Search results

Organizations are continually improving their practices to improve operational performance. They already employ Lean Manufacturing techniques (LM) to reduce unnecessary waste. Industry 4.0 techniques enhance operational performance in association with LM. Despite the proven benefits of LM principles and the advancements offered by Industry 4.0 technologies, many organizations struggle to integrate these approaches effectively. This research paper explores how LM principles can be combined with Industry 4.0 technologies to provide valuable guidance for businesses looking to adopt lean automation strategies.

A systematic literature review on LM and Industry 4.0 was done to investigate the possible technical integration of both methods. Ninety-two articles are extracted systematically from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. This study states a systematic literature review, including quantitative analysis of bibliographic networks and cluster analysis, to identify emergent ideas and their further implementation.

The research findings highlight the positive impact of integrating lean production with Industry 4.0 techniques, benefiting organizations in achieving their goals. A lean automation integration framework is proposed based on the literature review and the findings.

This study provides industry administrators and practitioners valuable guidance for enhancing organizational productivity. These implications can provide businesses with competitive advantages, enhance customer satisfaction, and enable them to adapt to the dynamic demands of the contemporary business environment.

This literature review study has substantially contributed to the technological integration of lean and Industry 4.0. The work has also identified potential emerging areas that warrant further research.

This paper aims to examine the determinants of the dividend distribution policy in a banking setting.

Using a sample of 48 Islamic banks and 94 conventional banks from 15 Islamic countries over a period spanning from 2012 to 2019, we document the effect of board gender diversity, executive director profile and governance mechanisms on dividend payment decisions. We also analyze the moderating effect of Islamic banks on the relationship between gender diversity and dividend policy.

We find new evidence on the role of women directors in determining dividend distribution policy and confirm the risk aversion hypothesis, hence contributing to the ongoing debate on gender diversity literature. Our results show that the moderating role of Islamic banks is effective only for small banks.

Our findings have practical implications for shareholders, managers and financial analysts as they suggest rationalizing dividend distribution strategies.

Our study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on dividend policy, gender diversity and Islamic banks.

This paper aims to examine the congruency effects of physically embodied robots in service encounters, which addressed a significant research gap concerning the synthesis of robot design elements (e.g., appearance and voice) and their service purposes.

Grounded in congruity theory and human-robot interaction literature, this study conducted a pretest and two experimental studies revealing the need to view robot design holistically and recognizing the pivotal role of congruity in shaping consumers’ service robot adoption. The moderating role of service purposes (utilitarian vs hedonic) was also investigated in terms of robot design and consumer reactions.

Consumers generally tend to favor robots with congruent designs, particularly for utilitarian service purposes. The serial mediation through perceived congruence and perceived intelligence explains such a favorite tendency.

This study advances service robot design research by highlighting the critical role of congruity in enhancing consumer engagement. It supports the use of comprehensive, congruent designs for services with utilitarian purposes and recommends adaptable designs for hedonic settings.

This study addressed the research gap by examining service robot design from a holistic perspective. The research findings highlight the importance of congruency effects in service robot design and deployment and provide valuable insights and guidelines to industry practitioners for optimal investment in service robots.

India liberalized its economy in 1991, which resulted in intense global competition, quality-conscious and demanding customers. Additionally, significant technological advancements lead to enhancements in products and processes. These forced Indian organizations to adopt innovative business strategies in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, the Lean Six Sigma methodology has significantly grown with vast applicability during the past 30 years. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop the learning on Lean Six Sigma methodology in the Indian context through investigation of literature.

A three-stage systematic literature review approach was adopted to investigate the literature during the present study. In total, 187 articles published in 62 journals/conference proceedings from 2005 to 2022 (18 years) were shortlisted. The first part of the article summarizes the significant milestones towards the quality journey in the Indian context, along with the evolution of the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The second part examines the shortlisted papers on Lean Six Sigma frameworks, their applicability in industrial sectors, performance metrics, outcomes realized, publication trends, authorship patterns and leading researchers from the Indian perspective.

