A systematic literature review on the use of big data analytics in humanitarian and disaster operations

At the start of this review, 168 million individuals required humanitarian assistance, at the conclusion of the research, the number had risen to 235 million. Humanitarian aid is critical not just for dealing with a pandemic that occurs once every century, but more for assisting amid civil conflicts, surging natural disasters, as well as other kinds of emergencies. Technology's dependability to support humanitarian and disaster operations has never been more pertinent and significant than it is right now. The ever-increasing volume of data, as well as innovations in the field of data analytics, present an incentive for the humanitarian sector. Given that the interaction between big data and humanitarian and disaster operations is crucial in the coming days, this systematic literature review offers a comprehensive overview of big data analytics in a humanitarian and disaster setting. In addition to presenting the descriptive aspects of the literature reviewed, the results explain review of existent reviews, the current state of research by disaster categories, disaster phases, disaster locations, and the big data sources used. A framework is also created to understand why researchers employ various big data sources in different crisis situations. The study, in particular, uncovered a considerable research disparity in the disaster group, disaster phase, and disaster regions, emphasising how the focus is on reactionary interventions rather than preventative approaches. These measures will merely compound the crisis, and so is the reality in many COVID-19-affected countries. Implications for practice and policy-making are also discussed.

Disruptive Technologies for Achieving Supply Chain Resilience in COVID-19 Era: An Implementation Case Study of Satellite Imagery and Blockchain Technologies in Fish Supply Chain

In supply chains where stakeholders belong to the economically disadvantaged segment and form an important part of the supply chain distribution, the complexities grow manifold. Fisheries in developing nations are one such sector where the complexity is not only due to the produce being perishable but also due to the livelihood dependence of others in the coastal regions that belong to the section of economically disadvantaged. This paper explains the contextual challenges of fish supply chain in a developing country and describes how integrating disruptive technologies can address those challenges. Through a positive deviance approach, we show how firms can help unorganized supply chains with economically disadvantaged suppliers by carefully redesigning the supply chain through the integration of satellite imagery and blockchain technology. With COVID-19 in the backdrop, we highlight how such technologies significantly improves the supply chain resilience and at the same time contributes to the income generating opportunities of poor fisherfolks in developing nations. Our study has important implications to both developing markets and food supply chain practitioners as this paper tackles issues such as perishability, demand-supply mismatch, unfair prices, and quality related data transparency in the entire value chain.

Operations Management teaching practices and information technologies adoption in emerging economies during COVID-19 outbreak

The objective of this article is three-fold. First, it aims at identifying the main teaching practices and information and communication technologies (ICTs) used to teach Operations Management (OM) in emerging economies during COVID-19 outbreak. Second, it investigates the effect of contextual characteristics on the adoption level of those teaching practices and ICTs. Third, this study examines the relationship between the adoption of ICTs and OM teaching practices during COVID-19 outbreak. Expectedly, schools around the world have pivoted to online learning and digital classrooms. Thus, OM lecturers and professors located in emerging economies that have been teaching during COVID-19 outbreak were surveyed. The collected data was analyzed through multivariate techniques. Findings indicate that lecturers and professors have been remarkably adopting specific teaching practices and ICTs to teach OM. Nevertheless, when considering the contextual characteristics of the universities, departments, and lecturers/professors, the adoption level of those practices and ICTs may significantly vary, especially depending on subject type and teaching experience. Moreover, we empirically verified that ICTs positively relate with OM teaching practices in emerging economies, although in a much less extent than expected. This research provides OM instructors guidelines to better plan their courses and subjects in face of extreme disruptive moments, such as the one caused by the COVID-19. Understanding how the concurrent utilization of ICTs and teaching practices helps OM programs to continue developing their activities is particularly important for universities located in emerging economies, since they are more likely to struggle with resources scarcity and more financially humble students.

Hospital Investment Decisions in Healthcare 4.0 Technologies: Scoping Review and Framework for Exploring Challenges, Trends, and Research Directions

BACKGROUND

Alternative approaches to analyzing and evaluating health care investments in state-of-the-art technologies are being increasingly discussed in the literature, especially with the advent of Healthcare 4.0 (H4.0) technologies or eHealth. Such investments generally involve computer hardware and software that deal with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision-making. Besides, the use of these technologies significantly increases when addressed in bundles. However, a structured and holistic approach to analyzing investments in H4.0 technologies is not available in the literature.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to analyze previous research related to the evaluation of H4.0 technologies in hospitals and characterize the most common investment approaches used. We propose a framework that organizes the research associated with hospitals' H4.0 technology investment decisions and suggest five main research directions on the topic.

