Ran Bhamra

Resilience: the concept, a literature review and future directions

In an ever-more interconnected world (social, technological and environmental), no organisation can retain a competitive position and survive disruptions as an independent entity. This article provides a review of resilience literature in its widest context and later its application at an organisational level context. The origins of the concept are reported and consequently, the various fields of research are analysed. The concept is shown to remain essentially constant regardless of its field of enquiry and has much to inform the fields of organisation theory, strategy and operations management. This article identifies a number of areas for advancing resilience research, in particular: the relationship between human and organisational resilience; understanding interfaces between organisational and infrastructural resilience.

Organisational resilience: development of a conceptual framework for organisational responses

Over recent years, the concept of resilience has gained increasing support within the academic community. Given the potentially devastating implications of disruptions, understanding the dynamics of successful adaption within organisations yields an important avenue for future research. This theoretical article will focus on addressing the features detection and activation within the response of an organisation to disruptive events. Through this, a conceptual framework of a resilient organisational response is presented. As such, this article will focus on establishing a solid conceptual base for organisational resilience upon which future empirical studies can be based. This article outlines the background literature relating to resilience and presents a working definition for organisational resilience. The conceptual framework supports analytical thinking toward characterising the response of an organisation to disruptive events and aims to support organisational development through outlining the fundamental processes necessary for an organisation to elicit a resilient response. Finally, conclusions are presented and attention is drawn to the implications of resilience on small and medium-sized enterprises and future research directions are outlined.

Competence understanding and use in SMEs: a UK manufacturing perspective

The paper seeks to address the neglected area of competency research that is the understanding and application of core competency concepts within small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). There is little doubt that SME manufacturing organisations can possess core competencies, however it appears from the literature that this issue has not yet been adequately addressed nor is there a clarification with regards to the nature of these competencies. This paper presents the results of an exploratory research study conducted with UK SMEs. The organisations involved were diverse and included a medical products manufacturer, automotive supplier, large metal fabrication and electromechanical capital equipment integrator. This research provides an insight into how competency concepts are perceived and understood amongst SME manufacturing firms and also whether these organisations use competence concepts. The research findings are important for both practitioners and academics, indicating an apparent lack of connectedness between research into competence and its ‘real world’ understanding and practical use within manufacturing SMEs.

Exploring SME Perceptions of Sustainable Product Service Systems

This paper explores the perception of a group of Colombian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) towards sustainable product service systems (PSS) development. There is currently much interest in the area of PSS; however, studies of sustainable PSS involving SMEs are lacking. The purpose of this research was to identify those organizational aspects that can contribute to develop sustainable PSS in SMEs. Four main areas were explored: sustainable awareness, use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), design process, and business strategy. This study was carried out in cooperation with the Colombian Ministry of ICTs and highlights their desire to find new routes to encourage transformation of companies toward competitive and sustainable industrial sectors. A significant finding is that the integration between design process and ICTs appears to be a key mechanism in developing sustainable PSS in SMEs. Finally, further work in this field of research is discussed and highlighted.

Risk management framework for build, operate and transfer (BOT) projects in Kuwait

AbstractSuccessful implementation of build-operate-transfer (BOT), infrastructure projects is dependent on a full and thorough analysis of factors that include social, economic and political, amongst others. Alongside the financially focused evaluations, qualitative factors will also have a strong impact on the project and so require specific techniques for the analysis. This paper presents a new evaluation framework, based on the analytical hierarchy process technique, for use in assessing the most common and significant decision factors relating to risks in BOT projects. Consultations with an expert group identified a series of risk decision factors. The results produced twenty-eight critical Risk Factors, which have a particular impact on the risks of BOT projects. The project risk framework was constructed by classifying the factors into five categories. The framework was successfully validated using a BOT project case study. This research seeks to make a valuable contribution to the field by having d...

