Search results

The purpose of this study is to reflect upon the ramifications of two decades of Lean Six Sigma implementations in Dutch healthcare institutions in the light of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors provide an evaluation of the impact that Lean Six Sigma implementations have had on the ability of Dutch healthcare institutions to respond adequately to healthcare needs during the COVID-19 crisis.

Process improvement in healthcare has had a tendency to cut capacity and flexibility which are needed to deal with excessive demand shocks, such as during a pandemic. The main reason for this failure seems to be an overly strong focus on cost reduction instigated by Lean Six Sigma during stable times.

Besides the research method being an inferential procedure, the research focuses on the Netherlands and so the generalizability might be limited. However, using Lean Six Sigma to improve healthcare processes has found broad acceptance, so the implications may well carry over to other countries.

The authors call for a more comprehensive approach of process improvement within healthcare that takes flexibility and buffering in anticipation of excess variability and disruption into greater account. Therefore, this study provides a new perspective on how and to which aim Lean Six Sigma should be applied in healthcare.

An assessment is given of the impact of Lean Six Sigma implementations on the ability to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. This is done by identifying the focus points of improvement projects and considering the impact on the resilience of healthcare operations.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

A pæan of joy and triumph which speaks for itself, and which is a very true indication of how the question of poisonous adulteration is viewed by certain sections of “the trade,” and by certain of the smaller and irresponsible trade organs, has appeared in print. It would seem that the thanks of “the trade” are due to the defendants in the case heard at the Liverpool Police Court for having obtained an official acknowledgment that the use of salicylic acid and of other preservatives, even in large amounts, in wines and suchlike articles, is not only allowable, but is really necessary for the proper keeping of the product. It must have been a charming change in the general proceedings at the Liverpool Court to listen to a “preservatives” case conducted before a magistrate who evidently realises that manufacturers, in these days, in order to make a “decent” profit, have to use the cheapest materials they can buy, and cannot afford to pick and choose; and that they have therefore “been compelled” to put preservatives into their articles so as to prevent their going bad. He was evidently not to be misled by the usual statement that such substances should not be used because they are injurious to health— as though that could be thought to have anything to do with the much more important fact that the public “really want” to have an article supplied to them which is cheap, and yet keeps well. Besides, many doctors and professors were brought forward to prove that they had never known a case of fatal poisoning due to the use of salicylic acid as a preservative. Unfortunately, it is only the big firms that can manage to bring forward such admirable and learned witnesses, and the smaller firms have to suffer persecution by faddists and others who attempt to obtain the public notice by pretending to be solicitous about the public health. Altogether the prosecution did not have a pleasant time, for the magistrate showed his appreciation of the evidence of one of the witnesses by humorously rallying him about his experiments with kittens, as though any‐one could presume to judge from experiments on brute beasts what would be the effect on human beings—the “lords of creation.” Everyone reading the evidence will be struck by the fact that the defendant stated that he had once tried to brew without preservatives, but with the only result that the entire lot “went bad.” All manufacturers of his own type will sympathise with him, since, of course, there is no practicable way of getting over this trouble except by the use of preservatives; although the above‐mentioned faddists are so unkind as to state that if everything is clean the article will keep. But this must surely be sheer theory, for it cannot be supposed that there can be any manufacturer of this class of article who would be foolish enough to think he could run his business at a profit, and yet go to all the expense of having the returned empties washed out before refilling, and of paying the heavy price asked for the best crude materials, when he has to compete with rival firms, who can use practically anything, and yet turn out an article equal in every way from a selling point of view, and one that will keep sufficiently, by the simple (and cheap) expedient of throwing theory on one side, and by pinning their faith to a preservative which has now received the approval of a magistrate. Manufacturers who use preservatives, whether they are makers of wines or are dairymen, and all similar tradesmen, should join together to protect their interests, for, as they must all admit, “the welfare of the trade” is the chief thing they have to consider, and any other interest must come second, if it is to come in at all. Now is the time for action, for the Commission appointed to inquire into the use of preservatives in foods has not yet given its decision, and there is still time for a properly‐conducted campaign, backed up by those “influential members of the trade” of whom we hear so much, and aided by such far‐reaching and brilliant magisterial decisions, to force these opinions prominently forward, in spite of the prejudice of the public; and to insure to the trades interested the unfettered use of preservatives,—which save “the trade” hundreds of thousands of pounds every year, by enabling the manufacturers to dispense with heavily‐priced apparatus, with extra workmen and with the use of expensive materials,—and which are urgently asked for by the public,—since we all prefer to have our foods drugged than to have them pure.

