A Framework for Assessing the IT Readiness of Retail Warehouse Control Systems for Peak Season

This paper provides insights on the link between operational risk management, disaster recovery (DR), business continuity planning (BCP), outsourcing and operational resilience, for financial services. Core of the analysis of this paper is examining the use of stress and scenario testing for operational risks, focusing on the UK insurance sector as a case study. Specifically, it presents a critical analysis on the application of this risk management tool in risk and crisis management, from a resilience lens. The aim of this practical paper is to highlight the relationship between DR, BCP, third party risk management (TPRM) and operational resilience from a scenario analysis angle and testing requirements. This comparison of existing regulatory prescribed stress tests supports the recommendations for the development of company-specific severe but plausible scenarios. Guidance on the development, design, assessment and quantification of idiosyncratic scenarios is presented, building on the lessons learned from the regulatory prescribed stress tests. Overall, this research highlights the application of scenario analysis and stress testing as a core element of risk management practices for UK insurance companies in meeting operational resilience requirements, while enhancing their DR, BCP, TPRM and their overall approach in managing operational risks. Insights on advances in scenario analysis and stress testing for cyber risks and operational resilience are sought, considering the developments around FinTech and providing practical guidance for their implementation. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business.

High customer expectations, product provenance and authenticity, transparency, traceability and inventory management are critical points in any retail business. The failure to provide these points can lead to customer dissatisfaction, defection and extremely inefficient processes. Retailers can stand to benefit from better provenance tools, as consumers are increasingly concerned about the origins of products they purchase, from ethical as well as value-based standpoints. The main benefit of blockchain is that retail organisations can prove what they delivered on their promises by product authenticity, tracking and tracing reliable delivery throughout the supply chain and accountability of suppliers. This chapter aim to; (i) Help retailers to understand potential application areas of blockchain in retail supply chain. (ii) Analyse the challenges and opportunities of blockchain technology in retail industry.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider the nature of the business continuity management (BCM) process and to frame it within wider literature on the performance of socio-technical systems. Despite the growth in BCM activities in organisations, some questions remain as to whether academic research has helped to drive this process. The paper seeks to stimulate discussion within this journal of the interplay between organisational performance and BCM and to frame it within the context of the potential tensions between effectiveness and efficiency.Design/methodology/approachThe paper considers how BCM is defined within the professional and academic communities that work in the area. It deconstructs these definitions in order to and set out the key elements of BCM that emerge from the definitions and considers how the various elements of BCM can interact with each other in the context of organisational performance.FindingsThe relationships between academic research in the area of crisis management and the practice-based approaches to business continuity remain somewhat disjointed. In addition, recent work in the safety management literature on the relationships between success and failure can be seen to offer some interesting challenges for the practice of business continuity.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper integrates work in safety, crisis and risk management with BCM in order to identify the main areas of overlap and synergy between these areas of academic research. By definition, the need for business continuity represents the risks and cost of failure in organisational performance in the absence of continuity. This calls into question the effectiveness of organisational processes around decision making, control, and strategic management. The paper sets out a series of issues that are in need of further research.Practical implicationsThe paper draws on some of the practice-based definitions of BCM and highlights the limitations and challenges associated with the construct. The paper sets out challenges for BCM based upon theoretical challenges arising in cognate areas of research. The aim is to ensure that BCM is integrated with emerging concepts in other aspects of the management of uncertainty and to do so in a strategic context.Originality/valueAcademic research on performance reflects both the variety and the multi-disciplinary nature of the issues around measuring and managing performance. Failures in organisational performance have also invariably attracted considerable attention due to the nature of a range of disruptive events. The paper reveals some of the inherent paradoxes that sit at the core of the BCM process and its relationships with organisational performance.

This study identifies and systematically reviews the literature on resilience in management research in order to characterise operational resilience. We argue that operational resilience provides an integrative view on different resilience perspectives in business (supply chain, business continuity, infrastructure, organisational, strategic). Using the resource-based view and particularly dynamic capabilities perspective as theoretical lenses, operational resilience is discussed in relation to the core business processes of an enterprise. Five core functions (sense, build, reconfigure, re-enhance, sustain) are identified from literature and discussed taking into account desired and undesired consequences of uncertainties. Moreover, operational resilience is operationalised using routines pertaining to the identified core functions. The proposed operational resilience core functions are further scrutinised using two case examples. Future research is suggested to validate the identified core functions and to use them for empirical analysis, including investigation of relationships with operations management paradigms such as lean thinking.

An electromyographic and kinematic comparison between an extendable conveyor system and an articulating belt conveyor used for truck loading and unloading tasks

Sustaining operational resilience is widely discussed yet remains poorly defined. At times it has been suggested to denote the ability to respond to unplanned events, while at others it has been equated with disaster recovery, business continuity, or even just predictable outages. This paper takes the more detailed exploration of operational resilience introduced in Baker et al. under the term observability-driven reliability. This perspective stems from a thorough analysis of observing systems and the role they play in operational resilience.

Evaluating the effects of distribution centres on the performance of vendor-managed inventory systems

UNICEF Uganda is one of the fast growing UN agencies working in Uganda in terms of funding with an annual budget of over USD. 71 million, expanded programmes and projects and increasing number of staff and consultants to implement its programmes. Its performance and impact remains outstanding among the not-for-profit organisations. However in Uganda, for most of the international not for Profit organisations when a post falls vacant the period taken to fill such posts is actually very long ranging from six months to two years. During such a period, the organisation is missing the essential staff to carry on the essential activities of the organisation hence weighing down its performance. In a quest to explore the effect of Human Resource Planning on the Performance of the Not-for profit organisations using UNICEF as a case study, the research set out to access this basing on three objectives: to examine the relationship between succession planning and organizational performance of UNICEF Uganda, to establish the relationship between Contingency planning and organizational performance of UNICEF Uganda and to investigate the influence of competency planning on organizational performance of UNICEF Uganda. The study undertook a review of literature on the subject, an in-depth review of the organisation’s performance over years. The survey involved both staff and top management. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered through a document review and interviewer-administered and self-administered questionnaire schedules. The sample size was 121, and 107 respondents returned the questionnaires, 14 out of 16 key informants were interviewed. Qualitative data were analysed with thematic analysis method while quantitative data were analysed using MS Excel and STATA to derive the mean and Standard deviation. SPSS was used to establish the correlations. The findings of the study reveal that deliberate Human Resource Planning in UNICEF Uganda exists and to a greater extent contribute to its outstanding organisational performance. Human Resource planning is more looked at from the angle of contingency planning, making sure that there is business continuity in case of emergency. The approach used is the staff back up system where a staff acts for the vacant post for a period greater than 6 months. More emphasis is put on competency planning, building the capacity of its staff through continuous training, coaching, emphasizing individual performance plans, evaluating them regularly and giving continuous feedback to staff which has proved significant in improving performance. The study found out that there is inadequate succession planning in UNICEF. Planning the potential replacement of current leadership positions is completely lacking. Overall, there is a positive and significant relationship between Succession Planning, Contingency Planning, Competency Planning and Organizational Performance as per r values of 0.961, 0.749, and 0.875 P<0.01 respectively. The overall adjusted r is 0.18 implying that HRP contributes 18% to the overall organizational performance in UNICEF. In light of the above a number of recommendations and conclusions were drawn which if implemented, would contribute more on improving organisational performance. These include; Developing a succession plan, KPI on filling a post to be calculated from when the time when post is vacant to when its actually filled, reduce on vacancy period to a maximum of 3 months, use a talent pool to fill a vacant post even when it has only one candidate, pay Special Post Allowance to all staff, contingency plan should be documented and communicated to all staff, allocate the training budget to each section, promote staff who perform exceptionally without competition and measure the absorption capacity of partners before disbursing funds.

The International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories Presents Abstracts from Its Annual Meeting

Supply chain and logistics are critical to the retail industry as they directly impact cost efficiency, customer satisfaction, and overall profitability. The rise of big data analytics (BDA) has transformed industries across the globe, and retail is no exception. With the increasing integration of BDA into retail supply chains and logistics, this literature review aims to explore a range of impacts of big data analytics on retail supply chains, including enhanced decision-making capabilities, customer experience improvements, inventory management optimization, and increased operational efficiency. By synthesizing recent studies and conceptual frameworks, this review highlights key findings and lays the groundwork for future research in this area.

