Peter Tatham, Yong Wu, Gyöngyi Kovács and Tim Butcher
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the supply chain management (SCM) skills that support the sensing and seizing of opportunities in a changing business environment.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the supply chain management (SCM) skills that support the sensing and seizing of opportunities in a changing business environment.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the previous literature on the T-shaped model of SCM skills, data were collected through a mail survey among Australian business executives. The resultant skill sets are grouped along factors that support the sensing vs seizing of opportunities.
Findings
Interestingly from an SCM perspective, functional logistics-related skills are important to maintain competitiveness but are not the ones contributing to a firm’s ability to sense opportunities and threats, and to seize opportunities in a changing business environment. The authors, therefore, support the notion that supply chain managers should be managers first. Factual SCM knowledge is the solid basis, but otherwise only an entry requirement in this field.
Research limitations/implications
Problem-solving skills, along with forecasting and customer/supplier relationship management, stand out as important components that support the ability of supply chain managers to sense and shape opportunities and threats in a turbulent business environment. This focus would tend to suggest the importance of supply chain integration and collaboration as management approaches. Other SCM skills from warehousing and inventory management to transportation and purchasing are more prevalent for maintaining competitiveness.
Practical implications
The results of the survey and the consequential analysis indicate that the content of tertiary-level educational programmes should be significantly reviewed to deliver two distinct (but partially overlapping) streams that focus on the generalist and functionalist managers who must work together in the management of the increasingly global and complex supply chains.
Social implications
Functional skills often form the basis of training and education programmes for supply chain managers. Whilst these form the solid foundation for their jobs, they are entry requirements at best. In a changing business environment, other skills are needed for success. Given that turbulence is becoming the norm rather than the exception, this finding necessitates rethinking in training and education programmes, as well as in the recruitment of supply chain managers.
Originality/value
Testing the T-shaped model of SCM skills from a dynamic capabilities perspective, the results of the factor analysis lead to a regrouping of skill sets in terms of sensing and seizing opportunities in a turbulent business environment.
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Thomas James Parkman and Charlie Lloyd
The purpose of this paper is to explore the theme of dependence on mutual aid identified in a previous paper. It is a theme which to date, has had very little empirical attention…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the theme of dependence on mutual aid identified in a previous paper. It is a theme which to date, has had very little empirical attention, especially in a UK context.
Design/methodology/approach
A phenomenological approach was adopted. Interviews with service users, mentors and professional staff involved with the Learning to Live Again project were undertaken over a ten-month period of data collection. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.
Findings
It was found that service users with very little access to recovery capital or social support are at risk of developing a dependency on mutual aid. Dependence seemed to manifest itself in two different forms – those that over engaged with the project and those that under engaged with the project. Consequently, there were a cohort of service users identified that seemed to strike a balance with the project and their life outside the project that was “just right”. They were referred to as the “Goldilocks group”.
Originality/value
This paper explored a theme which has had very little attention paid to it. The theme of dependence on mutual aid will raise the awareness of such a threat, thus helping to identify those in treatment most at risk of developing dependency on mutual aid, thus detrimentally impacting on mental wellbeing.
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Lisa Matherson, Vivian H. Wright, Christopher T. Inman and Elizabeth K. Wilson
This article gives an overview of using global positioning systems (GPS) in a popular activity, geocaching, as a teaching and learning activity. The authors provide background…
Abstract
This article gives an overview of using global positioning systems (GPS) in a popular activity, geocaching, as a teaching and learning activity. The authors provide background information and an overview of one social studies teacher’s first use of geocaching and share perspectives from the teacher and her students on its value in the classroom.
Denise M. Kennedy, Christopher T. Anastos and Michael C. Genau
Healthcare service quality in the USA has gained importance under value-based payment models. Providing feedback to front-line staff is a vital component of managing service…
Abstract
Purpose
Healthcare service quality in the USA has gained importance under value-based payment models. Providing feedback to front-line staff is a vital component of managing service performance, but complex organizational dynamics can prevent effective communication. This work explored the performance management of appointment desk staff at Mayo Clinic Arizona, identified barriers to effective management and sought to standardize the process for monitoring service performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Multiple data sources, including qualitative inquiry with 31 employees from the primary care and surgery departments, were used. The research was conducted in two phases – facilitated roundtable discussions with supervisors and semi-structured interviews with supervisors and staff six months after implementation of service standards. Participants were probed for attitudes about the service standards and supervisor feedback after implementation.