The next month or two behind us and this decade will have passed, to merge in the drab background of the post‐war years, part of the pattern of frustration, failure and fear. The ‘swinging sixties’ some called it, but to an older and perhaps slightly jaundiced eye, the only swinging seemed to be from one crisis to another, like the monkey swinging from bough to bough in his home among the trees; the ‘swingers’ among men also have their heads in the clouds! In the seemingly endless struggle against inflation since the end of the War, it would be futile to fail to see that the country is in retreat all the time. One can almost hear that shaft of MacLeodian wit christening the approaching decade as the ‘sinking seventies’, but it may not be as bad as all that, and certainly not if the innate good sense and political soundness of the British gives them insight into their perilous plight.

Autistic individuals are employed and access higher education opportunities at significantly lower rates than their nondisabled peers (US Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2023; Newman, 2015). Schools are an optimal setting for intervention as most individuals access the school setting. However, traditional support to facilitate postsecondary transition effectively, such as transition plans, is currently lacking (Greene, 2018; Hughes et al., 2023). The authors of the present chapter conducted a systematic review to identify school-based interventions available for autistic youth intended to support the transition from high school to higher education, entrepreneurship, and employment. The data extraction methods used by the authors identified 19 articles on interventions. Across all studies, the authors found variation in the extent to which researchers addressed entrepreneurial skills and identified two key skill development areas across different intervention modalities: employability skills and interpersonal communication skills. Based on these results, the authors discuss available school-based programming intended to prepare autistic youth for postsecondary careers and entrepreneurial opportunities and the implications of existing interventions for practitioners and researchers interested in improving outcomes for autistic students as they transition to the workplace, particularly entrepreneurial endeavors.

In recent years, numerous studies have investigated whether individual executives and their characteristics relate to financial reporting choices. In this article, we review archival, experimental and survey research on the influence of individual executives on corporate financial reporting and use upper echelons theory as our organizing framework. Our review of 60 studies shows that research consistently finds that top management executives exert significant influence on financial reporting decisions, particularly on disclosure quality. Empirical research has developed promising approaches to investigate executives' psychological attributes and character traits. The results of studies examining the influence of demographic characteristics of individual executives are, however, sometimes contradictory and ambiguous. Nevertheless, the overall empirical results we review are supportive of upper echelons predictions. Additional research in this field is needed to clarify the influence of unexamined upper echelon characteristics, important moderator variables, and adverse selection effects. We also suggest that future research more closely investigates the magnitudes of managerial influence and adopts a more holistic perspective on financial reporting outcomes.

This chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities of integrating big data generated by contemporary museums into data ecology and data fabrics of smart cities. First, it exposes that smart cities could enhance their global reputation, visibility and image by building on closer collaborations with museums. Second, it demonstrates that museums in the 21st century have transformed into hyper-connected cultural hubs, spreading their reach and impact beyond their immediate urban locations. Finally, this chapter discusses creative approaches to data-curation mechanisms that stress the role of museums and cultural heritage sites in supplying data for a more strategic and proactive smart city co-design and management. Specifically, this chapter offers a three-dimensional framework for integrating heritage data in the design of smart city data ecosystems, which includes such components as Data Resources, Data Republics and Data Impacts. Data Resources stresses museum collections’ data and meta-data as a strategic resource to empower creative public data-curation practices to tell meaningful stories about the city and enhance place-making. Data Republics focuses on big data generated by visitors online or on-site as a foundation for evidence-based urban research, design and management, empowering more sustainable, safe and enjoyable tourism. Data Impacts details data-driven methodologies that museums could employ to measure public sentiment and opinion to offer new human-centred indicators to understand the performance of smart cities. This chapter shares a conceptual framework for repurposing museum data within a smart city data ecology to translate the current data excess into data intelligence.

The Minister of Health in the exercise of the powers conferred upon him by the Public Health Act, 1875, the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, the Public Health Act, 1896, the Public Health (Regulations as to Food) Act, 1907, and by Section 8 of the Milk and Dairies (Amendment) Act, 1922, and of every other power enabling him in that behalf, hereby makes the following Regulations, that is to say: