Applying a transportation rating system to advance sustainability evaluation, planning and partnerships

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 608-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Barrella ◽  
Kelsey Lineburg ◽  
Peter Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Transportation Planning ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Sustainable Transportation ◽  
Rating System ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot application of the Sustainable Transportation Analysis & Rating System (STARS), and highlight how a sustainability rating system can be used to promote sustainable urban development through a university–city partnership. STARS is an example of a second-generation “green” rating system focused on transportation planning, design, operations and maintenance. Design/methodology/approach In Fall 2013, James Madison University (JMU) initiated a STARS pilot demonstration using a local corridor that connects the university and the city of Harrisonburg. The pilot’s purposes were to develop attainable transportation-development targets, evaluate infrastructure and programmatic options in the context of a credit-based system and demonstrate a decision-making framework centered on sustainability optimization. The paper provides an overview of the STARS framework and the pilot’s collaborations, analysis, findings and recommendations for credits across sustainability dimensions. Findings Upon applying the rating system, the research team found that STARS may initially be easier to integrate into a comprehensive transportation planning process than a corridor-level evaluation due to data needs, in-house expertise and planning timelines for campus and city developments. A campus-wide master plan based on STARS would enable a university and a city to apply sustainability principles to their physical and/or policy interfaces to systemically create change and achieve quantifiable targets. Originality/value The STARS framework provides a novel approach for integrating multiple stakeholders (faculty, the university and city staff, students and community members) in a process of capacity building, evaluating options, policy-making, implementation and performance monitoring. The JMU pilot is the first application of STARS at a university and the only US East Coast application to date.

Solar Photovoltaic Water Pumping to Alleviate Drought in Remote Locations

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kala Meah ◽  
Steven Fletcher ◽  
Yu Wan ◽  
Sadrul Ula
Keyword(s):  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Solar Water ◽  
Small Water ◽  
Water Pumping ◽  
Western Us ◽  
Water Right ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The University

Many parts of the western US is rural in nature and consequently do not have electrical distribution lines in many parts of farms and ranches. Distribution line extension costs can run from $15,000 to $25,000 per mile, thereby making availability of electricity to small water pumping projects economically unattractive. Solar photo-voltaic (PV) powered water pumping is more cost effective in these small scale applications. Many western states including Wyoming are passing through fifth year of drought with the consequent shortages of water for many applications. Wyoming State Climatologist is predicting a possible 5–10 years of drought. Drought impacts the surface water right away, while it takes much longer to impact the underground aquifers. To mitigate the effect on the livestock and wildlife, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal initiated a solar water pumping initiative in cooperation with the University of Wyoming, County Conservation Districts, Rural Electric Cooperatives, and ranching organizations. Solar water pumping has several advantages over traditional systems; for example, diesel or propane engines require not only expensive fuels, they also create noise and air pollution in many remote pristine areas. Solar systems are environment friendly, low maintenance and have no fuel cost. In this paper the design, installation and performance monitoring of the solar system for small scale remote water pumping will be presented.

