Complexity and learning behaviors in product innovation

Successful product innovation and the ability of companies to continuously improve their innovation processes are rapidly becoming essential requirements for competitive advantage and long-term growth in both manufacturing and service industries. It is now recognized that companies must develop innovation capabilities across all stages of the product development, manufacture, and distribution cycle. These Continuous Product Innovation (CPI) capabilities are closely associated with a company’s knowledge management systems and processes. Companies must develop mechanisms to continuously improve these capabilities over time. Using results of an international survey on CPI practices, sets of companies are identified by similarities in specific contingencies related to their complexity of product, process, technological, and customer interface. Differences between the learning behaviors found present in the company groups and in the levers used to develop and support these behaviors are identified and discussed. This paper also discusses appropriate mechanisms for firms with similar complexities, and some approaches they can use to improve their organizational learning and product innovation.

Evolution and change in industrial clusters : an analysis of Hsinchu and Sophia Antipolis

The aim of this paper is to advance understandings of the processes of cluster-building and evolution, or transformative and adaptive change, through the conscious design and reflective activities of private and public actors. A model of transformation is developed which illustrates the importance of actors becoming exposed to new ideas and visions for industrial change by political entrepreneurs and external networks. Further, actors must be guided in their decision-making and action by the new vision, and this requires that they are persuaded of its viability through the provision of test cases and supportive resources and institutions. In order for new ideas to become guiding models, actors must be convinced of their desirability through the portrayal of models as a means of confronting competitive challenges and serving the economic interests of the city/region. Subsequent adaptive change is iterative and reflexive, involving a process of strategic learning amongst key industrial and political actors.

Identification and specification of relationships as the foundation for service bundling

Service bundling can be regarded as an option for service providers to strengthen their competitive advantages, cope with dynamic market conditions and heterogeneous consumer demand. Despite these positive effects, actual guidance for the identification of service bundles and the act of bundling itself can be regarded as a gap. Previous research has resulted in a conceptualization of a service bundling method relying on a structured service description in order to fill this gap. This method addresses the reasoning about the suitability of services to be part of a bundle based on analyzing existing relationships between services captured by a description language. This paper extends the aforementioned research by presenting an initial set of empirically derived relationships between services in existing bundles that can subsequently be utilized to identify potential new bundles. Additionally, a gap analysis points out to what extent prominent ontologies and service description languages accommodate for the identified relationships.

Service identification through value chain analysis and prioritization

In a resource constrained business world, strategic choices must be made on process improvement and service delivery. There are calls for more agile forms of enterprises and much effort is being directed at moving organizations from a complex landscape of disparate application systems to that of an integrated and flexible enterprise accessing complex systems landscapes through service oriented architecture (SOA). This paper describes the deconstruction of an enterprise into business services using value chain analysis as each element in the value chain can be rendered as a business service in the SOA. These business services are explicitly linked to the attainment of specific organizational strategies and their contribution to the attainment of strategy is assessed and recorded. This contribution is then used to provide a rank order of business service to strategy. This information facilitates executive decision making on which business service to develop into the SOA. The paper describes an application of this Critical Service Identification Methodology (CSIM) to a case study.

Linking ambulance, emergency department and hospital admissions data : understanding the emergency journey

Objective: to assess the accuracy of data linkage across the spectrum of emergency care in the absence of a unique patient identifier, and to use the linked data to examine service delivery outcomes in an emergency department setting. Design: automated data linkage and manual data linkage were compared to determine their relative accuracy. Data were extracted from three separate health information systems: ambulance, ED and hospital inpatients, then linked to provide information about the emergency journey of each patient. The linking was done manually through physical review of records and automatically using a data linking tool (Health Data Integration) developed by the CSIRO. Match rate and quality of the linking were compared. Setting: 10, 835 patient presentations to a large, regional teaching hospital ED over a two month period (August-September 2007). Results: comparison of the manual and automated linkage outcomes for each pair of linked datasets demonstrated a sensitivity of between 95% and 99%; a specificity of between 75% and 99%; and a positive predictive value of between 88% and 95%. Conclusions: Our results indicate that automated linking provides a sound basis for health service analysis, even in the absence of a unique patient identifier. The use of an automated linking tool yields accurate data suitable for planning and service delivery purposes and enables the data to be linked regularly to examine service delivery outcomes.

A new and efficient intelligent collaboration scheme for fashion design

Technology-mediated collaboration process has been extensively studied for over a decade. Most applications with collaboration concepts reported in the literature focus on enhancing efficiency and effectiveness of the decision-making processes in objective and well-structured workflows. However, relatively few previous studies have investigated the applications of collaboration schemes to problems with subjective and unstructured nature. In this paper, we explore a new intelligent collaboration scheme for fashion design which, by nature, relies heavily on human judgment and creativity. Techniques such as multicriteria decision making, fuzzy logic, and artificial neural network (ANN) models are employed. Industrial data sets are used for the analysis. Our experimental results suggest that the proposed scheme exhibits significant improvement over the traditional method in terms of the time–cost effectiveness, and a company interview with design professionals has confirmed its effectiveness and significance.

