"It is very difficult in this business if you want to have a good conscience": pharmaceutical governance and on-the-ground ethical labour in Ghana

The governance of pharmaceutical medicines entails complex ethical decisions that should, in theory, be the responsibility of democratically accountable government agencies. However, in many Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), regulatory and health systems constraints mean that many people still lack access to safe, appropriate and affordable medication, posing significant ethical challenges for those working on the “front line”. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Ghana, we present three detailed case studies of individuals in this position: an urban retail pharmacist, a rural over-the-counter medicine retailer, and a local inspector. Through these case studies, we consider the significant burden of “ethical labour” borne by those operating “on the ground”, who navigate complex moral, legal and business imperatives in real time and with very real consequences for those they serve. The paper ends with a reflection on the tensions between abstract, generalised ethical frameworks based on high-level principles, and a pragmatic, contingent ethics-in-practice that foregrounds immediate individual needs – a tension rooted in the gap between the theory and the reality of pharmaceutical governance that shifts the burden of ethical labour downwards and perpetuates long-term public health risks

Business networks SMEs and inter-firm collaboration: a review of the research literature with implications for policy

This literature review, which was commissioned by the UK's Small Business Service is concerned with business networks, and their importance for the small business community. Business networks are sometimes defined as comprising only inter-firm relationships (e.g. those that exist between component supplier and a manufacturer). However, it soon becomes apparent that a broader perspective is required, if research findings are to contribute meaningful insights for policy and practice. We have therefore incorporated research evidence on personal networks, notably those associated with entrepreneurship, and on links between firms and supporting institutions, such as trade associations, government agencies and universities

A Study of the Role of Managerial Meta-Knowledge in the Management of Distributed Knowledge

When companies depend on knowledge distributed among employees, managers play a key role in establishing cooperation and coordination systems. This dissertation investigates the implications of managers’ knowledge about the knowledge and skills of employees for economic organization. The research question guiding this effort is: What managerial challenges arise from having distributed knowledge within a firm and how does the manager’s knowledge of this knowledge matter for economic organization? The dissertation consists of three research papers, each exploring a dimension of the research question. The first paper investigates antecedents of coordination break-down and how teams differ in their ability to coordinate specialized knowledge and skills. The second paper provides a theoretical framework for theorizing about the role of managers’ knowledge about employees’ knowledge for economic organization and introduces the term managerial meta-knowledge. The third paper investigates the effect of managerial meta-knowledge on the successfulness of inter-organizational relations. Empirically, the dissertation is based on a dataset on public procurement projects, comprised of archival data, a survey of buyers and a survey of suppliers. Together, the three papers argue that managers’ knowledge about employees’ knowledge is an important factor when managing the challenges of distributed knowledge. Such managerial knowledge allows managers to assess the capabilities available, make sure they fit contractual obligations, and rearrange tasks and employees when adapting to changes

Relational architecture and relational capability: organisational levers to support strategic supplier relationships

The resource based view of strategy suggests that competitiveness in part derives from a firms ability to collaborate with a subset of its supply network to co-create highly valued products and services. This relational capability relies on a foundational intra and inter-organisational architecture, the manifestation of strategic, people, and process decisions facilitating the interface between the firm and its strategic suppliers. Using covariance-based structural equation modelling we examine the relationships between internal and external features of relational architecture, and their relationship with relational capability and relational quality. This is undertaken on data collected by mail survey. We find significant relationships between both internal and external relational architecture and relational capability and between relational capability and relational quality. Novel constructs for internal and external elements of relational architecture are specified to demonstrate their positive influence on relational capability and relationship quality

Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard

David Norton and I introduced the Balanced Scorecard in a 1992 Harvard Business Review article (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). The article was based on a multi-company research project to study performance measurement in companies whose intangible assets played a central role in value creation (Nolan Norton Institute, 1991). Norton and I believed that if companies were to improve the management of their intangible assets, they had to integrate the measurement of intangible assets into their management systems. After publication of the 1992 HBR article, several companies quickly adopted the Balanced Scorecard giving us deeper and broader insights into its power and potential. During the next 15 years, as it was adopted by thousands of private, public, and nonprofit enterprises around the world, we extended and broadened the concept into a management tool for describing, communicating and implementing strategy. This paper describes the roots and motivation for the original Balanced Scorecard article as well as the subsequent innovations that connected it to a larger management literature.