Findings
While all staff indicated a positive work environment, there was an unexpected and pervasive negative stigma surrounding individual feedback from one’s supervisor. Half the participants indicated there had been no individual feedback regarding the service standards from the supervisor. Presenting service standards in a simple, one-page format, signed by both supervisor and the patient service representative (PSR), was well received.
Originality/value
Combining rapid-cycle quality improvement methodology with qualitative inquiry allowed efficient development of role-specific service standards and quick evaluation of their implementation. This unique approach for improving healthcare service quality and identifying barriers to providing individual feedback may be useful to organizations navigating a more value- and consumer-driven healthcare market.
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Ligia (Licho) López López, Christopher T. McCaw, Rhonda Di Biase, Amy McKernan, Sophie Rudolph, Aristidis Galatis, Nicky Dulfer, Jessica Gerrard, Elizabeth McKinley, Julie McLeod and Fazal Rizvi
The archives gathered in this collection engage in the current COVID-19 moment. They do so in order to attempt to understand it, to think and feel with others and to create a…
Abstract
Purpose
The archives gathered in this collection engage in the current COVID-19 moment. They do so in order to attempt to understand it, to think and feel with others and to create a collectivity that, beyond the slogan “we are in this together”, seriously contemplates the implications of what it means to be given an opportunity to alter the course of history, to begin to learn to live and educate otherwise.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is collectively written by twelve academics in March 2020, a few weeks into the first closing down of common spaces in 2020, Victoria, Australia. Writing through and against “social isolation”, the twelve quarantine archives in this paper are all at once questions, methods, data, analysis, implications and limitations of these pandemic times and their afterlives.
Findings
These quarantine archives reveal a profound sense of dislocation, relatability and concern. Several of the findings in this piece succeed at failing to explain in generalising terms these un-new upending times and, in the process, raise more questions and propose un-named methodologies.
Originality/value
If there is anything this paper could claim as original, it would be its present ability to respond to the current times as a historical moment of intensity. At times when “isolation”, “self” and “contained” are the common terms of reference, the “collective”, “connected” and “socially engaged” nature of this paper defies those very terms. Finally, the socially transformative desire archived in each of the pieces is a form of future history-making that resists the straight order with which history is often written and made.
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Ryan J. Chan, Shiran Isaacksz, Brian Low, Cecile Raymond, Lori Seeton and Christopher T. Chan
Health care systems aspire to adopt integration strategies shifting the focus from acute care to a broader focus on community-based health and social services. Real-world examples…
Abstract
Purpose
Health care systems aspire to adopt integration strategies shifting the focus from acute care to a broader focus on community-based health and social services. Real-world examples demonstrating effective delivery of integrated care are essential.
Design/methodology/approach
In this article, we introduce UHN Connected Care Hub, an innovative model of care comprising an interdisciplinary team designing sustainable, shareable practices across the continuum of care alongside community and health organization partnerships.
Findings
We describe UHN Connected Care Hub’s ability to identify patients from high-risk population and collaborate to delivery timely care, in detailing the real world experience of this model of care in the organization of a centralized system of micro-clinics to administer a therapeutic for pre-exposure prophylaxis against COVID-19 (Tixagevimab/cilgavimab [Evusheld]) in a population of immunocompromised patients.
Practical implications
Having a centralized system of micro-clinics for care delivery presents opportunities for increased adaptability, patient accessibility, enhanced community partnerships and integratedness. Expansion in the scope of services could also create new opportunities in preventative therapies for optimizing the cost effectiveness and quality of health care provided at the population level.
Originality/value
There is limited evidence on how to efficiently deliver integrated care, particularly to vulnerable and co-morbid patients. We discuss how dynamic organizations with proper infrastructure and a network of healthcare partnerships may allow a more fluid response to rapidly changing policies and procedures and facilitate preparedness for future health care crises or pandemics.