Building organizational capability through a quality assurance program within a business school and encouraging organizational culture change

This study explores organizational capability and culture change through a project developing an assurance of learning program in a business school. In order to compete internationally for high quality faculty, students, strategic partnerships and research collaborations it is essential for Universities to develop and maintain an international focus and a quality produce that predicts excellence in the student experience and graduate outcomes that meet industry needs. Developing, marketing and delivering that quality product requires an organizational strategy to which all members of the organization contribute and adhere. Now, the ability to acquire, share and utilize knowledge has become a critical organizational capability in academia as well as other industries. Traditionally the functional approach to business school structures and disparate nature of the social networks and work contact limit the sharing of knowledge between academics working in different disciplines. In this project a community of practice program was established to include academics in the development of an embedded assurance of learning program affecting more than 5000 undergraduate students and 250 academics from nine different disciplines across four schools. The primary outcome from the fully developed and implemented assurance of learning program was the five year accreditation of the business schools programs by two international accrediting bodies, EQUIS and AACSB. However this study explores a different outcome, namely the change in organizational culture and individual capabilities as academics worked together in teaching and learning teams. This study uses a survey and interviews with academics involved, through a retrospective panel design which contained an experimental group and a control group. Results offer insights into communities of practice as a means of addressing organizational capability and changes in organizational culture. Knowledge management and shared learning can achieve strategic and operational benefits equally within academia as within other industrial enterprises but it comes at a cost. Traditional structures, academics that act like individual contractors and deep divides across research, teaching and service interest served a different master and required fewer resources. Collaborative structures; fewer master categories of discrete knowledge areas; specific strategic goals; greater links between academics and industry; and the means to share learned insights will require a different approach to resourcing both the individual and the team.

Implementing a six sigma initiative in financial service companies

In a world of intense competition, Six Sigma is considered to be an important management philosophy, supporting organisations in their efforts to obtain satisfied customers. As financial service organisations have been slow to adopt Six Sigma, issues concerning its implementation are of major importance. For its implementation a large number of tools and techniques have been suggested by academics and practitioners. Intriguingly, despite the extensive effort that has been invested and benefits that can be obtained, the systematic implementation of Six Sigma in financial service organisations is limited. This paper presents a conceptual framework derived from literature and empirical results with a focus on financial services. Using this framework a financial service company should be able to cope with the relevant critical success factors. Thus, the framework allows identifying relevant aspects for a sustainable and successful implementation of a Six Sigma initiative.

A survey on six sigma implementation in Singapore service industries

The concept of Six Sigma was initiated in the 1980s by Motorola. Since then it has been implemented in several manufacturing and service organizations. In case of services, health care and finance were major beneficiaries till now. The application of Six Sigma is gradually picking up in other services like; call centers, utilities and public services. This paper provides empirical evidence on Six Sigma implementation in service industries in Singapore. By using a sample size of 50 service organizations (10 responses are from organizations which have implemented Six Sigma), the paper helps in understanding the status of Six Sigma in service organizations in Singapore. The findings confirm the inclusion of critical success factors, critical to quality characteristics, tools and key performance indicators as observed from the literature. The revelation of “not relevant” as a reason for not implementing Six Sigma shows the need for understanding specific requirements of service organizations before its application.

Beyond broadcasting: customer service, community and information experience in the Twittersphere

What opportunities does a channel like Twitter offer to libraries, beyond the realm of marketing? We would like to highlight three roles for Twitter in the academic library environment: Twitter as a service delivery and service recovery channel; Twitter as a community builder; Twitter as a site for information experience.

The influence of service quality and trade show effectiveness on post-show purchase intention

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and test an integrative services framework to investigate the role of perceived trade show effectiveness on overall trade show service outcome, conceptualised as the intention to purchase a related product after, rather than during, a show. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on the services marketing and trade show literature, the authors test a model of trade show effectiveness with data collected from 592 attendees at a major automotive trade show in a large metropolitan centre. Findings Results show that improving trade show visitors' perceived service quality positively affects visitor perceptions of trade show effectiveness. Furthermore, both trade show effectiveness and service quality directly influence future purchase intention. Research limitations/implications Employing a services theoretical framework to evaluate trade show visitor experiences provides an alternative to the traditional marketing communications approach. By viewing such visits as service encounters, managers must inevitably consider the effects of service quality and service outcomes in determining the likely success of their shows. The study primarily focuses on one large consumer show and therefore does not constitute a complete, nor necessarily representative, sample of the trade show industry. Originality/value The original contribution of the paper stems from the paucity of research conceptualising trade shows as services and the comparative lack of emphasis placed on visitors rather than exhibitors in the literature. The research not only has utility for trade show organisers but also provides necessary theory-based research in the trade show domain.

