A Strategic Approach to Crisis Management and Organizational Resilience

The paper adopts a strategic view on organizational survival and argues that preparedness, responsiveness, adaptability and learning abilities constitute organizational drivers of resilience and a new direction on crisis management. As a conceptual and literature exploration, the methodological focus is to combine various concepts within a unified model for resilience. The proposed conceptual model highlights the need for strategic reconfigurations toward the construction of a resilience culture and the development of a supporting social capital in organizations. It also portrays organizational survival and sustainability as dependent on strategic characteristics rather than the managerial ability to handle situations and manage crisis. Implications, methodological concerns in the study of resilience and further research directions are also presented. The paper approaches a new way of thinking about crises and provides a set of cultural and organisational characteristics that would increase resilience and crisis management abilities. While organisations are nowadays more than even affected by disruptions and crises, their inherent ability and strategies to protect their sustainability have been under theorized. This paper aims at contributing to a growing and fruitful discussion

Disaster Supply Chain Management: Responsive Inter-organizational Networks Under Pressure

Supply Chains are often required to absorb unexpected pressure, turbulent changes in demand and disruptions across their structural components. In this paper, we acknowledge both the inter-organizational and collaborative nature of supply chains and explore how established logistics structures respond to conditions of crises as a result of unforeseen natural events and disasters. After a brief review of existing practices in the area of Disaster Supply Chain Management (DCSM) we focus on identifying and presenting the sharing 'realities' of inter-organizational networks through a short case study showcasing the situational, complex and temporal nature of responsive networks under pressure

Organisational communication management during the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: A hermeneutic study in attribution, crisis management, and information orientation

The discovery in September 2015 of diesel emissions software cheat technology in Volkswagen (VW) cars initiated a process of organisational crisis management and damage limitation by VW, reflected in the contemporaneous intensive production of public information statements, including press releases, statements to shareholders and investors, and transcripts of oral evidence. Through taking stock of a selection of these public information statements, this article examines the organisational communication management strategies employed to respond to the crisis situation, making an integrated use of attribution, crisis management, and information orientation theories as an interpretive lens. An interpretivist, hermeneutic approach was used to carry out qualitative content analysis on selected statements issued by VW. The analysis reveals that there is a connection between statements relating to attribution and statements relating to information orientation, at the time of the crisis and in preparing future action. Priorities for action form part of the overall crisis management and image restoration approach. Proposed changes in information orientation constitute a key dimension of the company's public response to mitigate the offensiveness of the crisis. The analysis performed demonstrates the applicability of the proposed integration of attribution, crisis management, image restoration, and information orientation theories to better understand and explain how large corporations respond publicly to organisational crisis episodes, more specifically the ways in which attributions, crisis management, and image restoration strategies are related to aspects of information orientation as both components and consequences of the crisis

A machine learning approach to enable bulk orders of critical spare-parts in the shipping industry

Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological approach and a decision support tool, based on prescriptive analytics, to enable bulk ordering of spare parts for shipping companies operating fleets of vessels. The developed tool utilises Machine Learning (ML) and operations research algorithms, to forecast and optimize bulk spare parts orders needed to cover planned maintenance requirements on an annual basis and optimize the company’s purchasing decisions. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed approach consists of three discrete methodological steps, each one supported by a decision support tool based on clustering and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. In the first step, clustering is applied in order to identify high interest items. Next, a forecasting tool is developed for estimating the expected needs of the fleet and to test whether the needed quantity is influenced by the source of purchase. Finally, the selected items are cost-effectively allocated to a group of vendors. The performance of the tool is assessed by running a simulation of a bulk order process on a mixed fleet totaling 75 vessels. Findings: The overall findings and approach are quite promising Indicatively, shifting demand planning focus to critical spares, via clustering, can reduce administrative workload. Furthermore, the proposed forecasting approach results in a Mean Absolute Percentage Error of 10% for specific components, with a potential for further reduction, as data availability increases. Finally, the cost optimizer can prescribe spare part acquisition scenarios that yield a 9% overall cost reduction over the span of two years. Originality/value: By adopting the proposed approach, shipping companies have the potential to produce meaningful results ranging from soft benefits, such as the rationalization of the workload of the purchasing department and its third party collaborators to hard, quantitative benefits, such as reducing the cost of the bulk ordering process, directly affecting a company’s bottom linePeer Reviewe

Evaluating the Effects of Gamification in Behavioural Change: A Proposed SEM-Based Approach