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OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was…
Abstract
OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was specially notable for the absence of those bickerings and differences which must inevitably come to the surface at times. There may be something in the suggestion of one of our writers that the weather was a main factor. However that may be, there was uniform good temper, and we came away with the belief that a good week's work for librarianship had been done.
Matthew D. Roberts, Christopher T. Price and Seong-Jong Joo
This research aims to understand how organizational workplace meetings surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic impacted logistics Airmen across the United States Air Force and how these…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to understand how organizational workplace meetings surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic impacted logistics Airmen across the United States Air Force and how these meetings impacted their risk seeking behavior on social media.
Design/methodology/approach
This survey research tested an extended Planned Risk Information Risk Seeking Model (PRISM) with organizational meetings as an antecedent to determine if current meetings influenced an Airman's perceived behavioral control, attitude toward seeking, subjective norms, knowledge sufficiency and intention to seek information regarding COVID-19.
Findings
Results of the CFA showed that the expanded PRISM model had good model fit. Additionally, using a custom dialog PROCESS macro in SPSS, it was found that perceptions of existing meetings were directly, positively related to attitude toward seeking, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control, and indirectly related to knowledge sufficiency threshold and information seeking. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Originality/value
This research adds to the limited body of knowledge of crisis communication and effectively expands the PRISM model to include an antecedent that helps explain information seeking during times of uncertainty.
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Rongjin Huang, Christopher T. Bonnesen, Amanda Lake Heath and Jennifer M. Suh
This paper examines how mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) learn to enact equitable mathematics instruction using technology through lesson study (LS).
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines how mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) learn to enact equitable mathematics instruction using technology through lesson study (LS).
Design/methodology/approach
A LS team with three MTEs conducted three iterations of LS on teaching the Pythagorean Theorem in an in-person, technology-mediated environment. Many forms of data were collected: Desmos activities, videos of research lessons (RLs), videos of MTE RL debriefings, artifacts of student learning in the Desmos Dashboard, and MTEs' written self-reflection. The authors investigate the teacher educators' learning through LS by analyzing the MTE debriefings of the RLs using Bannister’s (2015) framework for teacher learning in communities of practice.
Findings
The MTEs learned to enact equitable mathematics instruction using technology through addressing emerging issues related to intellectual authority and use of student thinking. Throughout the LS, the MTEs sought ways of promoting students' mathematical authority and using student thinking through features of the Desmos platform.
Research limitations/implications
This study focuses on MTEs' learning without examining participating preservice teachers' learning. It demonstrates the benefits of LS for MTEs' professional learning.
Practical implications
This study showcases how a research-based Desmos activity is used and refined to promote MTE learning how to implement equitable mathematics instruction.
Originality/value
The study contributes to better understanding of how LS could be used to develop MTEs' professional learning. Moreover, the dual process of participation and reification was concretized through diagnostic and prognostic frames in the LS context, which enriches the concept of community of practice.
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Ariangela J. Kozik, Ada K. Hagan, Nafisa M. Jadavji, Christopher T. Smith and Amanda Haage
This paper aims to identify the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the academic job market in North America and the ways in which faculty job applicants altered their…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the academic job market in North America and the ways in which faculty job applicants altered their applications in response to a changing academia.
Design/methodology/approach
The data presented here is the portion relevant to COVID-19 collected in a survey of faculty job applicants at the end of the 2019–2020 job cycle in North America (spring 2020). An additional “mid-pandemic” survey was used in fall 2020 for applicants participating in the following job search cycle to inquire about how they were adapting their application materials. A portion of data from the 2020–2022 job cycle surveys was used to represent the “late pandemic.” Job posting data from the Higher Education Recruitment Consortium is also used to study job availability.
Findings
Examination of faculty job postings from 2018 to 2022 found that while they decreased in 2020, the market recovered in 2021 and beyond. While the market recovered, approximately 10% of the faculty job offers reported by 2019–2020 survey respondents were rescinded. Respondents also reported altering their application documents in response to the pandemic as well as delaying or even abandoning their faculty job search.
Originality/value
This paper provides a longitudinal perspective with quantitative data on how the academic job market changed through the major events of the COVID-19 pandemic in North America, a subject of intense discussion and stress, particularly amongst early career researchers.