Understanding competitiveness through life experiences – A strategy-as-practice approach

Practitioners learn and enact typical ways of thinking, understanding and viewing (interpreting) things in their surroundings (fields). The paper argues that by viewing competitiveness as something done by people and not a deliberate-emergent process has the potential to provide a fresh insight as to why competitive advantage is difficult to attain, maintain and plan. Therefore, it is advocated that the nature of competitiveness be explored through the practice theory lens. It is further suggested that due to the reflexive nature of practice theory, this approach allows investigation of the network of social practices, thus bridging the understanding of how social structures and human agency link together to clarify why people do what they do. In translating Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and reflexivity the research has captured the layered intersubjective and interdependent nature of (12 practitioner interviews) becoming competitive. By doing so, the intimate understanding of the way in which practitioners organise, produce and legitimise competitiveness is captured

Helping Deluxe Beds to sleep easy : a case study of agile project management

This case study describes the embedding of the Scrum project management framework as an innovation and operational improvement tool within a manufacturing Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) in the UK. The teaching notes inform 1) other UK manufacturing SMEs with novice teams, and 2) students at undergraduate and postgraduate level exploring innovation and operations management/improvement. The case advances our understanding of how small family-run manufacturing businesses can use contemporary frameworks such as Scrum to improve business operations and innovation. Deluxe Beds Ltd is a family SME manufacturing beds and mattresses with a technically novice workforce mainly with no formal educational background

Big data HE communities : could Twitter support UK universities amid the COVID-19 transition?

This chapter intends to explore the use of the Twitter social media platform as a microblog to share COVID-19 prescribed knowledge through observing the Twitter accounts of the five most student-populated UK universities. The chapter provides valuable practical insight to UK universities practitioners, students, and concerned stakeholders on the use of Twitter microblogs to share or retrieve knowledge required to cope with the current COVID-19 transition. The chapter sheds light on the unique characteristics of knowledge shared by UK universities through Twitter in relation to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter also highlights the unconventional use of Twitter by UK universities to share COVID-19 prescribed knowledge with their stakeholders

A project life-cycle readiness approach to manage construction waste in Jordan

The construction industry is well-known for generating the largest amount of waste amongst other industries, which significantly pollutes the environment. This study, therefore, examines the causes and sources of waste in construction projects, considering activities, inputs, and outputs of each phase of the construction projects’ lifecycle (i.e., concept, definition, deployment, and transition). Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted with professionals in construction projects in Jordan, including architects, contractors, and project administrators. The findings reveal that waste resulting from construction projects passes across several organized operations from generation to final disposal. Furthermore, waste is generated in small amounts at the early stages of the project construction but grows as the project progresses towards the end. This paper’s key contribution is to supplement the literature on waste management solutions by providing a holistic approach to tackling waste at its root by including waste management strategies across the project lifecycle phases, not only during the construction phase. This is done with a management readiness view to develop a suitable strategy for construction waste minimization and improve the management of construction projects. This study’s practical implication is providing a holistic waste management framework for practitioners to adopt in the early stages of the project

Covid-19 transition, could Twitter support UK Universities?

This paper seeks to conceptually explore the use of social media platforms such as Twitter as a microblog to share Covid-19 prescribed knowledge through developing a conceptual framework of university ecosystem knowledge regime. The framework outlines three ecosystem artefacts; teaching, assessment, and student experience and what knowledge sharing strategies that may help representing these artefacts to the wider community of the ecosystem. The paper provides valuable practical insight to UK Universities practitioners, students and concerned stakeholders on the use of Twitter microblogs to share or retrieve knowledge required to cope with the current Covid-19 transition. The paper sheds light on the unique characteristics of knowledge sharing by UK Universities through Twitter in relation to the current Covid-19 pandemic. The paper also highlights the unconventional use of Twitter by UK Universities to share Covid-19 prescribed knowledge with its stakeholders

Can knowledge be retained in informal organisational networks?

Taking a constructivist view of knowledge where knowledge is viewed as a process of knowing, the literature on knowledge sharing assumes that knowledge can be retained through being embedded in institutional routines, structures, and systems. However, this concept is challenged in the context of informal organisational networks where membership is voluntary, temporary and organisationally unsanctioned. Such challenges have predominately focused around: 1) behavioural aspects including organisational and individual defence mechanisms to protect knowledge and opportunistic behaviours such as free-riding; or 2) social aspects including lack of mutual trust and asymmetric power relations. This paper investigates the challenges to knowledge retention in knowledge-sharing networks, reporting on data collected from case studies of four organisational networks in the UK. There is a significant amount of literature addressing such challenges on organisational level, however, less research has been done on the network level. In particular, the challenge of knowledge retention within networks. The research adopts Social Exchange Theory in order to develop the theoretical underpinning and data interpretation. The paper also presents an explanatory model to inform theorists and practitioners on how to improve knowledge retention in networks. The case study consisted of four knowledge-sharing networks, two photography networks; women entrepreneurship network; and a construction network in the North West of England. A qualitative approach was used through an ethnographic lens consisting of 18 months participant observation study that produced 28 semi-structured interviews. The study also utilised data from network archive network spanning two years from 2012-2014. This paper argues that knowledge shared in the networks analysed largely remained inside the network and that less knowledge was shared with networked organisations making the network knowledge “ontologically” separate from knowledge created in organisation. The data also revealed that the boundary spanners found it difficult to share knowledge between their formally contracted organisation and the informal network due to issues related to trust and unbalanced reciprocal exchanges. Our investigation of knowledge sharing in those networks demonstrates the difficulty in retaining knowledge on a network level due to blurring organisational boundaries and temporariness of such networks

Increased 30-Day Mortality in Very Old ICU Patients with COVID-19 Compared to Patients with Respiratory Failure without COVID-19

Purpose: The number of patients ≥ 80 years admitted into critical care is increasing. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) added another challenge for clinical decisions for both admission and limitation of life-sustaining treatments (LLST). We aimed to compare the characteristics and mortality of very old critically ill patients with or without COVID-19 with a focus on LLST. Methods: Patients 80 years or older with acute respiratory failure were recruited from the VIP2 and COVIP studies. Baseline patient characteristics, interventions in intensive care unit (ICU) and outcomes (30-day survival) were recorded. COVID patients were matched to non-COVID patients based on the following factors: age (± 2 years), Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score (± 2 points), clinical frailty scale (± 1 point), gender and region on a 1:2 ratio. Specific ICU procedures and LLST were compared between the cohorts by means of cumulative incidence curves taking into account the competing risk of discharge and death. Results: 693 COVID patients were compared to 1393 non-COVID patients. COVID patients were younger, less frail, less severely ill with lower SOFA score, but were treated more often with invasive mechanical ventilation (MV) and had a lower 30-day survival. 404 COVID patients could be matched to 666 non-COVID patients. For COVID patients, withholding and withdrawing of LST were more frequent than for non-COVID and the 30-day survival was almost half compared to non-COVID patients. Conclusion: Very old COVID patients have a different trajectory than non-COVID patients. Whether this finding is due to a decision policy with more active treatment limitation or to an inherent higher risk of death due to COVID-19 is unclear.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio