Qualitative Case Studies in Operations Management: Trends, Research Outcomes, And Future Research Implications

Our study examines the state of qualitative case studies in operations management. Five main operations management journals are included for their impact on the field. They are in alphabetical order: Decision Sciences, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, and Production and Operations Management. The qualitative case studies chosen were published between 1992 and 2007. With an increasing trend toward using more qualitative case studies, there have been meaningful and significant contributions to the field of operations management, especially in the area of theory building. However, in many of the qualitative case studies we reviewed, sufficient details in research design, data collection, and data analysis were missing. For instance, there are studies that do not offer sampling logic or a description of the analysis through which research out-comes are drawn. Further, research protocols for doing inductive case studies are much better developed compared to the research protocols for doing deductive case studies. Consequently, there is a lack of consistency in the way the case method has been applied. As qualitative researchers, we offer suggestions on how we can improve on what we have done and elevate the level of rigor and consistency

On explanation of housing policy

This paper is concerned with making sense of current ways of explaining housing policy. Four different types of explanation are identified and analysed in detail: explanations in terms of systems of actors, hypothetico‐deductive explanations, realist explanations, and culturalist explanations. The characteristic ontology and epistemology of each type of explanation is made explicit. The four types of explanation are then evaluated, partly in their own terms, and partly in relation to each other. It is argued that explanations in terms of systems of actors are inherently superficial, so it is essential to go beyond and below them in order to achieve an acceptable level of explanatory adequacy. Hypothetico‐deductive explanations are rescued from realist and culturalist criticisms which tend to dismiss them altogether, but they are recognised as having serious limitations in terms of conceptual vagueness/ambiguity and contextual fragmentation. Realist explanations are considered in greater depth through an examination of regulation theory. This examination amounts to a critique of the theory as regards its application to housing policy. Finally, culturalist explanations are assessed by using Kemeny's theory as an illustration, with both ontological and epistemological problems being identified. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the logical relations and differences between explanations of the four different types

Looking Back, Moving Forward: Logical Decision Making in the Redevelopment of Decommisioned Military Installations

This project is fundamentally a study of the application of a formal logic system to an urban design problem. This system, which is not often used in the decision making for projects in the built environment, is more specifically of the Deductive Logic field of study. The rules and concepts from Sentential Deductive Logic have been utilized to create a decisionmaking tool for communities facing the decommissioning of a military base and its subsequent redevelopment. The first step to redevelopment is in deciding which school of urban design to work within. This is often the most difficult decision to make as it really gives structure to the entire redevelopment process. This logical formula, thus, is a scientific approach to determine which urban design approach is most appropriate for an installation: The Congress for the New Urbanism, The Smart Growth Network, LEED 2009 for Neighborhood Development, or Non-Planning. The establishment of the derivation formula is primary, while secondary is where the validity of the derivation is proved through its application to case studies of military bases that have already been redeveloped. A second portion of the document narrows the focus onto a single installation investigated as a case study and proposes a development design based on the outcome of the derivation process

If CPM is so bad, why have we been using it so long?

Why has the Critical Path Method (CPM) been used so widely for so long given its inability to produce predictable outcomes? For shedding light on this paradox, the formative period of the CPM is analysed from two main angles. First, how was the CPM embedded into the construction management practice? Second, what was the methodological underpinning of the development of the CPM? These questions are researched through a literature review. In terms of embeddedness into practice, it turns out that the CPM morphed from being a way of production control, into a method for contract control. In consequence, the promotion of the CPM by owners has been crucial for pushing this method to be the mainstream approach to scheduling and production control. Regarding methodological underpinning, it turns out that the CPM was developed as a way of optimization, as part of the quantitative methods movement. This movement was largely based on the axiomatic approach to research. In good alignment with that approach, there was no attempt to empirically test quantitative models and their outcomes. In this context, the unrealistic assumptions and conceptualizations in CPM did not surface in forty years. These results are argued to be helpful in critical discussions on the role and merits of CPM and on the methodologies to be used in construction management research

Integration with Ontologies

One of today’s hottest IT topics is integration, as bringing together information from different sources and structures is not completely solved. The approach outlined here wants to illustrate how ontologies [Gr93] could help to support the integration process

Intelligent customer relationship management (ICRM) by EFLOW portal

Customer relationship management (CRM) has become a strategic initiative aimed at getting, growing, and retaining the right customers. A great amount of numeric data and even more soft information are available about customers. The strategy of building and maintaining customer relations can be described with 'if… then' rules acquired from experts. Doctus Knowledge-Based System provides a new and simplified approach in the field of knowledge management. It is able to cope with tacit and implicit rules at the same time, so decision makers can clearly see the satisfactory solution (then and there). It reasons both deductive and inductive, so it enables the user to check on the model graph why is the chosen solution in the given situation most appropriate. It is upgradeable with in telligent portal, which presents the personalized (body-tailored) information for decision makers. When we need some hard data from a database or a data warehouse, we have automatic connection between case input interface and the database. Doctus recognizes the relations between the data, it selects them and provides only the needed rules to the decision maker. Intelligent portal puts our experience on the web, so our knowledge base is constantly improving with new 'if… then' rules. We support decision mak ing with two interfaces. On the Developer Interface the attributes, the values and the 'if… then' rules can be modified. The intelligent portal is used as a managerial decision support tool. This interface can be used without seeing the knowledge base, we only see the personalized soft information. ICRM (intelligent Customer Relationship Management) helps customer to get the requested information quickly. It is also capable of customizing the questionnaires, so the customer doesn't have to answer irrelevant questions and the decision maker doesn't have to read endless reports

Towards Intelligent Databases

This article is a presentation of the objectives and techniques of deductive databases. The deductive approach to databases aims at extending with intensional definitions other database paradigms that describe applications extensionaUy. We first show how constructive specifications can be expressed with deduction rules, and how normative conditions can be defined using integrity constraints. We outline the principles of bottom-up and top-down query answering procedures and present the techniques used for integrity checking. We then argue that it is often desirable to manage with a database system not only database applications, but also specifications of system components. We present such meta-level specifications and discuss their advantages over conventional approaches

A Comparative Study of the Application of Different Learning Techniques to Natural Language Interfaces

In this paper we present first results from a comparative study. Its aim is to test the feasibility of different inductive learning techniques to perform the automatic acquisition of linguistic knowledge within a natural language database interface. In our interface architecture the machine learning module replaces an elaborate semantic analysis component. The learning module learns the correct mapping of a user's input to the corresponding database command based on a collection of past input data. We use an existing interface to a production planning and control system as evaluation and compare the results achieved by different instance-based and model-based learning algorithms.Comment: 10 pages, to appear CoNLL9