Public-sector reforms and balanced scorecard adoption: an Ethiopian case study

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1230-1256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belete Jember Bobe ◽  
Dessalegn Getie Mihret ◽  
Degefe Duressa Obo
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Balanced Scorecard ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Sector Reforms ◽  
And Performance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine adoption of the balanced scorecard (BSC) by a large public-sector health organisation in an African country, Ethiopia as part of a programme to implement a unified sector-wide strategic planning and performance monitoring system. The study explains how this trans-organisational role of the BSC is constituted, and explores how it operates in practice at the sector-and organisation-levels. Design/methodology/approach The study employs the case-study method. Semi-structured interview data and documentary evidence are analysed by drawing on the concept of translation from actor-network theory. Findings The case-study organisation adopted the BSC as a part of broader public-sector reforms driven by political ideology. Through a centralised government decision, the BSC was framed as a sector-wide system aimed at: aligning the health sector’s strategic policy goals with strategic priorities and operational objectives of organisations in the sector; and unifying performance-monitoring of the sector’s organisations by enabling aggregation of performance information to a sector level in a timely manner to facilitate health sector policy implementation. While the political ideology facilitated BSC adoption for trans-organisational use, it provided little organisational discretion to integrate financial administration and human resource management practices to the BSC framework. Further, inadequate piloting of information system use for the anticipated BSC model, originating from the top-down approach followed in the BSC implementation, inhibited implementation of the BSC with a balanced emphasis between the planning and performance monitoring roles of the BSC. As a result, the BSC underwent a pragmatic shift in emphasis and was reconceptualised as a system of enhancing strategic alignment through integrated planning, compared to the balanced emphasis between the planning and performance monitoring roles initially anticipated. Originality/value The study provides a theory-based explanation of how politico-ideological contexts might facilitate the framing of novel roles for the BSC and how the roles translate into practice.

The continuing search for the Holy Grail

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
Robert M. Wiseman ◽  
Hadi Faqihi
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Multiple Stakeholders ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Current State ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Ceo Pay ◽  
And Performance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to enrich the finding by Aguinis et al. (2018) that there is little overlap between the extremes of firm performance and the extremes of CEO pay using a novel approach to characterize the distribution of pay and performance. The authors aim to shift the focus of compensation researchers from fruitlessly trying to link pay to performance to theory-rich accounts of pay that take into consideration the idiosyncratically motivated and socially embedded nature of CEO compensation. Design/methodology/approach The authors’ approach in this commentary is conceptual. They synthesize compensation literature from different fields such as economics, finance, sociology, strategic management and corporate law, as well as the empirical findings from the focal paper to support their characterization of the current state of the literature and future directions it should take. Findings The authors synthesize discussion of CEO pay down to three dimensions of CEO responsibilities and motivations. They argue that a realistic pay design should take into account that CEOs have limited control over performance, they are accountable to multiple stakeholders and they are motivated by financial as well as nonfinancial incentives. Originality/value The commentary presents researchers with high-order framing of CEO pay that goes beyond debating over methodology or narrowly focusing on limited behavioral drivers of pay setting. Instead, the authors encourage researchers to take advantage of their three-legged framework to theorize about CEO pay.

The effect of strategic alignment on purchasing management

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (11) ◽  
pp. 1175-1200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Alfonso Rodríguez-Escobar ◽  
Javier González-Benito
Keyword(s):  
Operations Management ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Strategic Alignment ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Industrial Companies ◽  
And Performance

Purpose This research aims to establish the role of the purchasing function’s strategic alignment in the relationship between well-established practices and performance in that function. It is argued that the strategic alignment of purchasing may have effects (direct, mediating and moderating effects) on the purchasing function’s operating performance. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses derived from key studies about strategic and advanced purchasing practices are tested with data from 156 industrial companies using structural equation modelling methodology. Findings The results suggest that the effect of strategic alignment on the role of purchasing consists of mediated effects on purchasing performance through implementation of certain advanced practices. It was also concluded that strategic alignment – as well as the implementation of these advanced purchasing practices – fosters the implementation of differentiation strategies based on quality, dependability and flexibility rather than on the implementation of cost leadership strategies. Research limitations/implications Although it is a common practice in operations management research, the use of perceptual measures obtained from a single informant constitutes a noteworthy limitation. Future research should make an effort to combine different sources of information and to identify and use more objective indicators. Practical implications Top managers should take into account the need to involve the purchasing function in the firm’s strategic planning process. Originality/value The results not only confirm findings from previous literature as to the purchasing function’s strategic relevance but also help clarify the mechanisms that make this integration important.

