Performance measurement : challenges for tomorrow

This paper demonstrates that the context within which performance measurement is used is changing. The key questions posed are: Is performance measurement ready for the emerging context? What are the gaps in our knowledge? and Which lines of enquiry do we need to pursue? A literature synthesis conducted by a team of multidisciplinary researchers charts the evolution of the performance-measurement literature and identifies that the literature largely follows the emerging business and global trends. The ensuing discussion introduces the currently emerging and predicted future trends and explores how current knowledge on performance measurement may deal with the emerging context. This results in identification of specific challenges for performance measurement within a holistic systems-based framework. The principle limitation of the paper is that it covers a broad literature base without in-depth analysis of a particular aspect of performance measurement. However, this weakness is also the strength of the paper. What is perhaps most significant is that there is a need for rethinking how we research the field of performance measurement by taking a holistic systems-based approach, recognizing the integrated and concurrent nature of challenges that the practitioners, and consequently the field, face

Infrastructure transitions toward sustainability: a complex adaptive systems perspective

To ensure infrastructure assets are procured and maintained by government on behalf of citizens, appropriate policy and institutional architecture is needed, particularly if a fundamental shift to more sustainable infrastructure is the goal. The shift in recent years from competitive and resource-intensive procurement to more collaborative and sustainable approaches to infrastructure governance is considered a major transition in infrastructure procurement systems. In order to better understand this transition in infrastructure procurement arrangements, the concept of emergence from Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory is offered as a key construct. Emergence holds that micro interactions can result in emergent macro order. Applying the concept of emergence to infrastructure procurement, this research examines how interaction of agents in individual projects can result in different industry structural characteristics. The paper concludes that CAS theory, and particularly the concept of ‘emergence’, provides a useful construct to understand infrastructure procurement dynamics and progress towards sustainability

Strengthening Out-of-School Time Nonprofits: The Role of Foundations in Building Organizational Capacity

Placing nonprofits in the larger context of city, state, and national policy, explores the capacity-building support nonprofits running afterschool and summer programs need to provide high-impact networks of learning and developmental opportunities

Contextual impacts on industrial processes brought by the digital transformation of manufacturing: a systematic review

The digital transformation of manufacturing (a phenomenon also known as "Industry 4.0" or "Smart Manufacturing") is finding a growing interest both at practitioner and academic levels, but is still in its infancy and needs deeper investigation. Even though current and potential advantages of digital manufacturing are remarkable, in terms of improved efficiency, sustainability, customization, and flexibility, only a limited number of companies has already developed ad hoc strategies necessary to achieve a superior performance. Through a systematic review, this study aims at assessing the current state of the art of the academic literature regarding the paradigm shift occurring in the manufacturing settings, in order to provide definitions as well as point out recurring patterns and gaps to be addressed by future research. For the literature search, the most representative keywords, strict criteria, and classification schemes based on authoritative reference studies were used. The final sample of 156 primary publications was analyzed through a systematic coding process to identify theoretical and methodological approaches, together with other significant elements. This analysis allowed a mapping of the literature based on clusters of critical themes to synthesize the developments of different research streams and provide the most representative picture of its current state. Research areas, insights, and gaps resulting from this analysis contributed to create a schematic research agenda, which clearly indicates the space for future evolutions of the state of knowledge in this field

The University-Commune

In this new book we return to the challenge of deepening the task to the point of imagining the university formed by commoner university students. It is a turn, a new place from which to name and reconsider community management and action from a sense of co-responsibility for the commons that we must guarantee so that the common project prevails and achieves long-term self-sustainability.This is what the seven articles in this book are about, which calls into question what it means for the university to be and act according to economic principles and logics (giving, receiving, undertaking), social (distribution of roles and benefits) and policies (agreements, consensus, participation and assignment of responsibilities) of the commune. The institutional dimension is important but the vitality, the sense of belonging and the profound strength of the Salesian university project depend much more on the commons logic. Feeling of the commons is not a possibility among many others. We are convinced that, in order to take on this project, it is necessary to transcend institutional, business logic and state regulations. Therefore, the university-commune is the way and, perhaps, the only one possible. University and Common Goods Research Group Universidad Politécnica Salesian