Lean Six Sigma has emerged as a highly acclaimed and structured business improvement strategy worldwide. The Indian economy has seen remarkable growth in the past decade and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the 21st century. Lean Six Sigma implementation in India has significantly increased from 2014 onward. The study revealed that researchers have proposed several different frameworks for Lean Six Sigma implementation, the majority of which are conceptual. Furthermore, the balanced applicability of Lean Six Sigma in manufacturing and service sectors was observed with the highest implementation in the health-care sector. Additionally, the widely adopted tools, techniques along with performance metrics exploring case studies were reported along with a summary of eminent and leading researchers in the Indian context.

This study is confined to reviewed papers as per the research criteria with a significant focus on the Indian context and might have missed some papers due to the adopted papers selection strategy.

The present study is one of the initial attempts to investigate the literature published on Lean Six Sigma in the Indian context, including perspective on the Indian quality movement. Therefore, the present study will provide an understanding of Lean Six Sigma methodology in the Indian context to graduating students in engineering and management and entry-level executives. The analysis and findings on Lean Six Sigma frameworks, research approach, publications details, etc., will be helpful to potential research scholars and academia. Additionally, analysis of case studies on Lean Six Sigma implementation by Indian industries will assist the managers and professionals in decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple perspectives on managerial coaching: why and how managers engage, employees and human resource development (HRD) professionals’ perspectives on the use and how HRD and managers can better support each other with it.

This study used secondary analysis of empirical data already collected through a transnational study from 20 different medium-size to large organisations in the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. For this study, 58 interviews referring to coaching were analysed from 18 of these organisations, from these 3 different countries and from 3 stakeholder groups: managers, employees and HRD professionals.

Findings show that managers perform a variety of “on the job” informal coaching roles and that HRD professionals lead the more formal aspects. Managers felt that HRD support was limited and hoped for more. A limited number of employees mentioned coaching, but those that did highlighted the different types of coaching they received in the workplace, referring to managers but with little recognition of HRD’s role. HRD professionals shared how they support managers through both informal and formal coaching approaches, but this was not fully acknowledged by neither managers nor employees.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature on devolved HRD practices, highlighting that managers are engaging more in managerial coaching with their teams, that potentially employees are not that aware of this and that managers and employees are not fully aware of HRD’s contribution to supporting coaching and feel they could do more. As a result, this study suggests that HRD professionals have a clear role to play in creating and leading the supportive organisational culture for coaching to thrive, not only in setting the “coaching scene” for managers to work within but also through offering support for long-term capacity building for all employees.

Through the diffusion of key HRD activities into managerial roles, and while internal coaching is gaining more momentum, managers now step up when coaching their teams. This study extends the limited prior research on managers’ and others’ (employees and HRD) beliefs about the coaching role in the workplace. This study highlights the changing role of the manager, the need for HRD to offer more support for the joint role that managers are taking (manager and coach) and the partnership potential for HRD professionals to include all stakeholders including employees.

This study aims to examine whether firms that appear to exhibit high sustainable outputs are more likely to pay higher audit fees than firms without such outputs.

The sustainability outputs are measured using a sustainable product portfolio consisting of four products: clean energy products, eco-design products (EDP), environmental products (EP) and sustainable building projects (SBP). The audit fee variable is measured by the natural logarithm of the total amount of audit fees. The study tests two models of the association between these outputs and audit fees; Model 1 tests this association in the absence of the moderating variable (sustainability committee), and Model 2 tests the association in the presence of the moderating variable.

An analysis of data on 261 European firms from the Refinitiv Eikon database from 2010 to 2019 shows that high sustainability outputs are significantly and positively associated with audit fees. More importantly, this association is moderated by the presence of a board-level sustainability committee, suggesting that this type of committee reflects a factor considered by auditors in their audit risk assessment practices. The findings indicate that in Model 1, one (EP) out of four variables has a significant and positive association with audit fees, while in Model 2 and in the presence of sustainability committee, two variables (EP and EDP) have a significant and negative association with audit fees. However, the robust analysis shows that three variables (EP, EDP and SBP) have significant and negative associations with audit fees.

The study findings have important implications for policymakers, auditors and firms’ managers. For policymakers, the findings provide support for the argument that sustainable attitudes incentivise firms to manage sustainable product profiles more effectively. As such, policymakers should incentivise firms to establish a sustainability committee and regulate its role and responsibilities. Auditors should coordinate with the sustainability committee to facilitate audit efforts and reduce audit fees.