scholarly journals Supporting integrated care in practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Billings ◽  
Rasa Mikelyte ◽  
Anna Coleman ◽  
Julie MacInnes ◽  
Pauline Allen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Integrated Care ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
National Level ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Support Programme ◽  
Additional Funding ◽  
Care Models ◽  
And Performance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of key informants on a national support programme for the development of new care models (NCM) in England (2015/2016–2017/2018). It focuses on the perceived facilitators and barriers affecting the development and implementation of the NCM programme and offers some insight into the role of national level support in enabling local integration initiatives. Design/methodology/approach A set of 29 interviews were carried out with a variety of respondents at the national level (including current and past programme leads, strategic account managers, advisors to the programme and external regulators) between October 2017 and March 2018, and analysed thematically. Findings A set of facilitative elements of the programme were identified: the development of relationships and alliances, strong local and national leadership, the availability of expert knowledge and skills, and additional funding. Challenges to success included perceived expectations from the national Vanguard programme, oversight and performance monitoring, engagement with regulators, data availability and quality, as well as timetables and timescales. Crucially, the facilitators and challenges were found to interact in dynamic and complex ways, which resulted in significant tensions and ambiguities within the support programme. Research limitations/implications While the sample was drawn from a range of different senior players and the authors ensured a diverse sample associated with the NCM support programme, it inevitably cannot be complete and there may have been valuable perspectives absent. Originality/value The paper demonstrates that the analysis of facilitators and challenges with respect to the national support of implementation of integrated care initiatives should move beyond the focus on separate influencing factors and address the tensions that the complex interplay among these factors create.

An ICT-based framework to improve global supply chain integration for final assembly SMES

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 634-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Cragg ◽  
Tom McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chain ◽  
Supply Chains ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Supply Chain Integration ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Final Assembly ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Frame Work ◽  
And Performance

Purpose To access new markets and improve sourcing practices small to medium sized manufacturing companies (SMEs) increasingly seek suppliers and customers in distant countries. Yet these new relationships with global partners often pose problems of an agency nature. The purpose of this paper is to directly address these challenges through the proposal of an information and communication technology (ICT)-based framework. Design/methodology/approach There has been very little research into how lead SMEs manage their global supply chains and the challenges they face. This paper uses a case study investigation to analyze how four French SMEs – final assemblers of machinery in the farming and agri-business sector – manage their international supply chains. Findings It was observed that the relationships and interactions between the SMEs and their immediate upstream and downstream partners were dominated by the agency problem and fell into six distinct categories (termed “barriers” to effective supply integration), namely; asymmetries, contractual design, supplier dependence, product specifications, supply chain complexity and performance monitoring. Originality/value The contribution of this paper is that a conceptual frame work was developed in which ICT solutions are offered to help address the barriers to supply chain integration, thus reducing the overall risk exposure due to externalities and problems of agency.

Accelerate proposal generation in R-CNN methods for fast pedestrian extraction

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-453
Author(s):  
Juncheng Wang ◽  
Guiying Li
Keyword(s):  
Object Detection ◽  
Pedestrian Detection ◽  
Data Preprocessing ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
General Object ◽  
And Performance

Purpose The purpose of this study is to develop a novel region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN) approach that is more efficient while at least as accurate as existing R-CNN methods. In this way, the proposed method, namely R2-CNN, provides a more powerful tool for pedestrian extraction for person re-identification, which involve a huge number of images and pedestrian needs to be extracted efficiently to meet the real-time requirement. Design/methodology/approach The proposed R2-CNN is tested on two types of data sets. The first one the USC Pedestrian Detection data set, which consists of three sub-sets USC-A, UCS-B and USC-C, with respect to their characteristics. This data set is used to test the performance of R2-CNN in the pedestrian extraction task. The speed and performance of the investigated algorithms were collected. The second data set is the PASCAL VOC 2007 data set, which is a common benchmark data set for object detection. This data set was used to analyze characteristics of R2-CNN in the case of general object detection task. Findings This study proposes a novel R-CNN method that is both more efficient and more accurate than existing methods. The method, when used as an object detector, would facilitate the data preprocessing stage of person re-identification. Originality/value The study proposes a novel approach for object detection, which shows advantages in both efficiency and accuracy for pedestrian detection task. It contributes to both data preprocessing for person re-identification and the research on deep learning.