This paper quantitatively assessed employee perceptions regarding the operational counter-terrorism preparedness and the adequacy of mitigation strategies at the Dusit D2 Hotel in Nairobi, following the critical 2019 attack. The research employed a quantitative, cross-sectional design, utilising Stratified Random Sampling to survey 110 employees, achieving an 83.3% response rate from the target sample. Data analysis utilised descriptive statistics and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare perceptions across three employment cadres: Top Management, Middle Management, and First-level Staff. The findings revealed a critical imbalance in the hotel's security posture. While the organisation shows high confidence in its physical and technological mitigation measures (e.g., Mass Notification Systems and Physical Barriers), its operational readiness is severely undermined by human and procedural deficiencies. The ANOVA results showed a statistically significant difference (p=0.033) in the perceived Overall Operational Preparedness across the employment cadres, confirming a distinct preparedness gradient where confidence diminishes significantly from Top Management to First-level Staff. Further analysis established that an overwhelming 74.0% of all employees deemed the counter-terrorism training to be inadequate, a systemic failure that held true across all hierarchical levels (p=0.331). The study concludes that the hotel's operational resilience is compromised by a critical failure to translate strategic security measures into confident, actionable capabilities among the frontline workforce

Management Insights

Property and Casualty (P&C) insurers are adopting multi-cloud environments as a strategic imperative because of their increasing data volumes and complexities in regulatory compliance, customer expectations and technological advancements. This paper discusses how Snowflake?s cloud-agnostic, unified platform enables insurers to create resilient, efficient, and compliant multi cloud data strategies. Using Snowflake?s elastic scalability, real-time analytics, secure data sharing and seamless cloud interoperability, insurers can optimize claims processing, augment fraud detection, and support customer engagement. The study offers core design principles for multi cloud data architectures and sheds light on problems in data fragmentation, latency, and security risks. It points to how Snowflake enables data resilience, including data replication, encryption, GDPR, and CCPA compliance. Details are provided. Practical implementation strategies of phased data migration ETL pipelines and integration with existing enterprise system to ensure a smooth deployment. Snowflake is seen as a clear win through a cost-benefit analysis with metrics like RTO and RPO that define how well Snowflake performs disaster recovery and business continuity. Additionally, the paper also looks at the emergence of tech like AI, blockchain and edge computing which could additionally bolster multi-cloud strategies even further. Finally, Snowflake enables the journey for P&C insurers through cloud ecosystem pitfalls, enabling operational resilience, regulatory compliance, along competitive advantage in a data-driven industry.

This paper examines risk and resilience through a lens of healthcare supply chain management and business continuity planning. Given contemporary considerations of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, healthcare supply chain management is experiencing new levels of disruption and urgency, requiring leaders to reconsider extant approaches to operational readiness posturing. Developing and inculcating strategic and agile supply chain factors and processes into organisational operations planning toward appropriately responding to complex disruptive supply chain events requires revised understanding, emphasis and modelling. Rational decision making must be applied in the context of problem solving and preparedness. While organisations continue to perceptibly play ‘whack-a-mole’ with supply chain resilience and risk management/mitigation, a better approach may be to align operational readiness with more definable, developed planning approaches. This paper presents five evolving concepts that should entice supply chain leaders to re-examine risk and resilience from a business continuity of operations perspective aligned with business and customer impact analyses, urgency and frequency of needs, and the feasibility of designed support models. Nascent theory development guided the paper’s writing. Development of this work involved a qualitative synthesis of literature associated with healthcare supply chain management, which tends to be underrepresented in academia as a specified genre of supply chain management. While no named theory is introduced within this paper, there may be similar underpinnings from other authors and readers’ curiosity may be piqued when considering an array of concepts closely aligned with three salient perspectives: technological advances’ influence on healthcare supply chain operations; forecasting and implications associated with longstanding, potentially misaligned application of just-in-time within healthcare; and supply chain amplifications (resulting from poor demand management methods in many instances) amid extant practices and processes. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

1 - Contingency and Continuity Planning