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of six sigma in service organizations

The concept of Six Sigma was initiated in the 1980s by Motorola. Since then it has been implemented in several manufacturing and service organizations. Till now Six Sigma implementation is mostly limited to healthcare and financial services in private sector. Its implementation is now gradually picking up in services such as call center, education, construction and related engineering etc. in private as well as public sector. Through a literature review, a questionnaire survey, and multiple case study approach the paper develops a conceptual framework to facilitate widening the scope of Six Sigma implementation in service organizations. Using grounded theory methodology, this study develops theory for Six Sigma implementation in service organizations. The study involves a questionnaire survey and case studies to understand and build a conceptual framework. The survey was conducted in service organizations in Singapore and exploratory in nature. The case studies involved three service organizations which implemented Six Sigma. The objective is to explore and understand the issues highlighted by the survey and the literature. The findings confirm the inclusion of critical success factors, critical-to-quality characteristics, and set of tools and techniques as observed from the literature. In case of key performance indicator, there are different interpretations about it in literature and also by industry practitioners. Some literature explain key performance indicator as performance metrics whereas some feel it as key process input or output variables, which is similar to interpretations by practitioners of Six Sigma. The response of not relevant and unknown to us as reasons for not implementing Six Sigma shows the need for understanding specific requirements of service organizations. Though much theoretical description is available about Six Sigma, but there has been limited rigorous academic research on it. This gap is far more pronounced about Six Sigma implementation in service organizations, where the theory is not mature enough. Identifying this need, the study contributes by going through theory building exercise and developing a conceptual framework to understand the issues involving its implementation in service organizations.

An exploratory study to examine the phenomenon and practice of ambulance ramping at hospitals within the Queensland Health Southern Districts and the Queensland Ambulance Service

Background: Ambulance Ramping, defined anecdotally as a practice where patients brought to emergency departments by ambulance experience delays to admission, has become more frequent in Australian emergency departments over the last few years. Previous research has shown a link between emergency department overcrowding, ambulance diversion and adverse outcomes for patients. However, there is very little research about Ambulance Ramping. The literature has no consistent definition of Ambulance Ramping, no description of how it is managed, and limited research on the effects it has on patient and service delivery outcomes...

Examination of socio-demographics and job satisfaction in Australian registered nurses

Aims and Objectives To examine relationships between socio-demographic factors and job satisfaction and to identify if these factors predict job satisfaction levels in an Australian registered nurses. Background Reports indicate that in Australia there are 30,000 qualified nurses no longer working in the healthcare and that current nursing shortages vary as a result of certain socio-demographic variables including type of nurse, geographic, location, sector, service and organisation. Furthermore it has been revealed that there is not only a real shortage but also a pseudo-shortage (i.e. either there are not enough nurses are available, or not enough are willing to work under existing workplace conditions). International studies have found significant relationships exist between some socio-demographic factors and job satisfaction in registered nurses however there is limited information available on relationships between socio-demographic factors and job satisfaction in nurses in the Australian context. Design A cross sectional survey was undertaken of Australian registered nurses. Methods Two thousand Australian registered nurses who were members of an industrial and professional organisation were sent the questionnaire in 2008. They were stratified and randomised according to gender. Six hundred and thirty-nine registered nurses responded. Descriptive analyses, correlation analyses, one- way ANOVA tests, simple linear regression and multivariable analyses were conducted to examine further if any relationships existed between the variables. Results The majority of respondents showed positive job satisfaction scores. An ANOVA found significant positive relationships existed between job satisfaction, specialty area, health sector and Australian states. Multivariable analyses found relationships existed between specialty area, health sector, and job satisfaction. Conclusions The variables specialty area and health sector were found to be significantly associated with job satisfaction. The different specialty areas and health sectors in relation to job satisfaction should be investigated further. Clinical Relevance The study results have provided new knowledge for policy makers, organisational and nursing leaders of the socio-demographic variables that may affect job satisfaction in registered nurses in the Australian context.

Environmental incidents in a developing country and corporate environmental disclosures : a study of a multinational gas company

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the environmental disclosure initiatives of Niko Resources Ltd – a Canada-based multinational oil and gas company – following the two major environmental blowouts at a gas field in Bangladesh in 2005. As part of the examination, the authors particularly focus on whether Niko's disclosure strategy was associated with public concern pertaining to the blowouts. Design/methodology/approach – The authors reviewed news articles about Niko's environmental incidents in Bangladesh and Niko's communication media, including annual reports, press releases and stand-alone social responsibility report over the period 2004-2007, to understand whether news media attention as proxy for public concern has an impact on Niko's disclosure practices in relation to the affected local community in Bangladesh. Findings – The findings show that Niko did not provide any non-financial environmental information within its annual reports and press releases as a part of its responsibility to the local community which was affected by the blowouts, but it did produce a stand-alone report to address the issue. However, financial environmental disclosures, such as the environmental contingent liability disclosure, were adequately provided through annual reports to meet the regulatory requirements concerning environmental persecutions. The findings also suggest that Niko's non-financial disclosure within a stand-alone report was associated with the public pressures as measured by negative media coverage towards the Niko blowouts. Research limitations/implications – This paper concludes that the motive for Niko's non-financial environmental disclosure, via a stand-alone report, reflected survival considerations: the company's reaction did not suggest any real attempt to hold broader accountability for its activities in a developing country.