How are mathematical models and results from mathematical models of vaccine-preventable diseases used, or not, by global health organisations?

While epidemiological and economic evidence has the potential to provide answers to questions, guide complex programmes and inform resource allocation decisions, how this evidence is used by global health organisations who commission it and what organisational actions are generated from the evidence remains unclear. This study applies analytical tools from organisational science to understand how evidence produced by infectious disease epidemiologists and health economists is used by global health organisations. A conceptual framework that embraces evidence use typologies and relates findings to the organisational process of action generation informs and structures the research. Between March and September 2020, we conducted in-depth interviews with mathematical modellers (evidence producers) and employees at global health organisations, who are involved in decision-making processes (evidence consumers). We found that commissioned epidemiological and economic evidence is used to track progress and provides a measure of success, both in terms of health outcomes and the organisations’ mission. Global health organisations predominantly use this evidence to demonstrate accountability and solicit funding from external partners. We find common understanding and awareness across consumers and producers about the purposes and uses of these commissioned pieces of work and how they are distinct from more academic explorative research outputs. Conceptual evidence use best describes this process. Evidence is slowly integrated into organisational processes and is one of many influences on global health organisations’ actions. Relationships developed over time and trust guide the process, which may lead to quite a concentrated cluster of those producing and commissioning models. These findings raise several insights relevant to the literature of research utilisation in organisations and evidence-based management. The study extends our understanding of how evidence is used and which organisational actions are generated as a result of commissioning epidemiological and economic evidence.

Industry 4.0 Application in Lean Manufacturing – A Systematic Review

For several years Lean manufacturing has been adopted by industries in improving the operational performance of the firm. However, Lean manufacturing is associated with fixed production sequence and slow responsiveness, which limits its capability of meeting the constantly changing customer demand, product variability & customisation. This can inhibit its adaptability in the digital era. Meanwhile, Industry 4.0 technologies support the mass production of highly customisable products by being modular and flexible. Although Industry 4.0 technologies can meet the demands of the digital era, they are considered as a solution provider with little scope for organisational process improvement. Hence, an integration of both approaches will lead to a competitive advantage in the digital era. This paper aims to explore and evaluate the work done by researchers in identifying the link between lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 technologies, through a systematic literature review to understand if lean manufacturing and Industry 4.0 technology can be integrated effectively.

EFFICIENCY EVALUATION OF ORGANISATIONAL PROCESSES SYSTEM IN A BUILDING PRODUCTION WITH SIMULATION MODELING FOR CONTRACTING COMPANIES

Purpose. This paper presents the innovative scientifically-based method on efficiency evaluation of the building production management for contracting companies. Otimisation models are substantially aimed at reducing the influence of negative factors and increasing the quality indexes of the organisational process of construction production. Methodology. Methodological approaches of the organisational processes optimisation of construction production are based on the establishment of a well-defined interconnection between the units of the functional structure, the definition of strategies hierarchy of the contracting company.The correlation of duration t and cost c in building production, its influence on the economic appropriateness for projects realisation in civil engineering are analyzed. Findings. Using mathematical analysing methods for cumulative distribution function S(t,c) of two-dimensional random value of construction duration and cost, the basic principles are shown that allow to qualitatively and quantitatively determine the level of influence of the construction market external factors on the implementation of organisational processes in the construction industry, in which a large number of forming elements are involved. The implementation of this methodology permits to assess the real state of organisational processes system in building production, its stability, the degree of determinate indicators structuring in a single functional system, to generate an economic justification in complex. On basis of simulation modeling, efficiency of organisational processes system in building production S(t,c) was determined and graphically illustrated. Originality. The results of the present study demonstrate that it amounted to 58.08 % within the established limits of acceptable risk (LAR) between 0.35 and 0.65. Practical value. It has been shown an implementation practicability of using this methodology by contracting companies at decision-making stage for construction projects initiation with determinate indicators of duration Td and cost Cd. The creation of theoretical and methodological foundations for the development of structural efficiency evaluation algorithms for the organisation of construction production will allow to achieve for contractor companies the highest level of competitiveness in the market of construction services.

