The Internet of Things for Natural Risk Management (Inte.Ri.M.)

This chapter deals with the development of a management system, which integrates the use of IoT in natural risk detection, revention, and management with economic evaluation of each stage. In the introductory part, recent data are presented that document the importance that natural disasters have for the environment and for the Italian economy. Section 2 presents the Inte.Ri.M. project—the Internet of Things for Natural Risk Management—its purpose, activity plan, and bodies involved. Technical aspects are treated in Section 3 with the choice of hardware and software components and the solutions for collecting and transmitting data. Section 4 is about the economic aspects considering the stages of prevention, intervention, and restoration and the relation between the intensity of human activity and environment to define a range of situations. These scenarios call for different economic methodologies useful to estimate economic implications of each stage in the short, medium, and long term. Section 5 describes the structure of the Inte.Ri.M. management system and the foreseen functionalities. In the conclusion, the critical points are discussed, and the steps for the transposition of the work carried out on the territory are outlined, according to the provisions of the work program

A hybrid approach to achieve organizational agility: An empirical study of a food company

Purpose: In today’s intense global competition, agility is advocated as a fundamental characteristic for business survival and competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to propose a practical methodology to achieve and enhance organizational agility based on strategic objectives. Design/methodology/approach: In the first step, a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) of the organization being studied are recognized and classified under the perspectives of balanced scorecard (BSC). Critical success factors are then identified by ranking the KPIs according to their importance in achieving organizational strategic objectives using the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). In the second step, three houses of quality (HOQs) are constructed sequentially to identify and rank the main agile attributes, agile enablers, and improvement paths. In addition, in order to translate linguistics judgments of practitioners into numerical values in building HOQs, fuzzy logic is employed. Findings: The capability of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by applying it to a case of a multi-national food company in Iran. Through the application, the company could find the most suitable improvement paths to improve its organizational agility. Research limitations/implications: A limited number of KPIs were chosen due to computational and visual constraints related to HOQs. Another limitation, similar to other agility studies, which facilitate decision making among agility metrics, was that the metrics were more industry-specific and less inclusive. Practical implications: A strong practical advantage for the application of the methodology over directly choosing agility metrics without linking them is that through the methodology, the right metrics were selected that match organization’s core values and marketing objectives. While metrics may ostensibly seem unrelated or inappropriate, they actually contributed to the right areas where there were gaps between the current and desired level of agility. It would otherwise be impossible to choose the right metrics without a structured methodology. Originality/value: This paper proposes a novel methodology for achieving organizational agility. By utilizing and linking several tools such as BSC, fuzzy TOPSIS, and quality function deployment (QFD), the proposed approach enables organizations to identify the most appropriate agile attributes, agile enablers, and subsequently agile improvement paths

Relevance of Balanced Scorecard for Performance Evaluation of Selected Indian Corporate Units

One of the hall-mark of leading edge organization- be they public or private has been the successful application for performance evaluation to gain insight into, and make judgments about the organization and the effectiveness-efficiency of its programmes, processes and people. In other words, they use performance measurement for managing their organizations. It is a common practice to evaluate a company’s performance in terms of financial measures like profitability, ROI, EVA. However, survival of company does not depend on financial matter alone. The financial measures alone in performance measurement and control system are inadequate for strategic decision making. There has been growing criticism for financial measures in performance as they are historic in nature and lack futuristic outlook. Their relevance in the information age, when the companies are building internal assets and capabilities, is questioned. The situation might be worse when the firm is compelled to pursue short term goals at the cost of the long term objectives. Manager in practice have learnt the hard way that an unequalled focus on the financial health of the organization results in several irreparable adverse consequences. Managers of successful companies do recognize that the financial measures are after-the-events or lagging indicators of performance which depend on numerous events that would have occurred months or years before and over which they do not have control at present. Thus, Non financial measures are equally important while measuring the performance of business units. Harvard’s Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed an innovative and multidimensional corporate performance evaluation tool known as Balanced Scorecard. The BSC is a useful approach for organizational measurement and improvement. The BSC is performance measurement system using a multi-dimensional scorecard to translate strategy into a balance of financial & non-financial performance measures. So many corporate firms are using the tool successfully throughout world. While in India, the Balanced Scorecard is also getting popularity

A decision support system for evaluating local authority housing maintenance strategies in the United Kingdom

