Visual management is much used within operations management practice, particularly in association with process improvement initiatives in diverse areas such as production and healthcare. The ...practitioner literature abounds with suggested best practice. However, there is little attempt to theorise about why the design and use of 'visual' devices for such process improvement works in practice. Within this paper we describe a novel theory of operation which highlights the role that material and visual artefacts proposed by visual management practitioners play within particular ways of organising work. We develop an innovative way of employing the theory of affordances to explain how first- and second-order affordances, situated around the visual devices at the heart of visual management, connect three domains of action, which we refer to as articulation, communication and coordination. Our analysis of three cases from healthcare, clothing manufacturing and software production help ground the theorisation discussed.
ABSTRACT
Despite ambitious efforts in various fields of research over multiple decades, the goal of making academic research relevant to the practitioner remains elusive: theoretical and academic ...research interests do not seem to coincide with the interests of managerial practice. This challenge is more fundamental than knowledge transfer, it is one of diverging knowledge interests and means of knowledge production. In this article, we look at this fundamental challenge through the lens of design science, which is an approach aimed primarily at discovery and problem solving as opposed to accumulation of theoretical knowledge. We explore in particular the ways in which problem‐solving research and theory‐oriented academic research can complement one another. In operations management (OM) research, recognizing and building on this complementarity is especially crucial, because problem‐solving–oriented research produces the very artifacts (e.g., technologies) that empirical OM research subsequently evaluates in an attempt to build explanatory theory. It is indeed the practitioner—not the academic scientist—who engages in basic research in OM. This idiosyncrasy prompts the question: how can we enhance the cross‐fertilization between academic research and research practice to make novel theoretical insights and practical relevance complementary? This article proposes a design science approach to bridge practice to theory rather than theory to practice.
Is lean a theory? Viewpoints and outlook Åhlström, Pär; Danese, Pamela; Hines, Peter ...
International journal of operations & production management,
12/2021, Letnik:
41, Številka:
12
Journal Article
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PurposeLean remains popular in a wide range of private and public sectors and continues to attract a significant amount of research. However, most of this research is not grounded in theory. This ...paper presents and discusses different expert viewpoints on the role of theory in lean research and practice and provides guidelines for future research.Design/methodology/approachSeven experienced lean authors independently provide their views to the question “is Lean a theory?” before Rachna Shah summarizes the viewpoints and provides a holistic outlook for lean research.FindingsAuthors agree, disagree and sometimes agree to disagree. However, a close look reveals agreement on several key points. The paper concludes that Lean is not a theory but has plenty of theoretical underpinnings. Many lean-related theories provide promising opportunities for future research.Originality/valueAs researchers, we are asked to justify our research drawing on “theory,” but what does that mean for a practice-driven phenomenon such as lean? This paper provides answers and directions for future research.
Purpose
In the healthcare management domain, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the role of resilience practices in improving patient safety. The purpose of this paper is to understand the ...capabilities that enable healthcare resilience and how digital technologies can support these capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
Within- and cross-case research methodology was used to study resilience mechanisms and capabilities in healthcare and to understand how digital health technologies impact healthcare resilience. The authors analyze data from two Italian hospitals through the lens of the operational failure literature and anchor the findings to the theory of dynamic capabilities.
Findings
Five different dynamic capabilities emerged as crucial for managing operational failure. Furthermore, in relation to these capabilities, medical, organizational and patient-related knowledge surfaced as major enablers. Finally, the findings allowed the authors to better explain the role of knowledge in healthcare resilience and how digital technologies boost this role.
Practical implications
When trying to promote a culture of patient safety, the research suggests healthcare managers should focus on promoting and enhancing resilience capabilities. Furthermore, when evaluating the role of digital technologies, healthcare managers should consider their importance in enabling these dynamic capabilities.
Originality/value
Although operations management (OM) research points to resilience as a crucial behavior in the supply chain, this is the first research that investigates the concept of resilience in healthcare systems from an OM perspective, with only a few authors having studied similar concepts, such as “workaround” practices.
Dynamic supply chain capabilities Aslam, Haris; Blome, Constantin; Roscoe, Samuel ...
International journal of operations & production management,
10/2018, Letnik:
38, Številka:
12
Journal Article
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Purpose This paper positions market sensing, supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability as a coherent cluster of dynamic supply chain capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to understand ...how dynamic supply chain capabilities interrelate and their effect on supply chain ambidexterity. Design/methodology/approach Based on a survey of Pakistani manufacturing firms, a theoretically-derived model was tested in a structural equation model. Findings The results of the study show that a market-sensing capability is an antecedent of supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability. Furthermore, supply chain agility, directly, and supply chain adaptability, indirectly, affect supply chain ambidexterity. Supply chain agility, therefore, mediates the relationship between supply chain adaptability and supply chain ambidexterity. Originality/value The contribution of this study lies in: first, identifying dynamic capability clusters relevant for achieving supply chain ambidexterity; second, evaluating performance implications of dynamic capabilities in the supply chain, specifically supply chain agility and adaptability; and third, proposing a unique measurement of supply chain ambidexterity in the light supply chain theory, and empirically evaluating the relationship between dynamic capabilities and supply chain ambidexterity.