Promoting Diversity but Striving for Excellence: Opening the ‘Black Box’ of Academic Hiring

Scholars have described how neutral routines and ‘objective’ criteria in recruitment may result in an institutional preference for certain types of candidates. This article advances the literature on recruitment by conducting an in-depth study of how the criteria for assessing quality are applied in practice in the recruitment process. Through an in-depth study of 48 recruitment cases for permanent academic positions in Norway and 52 qualitative interviews with the recruiters involved, we stress the need to grasp how evaluation is embedded in the organisational process of recruitment. By constructing an ideal type of recruitment process comprising five different steps, we show that despite evaluators including diversity concerns in their search for talent during the first stages of the recruitment process, they end up deploying narrow criteria that tend to favour men in the crucial steps of the recruitment process, in which hiring outcomes are determined.

Extending the Tavistock model: bringing desire, danger, dread, and excitement into a theory of organisational process

This article develops some novel extensions of the classical Tavistock model of organisational psychodynamics. The classical model privileges the emotion of anxiety as the primary trigger for psychosocial experiences in organisations. While this approach has been very generative, it has also been limiting, since there are several other important emotions that shape how people take up their work and their roles in organisations. The article shows how open systems theory and sociotechnical thinking emerge logically from the anxiety model by highlighting how organisations become functional, and work becomes satisfying. The article goes on to explore how desire as a feeling for the future, stimulates such feelings as danger, dread, and excitement. When these feelings become dispositive, they generate experiences associated with anxiety, and the primary risk, as well as the potential for developmental politics. Politics can be developmental rather than defensive when executives create settings where conflict is seen as transaction and rationality as an achievement. This article explores these issues through the use of case vignettes in the public domain, including a skunk works project in Data General, and leadership struggles and strategy dilemmas in Apple, IBM, and Polaroid.

Evaluating the Processes and Procedure of Digitalization Workflow

Digitisation is the practice of converting physical information into a digital (computer-readable format), by using digital technologies to modify the existing structure by enhancing the efficiency of an organisational process, foster reliability, and quality. This is a method of incorporating conventional records into a digitised form by eliminating redundancies and limiting the communications chain. This will help to improve accessibility and simplify better information exchange for users. The beginning of a digital revolution in any establishment is to appraise the manual methods with the view to improve and graduate to a user-friendly modern system. Digital workflow is a progressive, reliable arrangement of data, procedures, and responsibilities that make information is more permanent and management easy to access and enable the preservation of crucial data. This research set out to support workflow audit by revealing specific indicators to assist in processes that will enhance digital migration.

The Sociology of Diplomats and Foreign Policy Sector: The Role of Cliques on the Policy-Making Process

This paper studies the sociology of elites and the role of cliques on the foreign policy-making process through an exploratory case study of Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It identifies elite sociology as the independent variable triggering a policy-making process in the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in line with organisational process or governmental politic approaches. It shows that until the 1980s, the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs was marked by strong hierarchical tradition triggered by a certain career path and cliqueism leading to the homogeneity in the sociology of elites. This in turn triggered a foreign policy-making process based on organisational process. The role of cliqueism weakened along with the incremental circulation of elites in the post-1980s and particularly in the post-2005 period as the elite structure in the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs became even more heterogeneous, foreign policy-making process moved towards governmental politics which allowed taking into account diverse schools of thought. Nevertheless, newly emerging programmatic elites employed deliberate efforts for elite circulation by altering the dominant career path and relying on political appointments. The resulting outcome was the emergence of a new clique of ruling elites subordinate to political elites which led to the politicisation of the foreign policy decision-making process in the post-2011 period.