The purpose of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to investigate the available papers on the effect of gamification elements to explain behavioural changes through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Secondly, based on the SLR, it proposes a four-step SEM (Structural Equation Model)-based approach that can be used to validate the effects of gamification on behavioural change and can be further applied in the context of a research project that aims to lower maritime plastic pollution in coastal areas. The SLR approach provides an overview of empirical studies that successfully measure the three identified objectives, i.e., increased (O1) usage of a web platform, (O2) awareness, and (O3) participation in behaviour, and it focuses on SEM to collect empirical results. Findings from the SLR highlight multiple research shortcomings, such as the lack of a unified taxonomy for gamification and motivational affordances, the absence of studies soundly linking gamification elements to psychological outcomes, and the tendency of researchers to measure the intention to conduct a behaviour rather than the long-term effect of actual behaviour changes. Finally, the created approach provides insights on which gamification elements to include and how to measure their behavioural effect based on a self-developed SEM and questionnaire, which can be applied in research projects utilising gamification, independent from the domain of activity

An argument against the focus on Community Resilience in Public Health

Background - It has been suggested that Public Health professionals focus on community resilience in tackling chronic problems, such as poverty and deprivation; is this approach useful? Discussion - Resilience is always i) of something ii) to something iii) to an endpoint, as in i) a rubber ball, ii) to a blunt force, iii) to its original shape. “Community resilience” might be: of a neighbourhood, to a flu pandemic, with the endpoint, to return to normality. In these two examples, the endpoint is as-you-were. This is unsuitable for some examples of resilience. A child that is resilient to an abusive upbringing has an endpoint of living a happy life despite that upbringing: this is an as-you-should-be endpoint. Similarly, a chronically deprived community cannot have the endpoint of returning to chronic deprivation: so what is its endpoint? Roughly, it is an as-you-should-be endpoint: to provide an environment for inhabitants to live well. Thus resilient communities will be those that do this in the face of challenges. How can they be identified? One method uses statistical outliers, neighbourhoods that do better than would be expected on a range of outcomes given a range of stressors. This method tells us that a neighbourhood is resilient but not why it is. In response, a number of researchers have attributed characteristics to resilient communities; however, these generally fail to distinguish characteristics of a good community from those of a resilient one. Making this distinction is difficult and we have not seen it successfully done; more importantly, it is arguably unnecessary. There already exist approaches in Public Health to assessing and developing communities faced with chronic problems, typically tied to notions such as Social Capital. Communityresilience to chronic problems, if it makes sense at all, is likely to be a property that emerges from the various assets in a community such as human capital, built capital and natural capital. Summary - Public Health professionals working with deprived neighbourhoods would be better to focus on what neighbourhoods have or could develop as social capital for living well, rather than on the vague and tangential notion of community resilience.</p

ZAT PENGHAMBAT PERTUMBUHAN, METIL FEOFORBIDA B DARI BIJI PETIR (Parkia intermedia Hassk)

Dalam penelitian berkelanjutan terhadap kandungan zat pengatur tumbuh barudari tumbuhan Indonesia, di peroleh hasil bahwa ekstrak metanol dari biji mudatanaman petir (Parkia intermedia Hassk) suku Leguminosae memiliki aktivitaspengatur tumbuh yang signifikan terhadap bioindikator padi (Oryza sativa)kultivar Conde. Pemisahan ekstrak metanol dilakukan melalui partisi pelarutorganik dilanjutkan dengan kombinasi kolom kromatografi pada silika gel GF254menghasilkan suatu senyawa yang beraktivitas penghambat pertumbuhanterhadap bioindikator padi (Oryza sativa). Struktur kimia zat penghambatpertumbuhan diidentifikasi dengan metode spektroskopi dan di identifikasisebagai suatu metil feoforbida B. Metil feoforbida B menunjukkan aktivitaspenghambat pertumbuhan pada konsentrasi 0,1 bpj terhadap bioindikator padi

A New Multi-Index Method for the Eutrophication Assessment in Transitional Waters: Large-Scale Implementation in Italian Lagoons

Eutrophication represents one of the most impacting threats for the ecological status and related ecosystem services of transitional waters; hence, its assessment plays a key role in the management of these ecosystems. A new multi-index method for eutrophication assessment, based on the ecological index MaQI (Macrophyte Quality Index), the trophic index TWQI (Transitional Water Quality Index), and physicochemical quality elements (sensu Dir. 2000/60/EC), was developed including both driver and impact indicators. The study presents a large-scale implementation of the method, which included more than 100 Italian lagoon sites, covering a wide variability of lagoon typologies and conditions. Overall, 35% of sites resulted in eutrophic status, 45% in mesotrophic, and 25% in oligotrophic status