Promise versus reality: a systematic review of the ongoing debates in people analytics

PurposeAccording to the significant growth of literature and continued adoption of people analytics in practice, it has been promised that people analytics will inform evidence-based decision-making and improve business outcomes. However, existing people analytics literature remains underdeveloped in understanding whether and how such promises have been realized. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the current reality of people analytics and uncover the debates and challenges that are emerging as a result of its adoption.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducts a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles focused on people analytics published in the Association of Business School (ABS) ranked journals between 2011 and 2021.FindingsThe review illustrates and critically evaluates several emerging debates and issues faced by people analytics, including inconsistency among the concept and definition of people analytics, people analytics ownership, ethical and privacy concerns of using people analytics, missing evidence of people analytics impact and readiness to perform people analytics.Practical implicationsThis review presents a comprehensive research agenda demonstrating the need for collaboration between scholars and practitioners to successfully align the promise and the current reality of people analytics.Originality/valueThis systematic review is distinct from existing reviews in three ways. First, this review synthesizes and critically evaluates the significant growth of peer-reviewed articles focused on people analytics published in ABS ranked journals between 2011 and 2021. Second, the study adopts a thematic analysis and coding process to identify the emerging themes in the existing people analytics literature, ensuring the comprehensiveness of the review. Third, this study focused and expanded upon the debates and issues evolving within the emerging field of people analytics and offers an updated agenda for the future of people analytics research.

An Improvement Framework for Maintenance Management

Maintenance is one of the main stages to deliver business outcomes from physical assets over their life cycles. However, as unexpected events and performance may occur in maintenance management, organizations shall be aware of how to address them as well as other opportunities for improvement. Accordingly, this chapter intends to present an improvement framework for maintenance management. The first two sections provide an introduction to maintenance management improvement and its interface with the ISO 55000 series for asset management and the maintenance management model (MMM). Then, the proposed framework and its activities for improvement in maintenance management are discussed in the third section. The fourth section addresses an overview of the main RCA techniques to support the framework implementation. Finally, a hydroelectric power plant case study is discussed to demonstrate the framework in a real operational context.

Tax Treaties and Enterprise Outcomes: Evidence Across Developing African Countries

Studies have noted the possibility of tax treaties constraining the tax policy autonomy of developing countries, while their impact on enterprise development within host economies remains an empirical issue. This study examines the effects and heterogeneous differences in estimated effects of tax treaties on small businesses in developing countries that agree to these agreements. The study uses the ICTD tax treaties dataset and the World Bank Enterprise Survey data to set up a quasi-experiment framework for selected African Countries. The framework compares countries’ outcomes for small businesses that ratify and enforce a tax treaty and those without a ratified tax treaty for the years pre-2005–2010 and post-2011–2019). We find that tax treaties signed and enforced by developing countries in Africa have a consistent, negative relationship with small business outcomes. These results are driven by the enterprise’s size and internationalisation status but not by the subsidiary status of the sampled small businesses. The findings have implications for policy targeted towards industrial development alongside tax treaty negotiations.

Transdisciplinary Teaching and Learning in UX Design: A Program Review and AR Case Studies

Today’s user experience (UX) educators and designers can no longer just focus on creating more usable systems, but must also rise to the level of strategists, using design thinking and human–computer interaction (HCI) solutions to improve academic and business outcomes. Both psychological, designer, and engineering approaches are adopted in this study. An invited program review committee met to review progress of the UX program at the Beijing Normal University (BNUX). They considered issues and challenges facing the program today, and the steps that it could make to develop further. During a recent augmented reality (AR) project on designing future life experience on smart home and wearables, several experiential concepts and prototypes were generated to demonstrate HCI and UX research directions. The committee was impressed by BNUX with its energy, enthusiasm, and a sense of purpose on practicing transdisciplinary teaching and learning activities. Recommendations on the current organization of education, the relation between project-based learning and research, and opportunities for exposure and visibility are provided.

Real-time Visibility, Operational Insights and Actions with SAP Operational Process Intelligence, powered by HANA

Over the past decade, business operations in organizations are increasingly generating vast amounts of data. This steep increase in operational data – often known as big data – is a result of organizations capturing data at more fine-granular levels in business operations. Leveraging operational big data to improve business operations can create a sustainable competitive advantage to organizations. In this paper, we argue that operational big data is ”dead data” unless it is contextualized and made actionable for line-of-business users. Moreover, we explain how organizations can use SAP Operational Process Intelligence and the power of HANA to first, contextualize operational big data for real-time operational intelligence, second, provide line-of-business users visibility into business operations and business situations as they evolve and third, propose appropriate actions to respond to these business situations and help them reach business outcomes.

A Systematic Literature Review of Quality Management Initiatives in Dental Clinics

By considering the recently proposed definitions and metrics, oral healthcare quality management (OHQM) emerges as a distinct field in the wider healthcare area. The goal of this paper is to systematically review quality management initiatives (QMIs) implementation by dental clinics. The research methodology approach is a review of 72 sources that have been analyzed using the Context–Intervention–Mechanism–Outcome Framework (CIMO). The analysis identifies five mechanisms that explain how quality management initiatives are implemented by dental clinics. The simplest QMIs implementations are related to (1) overall quality. The next ones, in terms of complexity, are related to (2) patient satisfaction, (3) service quality, (4) internal processes improvement, and (5) business outcomes. This paper is the first attempt to provide a critical review of this topic and represents an important advancement by providing a theoretical framework that explains how quality management is implemented by practitioners in this field. The results can be used by scholars for advancing their studies related to this emerging research area and by healthcare managers in order to better implement their quality management initiatives.

Experts’ Perspective on the Development of Experiential Marketing Strategy: Implementation Steps, Benefits, and Challenges

Consumer needs change over time as a result of the fast-paced advancement in technology and the induction of the Internet, expansion that leads to a difficulty for brands to adapt their marketing promotion strategy and trying to remain innovative and effective at meeting their consumers’ expectations. This research investigates what effect experiential marketing campaigns have on both customers’ perception and business outcomes, aiming to develop a deeper understanding of experiential marketing, its challenges, and benefits, to understand customers’ reactions to experiential touchpoints, to explore what type of technology increases experiential perceived value, and to envisage the evolution of experiential marketing strategy. To capture all the important facets of the research objectives, an exploratory survey based on the voices of 31 marketing experts from all around the world was applied. By identifying the key drivers of experiential marketing campaigns in a hybrid setting, the present study highlighted the important role that experiential marketing has as a communication strategy, offering additional insights to marketing specialists on the experiential marketing implementation steps. A theoretical framework of the steps needed to put into practice an experiential marketing strategy was proposed.

Knowledge Management Infrastructure Framework for Enhancing Knowledge-Intensive Business Processes

In this age of digital transformation, knowledge-intensive organizations strive to improve business outcomes and sustainability by improving their knowledge-intensive business processes (KIBPs) to obtain a competitive advantage. Many researchers have claimed that KIBP enhancement is possible through knowledge management (KM) initiatives supported by an effective KM infrastructure. Current KM infrastructures deal with formal KM procedures, where knowledge is created, stored, assimilated, and disseminated. Such activities, however, are designed to be performed outside of the business process. KM infrastructures are expected to be more effective when they include specific real-time knowledge procedures integrated into the operational flow of KIBPs. This paper explores how modern KM infrastructures can support KIBPs, considering both formal and operational KM procedures. Our study’s essential contribution is the conceptual KM infrastructure framework (KMIF) developed based on grounded theory research. This infrastructure provides a systematic and robust approach, starting from the ground up, for structuring organizational knowledge assets across a range of KIBP environments. We define operational knowledge procedures directly involved in KIBPs, adding a layer to KM infrastructures beyond the formal knowledge procedures. A mixed-method case study was conducted to demonstrate and evaluate the proposed KMIF for enhancing business outcomes and sustainability of knowledge-intensive organizations.