Making the business process outsourcing decision: why distance matters

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (9) ◽  
pp. 1037-1064 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Gerbl ◽  
Ronan McIvor ◽  
Paul Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Business Process ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Transaction Cost Economics ◽  
Business Process Outsourcing ◽  
Content Type ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Process Level

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that incorporates both firm- and process-level factors for understanding location distance choice in the business process outsourcing (BPO) decision. Design/methodology/approach The research involved undertaking in-depth case study analysis of a number of BPO decisions in six German companies, and employing transaction cost economics (TCE) and the resource-based view (RBV) as a theoretical basis. Findings The findings have shown that existing literature in the operations management (OM) literature does not provide a complete understanding of the complexities of location distance choice in the BPO decision. This decision requires an understanding of a range of factors at both the firm- and process-level. The findings here enhance the understanding of how these factors interact to influence the potential distance options. Practical implications The findings have shown how organisations can influence the factors that affect the location distance choice including modularising business processes, developing outsourcing capabilities, and supplementing internal skills in areas such as cultural management and performance monitoring. Originality/value This is one of the first studies in the OM field to analyse how organisations make the decision in relation to local, nearshore, and offshore location distance options. The paper has highlighted the importance of OM concepts such as performance management and continuous improvement to this phenomenon, and the paper has offered a number of important areas for further research.

An integrated methodology for supporting the development and the performance evaluation of academic spin-offs

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-89
Author(s):  
Gianpaolo Iazzolino ◽  
Domenico Greco ◽  
Saverino Verteramo ◽  
Andrea Luca Attanasio ◽  
Gilda Carravetta ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Integrated Methodology ◽  
Start Up ◽  
First Results ◽  
Risk Areas ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University

Purpose This paper aims to propose an integrated methodology for evaluating academic spin-offs (ASOs) for supporting both the development phase and performance evaluation. The ASOs have peculiar characteristics compared to other start-up companies and the debate on their evaluation is still open. Design/methodology/approach The proposed methodology, adopting a lean approach, faces the typical problems that characterize the growth of an ASO: the excessive attention to the technological aspects with respect to the commercial and managerial ones; and the need for evaluation systems that try to evaluate all risk areas and to highlight any misalignment. The methodology was built also starting from the results of an Erasmus + research project, co-funded by the European Commission, called spin-off lean acceleration. Findings The methodology proposes to monitor the main risk areas (market, technological, implementation, governance and financial). For each of these areas, at first, a framework and a checklist are proposed for supporting the qualitative assessment of the potential of each areas. In the second part, a set of metrics for monitoring the performances and to understand if the spinoff is developing in the right direction is proposed. Moreover, the methodology was applied to the spin-offs at the University of Calabria (Italy), and the paper reports the first results obtained. Originality/value A new canvas model (lean acceleration canvas), more specific and suited to the context of ASOs, was developed and tested. A lean approach has been adopted also for understanding the weakness of traditional methods. The proposed methodology could be used by the technology transfer offices in their institutional activity of supporting ASOs.

Risk-based performance monitoring takes off at Brussels Airlines

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 21-22
Keyword(s):  
Performance Management ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Performance Monitoring ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Safety Issues ◽  
Performance Monitor ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Operational Issues ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose – Demonstrates how Brussels Airlines has streamlined its quality and safety operations through an integrated safety and performance-management system. Design/methodology/approach – Describes how software from Ideagen has enabled the airline to improve safety and operations, as well as anticipate and manage risks, and prevent problems from occurring. Findings – Charts how the three main planks of the software – Q-Pulse, Gael Risk and Performance Monitor – work together to help the airline to improve through efficient safety and risk management and in-depth performance indicators. Practical implications – Reveals that the system encourages the same working methods throughout the organization with regard to capturing safety and operational issues and other forms of data. Originality/value – Shows how the airline is now capturing safety issues more easily and working more proactively as it can detect hazards in advance even better.

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