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Case Company (case + company)
Selected AbstractsAlternative Scenarios for Managing the Environmental Performance of a Service Sector CompanyJOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 4 2006Seppo Junnila Summary This article presents a scenario analysis for a life-cycle model of service sector companies. The model is based on six case companies and it is applied to test the influence of 32 management scenarios. The scenarios simulate feasible options for environmental management measures in companies, and the life-cycle assessment method is used to model their relevance in terms of the total environmental impact of the company. The study found that the bulk of tested scenarios had only a minor influence on the total environmental impact of the company. Some individual management scenarios, though, turned out to have a major influence on the organization's environmental performance. The scenarios with greatest influence were those related to the procurement of electricity, building energy consumption, commuting vehicle mix, space usage efficiency, and refurbishment periods of the building. All of these management scenarios had an influence of more than 10% on the environmental impact of the model organization. [source] New instruments , old practices?BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, Issue 6 2006The implications of environmental management systems, extended producer responsibility for design for the environment Abstract As the focus of environmental policy and management is shifting from cleaner production at the process level towards greener products, there is a need for new kinds of policy instruments and initiatives. Environmental management systems (EMSs) and extended producer responsibility (EPR) systems are efforts to overcome the limitations of the traditional regulatory approach. In this paper, I illustrate how EMSs and EPR systems have influenced the emergence of greener products in three case companies. These case studies are complemented by results from a survey on design for the environment in the electrical and electronics industry. Both the case studies and the survey indicate that the linkage between EMSs and product development is weak or completely missing. Therefore, the mere existence of an EMS can hardly be used as a convincing indicator of the implementation of an environmentally friendly design process. The results regarding the EPR systems are more positive. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Design for usability on supply chain management systems implementationHUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 5 2009Chao-Hsien Lin Supply chain management (SCM) systems implementation has become a fashion due to advances in information technology and pressures of market competition. Unfortunately, successful implementation was rare. In this article, the concept of usability was extended in an explorative case study to crystallize design for usability (DFU) principles in a large-scale SCM systems implementation project at a leading semiconductor manufacturing company in Taiwan. Proposed was a holistic usability framework to guide the analysis of DFU as well as the compilation of an evidence database composed of design documentation, post hoc evaluation, semistructured interviews, and participant observation. This research revealed a set of usability needs and coping strategies found throughout a series of systems design and redesign processes at the case company. As a result, an emergent usability framework in the form of ICOM (Input, Control, Output, and Mechanism) dimensions was proposed to guide the implementation of SCM systems. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Paths to deutero-learning through successive process simulations: a case studyKNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT: THE JOURNAL OF CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION, Issue 4 2004Päivi Haho This paper discusses the dynamic interaction between organizational learning processes and their outcomes in the context of innovative business process development and change projects in a pharmaceutical company. Through the answers to the research questions, I wish to demonstrate the paths to deutero-learning, which seldom can be empirically identified in an organization. The paper uses notions of strategic, operational and cultural outcomes,including their intangible and tangible manifestations,to explain different results in organizational learning processes. From 1998 to 1999, the pharmaceutical case company applied an evolutionary, process simulation-based business process development method. This method was used to invent and implement business process innovations in the New Product Development process, to shorten the time-to-market of its new medical entities. Successive process simulations guided and focused the business process development and actions on the strategically most valuable areas. The process simulations prepared the organization for the change, and promoted the implementation of the process outcomes. The successive simulations have triggered and thereafter sustained individual and organizational learning. Thus, they have accelerated organizational learning processes and the development of knowledge and innovations. The case demonstrates efficient deutero-learning, enabled through empowered successive process simulations. The results indicate that development projects are more successful, if there are intangible learning outcomes and systemic process learning at the early stages of the project. This also supports double-loop learning in the business process development project and assists changes in norms to occur. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Reducing Ongoing Product Design Decision-Making Bias,THE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 6 2008Michael Antioco The objective of this exploratory study is to add to our understanding of ongoing product design decision-making to reduce eventual decision-making bias. Six research questions are formulated with the aim to establish if and how functional membership and informal patterns of communication within an organization influence whether and why employees are willing to engage in product design modifications. We selected as a field site for our study an industrial company that had an internal research and product development operations and where the employees were located on the same site. A three-step approach within the manufacturing case company was designed: (1) In-depth interviews were carried out with managers and employees; (2) a survey questionnaire was sent out to all employees involved with a specific product that is subject to potential design modifications; and (3) a post hoc group feedback session was organized to further discuss our findings with the management. First, analysis of the nine in-depth interviews establishes a taxonomy of product design decisions involving four types of criteria; product-related, service-related, market-related, and feasibility-related criteria explain why employees would engage or not in product design modifications. Second, it is demonstrated that functional membership has a significant influence on the concern for these decision-making criteria as well as on the decision to proceed or not with product design modifications. In other words, functional membership influences whether and why employees are more or less willing to make product design modifications. In this manufacturing company, a global industrial player, the differences in concern appear especially for service- and market-related criteria and pertain particularly to the research and development (R&D) and service function. Overall, even though the perceived performance of the specific product under study did not differ significantly among the different departments, it is observed that R&D employees were significantly less in favor of proceeding with product design modifications than other employees were. Third, using UCINET VI software, we provide some explanations for this finding. It is shown that informal patterns of communication (i.e., employee degree centrality) operate a situational opportunity to make modifications to an existing product and a cognitive opportunity influencing the decision to modify product design following an inverted U-shaped function. Ultimately, we derive practical guidelines for an ideal product,team composition to reduce product design decision-making bias. [source] Critical Aspects of Organizational Learning Research and Proposals for Its MeasurementBRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001Satu Lähteenmäki Based on an extensive literature review, this paper reveals several gaps in organizational learning (OL) research that need filling before we can really talk about a theory of organizational learning or verify the traits and very existence of learning organizations (LO) as a phenomenon. The critique, however, is not targeted at any single model or theory of organizational learning, but at theory building, which constantly drifts away with new definitions and approaches that break up rather than construct a theory. Despite the fact that numerous consultation tools for turning organizations into learning models have been developed and applied, the concept of organizational learning itself still remains vague and there is an urgent need for a holistic model of OL. Too much emphasis is put on studying the learning of individuals instead of concentrating on the learning of organizations. Since the theory is highly dispersed and does not really build on earlier findings, rich empirical studies are needed in order to validate measures of organizational learning. Modelling of the organizational learning process and clarification of how learning of individuals is turned into learning of organizations is needed. This paper introduces one set of OL measures developed to study whether organizational learning occurred during the operational and business culture change process of a single case company. Suggestions for further OL research are made on the basis of experiences gained when empirically testing this model. [source] | ||||||||||