Causal Ambiguity in Lean Production Implementation in Malaysia

The success of the lean production system in Japan has led other companies to attempt to adopt it. Yet lean production system initiatives have seen a low success rate. This study draws on the theory of causal ambiguity and its role in the transfer of knowledge to argue that causal ambiguity can impede interfirm transfer of knowledge during lean production system implementation. The authors argue that causal ambiguity undermines motivation during lean production system implementation. Several variables are proposed as moderating the relationship. The findings of a survey are presented here.     

The Implementation and Adaptation of the Balanced Scorecard in a Government Agency

Despite considerable progress in understanding the adoption and practice of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a performance management tool in government organisations, how a well‐designed BSC can become a sustainable organisational practice remains under explored and of central importance. Through a qualitative field study carried out within a government agency (Alpha), this paper demonstrates that Alpha's senior management implemented a BSC framework because they believed it would benefit the agency to realise its broader organisational and socio‐economic goals, namely sustainable organisational efficiency and social status. We conclude that an organisation's performance management systems can travel across internal organisational boundaries over time and could be assimilated by organisational actors to become a sustained internal control mechanism in a complex socio‐political setting.     

An evaluation of the red-light camera programme in the city of Dammam,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This study evaluated the effectiveness of red-light cameras in Dammam, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Two methods were used to assess changes in crash risk at the intersections at which the red-light camera programme had been operating. Geospatial analysis was used to visualize trends in road crash density over the geographical region of Dammam and a pre--post-camera crash analysis was undertaken. The distribution of injury crashes was greater than that of crashes which included property damage, the latter of which was concentrated around central Dammam. The five red-light cameras installed in 2012 were located outside areas of high-crash and injury density, and the total number of crashes reported in the three-month periods after installation was double that before the cameras were installed. This increase in the number of crashes also occurred at the five comparison sites (without red-light cameras), indicating a null effect. The findings from this study are contrary to previous evaluations of speed management programmes associated with red-light cameras. The study highlights the challenges in obtaining data for such research and illustrates that a reliance on overt, fixed camera's to manage speed is unlikely to deliver significant reductions in road trauma.     

Existence of competitive equilibrium under financial constraints and increasing returns

This paper studies a ‘factor cost in advance’ model with increasing returns in production. In the model both partial equilibrium and general equilibrium may exist since working capital of firms limit their input demand. We provide a sufficient condition for the existence of partial equilibrium of a firm operating on a non-convex choice set. Furthermore we establish the existence and uniqueness of competitive equilibrium in the special case of logarithmic utility.     

Unleashing the Power of Networks: Shareholder Activism,Sustainable Development and Corporate Environmental Policy

In recent years, a new trend has emerged in which shareholder activists have formed networks to empower shareholders and magnify shareholder voices. This study explores the structural patterns and effectiveness of shareholder activism networks and shows how those networks affect corporate sustainability policies. We draw upon stakeholder influence theory, stakeholder network management theory and recent studies on activism networks to examine a shareholder activism network formed around environmental issues. The study found that (1) the structure of shareholder activist networks is largely driven by organizational attributes such as organization type, organizations’ human resources, media visibility and history; and (2) activist organizations with high centralities and eigenvector centralities enjoy more efficient results. This study contributes to our understanding of the business responses to shareholder demands on improving environmental performance and paves the way for future research on sustainable development through partnerships with shareholder networks. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

A proposed configurable approach for recommendation systems via data mining techniques

This study presents a configurable approach for recommendations which determines the suitable recommendation method for each field based on the characteristics of its data, the method includes determining the suitable technique for selecting a representative sample of the provided data. Then selecting the suitable feature weighting measure to provide a correct weight for each feature based on its effect on the recommendations. Finally, selecting the suitable algorithm to provide the required recommendations. The proposed configurable approach could be applied on different domains. The experiments have revealed that the approach is able to provide recommendations with only 0.89 error rate percentage.     

Trust,acceptance and knowledge of technological and environmental hazards in Chile

Studies over the past decade have found empirical links between trust in risk management institutions and the risk perceptions and acceptability of various individual hazards. Mostly addressing food technologies, no study to date has explored wider possible relationships among all four core variables (risk, benefit, trust and acceptability) covering a heterogeneous group of hazards. Our prime objective was to ascertain effects among social trust in regulatory entities, and the public's perceived risk, perceived benefit and the degree of acceptability towards both technological and environmental hazards. We also assess whether trust in regulatory authorities is the cause (causal model) or a consequence (associationist model) of a hazard's acceptability for a wide and heterogeneous range of hazards on all four core variables. Using a web‐based survey, 539 undergraduates in Chile rated the five variables across 30 hazards. Implications for technology and environmental risk management organizations are discussed. Independent of the magnitude of the perceived risk or benefit surrounding a given hazard, or how knowledgeable the public claim to be of it, the trust sustained in regulatory institutions will either generate or be the consequence of public attitudes towards the hazard.