Factors Influencing Attitudes of Students Toward ERP Systems as Computer-Aided Learning Environments

The labour market requires the knowledge and skills for usage of enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions from graduates of business studies – future employees. Because ERP solutions are the most frequently used business software in organisations in all industries, more and more schools are incorporating them in their courses. Teaching real business case problem-solving in classrooms, using these solutions require innovative and adapted teaching methods. Because of this, schools need to know what the attitudes of students toward these solutions are. The main objective of the chapter is, therefore, the identification of important external factors that contribute to the acceptance of ERP solutions among economic and business studies students and that shape student intentions to use this knowledge in the future. The conceptual model of our research is based on the technology acceptance model (TAM), extended by identified important external factors that refer to students' characteristics, organisational-process characteristics, as well as system and technological characteristics.

Physical education in general education schools in Ukraine (selected aspects)

There were many different problems in the organisational process of physical education in schools of Ukraine in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 21st century, such as: underestimation of the importance of physical education in the didactic and educational process by managers of individual schools, insufficient consideration of students’interests in selected forms of exercise; lack of individualisation of work with a student, taking into account their real level of mobility and readiness to perform particular exercises; low level of investment in the development of sports fa-cilities by educational and local authorities, i.e. creating sports fields, swimming pools and supply-ing schools with sports equipment; lack of coordination in the cooperation of schools with students’parents or with state and local government institutions in the field of popularising physical educa-tion and a healthy lifestyle. The Ukrainian children and young people’s health situation at the be-ginning of the 21st century was unsatisfactory. The analysis of pedagogical and specialist literature regarding remedial actions in the pre-school and school education system in physical education in Ukraine shows that most often the main direction of changes is the improvement of methods and forms of conducting physical education lessons as well as activities in the field of popularising sport recreation in the free time and adapting these solutions to contemporary curriculum requirements of this subject at school.

Desarrollo rural y actores locales. Los interrogantes de una Organización Institucional de Competencia Económica Dinámica en crisis: El caso SanCor en la provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina

El estudio de caso de SanCor Cooperativas Unidas Limitada es relevante por varios motivos. El primero, por la importancia económica y social que tiene en el sector lácteo nacional y en las localidades del interior donde radican sus plantas en las tres provincias más importantes de la Argentina: Santa Fe, Córdoba y Buenos Aires. En segundo lugar, constituye un ejemplo de un proceso organizacional evolutivo que atraviesa distintos estadios, nace como cooperativa de segundo grado y, luego de casi un siglo de existencia, se reconvierte en una cooperativa de primer grado, para terminar finalmente enajenando la casi totalidad de sus activos y gerenciamiento a otras empresas del sector. Tercero, su evolución comprueba una hipótesis planteada hace tiempo sobre el resultado de una de las dos opciones posibles de evolución que presentaban los tipos de Organizaciones Institucionales en Mutación en las tipologías cooperativas propuestas por Lattuada y Renold (2004). Finalmente, como actor destacado del desarrollo territorial local y regional que culmina en un escenario de crisis irreversible, y dada la envergadura alcanzada por la organización, el impacto de su desmembramiento, enajenación y cambio de naturaleza cooperativa, deja enseñanzas y abre numerosos interrogantes sobre sus efectos en la cadena de valor láctea y en el desarrollo de las comunidades donde se encuentra inserta. The case study of SanCor Cooperativas Unidas Limitada is relevant due to several reasons. First of all, SanCor Cooperativas Unidas Limitada has got a big economic and social importance in the national milk production sector as well as in provincial towns located in the three major Argentine provinces: Santa Fe, Córdoba and Buenos Aires. Secondly, it is an example of an evolving organisational process going through different degrees: emerging as a second-degree co-operative society, a century after, it becomes a first-degree co-operative society, and finally, it disposes of almost all of its assets as well as its management to other companies of the dairy sector. Thirdly, its evolution verifies a hyothesis that had been stated long time ago about the results of one of the two possible evolution choices which could be carried out by the types of Everchanging Institutional Organisations, according to the co-operative societies typologies proposed by Lattuada and Renold (2004). Lastly, as a leading actor of territorial development, it ends up with an irreversible crisis scenario. Due to the big size reached by this organisation, the impact of its breakup, its disposal and its change in its cooperative society nature, it teaches us some lessons, and poses numerous questions about its effects on the dairy value chain as well as on the local development of those communities where it is inserted.