Purpose The lack of smart resources management and servicescape strategies within the social housing sector in the late 1970s influenced the rise of successive Governments to consider the restructuring of the traditional ‘cumbersome’ Local Authority based structures and approaches toward more ‘enterprise focussed’ management organisations (Sharp & Jones 2012). This change in central Government policy encouraged Local Authorities to assign through outsourcing their housing stock (including associated asset management services) as part of a Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) via a process of compulsory competitive tendering to Housing Associations and / or set up Housing Trusts to increase the accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness of social housing and healthcare provision in the local community. As part of this modernisation process, all social housing and community care providers (also known as ‘Registered Social Landlords’ - RSLs) became subject to statutory audits, inspections and regulation, and performance management, to ensure the service quality delivery requirements. More recently, however, changes in the legislative framework have introduced choice-based letting policy, putting the customer first, service delivery and additionally RSLs are required to act as ‘Corporate Social Landlords’. These changes have focused RSLs attention on the need to sharpen service responsiveness, especially in the area of housing maintenance management (DETR 2000). Previous research (Holmes 1985; Spedding 1990; Johnston 1993; Stewart & Stoker 1995; Olubodun 1996, 2000, 2001; Sagoo et al. 1996; El-Haram & Horner 2002; Kangwa & Olubodun 2003, 2005; Boussabaine & Kirkham 2004; Jones & Cooper 2007; Prowle 2009; Babangida et al. 2012) has mainly concentrated on analysing maintenance management factors at the micro level; developing maintenance models and framework design for operational level. However, in the social housing sector, there have been no studies undertaken to date that have been focused on housing maintenance strategies – for example, how this is formulated, the key drivers of change and the impact on customer orientated service delivery. The purpose of this study is to identify the critical factors that drive the decision-making process in order to formulate responsive housing maintenance strategies and to develop a decision support model to improve customer service delivery of social housing provision. Research methodology Through a process of qualitative case study, pilot questionnaire surveys, workshops and qualitative in-depth interviews, the research has identified how the housing maintenance strategies are formulated and how social housing providers could enhance customer service delivery. The study comprised four phases in order to reflect the key objectives of the research. The first phase comprised a review of literature on social housing provision in the UK, identifying relevant changes in the legislative framework, an assessment of the challenges faced by RSLs and the key factors influencing performance of social housing provision. This phase also included undertaking a case study based on five different RSLs to examine the ‘real problems’ as to how and to what extent RSLs have adopted their organisation in order to meet the changes and challenges which they now face. The second phase investigated the key service factors impacting on housing maintenance strategy design and development through the use of a pilot study questionnaire directed to the asset managers (participating in the survey) and also included a selection of end users of the services (tenants). This phase identified the differences between the perceptions of service providers and the expectations of the service users. A key feature of this phase entailed conducting a workshop to disseminate findings of the pilot study. The workshop also formed a basis for ‘in-depth’ discussions for identifying the key factors, their descriptions, their interactions with each other, their inter-relationships with the tenant type, and their combined impact on formulating responsive housing maintenance strategy. The third phase of the study entailed eliciting qualitative data from the participants using the Repertory Grid (RG) ‘in-depth’ interview technique - a psychology tool in order to gain a deeper understanding of the core important ‘constructs’ and sub-constructs, their characteristics, their inter-relationships in the design and development of effective housing asset maintenance strategies. The fourth phase of this study entailed the development of a decision support system and the qualitative validation of the relationships found to exist between the constructs examined in phase three together with the testing of the model over a period of two months with four of the participating social housing providers. Findings The key findings arising from this research suggest that the design and development of value for money maintenance strategies within the public housing sector, are not solely based on physical factors related to the age, condition, location, construction type for example, but rather it was found that the majority of the asset management decisions made, were dependent upon a multivariate of key factors. The study identified 52 key factors, which when grouped together formed seven key cluster (Customer risk factors, Asset manager risk factors, Tenancy risk factors, Neighbourhood and community sustainability risk factors, Financial and economic risk factors, continuous service improvement risk factors and corporate risk factors) which are both ‘unique’ and ‘novel’ and are identified as having a direct influence on the formulation of housing maintenance strategy. These factors should not be considered in isolation and are more akin to the business success factors. The business ‘Balanced Scorecard’ (BSC) was evaluated and used as the basis for a ‘best fit’ model which was tested against four RSL to confirm its validity and its appropriateness. The responses obtained from these trials has indicated that the BSC provides a working tool capable of enhancing RSL organisational capabilities and service delivery effectiveness but also able to incorporate customer views regarding service delivery. This research makes major contributions to the existing limited pool of knowledge relating to strategic asset management within social housing sector and in addition, provides an insight into how housing maintenance strategy can be developed to incorporate feedback from customers (tenants) regarding the quality and responsive service delivery. The research also demonstrates the potential value of the BSC approach to the management tool capable of generating a competitive edge in line with government policy which is currently directed towards encouraging RSLs to adopt a commercial business approach to their operations. The research also demonstrates that the adoption of a decision support system in the form of BSC has the potential to provide useful assistance to RSLs intending to move away from the traditional public sector approaches to management (a more private sector orientated) approach to their operations. The research also shows that asset managers experience little difficulty in understanding the principles behind the BSC approach and its application. In addition, the cascading effect of BSC in housing maintenance strategy means that the strategy can be converted into measurable actions at the operational levels thereby providing a direct link between strategy and its implementation. Due to the absence of suitable benchmarking data, score rating derived from the RG were adopted by asset managers. This approach was found to be highly sensitive in assessing service delivery constructs. Furthermore, the research revealed that the individual constructs (52 key factors) had a profound influence in relation to the strategy formation and the assessment of customer service delivery. The study found that RSLs need to develop a deeper understanding and awareness of their customers concerns in that these factors may have a major impact in the development of a responsive housing maintenance strategy and overall improvements on RSLs performance. A close link was found between customer profile, their financial standing and their service expectations, patterns of behaviour and their interaction with their RSLs. High performance expectation was found on the part of affordable customers, presumably reflecting a higher level of social and economic dependency within this group and greater need for access to services thereby challenging RSLs to deliver higher standards of performance including housing maintenance provision. Other customer groups were noted as placing demand on their RSLs to adopt more holistic approach to formulation of housing maintenance strategy and embrace business-like approach to service delivery in order to facilitate a smooth transition from traditional public sector ethos to one closely akin to that associated with the private sector organisation. Practical implications The practical implications of this research are, that, if RSLs are to meet the demands of complying with a changed legislative framework, deliver responsive housing maintenance services to reflect the ever-changing customer expectations, and to adopt commercial approaches to the development of housing maintenance strategies, RSLs will need to re-engineer their business processes if the demands are to be satisfactorily accommodated. RSLs must also be prepared to adopt ‘smart business’ practices in the future, given that existing Key Line Of Enquiry (KLOEs) approaches now provide an inadequate tool for assessing performance in housing asset management nor are KLOEs sufficiently robust or possessing a sufficient degree of agility for modelling complex service delivery scenarios. As a result of this research, the BSC model has demonstrated its usefulness and its appropriateness to housing maintenance decision making within the current economic conditions and changed regulatory regime. The BSC model is simple in nature but nonetheless sufficiently flexible to allow factors to be added or omitted to accommodate the requirements and structures of individual RSLs. Academic implications To date, most housing asset management have concentrated on the technical and cost aspects of maintenance management aimed at the micro level and have attached little attention to the needs of strategic management or the potential significance of the customer. These earlier researches have limited application to the needs of strategy management particularly under the current conditions which social housing providers are now required to operate (Sharp & Jones 2012). This study is first of its kind to attempt to evaluate housing maintenance strategy giving considerations to end user ‘the customer’ dimension in service delivery within the social housing sector. This study has adopted a novel approach to this area of research by employing a technique frequently encountered in clinical psychology, based upon the use of a Repertory Grid – a qualitative tool for triadic elicitation of key drivers with a view to providing a robust tool for assisting housing asset managers involved in the development of housing maintenance strategy. The RG personal interviews with senior asset managers revealed hidden and latent factors, which would not have been easily identified had a quantitative questionnaire been used. The hidden constructs which were identified as a result of the applications of this technique are considered to be ‘akin’ to business success factors. Originality This study is also unique in that it has given particular considerations to the provision of housing maintenance service as perceived from the view point of the end users rather than directing itself to the constructional and technical aspects of housing asset management. Also, the research recognises the need for asset managers to become more aware of the implications of social factors and the need for these aspects to be incorporated into strategic maintenance models. A further unique aspect of this research is that it has endeavoured to obtain an insight into the cognitive processes (mind mapping and analytical mental processes) behind the decision making of asset management, in order to identify and understand the nature of the drivers behind these processes to develop a rational decision support model for assisting in the rational formulating of housing maintenance strategy. KEYWORDS Social Housing, Registered Social Landlords, Social Housing Providers, Customer Service Delivery, Asset Managers, Customer, Tenants, Repertory Gri

