Lean Product Development: Nothing New Under the Sun?

The concept of lean product development has attracted the attention of many scholars since its inception in the 1990s derived from practices at Toyota Motor Company. Key to this approach to new product development (NPD) are a few methods derived from lean production as well as longer established practices such as concurrent engineering. This makes one wonder whether lean product development is a new practice, a new method or an encapsulation of already existing methods at the time; this quest for the roots and tenets of lean product development, also in comparison with other methods for NPD, is the focus of this paper. This journey takes this propositional paper not only to the roots of lean product development and the context of its era of conception, but also to what this concept adds to other extant methods for NPD. In particular, this comparison draws out that other methods are trying to achieve the same objectives: the creation of products and services with value to the customer, the reduction of time‐to‐market and the efficient use of resources. This inference implies that managers of new product (and service) development can choose from a wider pallet of methods and approaches to enhance the performance of R&D and to connect better to manufacturing (including supply chains). Inevitably, this has implications for research on (lean) product and service development; hence, this paper sets out a research agenda based on the deliberations and gaps that have been uncovered in the discourse.     

Form Perception of Partly Occluded Shapes in 4‐Month‐Old Infants

Two habituation experiments were conducted to investigate how 4‐month‐old infants perceive partly occluded shapes. In the first experiment, we presented a simple, partly occluded shape to the infants until habituation was reached. Then we showed either a probable completion (one that would be predicted on the basis of both local and global cues) or an improbable completion. Longer looking times were found for the improbably completed shape (compared to probable and control conditions), suggesting that the probable shape was perceived during partial occlusion. In the second experiment, infants were habituated to more ambiguous partly occluded shapes, where local and global cues would result in different completions. For adults, the percept of these shapes is usually dominated by global influences. However, after habituation the infants looked longer at the globally completed shapes. These results suggest that by the age of 4 months, infants are able to infer the perceptual completion of partly occluded shapes, but for more ambiguous shapes, this completion seems to be dominated by local influences.     

A magical model to predict individual differences in mood change

We tested a mathematical model of psychological well-being (PWB) with data from a paradigm that included a negative mood induction followed by a positive induction. The propositions from the model encompass the hypothesis that the relative mood prior to either induction has implications for the magnitude of subsequent induction effects, such that relative mood is defined by current mood as a ratio of the prevailing mood that is predicted by the model. The findings confirm the hypothesis that the relative mood at baseline predicts mood change in a nonoverlapping time period, even after control for potentially mediating variables.     

An alternative to farmer age as an indicator of life-cycle stage: The case for a farm family age index

In studies of farming, the age of the principal decision-maker (PDM) has been associated with numerous farm structural and managerial features and has been widely accepted as a good indicator of the influence of life-cycle factors on decision-making. As such, it has become an important aspect of many quantitative studies of agricultural change. However, contemporary studies of family farming demonstrate that the concept of a single PDM in family farms is becoming an anachronism as alternative enterprises, pluriactivity and the scale of family farms force more diffuse management/operating systems. This raises questions concerning whether the age of the PDM can still be taken as representative of farm structure, strategy or life-cycle stage? Using a study conducted in the Grampian Mountains region of Scotland in 2003 this note investigates the impact of using an alternative index—compiled by averaging the age of family members working on the farm. It suggests that PDM age is a relatively poor indicator of farm structural and managerial features compared to a family age index and calls for researchers to think about alternative approaches to measuring ‘age’ as an indicator.     

Happiness has traitlike and statelike properties: A reply to Veenhoven

Veenhoven (1994) contrasted hypotheses of whether happiness is a trait or state, concluding that it is a state variable. This article critiques the conceptual foundation of Veenhoven's paper, and examines technical deficiencies in his review of evidence. Based on previous findings and new analyses, we conclude that happiness has both traitlike and statelike properties, but that individual differences in happiness endure despite its situational reactivity, and explain greater variance than situational effects.     

Understanding manager resistance to blockchain systems

Blockchain technology has received much attention in the media and there is an increasing interest amongst organizations within financial services due to the potential benefits. As blockchain-based systems are a nascent technology, the requirements of the technology need to be understood, to allow blockchain systems to be successfully integrated within financial service organizations. There are gaps in academic research in understanding how managers evaluate the value of a blockchain-based system. This study develops a model to explain manager resistance to implementing blockchain-based systems in financial services organizations. This research advances the theoretical understanding of managers’ perspectives on blockchain-based systems and models their resistance to blockchain technology.     

Building ‘cowshed cultures’: A cultural perspective on the promotion of stockmanship and animal welfare on dairy farms

Improving animal welfare is an important part of the development of the agricultural industry, particularly at a time when intensification and the encroachment of factory-style production systems is making the maintenance of human-animal relations increasingly difficult. Animal science deals with the issue of improving stockmanship by focusing on the relationships between attitudes and behaviour, under the premise that improved attitudes will lead to improved behaviour. From an analysis of 42 interviews with owners, sharemilkers and workers on dairy farms in New Zealand we present a different view, seeing behaviour instead as part of a self-reinforcing culture in which animals, humans and the physical structure all contribute to the development of farm specific ways of doing and being. We further suggest that changing one stockperson's attitude alone is insufficient to ensure a change in the culture as other actors – including animals and non-human actors – reinforce any existing culture that has developed, making both attitudinal and behavioural change difficult. We conclude by discussing the key importance of designing farm systems and structures that promote positive interactions between animals and humans and suggest that this, rather than simply promoting knowledge and attitudinal change, is likely to be the most effective way of maintaining stockmanship in the face of an industrialising agriculture.     

Researcher reflexivity: exploring the impacts of CAQDAS use

Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) programs are established tools for qualitative research. Making informed decisions when using them requires researchers to understand how they affect research practices and outcomes. In this article we consider the impact of CAQDAS on researcher reflexivity. Reviewing three decades of literature, we identify specific ‘reflexive moments’ experienced by CAQDAS users, the contexts in which they occur, the issues they raise, and the reflexive awareness they generate. The ways in which CAQDAS can enhance or undermine researcher reflexivity are also reported. By doing so, we aim to help researchers and especially research students (and their supervisors) understand the relationship between CAQDAS and reflexivity and the reflexive moments they may encounter when using such software.     

Context Matters: Differential Effects of Discrimination by Environmental Context on Depressive Symptoms Among College Students of Color

Clinical Social Work Journal - Experiences with more subtle racism – which have been called microaggressions – have a host of negative effects on health, mental health, educational...     

Conceptualizing reflection in experience-based workplace learning

This paper seeks to understand key dimensions of reflection in experience-based workplace learning for research being collaboratively undertaken by scholars in Dutch and US research institutions. We systematically explore and compare Tara Fenwick’s analysis of five perspectives on cognition to distinguish among constructivist, psychoanalytic, situative, critical-cultural, and enactivist perspectives on reflection. Our aim is to examine how to conceptualize reflection so that one or more perspectives can complement our understanding of learning through experience at work. We position reflection not only from a practical but also from a theoretical perspective that moves beyond the individual focus of the constructivist perspective. Fenwick’s five perspectives are described in terms of whether and how reflection is utilized, key activities in the process of reflection, relative focus on the individual and/or the context, triggers for reflection, role of power and positionality, role of emotions, and reflection outcomes. We conclude that adding other lenses to the dominant constructivist perspective helps expand our understanding of reflection as well as identify and attend to other tools, people, and factors in the work situation that influence reflection processes and learning outcomes. The paper closes with a discussion of promising new approaches that have emerged since Fenwick’s analysis.