Factors influencing innovation input and operational efficiency: The role of social capital

Innovation is an effective way to help enterprises shift from “high growth” to “high quality” development. China’s investment on R & D has been steadily on the increase but, in a transitional economy with incomplete institutions, what are the important factors that influence Chinese enterprises to make innovation input and improve operational efficiency? What factors can replace formal institutions to guide enterprises to innovate and improve operational efficiency? From the perspective of the theories of social capital, resource-based view (RBV) and the new institutional economy theory, this study mainly explores the relationship of corporate social capital, access to resources, corporate innovation input and operational efficiency in China’s healthcare sector. The sample data of Chinese medical enterprises were obtained through questionnaire survey; then, multiple linear regression analysis was used to verify the influence mechanisms among the variables, and the results of the survey show that: (1) Corporate social capital significantly promotes corporate innovation input and operational efficiency; (2) Resource acquisition plays a mediating role in the relationship among corporate social capital and innovation input and corporate operational efficiency; (3) the institutional environment positively moderates the influence between corporate social capital on corporate innovation input and operational efficiency; (4) the competition degree of the industry negatively moderates the influence of corporate social capital on corporate innovation input and operational efficiency. This study enriches the theories related to social capital, access to resources, innovation input, and operational efficiency in China’s healthcare sector, and may provide meaningful practical insights for stakeholders including enterprises in China’s healthcare sector, governments, and associations.A inovação é uma forma eficaz de ajudar as empresas a transformarem o seu modelo de desenvolvimento de “crescimento elevado” para “qualidade elevada”. Nos últimos anos a China tem vindo a fazer um grande investimento em I&D mas, sendo uma economia em transição com uma envolvente institucional ainda incompleta, quais os fatores que influenciam a dinâmica de inovação das empresas chinesas e a melhoria da sua eficiência operacional? O que poderá substituir as instituições formais e ajudar as empresas a concretizar estes objetivos? Tendo em consideração as teorias sobre o capital social, a perspetiva dos recursos e a teoria institucional, esta tese explora a relação entre capital social, acesso a recursos, inovação organizacional e eficiência operacional tendo por base o sector da saúde na China. Um questionário foi especialmente concebido de acordo com o modelo teórico e administrado a uma amostra de empresas do sector médico. Os dados foram analisados através de regressão linear múltipla para verificar as relações entre as diferentes variáveis e os resultados demonstram que: (1) A existência de capital social promove significativamente quer a inovação, quer a eficiência operacional; (2) A capacidade de acesso a recursos desempenha um papel mediador na relação entre capital social, inovação e eficiência operacional; (3) A envolvente institucional modera positivamente a influência entre capital social e os constructos inovação e eficiência operacional; (4) O grau de competitividade da indústria modera negativamente a relação entre capital social e os constructos inovação e eficiência operacional. Este estudo contribui para enriquecer as teorias relacionadas com o papel que o capital social pode desempenhar no desenvolvimento da inovação e na melhoria da eficiência operacional das empresas no sector da saúde na China e pode contribuir com uma nova perspetiva para a gestão das empresas nesta indústria, para o governo e associações

Application of Trustworthy IoT Technology in Fast Communities: Smart Access Control

As a response to the current development status and existing problems in the ubiquitous and trustworthy aspect of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the construction of smart community systems in Bangladesh, this paper presents the trustworthy technology strategy of the ubiquitous and trustworthy IoT intelligent system. Additionally, it provides a list of the demonstration application practice of trustworthy IoT technology at the level of smart communities through three different application scenario project construction cases. These cases include smart access control, smart buildings' construction, and smart parks' construction.&nbsp

Global, local, or regional? The locus of MNE strategies

This paper provides an overview of the main insights arising from the ‘regional strategy’ literature. It also develops the contours of a new, rich research agenda for future international strategy scholarship, whereby the region should be introduced as an explicit, third geographic level of analysis, in addition to the country-level and the global level. Regional strategy analysis requires a fundamental rethink of mainstream theories in the international strategy sphere. This rethink involves, inter alia, internalization theory, with its resource-based view and transaction cost economics components, as well as the integration (I) – national responsiveness (NR) framework

Expanding the Horizons of Manufacturing: Towards Wide Integration, Smart Systems and Tools

This research topic aims at enterprise-wide modeling and optimization (EWMO) through the development and application of integrated modeling, simulation and optimization methodologies, and computer-aided tools for reliable and sustainable improvement opportunities within the entire manufacturing network (raw materials, production plants, distribution, retailers, and customers) and its components. This integrated approach incorporates information from the local primary control and supervisory modules into the scheduling/planning formulation. That makes it possible to dynamically react to incidents that occur in the network components at the appropriate decision-making level, requiring fewer resources, emitting less waste, and allowing for better responsiveness in changing market requirements and operational variations, reducing cost, waste, energy consumption and environmental impact, and increasing the benefits. More recently, the exploitation of new technology integration, such as through semantic models in formal knowledge models, allows for the capture and utilization of domain knowledge, human knowledge, and expert knowledge toward comprehensive intelligent management. Otherwise, the development of advanced technologies and tools, such as cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, the Industrial Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Blockchain, etc., have captured the attention of manufacturing enterprises toward intelligent manufacturing systems