Measuring Innovation: Evaluation in the Field of Social Entrepreneurship

Explores the various approaches to evaluation in social entrepreneurship, based on a review of relevant literature and interviews with funders, social entrepreneurs, and scholars in the field

Prioritising IT Applications’ Readiness using Balanced Scorecards in Saudi Arabia

Defining a realistic strategy, that directs employees to achieve the organisation's strategic goals, is an important step towards achieving an organisation's objectives. Balanced Scorecards are one of the most useful tools and management systems to measure an organisation's performance against defined targets. In many instances the use of Information Technology within the organisation is essential to achieve a satisfying degree of the strategic objectives due to the IT readiness within the organisation. IT readiness of an organisation can be defined as the degree of the software applications can provide the desired functionality and operations required by departments and sections within the organisation in order to achieve the strategic goals. This research shows how Balanced Scorecards can be used to identify and priorities process requirements for IT readiness to align within organisation business strategy. Four main research questions were formulated here: how to determine projects priorities in adopting targets and weight and importance for each application, how algorithms and metrics used to measure the importance of needed applications can be developed and then how to assess their readiness. Finally, what are the methodologies used to develop a framework to priorities applications in terms of their readiness to achieve the strategic objectives. The framework used to priorities applications have been developed and tested in this research. This implementation was based on a mathematical model used to calculate the importance and the readiness of each application in public organisation in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, a comparison between the percentages of the expected achieved targets with prioritizing application readiness and the current achievements was provided

