Resilience in Humanitarian Supply Chains: A Focus on the Procurement Decisions

This thesis looks into how the need for resilience in humanitarian aid supply chains influences procurement strategy decisions. Increasingly, the need for resilience in supply chains has become undoubted and management researchers have prescribed diverse ways of pursuing it; not only so that supply chains may be better prepared to avoid, respond and recover from disruptions, but to also provide them with competitive advantage. Considering that the procurement function has gone beyond a simple business function to include the strategic management of resources and suppliers when pursuing supply chain resilience (SCR), the role of procurement decisions cannot be understated, especially as suppliers could become significant sources of disruptions. This is even more pronounced in humanitarian supply chains where disruptions do not only result in the loss of limited resources but sometimes human lives as well. Due to this criticality for resilience in humanitarian supply chains and the limited research here particularly from a procurement perspective, this research collects qualitative data through semi-structured interviews and document analysis from 8 UK-based humanitarian organisations. The data is analysed to identify how these organisations pursue SCR formative elements from a procurement perspective and also how pre-contract procurement decisions relative to inter-organisational interactions are guided by the need for resilience. Findings show that cross-training, flexible contracting, and financial resilience are critical to attaining SCR in humanitarian supply chains as they influence many of the identified formative elements. Differences are identified in the relationships between decisions taken under procurement strategy towards resilience from those in commercial supply chains, with monetary value and donor requirements being major influencing factors. Donor influence on procurement decisions in humanitarian organisations is identified to positively influence multiple formative elements including risk avoidance, sustainability, decision making and culture. It however inhibits flexibility and agility. Contributions from this research include the presentation of a theoretical framework on procurement strategy decisions towards achieving SCR. This is then empirically tested in UK humanitarian supply chain context and a simple but useful framework to aid managerial decision making in the sector is provided

Engaging Teachers in Agile School Improvement

This Organizational Improvement Plan addresses a K-6 principal’s leadership challenge of engaging teachers in implementing the strategies from the annual school improvement plan in a changing school context. The inquiry questions focus on increasing teacher voice, enabling collaborative professional learning, and facilitating dynamic organizational change. Drawing from complexity theory, School X is conceived as a complex adaptive system that exists within a broader eco-system, with organizational transformation occurring through complex responsive processes where human interactions and diversity are essential for shifting current thinking and behaviors. The principal proposes an authentic/adaptive leadership approach that integrates two change models to develop the Dynamic Innovative Generative change framework to lead teachers in a system-oriented and locally adapted process where teachers participate as leaders and co-creators of school improvement. A collaborative, short-term action planning protocol enables teachers to engage in student-centered, collaborative, and impactful school and practice improvement. This proposed solution addresses the current low level of readiness for teachers to engage in creative and collaborative professional learning. Supporting the principal in implementing the changes in this OIP is a detailed communication plan and strategies for adapting decisions and leading an agile school improvement process

Fostering Collaboration Between local HEIs and Global Professional Engineering Organization

This organizational improvement plan (OIP) proposes a change process to foster collaboration between a not-for-profit engineering organization and higher education institutions (HEIs) situated in the Central Ontario Region. This OIP will help students create successful conditions to transition from HEIs to workplaces by providing them with support from a multidisciplinary team, including professional engineers. Support will be needed to engage students in events that underscore creativity, critical thinking, communication, and other leadership competencies for facing 21st-century challenges. As a section chair, I will work as a change initiator/participant with a guiding coalition encompassing students, faculty members, HEI administrators, and executives from the engineering organization to create a sustainable change solution. This OIP uses the principles of adaptive, humble, and distributive leadership approaches. The leadership framework drives the implementation plan, which focuses on developing a student-run society that will create and promote activities to help students transition from HEIs to workplaces. The solution presented offers a way of ensuring financial support and management methods to increase stakeholder accountability and engagement. Lessons learned from the change process will be shared with engineering associations and HEIs across Canada. The report demonstrates how the implementation plan and the adopted change model and leadership approaches are woven into monitoring and evaluation methods grounded on a continuous and open communication system. This OIP may be adapted to similar contexts in which chapters of professional associations and engineering schools have the common goal of enhancing student engagement with the local community

Responsible AI and Analytics for an Ethical and Inclusive Digitized Society

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Initiating Leadership Development In a VUCA Environment

Organizations across the world are continuously undergoing change - some of which is by choice; the majority of this change is in response to the pressures the external environment. In today\u27s world, organizations need to be agile. They need to be able to meet the challenges and develop creative ways to attract and retain talent as part of their business strategy. When organizations are strong, their process and procedures are working well in support of their business operations, and their employees are engaged as healthy and constructive components of a high-functioning, complex, adaptable system. Organizational adaptation is imperative in the modern, volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, as without it a firm can become obsolete. Organizations represent and operate as complex adaptive systems. Accordingly, all of their systemic parts are connected and employees within these systems have the ability to influence the organizational and relational dynamics that are needed to successfully meet the adaptive challenges they and their organizations receive from their surrounding environment. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) presents a possible solution by initializing leadership development through an engagement of complexity leadership theory and adaptive leadership within an organizational context unfamiliar with the value of investing in the leadership development of their employees as a form of competitive advantage. Utilizing a postmodern perspective, this OIP focuses on developing a theoretical framework through which a progressive, iterative solution can begin to gradually influence the evolution of largely transactional relationships between employees into increasingly collaborative exchanges through which adaptive work and innovative solutions can be enabled