This work proposes and empirically tests a new framework for evaluating the relationship between stakeholder pressures, the adoption of low-carbon operations practices and firms' carbon performance. ...It seeks to expand upon stakeholder theory and the natural-resource-based view (NRBV) to understand further the role of operations management in a low-carbon environment. Our theoretical hypotheses were tested through the Partial Least Squares method with bias-corrected and accelerated (BCA) bootstrap confidence intervals. The key findings encapsulate a mixture of expected and unexpected research results: (i) stakeholder pressures influence both barriers and motivators for decarbonising operations management practices; (ii) a variety of barriers and motivators significantly affect the adoption of low-carbon operations management practices; (iii) developing positive relationships with stakeholders is important to overcome barriers from the external environment and enhance organisational competitiveness; (iv) low-carbon operations management has an overall effect on firms' carbon performance; However, unexpectedly: (v) firms seem to face difficulties in understanding stakeholder pressures when developing low-carbon products and logistics, due to a lack of awareness of the sources of barriers to the adoption of low-carbon management practices; (vi) in terms of stakeholders, competitors tend to exert significant pressure towards the adoption of low-carbon operations, while government does not; (vii) more research is necessary to better understand the apparent weak link between low-carbon logistics and firms' low-carbon performance.
E‐healthcare platforms start to integrate medical services across online and offline channels, where providers can perform online consultations, schedule patients’ offline visits, synchronize ...relevant medical records, and finally, answer online inquiries regarding follow‐up and recovery anytime and anywhere within one operations management function (i.e., online–offline service integration). In this study, we seek to quantify the effects of online–offline service integration on the e‐healthcare providers’ demand and reputational outcomes, noting that it is not altogether clear how the service integration function will affect the providers who adopt such a function in e‐healthcare platforms. Leveraging a quasi‐natural experiment on an e‐healthcare platform, we conducted difference‐in‐differences analyses in tandem with a variety of matching strategies, including propensity score matching and look‐ahead propensity score matching. Furthermore, we explored the moderating roles of provider‐specific characteristics. Our results reveal a set of robust and interesting findings: (i) e‐healthcare providers, on average, experience increases in online demand and decreases in offline demand post online–offline service integration; (ii) the service integration function also improves the professional reputation of participating providers; (iii) the impact of channel integration on the outcomes is weaker for providers with lower (vs. higher) professional titles; and (iv) the providers who specialize in treating chronic (vs. acute) diseases experience greater increases in online demand and reputational outcomes, yet insignificant changes in offline demand. This work contributes to related prior literatures on healthcare operations management, e‐healthcare, and online–offline channel integration, offering design implications for the service operations of e‐healthcare platforms.
•This work highlights challenges of service operations in the sharing economy.•Empirical evidence of peer effects and externalities is presented.•Data was gathered from Brazilian libraries through ...big data analysis.•This work provides detailed insights to the economics of the sharing economy.•This work extends knowledge on service operations in the sharing economy.
Information and operations management in libraries presents a unique opportunity to provide insights for the sharing economy. Libraries correspond to a special type of sharing goods, named common-pool resources. Such resources have two characteristics: they are non-exclusive, but rival to each other. Service operations in libraries involve thousands of operations every year, making them a perfect context for the use of big data analytics capabilities (BDAC) to provide real-world evidence on the potential existing challenges in the sharing economy. Employing a novel dataset related to 723,798 library transactions, made by 16,232 individual users during a 10-year period (2006–2015), we estimate peer effects among users via regression analysis, considering the number of books each user borrows. Our main results suggest that a rise in the number of loans among a user’s peer group correlates with her own loans, an evidence of positive peer effects. However, a closer look at the data suggests a high degree of heterogeneity, in terms of behavioral patterns. First, we suggest that peer effects do not occur in the case of users who are not subject to monetary fines. Second, peer effects vary according to users’ category (student or non-student), and area of study (management, accounting, economics, and other courses). Third, there is evidence of different magnitudes of peer effects according to time in school, which suggests the existence of learning effects in a library setting. The results reported in this paper highlight the important role of big data analytics capabilities to uncover new challenges of the sharing economy, having important implications, both in theoretical and practical terms.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war revealed vulnerabilities in supply chains, emphasizing the need for resilience in multiple industries. While Industry 4.0 is valuable, it cannot ...fully address complex supply chain challenges. Therefore, exploring additional drivers like Operations Management has become imperative. More clearly, the adoption of Operations Management tools and practices helps implement and use enabling technologies more effectively. In this context, the aim of the paper is to conduct a literature review to study supply chain resilience considering these two concepts. In other words, the objective of the work consists in examining the effectiveness of the mentioned combination. The paper presents a conceptual framework for enhancing supply chain resilience by exploring the potential of Industry 4.0 and Operations Management. The paper also underlines the positive impact issued from hybridizing both solutions to achieve resilience. As it discusses enhancing features of each concept aside the other. The paper provides a basic model for researchers to further detailed studies, and for managers to bringing the proposed framework from theory to practice.
Supply chain resilience and data analytics capability have generated increased interest in academia and among practitioners. However, existing studies often treat these two streams of literature ...independently. Our study model reconciles two different streams of literature: data analytics capability as a means to improve information-processing capacity and supply chain resilience as a means to reduce a ripple effect in supply chain or quickly recover after disruptions in the supply chain. We have grounded our theoretical model in the organisational information processing theory (OIPT). Four research hypotheses are tested using responses from 213 Indian manufacturing organisations collected via a pre-tested survey-based instrument. We further test our model using variance-based structural equation modelling, popularly known as PLS-SEM. All of the hypotheses were supported. The findings of our study offer a unique contribution to information systems (IS) and operations management (OM) literature. The findings further provide numerous directions to the supply chain managers. Finally, we note our study limitations and provide further research directions.
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