Developing a strategic framework in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)

Aims: The purpose is to understand the strategy process approach within SMEs to gain a better understanding of how a SME performs the strategy process. The research aims to develop a strategy process framework through the findings of a case study within a SME, by comparing those findings with the existing literature. Methodology: The research paradigm is moderate constructionism that adopts first a deductive approach to obtain the required theoretical knowledge of how strategy process (phases, activities, and tools) function and how they have been used within empirical studies, with a specific focus on case studies in SMEs. This is achieved through the establishment of a conceptual framework of the strategy process including phases and activities. Second, an inductive approach is adopted to induce from the research findings how the strategy process of the SME evolves. This mixture of deductive and inductive approaches is known as abductive. The research adopts an abductive approach culminating in a strategy process framework based on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), the findings of the case study, and the literature. The research strategy is a single case study using semi-structured interviews during which the interviewer conversationally obtained the required information. This was complemented by documentation evidence. The data analysis process used thematic analysis and an enumeration approach. Results: Whilst the literature lays out a systematic, sequential process, the picture presented by the case study in a SME is somewhat different. The SME was involved in several different aspects of strategy as defined in the literature review, including several phases of the strategy process, and the activities within each of these phases. Some activities were more frequently performed than others, in a very ad-hoc manner. Moreover, The SME did not have a coherent strategy process. The process that the SME uses is messy; it is not systematic; it is not sequential and is not clear. These results are incorporated in a revised conceptual framework to reflect the strategy process actuals used within the SME of the present study. The reasons that explain the finding and the need of the framework may be summarized as: Ambiguous communication of information, Inability to manage development, innovation without a flexible approach, a lack of systematic methods for defining strategy, short-term cash flow issues, and high risks in the SME. Originality/value is contribution to knowledge (theory and empirical): First: a comprehensive literature review investigated and extended the strategy process phases and activities literature, by establishment of a conceptual framework of the strategy process including phases and activities. Second: this conceptual framework was revised based on these findings to reflect the strategy process actually emplaced within the SME in the present study, this aided an overall understanding of the theory of the strategy process. Third: due to the lack of formal strategy the SME had much ‘emergent’ strategy, which it failed to deal with effectively. Normatively, it should work to overcome this, by implementing a more coherent and formal approach to the strategy process framework (using the BSC framework with support of other strategic tools [QFD and SWOT analysis]. Fourth: the methodological implementation of the research paradigm of moderate constructionism and validation through crystallization

A fuzzy-grey- weighted aggregate sum product assessment methodical approach for multi-criteria analysis of maintenance performance systems

Diverse maintenance performance models have been previously proposed in literature. However, many of these frameworks perform inefficiently or are not applicable in real-world problems due to their over-simplified assumptions. Such models do not take into account peculiarities of the maintenance situation in which multiple factors need to be prioritised under uncertain conditions. Keeping the above issues in mind, this communication proposes a framework for ranking maintenance performance systems using integrated fuzzy entropy weighting method, grey relational analysis (GRA) and weighted aggregate sum product assessment (WASPAS). The values of criteria weights were determined using fuzz entropy weighting method. Ranking was carried out using GRA and WASPAS methods. GRA ranking considered a criterion, while WASPAS method considered multi-criteria. It is the belief of the authors that merging these three mentioned tools generates synergy. The synergic advantage of the fusion is that these tools interact to create the combined results of ability to handle logic decisions, or partial information and choice among complex alternatives, demonstrated in this paper. The built-up frame-work was illustrated with practical data from five manufacturing companies operating in Nigeria with information gathered through the questionnaire approach to show that the approach can be effectively implemented in practice. Based on the proposed framework’s results, the highest ranked maintenance system belongs to companies 4 and 5, while the lowest ranked maintenance system belongs to company 5. TOPSIS method was used to determine the best performing maintenance function of the companies. It was observed that maintenance system of company 4 was the highest ranked system. The results from model testing confirmed that the presented scheme is feasibility in industrial settings, efficient and capable of revealing the best company in performance according to certain six input criteria. The novelty of this approach is its uniqueness of the combined frameworks’ structures in achieving the highest accuracy of estimation, introduced for the first time in maintenance performance assessment in a multi-criteria framewor