The Future

This book addresses understanding of and solutions to teleworking, trustworthiness, and performance issues. Overall, it suggests using a strategic approach that encourages participation and that is required to achieve, understand, and build buy-in for teleworking. The organizationally sanctioned program must exist. The use of LMX is beneficial in exploring the factors that contribute to motivating the target audience: employees. A culture of self-motivation is necessary to empower employees, but there must also be a culture of enforcement when needed. Finally, buy-in at all levels of the organizations is crucial to the success of a telework program. The parts of the strategic approach mentioned here will be enhanced with the resources provided in this book: how to develop leaders, motivating employees, increasing productivity, using EI, managing radical change, and learning from the research provided. Viewed through the lens of a management context, these components make the recommended strategic approach possible and can deliver an effective framework for results.

Intermodal Terminal Planning under Decentralized Management: Optimization Model for Rail-Road Terminals and Application to Portugal

Terminals are key components of intermodal transport networks, as they are the facilities where freight is transferred between transport modes. The efficiency of such facilities crucially depends on their locations (and sizes), which are typically chosen considering two levels of analysis: local/urban and regional/country. Our focus in this presentation is the regional/country level. At this level, the problems involved in the locational (and sizing) decisions at stake are a particular variety of hub locations problems—a class of problems that has been widely studied through optimization approaches. However, they typically assume that decisions are made in a centralized management context: decision-makers not only choose the locations of intermodal terminals (or hubs), but also fully control their utilization (i.e., which terminal each user will patronize). This signifies that such approaches are not applicable when users–potentially, any companies that move freight–behave according to their own individual interests; that is, they are not applicable in a decentralized management context. In this presentation, we describe an ongoing study where (regional) intermodal terminal location problems are dealt with in this type of context considering terminals of different types and respective capacity and operation ranges. In particular, we present the complex optimization model we have developed to handle such problems, and the (sometimes counterintuitive) results it led to when applied to a case study inspired by the Portuguese reality.

Die neuen ISO Standards 21 500 „Projekt-, Programm und Portfoliomanagement - Kontext und Konzepte“ sowie 21 502 „Projektmanagement“

Seit 2018 hat das ISO Komitee TC 258 „Project, programme and portfolio management“ die internationale Norm ISO 21 500 „Guidance on project management“ umfangreich überarbeitet und 2020 als ISO 21 502 veröffentlicht. Zusätzlich wurde 2021 die neue übergreifende Grundlagen-Norm ISO 21 500 „Project, programme and portfolio management - Context and concepts“ publiziert. Was ist neu? Was hat sich geändert? Was sind die Wirkungen im Markt? Was bleibt an offenen Fragen für die nächsten internationalen Standardisierungsprojekte?

We Can Better Manage Ecosystems by Connecting Solutions to Constraints: Learning from Wetland Plant Invasions

Wetlands provide critical wildlife habitat, improve water quality, and mitigate the impacts of floods, droughts, and climate change. Yet, they are drained, filled, dredged, and otherwise altered by humans, all of which contribute to their high susceptibility to plant invasions. Given the societal significance of wetlands and the disproportionately large amount of time and money spent controlling invaders in remaining wetlands, a fundamental shift must occur in how we approach restoration of plant-invaded wetlands. The need for more research is often used as an excuse for a lack of progress in invader management but, in fact, constraints to invader management are spread across the science, management, and stakeholder engagement domains. At their intersection are “implementation gap” constraints where the monumental efforts required to bridge the gap among scientists, managers, and community stakeholders are often unassigned, unrewarded, and underestimated. Here we synthesize and present a portfolio of broad structured approaches and specific actions that can be used to advance restoration of plant-invaded wetlands in a diversity of contexts immediately and over the long-term, linking these solutions to the constraints they best address. These solutions can be used by individual managers to chart a path forward when they are daunted by potentially needing to pivot from more familiar management actions to increase efficiency and efficacy in attaining restoration goals. In more complex collaborations with multiple actors, the shared vocabulary presented here for considering and selecting the most appropriate solution will be essential. Of course, every management context is unique (i.e., different constraints are at play) so we advocate that involved parties consider a range of potential solutions, rather than either assuming any single solution to be universally optimal or relying on a solution simply because it is familiar and feasible. Moving rapidly to optimally effective invasive plant management in wetlands may not be realistic, but making steady, incremental progress by implementing appropriate solutions based on clearly identified constraints will be critical to eventually attaining wetland restoration goals.

