Suchergebnisse

Supply chains for various goods span across multiple nations. Often, lower developed countries are involved in which no adequate background institutions have been established. Consequently, sustainable behavior of multinational corporations is important. To make companies' performance regarding sustainability more transparent, various international institutions developed guidelines for sustainability reporting. Based on the predominant Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework, they have analyzed the reports of two outdoor equipment vendors, namely Timberland LLC and The North Face. Consumers of outdoor products are expected to be more aware of the impact their purchases have. The authors briefly introduce the GRI framework and the concerned sector. The two companies' actions are compared in detail and their actions assessed based on theories of ethical business operation. Afterwards implications of the findings are discussed. The authors' results suggest that companies in this sector are conscious about sustainability but individual performance greatly differs.

Resilience is a topic of steadily increasing interest. It particularly gains importance when discussing how communities (e.g. municipalities) can prepare themselves for potential future disruptions. A resilient community will overcome immediate shocks, such as an earthquake, as well as stresses, such as the successive outbreak of a pandemic. Due to the novelty of the topic, research particularly exists on theoretical aspects of resilience. Targeting learning - and thereby the local population - is a rather new emergence. To effectively reach, involve, and engage citizens, technology can play a key role. Based on four actual cases from communities we analyse the impact technology has on learning about resilience. We then scrutinize the effectiveness and propose future steps. Thereby, we seek to provide practical advice to local governments and to enrich the theory at the same time.

In crisis informatics, little attention is placed on how transitions occur between periods of crisis and non-crisis. The analysis of transition behaviors in public organizations could help in understanding the duality between the need for continuity of services provided to the community, and the cyclical nature of risk and crisis management. This study uniquely highlights the transitions occurring when organizations need to stop day-to-day activities to focus on responding to a crisis while continuing to provide services to their communities. We focus on the use of social media analytics as a support system to study transitions and, with the objective to gain an insight into how sociotechnical systems navigate through periods of crisis and non-crisis, we leverage individual experiences of use of social media as a source of information in public service organizations and developers of social media analytics support tools. In doing so, we employed a process study approach, conducted semi-structured interviews, and used thematic analysis to trace patterns of transitions between crisis and non-crisis states. Furthermore, we formulate five signals that public organizations exhibit to illustrate and guide organizational transition behaviors. The main contribution of this study is the explanation and conceptualization of how transitions happen by framing social media as a support information system. In addition, we highlight the return to a new steady state, an overlooked area of organizational transitions and continuity. Our study will help streamline processes of continuity in organizations and inspires the design and improvement of current and future support systems. Future research could apply and extend our propositions to other support systems such as geospatial technologies, robots, and even artificial intelligence.

AbstractResponding to a disaster encompasses a myriad of humanitarian actions; the ultimate and crucial is immediate relief distribution. Making effective decisions in chaotic disaster environment is always complex and challenging. Decisions made here are heavily influenced by the decisions made in several related problem areas such as facility locations, relief supply chain, transportation, scheduling, and inventory management. While each of these problem areas has its own set of decision factors, several of these factors are also common in multiple problem areas. These common decision factors offer both an opportunity and a challenge. The challenge is to balance the relative importance of a factor that is common between one or more problem areas—one factor that is considered vital in one area may have a lower priority in another area. The opportunity here is to develop a common framework that can help all problem areas to work together to achieve the main objective of effectively distributing essential relief goods among affected people. While the literature has studied individual problem areas and their decision factors, an integrated view showing the linkages between multiple problem areas is missing. In this paper, we propose such an integrative framework. Based on a systematic review of the literature, we first identified problem areas that are linked to relief distribution and then identified the linkages between these areas. We synthesized the findings into a conceptual framework and validated it through a panel of experienced field experts who work in relief distribution. We framed our refined framework as an information ecosystem of humanitarian actions where relief distribution resides at the core. Such a conceptualization will not only enrich the in-depth understanding of humanitarian domain, but also offer insights for developing computer-based decision support systems for relief distribution.

During a crisis, authorities need to effectively disseminate information. We address the problem of deciding how crisis-related information should be published on Facebook to reach as many people as possible. We examine three recent terrorist attacks in Berlin, London and Stockholm. Our specific focus lies with official Facebook pages by municipalities and emergency service agencies. We collected posts about the events, along with the number of shares, likes and emotional reactions to them. In a regression analysis, several variables were examined that capture decisions on which information to publish and how. Posts containing condolences were found to result in three times as many emotional reactions as other posts, all other variables held constant. Images and videos positively affected the number of reactions by factors of 2.2 and 3.9, respectively, while text length negatively affected the number of shares. These results will help in the development of effective guidelines.

As a result of several governments closing educational facilities in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, almost 80% of the world's students were not in school for several weeks. Schools and universities are thus increasing their efforts to leverage educational resources and provide possibilities for remote learning. A variety of educational programs, platforms, and technologies are now accessible to support student learning; while these tools are important for society, they are primarily concerned with the dissemination of theoretical material. There is a lack of support for hands-on laboratory work and practical experience. This is particularly important for all disciplines related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), where labs and pedagogical assets must be continuously enhanced in order to provide effective study programs. In this study, we describe a unique perspective to achieving multi-sensory learning through the integration of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) with haptic wearables in STEM education. We address the implications of a novel viewpoint on established pedagogical notions. We want to encourage worldwide efforts to make fully immersive, open, and remote laboratory learning a reality.