Work Organisation and Innovation - Case Study: Company X, Slovenia

[Excerpt] Company X is one of the largest and most successful commercial grocery retailing chains in south-eastern Europe (Euromonitor, 2011). It was established over 60 years ago in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Company X is the largest Slovenian retailer with 24,000 employees and approximately a third of the market share for its sector (Gvin.com, 2012). Company X also operates in six other countries in the region: Serbia (9% market share), Croatia (9% market share), Bosnia and Herzegovina (5% market share), Montenegro (19% market share), Bulgaria (0.5% market share) and Albania (1% market share) (Company X, 2011). Company X’s main activity is retail and wholesaling of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). The chain has been expanding its core activity by selling clothing, furniture and household appliances as well. Company X has 1,581 outlets including hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience stores, specialised stores, etc. (Company X, 2011)

Prospective Risk Assessment of Medicine Shortages in Europe and Israel: Findings and Implications

Introduction: While medicine shortages are complex, their mitigation is more of a challenge. Prospective risk assessment as a means to mitigate possible shortages, has yet to be applied equally across healthcare settings. The aims of this study have been to: 1) gain insight into risk-prevention against possible medicine shortages among healthcare experts; 2) review existing strategies for minimizing patient-health risks through applied risk assessment; and 3) learn from experiences related to application in practice. Methodology: A semi-structured questionnaire focusing on medicine shortages was distributed electronically to members of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action 15105 (28 member countries) and to hospital pharmacists of the European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) (including associated healthcare professionals). Their answers were subjected to both qualitative and quantitative analysis (Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and IBM SPSS Statistics®) with descriptive statistics based on the distribution of responses. Their proportional difference was tested by the chi-square test and Fisher's exact test for independence. Differences in the observed ordinal variables were tested by the Mann-Whitney or Kruskal-Wallis test. The qualitative data were tabulated and recombined with the quantitative data to observe, uncover and interpret meanings and patterns. Results: The participants (61.7%) are aware of the use of risk assessment procedures as a coping strategy for medicine shortages, and named the particular risk assessment procedure they are familiar with failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) (26.4%), root cause analysis (RCA) (23.5%), the healthcare FMEA (HFMEA) (14.7%), and the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) (14.7%). Only 29.4% report risk assessment as integrated into mitigation strategy protocols. Risk assessment is typically conducted within multidisciplinary teams (35.3%). Whereas 14.7% participants were aware of legislation stipulating risk assessment implementation in shortages, 88.2% claimed not to have reported their findings to their respective official institutions. 85.3% consider risk assessment a useful mitigation strategy. Conclusion: The study indicates a lack of systematically organized tools used to prospectively analyze clinical as well as operationalized risk stemming from medicine shortages in healthcare. There is also a lack of legal instruments and sufficient data confirming the necessity and usefulness of risk assessment in mitigating medicine shortages in Europe. © Copyright © 2020 Miljković, Godman, Kovačević, Polidori, Tzimis, Hoppe-Tichy, Saar, Antofie, Horvath, De Rijdt, Vida, Kkolou, Preece, Tubić, Peppard, Martinez, Yubero, Haddad, Rajinac, Zelić, Jenzer, Tartar, Gitler, Jeske, Davidescu, Beraud, Kuruc-Poje, Haag, Fischer, Sviestina, Ljubojević, Markestad, Vujić-Aleksić, Nežić, Crkvenčić, Linnolahti, Ašanin, Duborija-Kovačević, Bochenek, Huys and Miljković

The relationships between technological turbulence, flow experience, innovation performance and small firm growth

The main objective of the paper is to address the question of how to foster innovation and small firm growth under different levels of technological turbulence. Specifically, the paper examines the relationship among risk-taking, arising from different levels of technological turbulence, flow experience, innovation and small firm growth (i.e. market share and ROI growth). The underlying premise of our research is that there are substantial differences in low and high technological environments in terms of the relationships of risk taking, flow at work, innovation and small firm growth. Based on a survey among 188 entrepreneurs, the paper tests the proposed relationships in technological diverse environments with structural equation modelling. The results show that, when the level of technological turbulence is high, flow experience is significantly related to innovation and small firm growth, while in low-technological turbulence environment such relationships are not present. The study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature by demonstrating that in highly turbulent environments, flow experience may promote entrepreneurs’ innovation and the efficiency of small firm performance. The study also provides new empirical insights about the relationship between entrepreneurs’ behaviour, which is influenced by environmental conditions, on the one hand and innovation and small firm growth on the other hand

Microfoundations of SME open innovation

Purpose–The purpose of this research is to better understand the human aspects of open innovation in small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by exploring how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence enjoymentin helping others, knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding and consequently firms’open innovation. Design/methodology/approach–We collected data with a survey among CEOs in 140 SMEs andperformed confirmatory factor analysis applying structural equation modeling in IBM SPSS AMOS (v. 26). Findings–Results reveal that intrinsic motivation is positively associated with helping behavior andknowledge sharing and negatively associated with knowledge hiding. We also confirm the positiverelationship between extrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing. Moreover, we find that knowledge sharingincreases and knowledge hiding decreases the firm-level open innovation. Especially in high-tech industry,knowledge sharing is a vital determinant of open innovation. Originality/value–Responding to the calls for a deeper understanding of the individual-level factors thatdetermine organization-level open innovation, in this research we focus on the human aspect of open innovationin SMEs. Open innovation is a widely recognized and implemented concept among large corporations andfacilitates better understanding of new technological and market developments both within and outside oforganizations. However, understanding of the microfoundations of open innovation in smaller firms is stilllimited, but this steam of research is growing rapidly

Interorganizational employee mobility: A bibliometric analysis

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of interorganizational employee mobility, 55 defined as a movement of employees between the source and destination organizations that goes beyond simple turnover behaviour. We use a bibliometric analysis approach that applies quantitative and statistical methods to bibliographic data to deepen our objective understanding of how research on interorganizational employee mobility has evolved over time and to examine whether interorganizational employee mobility is multilevel in nature. The results of the performance analysis and various science mapping methods (co-authorship analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, and co-word analysis) reveal clustered networks of key contributors in the field (i.e., authors, journals, affiliations, countries). Authors from the field of management, mainly from the USA and Western European affiliations, dominate the field. However, few of them have more than one publication on the topic of interorganizational employee mobility, which indicates that the literature in the field is still scattered and not yet mature. Our findings contribute to the career development literature by providing a detailed insight into how career has changed over time and highlighting the main constructs and factors associated with individual decisions to change employers

Development and validation of ethical blindness scale

Recent models of ethical decision making have underlined the influence of unconscious processes of unethical behavior, and ethical blindness has been identified as a construct that deepens the understanding of unintentional unethical behavior. However, to date, no empirically tested measure of ethical blindness exists. Consequently, we have explored and developed a tool for measuring ethical blindness, which is presented in this paper. Based on qualitative data from interviews with individuals employed in different industries and a literature review, we developed a multidimensional measure of ethical blindness. The measure was tested and validated in several consecutive steps on three quantitative data sets. Exploratory factor analysis generated three factors (rationalization, routine, and ambiguity) comprising 12 items of ethical blindness. Confirmatory factor analysis verified that the three-factor structure had an acceptable fit. The dimensions displayed good internal reliability. Preliminary evidence of construct and discriminant validity was also provided. The paper discusses the practical implications and future research