Detecting the Conspecific: Herbivory-Induced Olfactory Cues in the Fall Armyworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)

The fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (Smith), is a polyphagous pest whose larval feeding threatens several economically important crops worldwide with especially severe damage to corn (Zea mays L.). Field-derived resistance to several conventional pesticides and Bt toxins have threatened the efficacy of current management strategies, necessitating the development of alternative pest management methods and technologies. One possible avenue is the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other secondary metabolites that are produced and sequestered by plants as a response to larval feeding. The effects of conspecific larval feeding on fall armyworm oviposition preferences and larval fitness were examined using two-choice oviposition experiments, larval feeding trials, targeted metabolomics, and VOC analyses. There was a significant preference for oviposition on corn plants that lacked larval feeding damage, and larvae fed tissue from damaged plants exhibited reduced weights and head capsule widths. All larval feeding promoted significantly increased metabolite and VOC concentrations compared to corn plants without any feeding. Metabolite differences were driven primarily by linoleic acid (which is directly toxic to fall armyworm) and tricarboxylic acids. Several VOCs with significantly increased concentrations in damaged corn plants were known oviposition deterrents that warrant further investigation in an integrated pest management context.

Electroantennographic Responses of Cerambyx welensii Küster to Host-Related Volatiles

Wood-boring insects, such as Cerambyx welensii Küster, are involved in oak decline in Mediterranean areas. To advance our understanding of the olfactory perception of C. welensii, we recorded electroantennographic (EAG) responses from male and female antennae to 32 tree volatile organic compounds typical of emissions from its main Quercus L. hosts, and also analysed the dose-dependent response. Cerambyx welensii antennae responded to 24 chemicals. Eight odorants elicited the highest EAG responses (normalized values of over 98%): 1,8-cineole, limonene-type blend, β-pinene, pinene-type blend, sabinene, α-pinene, turpentine and (E)-2-hexenal. Cerambyx welensii exhibits a broad sensitivity to common tree volatiles. The high EAG responses to both limonene- and pinene-type blends suggest the detection of specific blends of the main foliar monoterpenes emitted by Q. suber L. and Q. ilex L. (limonene, α- and β-pinene, sabinene and myrcene), which could influence the intraspecific host choice by C. welensii, and in particular, females may be able to detect oak trees with a limonene-type chemotype. In addition, C. welensii showed high antennal activity to some odorants that characterize emissions from non-host tree species (1,8-cineole, β-pinene, α-pinene, turpentine, δ3-carene and camphene). The results obtained may be applicable to optimize monitoring and mass-trapping programmes in an integrated pest management context.

The Role of Ethical Leadership in Managing Occupational Stress to Promote Innovative Work Behaviour: A Cross-Cultural Management Perspective

This study examines the role of ethical leadership in managing occupational stress to engender innovative work behaviour (IWB) in cargo logistic SMEs in a contrasting cross-cultural management context of Canada and Pakistan. We draw on Trait Activation Theory to develop the conceptual and theoretical framework of the study. Using connections and a networking approach, a proportionate equal sample of nine SMEs were selected for the study. Analysis of the data from the semi-structured Skype and face-to-face interviews with 38 supervisors and 97 employees showed that ethical leadership plays a vital role in reducing occupational stress and increasing employees’ IWB in both countries. Employees in both countries perceiving ethical leadership exhibit more creative-constructive behaviour. The results further demonstrate that males relative to females in both countries have a higher tendency of exhibiting risk-taking behaviour and IWB, resulting from leaders’ support. Similarly, males have higher tendency of challenging the prevailing “status quo” within the organisations than females. Generally, the Pakistani workforce scored higher in contrast to the Canadian workforce in demonstrating IWB due to ethical leadership support, despite higher perception of occupational stress. Cross-cultural management implications are duly outlined.

STRATEGIES FOR ORGANISING AND MANAGING RESEARCH AT UNIVERSITIES: SYSTEMIC REVIEW

The purpose of the study was to identify and synthesise the interventions used to build the strategies for organising and managing research at universities that can be feasible in Ukraine. To achieve this purpose we provided a descriptive profile of the interventions and strategies used at universities to organise and manage research, rather than the detailed examination of substantive research results. The method of descriptive content analysis was applied to analyse empirical, experimental, review, conceptual, and commentary sources revealing strategies of organising and managing research at universities. The growth and corporate type strategies are dominant at universities, particularly in the USA and EU. The universities mainly seek cost-effective research opportunities that can help the institutions build a strong international brand. The policy of institutional strategic research management aimed at cooperation in research with other sectors seems to be the most feasible and appropriate for the Ukrainian research management context. Creating project management communities was found to be the second most feasible and appropriate strategy of organising and managing the university research in Ukraine. Financial criterion dominates in assessing the interventions for building a strategy of organising and managing research at universities. The university research can be stimulated at the state level through a demand-oriented reform that is aimed at reshaping the management of personnel, talent selection system, and personnel assessment.