METHODS

To achieve our goal, we followed the standard procedure for scoping reviews. We performed a search in the Crossref, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases with the keywords investment, health, industry 4.0, investment, health technology assessment, healthcare 4.0, and smart in the title, abstract, and keywords of research papers. We retrieved 5701 publications from all the databases. After removing papers published before 2011 as well as duplicates and performing further screening, we were left with 244 articles, from which 33 were selected after in-depth analysis to compose the final publication portfolio.

RESULTS

Our findings show the multidisciplinary nature of the research related to evaluating hospital investments in H4.0 technologies. We found that the most common investment approaches focused on cost analysis, single technology, and single decision-maker involvement, which dominate bundle analysis, H4.0 technology value considerations, and multiple decision-maker involvement.

CONCLUSIONS

Some of our findings were unexpected, given the interrelated nature of H4.0 technologies and their multidimensional impact. Owing to the absence of a more holistic approach to H4.0 technology investment decisions, we identified five promising research directions for the topic: development of economic valuation methodologies tailored for H4.0 technologies; accounting for technology interrelations in the form of bundles; accounting for uncertainties in the process of evaluating such technologies; integration of administrative, medical, and patient perspectives into the evaluation process; and balancing and handling complexity in the decision-making process.

Decision Intelligence: Creating a Fit between Intelligence Requirements and Intelligence Processing Capacities

Dynamic business environments throw up many challenges for senior executives. To make strategic decisions in such environments, it is crucial for them to find the right fit between the intelligence required for decisions, and how their companies gather and process intelligence. This paper conceptualizes a ‘ Decision Intelligence’ framework for achieving such a fit. The four major elements constituting the framework place the emphasis explicitly on senior executives adopting the right decision context, tailoring appropriate decision-making frameworks, innovating the access to diverse sources of intelligence and implementing the decisions proficiently. These elements are illustrated and elucidated by drawing on multiple firm experiences from automotive, agritech, pharma, banking and farming sectors. The paper concludes with a discussion on the major implications on intelligence processing capacity challenges of companies, and what this implies for management education and strategy research.

Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on employee performance - Moderating role of industry 4.0 base technologies

COVID-19 outbreak has implied significant changes in the way service organizations work, affecting employees' routine and activities. At the same time, the advent of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) introduced new technologies that might facilitate such activities, mitigating the COVID-19's implications. The objective of this research is two-fold. First, we aim at examining the impact of COVID-19's work implications on employees' performance (i.e. output quality and delivery). Second, we seek to verify the moderating role of I4.0 base technologies on this relationship. We surveyed 106 employees of different service organizations who have been working remotely during the pandemic and analyzed their responses through multivariate techniques. Results revealed that COVID-19's work implications (i.e. home office work environment, job insecurity and virtual connection) do impact employee's performance, although not at the same extent. Further, we found that I4.0 technologies moderate the enhancement of employee's performance. However, the orientation and intensity of such moderation may vary according to the performance metric and work implication under analysis. As COVID-19 outbreak inevitably pushed new ways of working that can become an integral part of the post-pandemic world, our research provides important theoretical and practical implications for improving employee's performance through the digitalization of service organizations.

Organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures – a review, synthesis and extension

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically review and explore how organizations knowledgeably respond to unfavorable institutional environments that exert institutional pressures and thereby limit their decision-making and eventually their actual behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a thorough structuration and analysis of the literature in management and related fields, the authors present a comprehensive synthesis of organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures.

Findings

Based on the review, the authors categorize organizational knowledgeable responses into three major types – passively responding to avoid non-conformity, reactively mitigating institutional pressures and proactively developing institutional environments toward less interfering setups.