Understanding the relationship between sustainable products and audit fees will allow firms to improve their portfolio of sustainable products. In addition, other social implications of this study relate to improving relationships with society by establishing a sustainability committee that is responsible to communicate with that society.

The results support the argument that firms should manage sustainable product portfolios more effectively. In addition, the results of the study highlight the importance of a new variable as a moderator, the sustainability committee, which has not been examined before.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a cutting-edge new reality already having an unprecedented impact on society, the economy and businesses. Its future developments and long-term influence are still largely unknown. This article aims to examine AI’s potential benefits and challenges to corporate governance mechanisms, focusing on the board of directors.

The paper theoretically explores the influence of artificial intelligence on the board of directors’ capabilities, roles and functions.

Concerning rethinking board functioning in the era of artificial intelligence, the paper analyzes how artificial intelligence can impact the board of directors. It proposes some recommendations on how directors can more effectively integrate artificial intelligence into the boardroom, including establishing an internal artificial intelligence committee composed of experts with technical knowledge dedicated to managing artificial intelligence-related potential threats and opportunities.

Companies are invited to have some technical knowledge and expertise on artificial intelligence on the boards, fostering directors to upskill themselves in the new artificial intelligence technologies and establishing an ad-hoc internal committee. Policymakers are expected to keep pace with the growing proliferation of artificial intelligence solutions, defining a sharp regulatory framework.

The study advances knowledge in the corporate governance literature by shedding light on the effects of artificial intelligence on boards of directors and suggesting a set of best practices for its effective implementation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and decision making in the development of AI-related capabilities. We investigate if and how AI-driven decision making has an impact on firm performance. We also investigate the role played by environmental dynamism in the development of AI capabilities and AI-driven decision making.

We surveyed 346 managers in the United States using established scales from the literature and leveraged p modelling to analyse the data.

Results indicate that AI-driven decision making is positively related to firm performance and that big data-powered AI positively influences AI-driven decision making. Moreover, there is a positive relationship between big data-powered AI and the development of AI capability within a firm. It is also found that the control variables of firm size and age do not significantly affect firm performance. Finally, environmental dynamism does not have a positive and significant moderating effect on the path connecting big data-powered AI and AI-driven decision making, while it exerts a positive moderating effect on the development of AI capability to strengthen AI-driven decision making.

These findings extend the resource-based view by highlighting the capabilities developed within the firm to manage big data-powered AI. This research also provides theoretically grounded guidance to managers wanting to align their AI-driven decision making with superior firm performance.

Prior research has revealed that a large share of managers is reluctant towards the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in decision-making. This aversion can be caused by several factors, including individual drivers. The purpose of this paper is to better understand the extent to which individual factors influence managers’ attitudes towards the use of AI and, based on these findings, to propose solutions for increasing AI adoption.

The paper builds on prior research, especially on the factors driving the adoption of AI in companies. In addition, data was collected by means of 16 expert interviews using a semi-structured interview guideline.

The study concludes on four groups of individual factors ranked according to their importance: demographics, familiarity, psychology and personality. Moreover, the findings emphasized the importance of communication and training, explainability and transparency and participation in the process to foster the adoption of AI in decision-making.

The paper identifies four ways to foster AI integration for organizational decision-making as areas for further empirical analysis by business researchers.

This paper offers four ways to foster AI adoption for organizational decision-making: explaining the benefits and training the more adverse categories, explaining how the algorithms work and being transparent about the shortcomings, striking a good balance between automated and human-made decisions, and involving users in the design process.

The study concludes on four groups of individual factors ranked according to their importance: demographics, familiarity, psychology and personality. Moreover, the findings emphasized the importance of communication and training, explainability and transparency and participation in the process to foster the adoption of AI in decision-making.

This study is one of few to conduct qualitative research into the individual factors driving usage intention among managers; hence, providing more in-depth insights about managers’ attitudes towards algorithmic decision-making. This research could serve as guidance for developers developing algorithms and for managers implementing and using algorithms in organizational decision-making.