Understanding and Development of Supply Chain Agility and Flexibility: A Structured Literature Review

This paper provides a review of the literature while contributing to academic understanding of the concepts of agility and flexibility within the supply chain. The research identified 83 peer‐reviewed articles through a structured review technique, which is based on a three‐stage refinement process. Data reduction procedures using codification, sentence strings and a review of keywords, title, abstract and conclusion were used in the search. The papers identified focused on organizational and supply chain agility and flexibility. The acknowledged gaps in understanding and development of agility and flexibility in supply chains were identified and categorized in terms of conceptual, contextual and methodological gaps. Subsequent to the gap analysis, this paper argues that effective relationship integration with key partners is a fundamental mechanism for mitigating the problem of control dissipation, which has hindered academic understanding with respect to development and application of agile and flexible capabilities in supply chains. The findings in this paper will help academics to gain a better understanding and to develop the concepts of supply chain agility and flexibility. In addition, the findings indicate that supply chain stakeholders need to address the issue of relationship integration when undertaking, or participating in agility and flexibility development programmes, so as to maximize supply chain performance. The paper concludes by highlighting implications for managers and researchers, and proposes a number of areas for future investigation.     

Cross‐Ethnic Equivalence of Socialization Measures in European American and African American Youth

We examined the cross‐ethnic equivalency of socialization measures developed primarily with European American families. Four aspects of measurement equivalence were assessed: conceptual, operational, scalar, and functional. Evidence of between—and within—group measurement equivalency of socialization measures was derived from youth reports of 500 European American and 134 African American individuals ages 10 to 18, using confirmatory factor analyses and item response theory analyses. Findings indicate that most individual indicators of socialization, with the exception of paternal psychological control and parent‐youth conflict, demonstrated cross‐ethnic equivalence. The findings also suggest that lax control is better represented as a multidimensional construct (leniency and laxness).     

The Role of Children in Eastern European Families

This study examines the additive effect of attitudes towards gender roles and importance of marriage on the centrality of children in seven East European countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, the former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Slovenia using the data from the 1994 International Social Science Survey (ISSP). Results support country related differences in participants' attitudes about gender roles, marriage and children. The results show former East Germany as being the most egalitarian country, Bulgaria and Hungary as the most traditional ones, and Poland, Slovenia, Russia and Czech Republic in between. A model of the dynamics among attitudes towards gender roles, importance of marriage and the centrality of children was tested for the goodness‐of‐fit using structural equation models (AMOS 4.0) techniques by the method of maximum likelihood. The goodness‐of‐fit provided evidence that the hypothesised model was stable. The results indicated that attitudes towards gender roles and marriage have a strong impact on attitudes toward children.     

Public Policies and Equality of Opportunity for Wellbeing in Multiple Dimensions: A Theoretical Discussion and Evidence from Bolivia

Social Indicators Research - While there are many cross-sectional studies that provide data on gambling behaviour and the characteristics of those who gamble, there are few large-scale population...     

An approach to the design of housing for Kathmandu, Nepal : Improving utility and facilitating construction

Totally modern design of housing in Nepal causes problems both in its use and construction. The modern designs have arbitrary spatial layouts that are incompatible with the cultural needs of the users. They require many foreign building materials and skills making construction problematic. Whereas modern design can improve performance of building in areas of damp-proofing and thermal control, traditional design provides culturally useful spaces. Traditional housing is easy to build but fails in some technical aspects of building. A synthesis of modern and traditional designs is the most suitable approach to housing design in Nepal and governmental policy should facilitate it by redirecting the education on building technology, by encouraging the production of indigenous materials, by suitable regulatory controls and by incorporating an optimal design in its own housing projects.