Sustainable outsourcing: a practice survey and research opportunities

This paper addresses the issue of the sustainability imperative and its influence on outsourcing practice. The research initially finds that there is currently little or no work that explores sustainable or green outsourcing, other than in an information technology context. This lack of research on sustainable outsourcing practice in the industrial organisation sector led to the development of this research study. This exploratory study used a qualitative survey tool to investigate current industrial practice. Manufacturing managers in 57 organisations formed the survey sample. The data were analysed by comparison and clustering of responses of survey participants. This study contributes five key findings that demonstrate current industrial practice which includes: 32% of respondents state that sustainability is not a factor in their outsourcing decision making and 65% of small- and medium-sized enterprises had never heard of the ‘triple bottom line’ concept. Future research needs are identified and proposed highlighting that urgent development of research is required in outsourcing performance measurement and also in considering sustainability as a new manufacturing competitive priority.

A participatory systems approach to design for safer integrated medicine management

Abstract It is recognised that whole systems approaches are required in the design and development of complex health care services. Application of a systems approach benefits from the involvement of key stakeholders. However, participation in the context of community based health care is particularly challenging due to busy and geographically distributed stakeholders. This study used action research to investigate what processes and methods were needed to successfully employ a participatory systems approach. Three participatory workshops planned and facilitated by method experts were held with 30 representative stakeholders. Various methods were used with them and evaluated through an audit of workshop outputs and a qualitative questionnaire. Findings on the method application and participation are presented and methodological challenges are discussed with reference to further research. Practitioner Summary: This study provides practical insights on how to apply a participatory systems approach to complex health care service design. Various template-based methods for systems thinking and risk-based thinking were efficiently and effectively applied with stakeholders.

A review of resilience within the UK food manufacturing sector

Research on food security and resilience has focused primarily on improving production of traditional crops and livestock (agriculture, crop science, genetics etc.). However significant losses occur after this initial production phase during storage, transportation, processing and preparation. Whilst increased competition and margin pressures within this sector are constant drivers for efficiency improvements and waste reduction, they can also have unintended consequences on the resilience of food manufacturers and their supply chains. This paper examines how current trends and initiatives could impact the resilience of the UK food manufacturing sector and their wider impacts on UK food security.

Challenges in applying human factors approaches to health service design

A participatory systems approach is a fundamental characteristic of the human factors and ergonomics discipline. However, the appropriate application of relevant methods is challenging in healthcare, since there is very limited time for staff to participate and their knowledge on design methods is usually very limited. An action research was carried out in a health service design project commissioned by a local health service commissioner. The aim of this paper is to examine and discuss challenges in applying the participatory systems approach.

The basics of performance measurement–2nd edition, by J. L. Harbour

The book provides an elementary introduction to the use of performance measures within businesses. The book is divided into nine chapters that include types of measures, key definitions, families of measures, measurement hierarchies, units of measurement, data collection, performance measure displays, interpreting and taking action, and finally, putting it all together. The first chapter contains a brief list of basic concepts and definitions used in performance measurement. This list feels out of place in this particular section as it is something that would commonly be found in a glossary towards the back of a book. A useful feature is that every so often there is a box of text that encapsulates a key concept that the author is trying to amplify, for instance, in Chapter 5 there is ‘‘always compare apples with apples’’; Chapter 2 contains ‘‘A baseline measure answers the question, ‘‘Where am I starting from?’’. The book contains the very minimal of mathematical terms so would prove relatively easy to approach for non-technical readers. A very useful but short part in the book provides examples of families of measures that are commonly found in different business sectors such as manufacturing, customer service focussed, healthcare, information systems and so on. This is a very good idea and left me wanting to see more depth regarding typical measures in different industries. This part of the book would be of particular interest to readers, who are very likely to be new to the subject. The final chapter is called ‘putting it all together’ and forms an essential summarising part to the book. All the main points are brought together within three pages. This shows the book’s true nature which is as a guidebook or handbook for non-technical readers, at the most elementary level. The book, unfortunately, does not provide much in the way of recommendations for taking ‘next steps’ or further advanced techniques to its readers. The further reading section only contains five books, which is rather disappointing in the light of the wealth of additional material available on the topic. It makes no mention of any of the key, current literature on the subject of performance measures such as Kaplan & Norton’s Balanced Scorecard, or Neely et al.’s Performance Prism, for example. The book runs to barely 90 pages in length. It appears to be aimed at the complete beginner who has no previous knowledge of the topic, such as individuals or teams who have perhaps been included in projects concerned with measuring performance. For them the book will be very easy to read and understand.