal volunteers follow an effectual logic, relying on available means to take advantage of opportunities as they are recognized or created. Application of effectuation vs causation processes depended on whether the informal volunteers were categorized as traditional, emergent or extended volunteers.
Practical implications
Informal volunteers’ disregard for the Affordable Loss Principle task governments and disaster relief organizations with the important challenge of managing and assuring the safety and well-being of informal volunteers. Their entrepreneurial behavior also invites the establishment of formal processes to counsel and guide informal volunteers, helping them fill out the necessary paperwork and funding applications to develop their efforts.
Social implications
Through their experimentation and flexibility, informal volunteers accelerate disaster recovery, recognizing opportunities, working around bureaucracy and other roadblocks that hinder the efforts of established organizations. They also demonstrate entrepreneurial behavior that helps revitalize and jumpstart the local economy, making for stronger and more resilient communities
Originality/value
This study borrows from Effectuation Theory from the entrepreneurship field in order to bring a much needed theoretical lens to the topic and greatly assists informal volunteerism research, moving from past efforts that simply define and categorize the concept.
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Jeanine Kirchner-Krath, Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva, Benedikt Morschheuser and Harald F.O. von Korflesch
Given the urgency of corporate engagement in sustainable development, companies seek ways to involve their employees in sustainability efforts. In this regard, gamified systems…
Abstract
Purpose
Given the urgency of corporate engagement in sustainable development, companies seek ways to involve their employees in sustainability efforts. In this regard, gamified systems have gained attention as a novel tool to promote sustainable employee behavior. However, as the research field matures, researchers and practitioners are confronted with a scattered academic landscape that makes it difficult to grasp how gamification can be designed to engage employees in sustainable behavior and to understand how gamification effects unfold at psychological, behavioral and corporate levels of sustainability.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a systematic literature review to consolidate the existing knowledge on gamification designs and their effects on sustainable employee behavior.
Findings
Studies have explored a variety of utilitarian and achievement-, immersion- and social-related gameful affordances to promote positive behavior- and system-related psychological effects as a basis for employee engagement in sustainable behavior. However, the evidence regarding their impact on rational decision-making processes and overcoming the intention-action gap inherent in sustainability is still limited. Nevertheless, several studies in focused areas indicate the potential to elicit behavioral changes that drive sustainability outcomes at the corporate level as well.
Originality/value
Our study provides three main contributions. First, we develop a conceptual framework that illustrates how gamification can drive sustainable behavior in the workplace. Second, we derive seven agenda points to guide future research on gamification for corporate sustainability. Third, we deduce three practical approaches to use gamification as a strategic intervention to promote sustainable behavior in organizations.
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María Dolores Vidal-Salazar, Vera Ferrón-Vilchez and Eulogio Cordón-Pozo
Purpose – Is the current economic crisis affecting the quality of working conditions within organisations? More specifically, due to constrained economic times, are organisations…
Abstract
Purpose – Is the current economic crisis affecting the quality of working conditions within organisations? More specifically, due to constrained economic times, are organisations reducing the social benefits they offer to employees? This study analyses whether the current economic downturn influences companies’ maintenance of social benefits. Social benefits are those remunerations in kind voluntarily offered by an employer beyond what is established in labour laws and collective agreements
Design/methodology/approach – In doing so, this chapter presents an analysis of the evolution of social benefits in a sample of 171 employees, comparing the situation before and during the economic crisis.
Findings – Results showed that, in general, social benefits offered by companies to their workers have been reduced due to economic recession.
Originality/value of the chapter – Understanding the topic addressed in this work is interesting for scholars, regulators, and practitioners because the diminishing of social benefits due to the economic constraints could yield negative consequences for the employees’ involvement with the firm and have a subsequent negative impact on business performance.
Practical/social implications – This work demonstrates the need to pay greater attention to indirect remuneration. This issue is intimately related to the Internal Corporate Social Responsibility of the company.
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Linsey Ann Belisle and Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio
As prison drug use continues to be a concern worldwide, harm reduction practices serve as an alternative approach to traditional abstinence-only or punishment-oriented methods to…
Abstract
Purpose
As prison drug use continues to be a concern worldwide, harm reduction practices serve as an alternative approach to traditional abstinence-only or punishment-oriented methods to address substance use behind bars. The purpose of this study is to present a summary of research surrounding prison-based harm reduction programs.
