COVID‑19 vaccine distribution: exploring strategic alternatives for the greater good

The dire state of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis symbolized the urgency for efficient distribution and administration of vaccines to combat the virus as the most urgent public health service. This paper presents a prototype multi-criteria decision support model based on goal programming that can effectively support vaccination plans for the greater good of society. The optimization goals of the model include minimizing the number of fatalities and risk of spreading the disease, while complying with government health agency’s priority guidelines for vaccination. This study applied the model to a real-world dataset to demonstrate how it can be effectively applied as a decision support tool for vaccine distribution plans and manage future pandemics

USING GOAL PROGRAMMING TO INCREASE THE EFFICIENCY OF MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

Organizations allocate a part of their financial resources to optimize their market segmentation strategies, plan marketing campaigns, and improve customer relationships. Throughout this process, they use a vast amount of electronic records generated by online and offline purchases to design effective marketing campaigns and introduce personalized promotions for their customers by employing data analytics. The problem of selecting target customer segments, given various priorities and the budget constraint, can be modeled as a multi-objective optimization problem with flexible goals and different priorities, interdependencies and resources constraints. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the use of the goal programming approach to address this challenge

What knowledge managers really do: An empirical and comparative analysis

The advent of information technology has generated not only interest in how to acquire, store and ‘‘mine’’ data, but also how to manage knowledge. Yet, there is still considerable confusion and a lack of understanding of what today’s knowledge managers really do. Continuing a stream of previous research on the behavior activities of traditional managers, this study investigated the relative amount of time today’s knowledge managers (N = 307) spend on traditional management functions, communications, human resources and networking. Besides identifying what knowledge managers really do, this study examined what successful knowledge managers do. Comparisons are then made with managers in the 1980s. Finally, the role that information technology plays in knowledge managers carrying out their managerial activities was assessed. The implications of some surprising findings and conclusions end the paper

What knowledge managers really do: An empirical and comparative analysis

The advent of information technology has generated not only interest in how to acquire, store and ‘‘mine’’ data, but also how to manage knowledge. Yet, there is still considerable confusion and a lack of understanding of what today’s knowledge managers really do. Continuing a stream of previous research on the behavior activities of traditional managers, this study investigated the relative amount of time today’s knowledge managers (N = 307) spend on traditional management functions, communications, human resources and networking. Besides identifying what knowledge managers really do, this study examined what successful knowledge managers do. Comparisons are then made with managers in the 1980s. Finally, the role that information technology plays in knowledge managers carrying out their managerial activities was assessed. The implications of some surprising findings and conclusions end the paper

A Text-mining Approach to Evaluate the Importance of Information Systems Research Themes

This study combines text-mining techniques and exploratory factor analysis to identify significant research themes in the information systems (IS) field during the last decade. We analyzed 483 papers that have been published in the Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ) journal since 2010. We found that the most published themes in the MISQ are: (1) the impact of information systems and digital innovation on organizational performance, (2) the influence of computer-mediated communication and social media within individuals and groups, (3) information systems development and project management, (4) design science, and (5) decision making and information Systems. We also perform econometric analysis to study the effect of these research themes on the number of downloads, citations and reads in Google Scholar (SC), ResearchGate (RG), and the Association for Information Systems (AIS) library. This study shows that “the impact of information systems and digital innovation on organizational performance and “the influence of computer-mediated communication and social media within individuals and groups” are positively associated with the number of reads, downloads, and citations. However, “information systems development and project management” is negatively associated with the number of reads, downloads, and citations. The methodology used here can be implemented in other areas of research by journal editors and research institutions to identify the most sought-after areas of future research. Also, understanding the most relevant themes of IS research can help universities revise their IS doctorate curriculum to better meet the needs of today\u27s academic workforce

Implementation of simulation software packages for healthcare scheduling

Simulation methodology is considered an effective decision making tool in the process of patient scheduling in healthcare centers. In spite of the large number of simulation software packages that are commercially available, operation researches still are facing difficulties to implement simulation models in healthcare centers. In many cases, healthcare schedulers must spend extra efforts trying to mold scheduling requirements to conform to the features of the package. In this paper, we offer a systematic approach that can be used by practitioners to successfully adopt the available software simulation packages, develop simulation models, and transform their findings into practical scheduling rules. A radiology center in a Midwestern Hospital is used to illustrate the proposed methodology

The Themes of Entrepreneurship Discourse: A Data Analytics Approach

Scholars are devoting heightened attention to the language of entrepreneurship and to its influence on the cognition, behaviors, and outcomes of entrepreneurs and their stakeholders. However, the primary themes that constitute entrepreneurs’ language are unexamined. In this partially-inductive study, we identify the most common themes in entrepreneurship discourse and explore how they have changed over time. To map the themes in entrepreneurs’ language, we use data analytic techniques coupled with text mining algorithms to analyze a longitudinal corpus of entrepreneurial discourse. Our findings reveal five dominant and recurring themes in entrepreneurship discourse – marketing activities, technology-oriented entrepreneurship, digital entrepreneurship, professional investment, and new venture entrepreneurship – and illustrate how these themes are evolving. By examining the key themes in the discourse of entrepreneurs and charting their transformation over time, our study makes theoretical and methodological contributions to entrepreneurship research. We identify the areas where the academic literature seems to be lagging practitioner discussions and suggest that scholars should evaluate research for how closely topics are calibrated with the main themes in the discourse of entrepreneurs. Our findings also produce practical implications for entrepreneurs by identifying the main themes receiving attention, which allows entrepreneurs to evaluate if the topics that comprise their day-to-day discourse align with the themes emphasized in the larger body of entrepreneurship discourse

Scheduling healthcare services: An object-orientation approach

This dissertation explores the possibility of applying the principles of the object-orientation paradigm in the area of decision making, in general, and for scheduling healthcare services, in particular. The use of object-orientation concepts, such as inheritance, encapsulation, classes, and subclasses provides the basis for the proposed model. A large regional community health center is used as a source of data for modeling the scheduling system. This dissertation consists of two major parts. In the first part, the object-orientation paradigm is explored and an object-orientation decision-making system for scheduling healthcare services is proposed. In the second part, specific optimization techniques are used to solve scheduling problems for two specific sub-classes of the proposed object-orientation scheduling system. These include traditional management science techniques, such as simulation and mathematical programming as well as more recent optimization techniques, such as genetic search algorithms. The radiology center is considered as a representative of that class of scheduling problems, which is characterized by random arrivals of patients, with stochastic processing times and several servers. For this class, simulation is proposed as an optimization technique. Another common class of scheduling problem is the one, which is characterized by sequence dependent setup times with dual criteria. When the number of patients in the system is relatively large, the proposed LP formulation becomes very complex with respect to the number of constraints and decision variables. In such a situation, a genetic search optimization model is proposed and designed. The results of this study are both theoretical and practical. The object-orientation approach helps for a better understanding of complex systems and provides solutions that can increase the flexibility of such systems. For the first time in the literature, this dissertation provides a comprehensive, yet simple and flexible scheduling system in a healthcare center based on the principles of the object-orientation paradigm. The proposed dispatching rules and optimization techniques significantly improve the overall performance of the hospital