Research limitations/implications

The authors discuss the enabling conditions for the categorized organizational knowledgeable responses as well as limitations to their application. They identify research gaps and formulate research questions to offer promising avenues for future work. The authors expect this detailed synthesis to lay the framework for investigating how the knowledge-based view of the organization influences its knowledgeable response to institutional pressure.

Practical implications

The authors elaborate on distinct passive, reactive and proactive strategies, which firms can apply to cope with institutional pressures. The contribution of this study will be of relevance to practitioners managing organizations in the face of unfavorable institutional setups, as well as to policymakers engaged in the development of institutions and interacting with affected organizations.

Originality/value

This study provides a valuable overview on developments in institutional theory, particularly on contributions to the “nascent literature” that examines heterogeneous organizational knowledgeable responses to institutional pressures.

Access-Based Services for the Base of the Pyramid

One key challenge for consumers at the base of the pyramid (BoP) is access to products that could transform their livelihood, leading to nonconsumption as the dominant pattern. Previous studies have claimed that nonconsumption could be addressed with services offering access to goods without ownership. Drawing on expected utility theory, we conduct two experimental studies in rural India that provide the first empirical support for the idea that the availability of access-based services reduces nonconsumption at the BoP. Additionally, we show that this effect is explained by BoP consumers' expected utility assessment as reflected in their perception of access being more affordable and entailing less financial risk than ownership. We also demonstrate that access temporality, an important configurational variable for access-based service providers, affects the degree to which nonconsumption can be decreased. Compared to short-term access, BoP consumers perceive long-term access to be too similar to ownership in terms of affordability and financial risk, which causes them to refrain from purchasing. Overall, the results suggest that access-based services represent a viable alternative for addressing nonconsumption at the BoP. However, service providers should be aware that short-term access is required to gain acceptance among BoP consumers.

“8A” framework for value stream selection – an empirical case study

Purpose

Before initiating the implementation of change for transforming and improving an organization through lean thinking (LT), it has to first select a right value stream. Several implementation studies have been documented in literature, but not many studies have addressed this issue of value stream selection. The purpose of this paper is to propose and empirically validate a framework for selecting a value stream to implement LT.

Design/methodology/approach

8A framework is proposed by reviewing the literature on LT implementation case studies. Single case study methodology has been adopted to validate the application of 8A framework for selecting a value stream in an Indian educational institute. Since multiple qualifiers are considered simultaneously, a multi-criteria decision-making approach has been employed for choosing the value stream.

Findings

Utility of the proposed 8A framework for value stream selection was confirmed through its successful application in an educational institute. Out of three alternatives in the case organization, the teaching alternative was chosen for further LT implementation based on the application of 8A framework. Qualitative cross-validation and sensitivity analysis also confirmed the robustness of the value stream selection made using the 8A framework.

Research limitations/implications

Framework proposed in this study comprehensively captures the important qualifiers that were overlooked by the widely adopted first tenet of LT. Future research can attempt to generalize the applicability of 8A framework in different contexts including manufacturing, healthcare, software development, etc. A further study can be carried out in two similar case organizations or in two value streams of the same case organization (say in two different plants) to compare the differences in the outcome of lean implementation when one chooses its value stream for LT implementation without the application of the proposed framework, while another chooses it by applying the 8A framework.

Practical implications

Through structured evaluation of the comprehensive set of qualifiers in 8A framework using a multi-criteria decision making model, an informed decision can be taken by the practitioners in selecting a value stream from the available alternatives before proceeding with the implementation of LT.

Originality/value

After questioning the existing procedure of value stream selection for LT implementation, this study is the first to propose and validate an 8A framework that overcomes the limitations of the existing procedure. Study is also unique in the choice of the case organization as not many research papers have documented implementation of LT from the context of educational institutes.

Leanness assessment: a literature review

Purpose

Assessing the outcome of lean transformation journey has been of interest to both researchers and practitioners. Various qualitative and quantitative assessment methodologies have been proposed in literature to track and measure the degree of leanness attained. The purpose of this paper is to understand the evolution of this leanness assessment literature over different attributes and identify gaps for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

A detailed literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers addressing leanness assessment was performed. Content analysis methodology involving a four-step process suggested by Mayring (2004) was adopted for this study.

Findings

The number of studies in literature on leanness assessment is low when compared to that in the area of lean implementation. Assessment methodologies developed are of wide range, varying from simple qualitative checklist to complex quantitative mathematical models. Following the trend of lean implementation literature, lean thinking assessment literature is also getting transformed from process-level monitoring to enterprise-level monitoring. Finally, based on this review, a simplified leanness assessment framework is proposed for future validation.

Research limitations/implications

Only peer-reviewed journals and conference papers were analyzed, while excluding the manuals, reports, and white papers from practice. Clustering of leanness assessment literature revealed that future studies in this domain would fall into two major categories, namely manufacturing leanness assessment and service leanness assessment.

Practical implications

Practitioners can use this review study to choose a suitable methodology for assessing the leanness attained in their organization by controlling for the structural attributes identified.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to review the topic “leanness assessment.” The review analyzes the entire literature available on leanness assessment to summarize its current status and identify potential future directions.

Converging sustainability definitions: industry independent dimensions

Purpose

– Sustainability as a construct is still debated and is yet to attain a consensus among researchers and practitioners. Sustainable development has been seen differently by players from different industry sectors. There is need to understand the commonality prevailing on sustainability practices across different industry sectors to arrive at a consensual sustainability definition. The purpose of this paper is to propose four dimensions of sustainability and studies how it captures sustainability practices across key industrial sectors.

Design/methodology/approach

– Current study argues the case for sustainability using four constructs, namely, economical, environmental, ethical, and social. Subsequently a holistic definition with a model is proposed incorporating the four constructs for sustainability. Studies documenting sustainability practices across industries, namely, automobile, infrastructure, cement and concrete, electronics, mining, paper, pharmaceutical, and logistics were reviewed to validate the applicability of the proposed four construct model across different key industrial sectors.

Findings

– Current study validates the industry independence of the proposed four constructs of sustainability model through a literature review. Very few studies have documented industry-specific sustainability practices and much lesser have studied the ethical dimension of sustainability. Furthermore, the organizational strategic plan is developed for incorporating the environmental, economical, ethical, and social needs into the organizational business operations at the strategic, tactical, and the operational levels.

Research limitations/implications

– Proposed model needs to be applied in multiple case organizations from diverse sectors to evaluate its capacity to capture the aspects of sustainability across different sectors. Future study could attempt to understand the interrelationships between the identified constructs and how they impact each other within different industrial sectors.

Practical implications

– Model linked to organizational business operations at the strategic, tactical, and the operational levels helps in the alignment of the organizational activity towards the strategic intent of the organizational sustainability philosophy in the business ecology. It also helps in equipping the organization to achieve the operational excellence and the strategic business growth at the same time.

Originality/value

– Current study is unique in its attempt to understand the capability of proposed sustainability dimensions to capture the sustainability practices followed across different industrial sectors.

The Impact of Information Systems on Management Performance in the Pharmaceutical Industry

There are many aspects that should be considered while implementing ISs in pharmaceutical companies. This is due to the various regulations and standards that the governmental authorities impose on these companies. In addition, any audit from US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or other authorities will require computer system validation to be performed for the implemented ISs to ensure that all areas that affect the drugs lifecycle are following the required standards, and that each single process in this lifecycle is validated. Unfortunately, many pharmaceutical companies didn't recognize yet the importance of ISs to their businesses. The research presented in this paper examines the value of using an information system (IS) in pharmaceutical environment and how it can be a key component of improving the operational and process effectiveness by supporting the strategic decisions and enabling the decision-makers to take their decisions in short time. Lack of information in pharmaceutical companies is one of the reasons why these companies will not be able to compete in this competitive market because the delays in taking decisions, product lifecycle, and supply chain. Pharmaceutical companies required to follow various regulations and standards, and ISs are the tools that can be mapped to these standards and control the business operations without any obstacles. The authors conducted a comprehensive study to investigate the role of ISs in the pharmaceutical industry through a review of existing literatures relevant to the research subject and through a questionnaire survey with 54 participants working in the pharmaceutical industry in different countries in the Middle East. The survey aimed to understand the present status of ISs in pharmaceutical companies and the impact of ISs on management performance, operation improvement, end-users productivity, and compliance with the regulations and standards of the pharmaceutical industry in their companies. Moreover, the survey also aimed to identify the catalysts behind successful implementation of ISs.