Design/methodology/approach
This narrative review of the international literature summarizes the harms associated with prison drug use followed by an overview of the literature surrounding three prison-based harm reduction practices: opioid agonist therapy, syringe exchange programs and naloxone distribution.
Findings
A collection of international research has found that these three harm reduction programs are safe and feasible to implement in carceral settings. Additionally, these services can effectively reduce some of the harms associated with prison drug use (e.g. risky injection practices, needle sharing, fatal overdoses, etc.). However, these practices are underused in correctional settings in comparison to their use in the community.
Originality/value
Various policy recommendations are made based on the available literature, including addressing ethical concerns surrounding prison populations’ rights to the same standard of health care and services available in the community. By taking a public health approach to prison drug use, harm reduction practices can provide a marginalized, high-risk population of incarcerated individuals with life-saving services rather than punitive, punishment-oriented measures.
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Manuel Alonso Dos Santos, Ferran Calabuig Moreno and María Huertas González-Serrano
The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated…
Abstract
The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.
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Bin Xie, Zhenyu Wang, Yiling Xu and Libing Cui
Emergencies have become a growing concern for organizations, which require flexibility to respond to changes in emergencies based on their contingency, dynamic evolution rapidly…
Abstract
Purpose
Emergencies have become a growing concern for organizations, which require flexibility to respond to changes in emergencies based on their contingency, dynamic evolution rapidly and other characteristics. In order to enhance the ability of engineering project organizations to cope with emergencies, this study explores the mechanism of its influence on knowledge innovation under emergencies from the perspective of bricolage theory, and provides a new perspective for the traditional preplanning-based handling of emergencies by improvising to enhance the ability and results of improvisation.
Design/methodology/approach
Firstly, a structural equation model of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation was constructed by introducing improvisational behavior and serendipity as mediating and moderating variables of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation based on bricolage theory; secondly, drawing on previous well-established measurement scales about bricolage, improvisational behavior, knowledge innovation and serendipity, a questionnaire survey was conducted with different types of engineering project managers and technicians in Gansu Province as the research subjects, and 238 valid questionnaires were returned; finally, validation factor analysis and correlation analysis were performed, and the hypothesized relationships were verified using AMOS 24.0 software.
Findings
The results show that bricolage positively influences improvisational behavior; improvisational behavior positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage influences knowledge innovation through the mediating role of improvisational behavior and serendipity positively moderates the impact of resource bricolage on knowledge innovation.
Originality/value
It reveals the mechanism of knowledge innovation of engineering project organizations in response to emergencies and the innovation mechanism of the episodic nature of emergency decision-making, extends the applicable context of bricolage theory and provides a new perspective for engineering project organizations in response to emergencies.
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Ritesh J. Patel and Aaliyah Siddiqui
The purpose of this paper is to perform a meta-bibliometric analysis of the banking service quality and to provide various research streams. Another goal is to provide future…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to perform a meta-bibliometric analysis of the banking service quality and to provide various research streams. Another goal is to provide future research questions to explore these areas in more detail.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used three major academic databases (Scopus, ProQuest and EBSCO) from 1980–2021 and found 226 papers, where they performed the meta-bibliometric analysis by performing co-citation analysis, co-authorship analysis, cartographic analysis and content analysis.
Findings
The SERVQUAL model is the most used conceptual framework and model to study banking service quality. Structural equation modeling (SEM), followed by partial least squares SEM, is a majorly used method. There are three research streams in the literature: retail banking service quality, internet banking service quality and mobile banking service quality. Retail banking is the most studied stream, whereas mobile banking is the least studied stream. The study on banking service quality was initially conducted in developed markets, and later in emerging markets. All three streams have scope for further exploration, and hence, 44 future research questions have also been proposed.
Research limitations/implications
This study has implications for bank managers, academicians and future researchers.
Originality/value
This study is unique in that it examines the meta-bibliometric dimensions of banking service quality and provides directions for future research for academicians and researchers.