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It is difficult to predict what will happen tomorrow, let alone predict the future of 3PLs in the coming decade. After all, in early 2020, who could have foreseen the upheaval the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to supply chains across the globe? Faced with so much uncertainty, one may want to take the approach of many futurists who think about time in a different way. Instead of thinking in linear terms and throwing darts several years into the future, they start with identifying more highly probable events in the short term and work outward (Webb, 2019). So, while we do not own a crystal ball, we are convinced that two currently emerging aspects, you could call them trends, will shape the foreseeable future of third-party logistics providers (3PLs). First, pronounced technological advancements pertaining to hardware and software increasingly impact the future of corporate supply chain management. Second, elements and events within supply chains are getting more difficult to predict. Looking at the next five to ten years, 3PLs will need to proactively address these trends because it directly influences the 3PLs success and because it influences the 3PLs' clients' success and their associated demand for logistics services. While both trends raise challenges, they also offer ample opportunities for 3PLs by enhancing their current services and developing new offerings. For this, 3PLs need to enhance their leadership and management skills. Moreover, 3PL need to emphasize establishing and managing collaborative relationships. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.
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At the start of Singapore's first year of living with COVID-19, its government was praised internationally for its ability to control the spread of the virus through high standards of testing, tracing, and isolation, the basic elements of communicable disease control. Its success strengthened both its brand as a global city and its national narrative often referred to as "The Singapore Story”. However, the first year of COVID-19 also exposed weaknesses in the Singapore system of development, governance, and policymaking. And yet, that very same system seemed, at least on the surface, sufficiently resilient to correct the immediate problems and adapt to changing circumstances. The question perhaps is whether the Singapore system is capable of further adapting in the face of intensifying volatility, uncertainly, complexity, and ambiguity, the kind of future of which COVID-19 might in fact be merely a portent. How should lapses such as the serious outbreak of infection in the migrant worker dormitories be viewed? It is reasonable to admit that no government is perfect, not even in well-governed Singapore. One can also say that crisis of this kind can be unpredictable and so all one can hope for is that the authorities did the best that they could, given what they knew and the resources that they possessed. But, from these lapses, one could also gain insight into deeper problems of a structural or systemic nature. Putting out the proverbial fires, difficult as it is to do, may distract from their real causes, which could be subterranean, or climatic, or ideological. These causes are deeper than a simple explanatory chain linking events, behaviour, decisions, responsibility, and corrections. These deeper causes are all linked in some way to neoliberal globalization and authoritarian populist responses to it. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022.
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PurposeCountries in Africa have undergone an unprecedented transformation that has shaped the continent as they move ahead from the clutches of colonialism. The evolution of leadership and how organisations function optimally has given rise to the review of leadership approaches and practices, revolutionising its position in the global markets. With the recent spate of global suffering from the pandemic, the formal and traditional work structures are becoming transient. At the same time, the economic consequences of the Russo-Ukrainian crisis have catastrophic effects globally.Design/methodology/approachThe research was conducted via a systematic review of scientific sources from various academic websites. Eligibility criteria were defined with the agreement of pertinent themes and concepts.FindingsBy evaluating and analysing characteristics and success indicators from the blend of leadership competencies ascertained from Afrocentric principles in response to African associated problems, Africa can cement its leadership concepts without following the global north principles. These philosophies are resilient enough to contend with a range of VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) complexities, including the impact of the recent global pandemic of immeasurable proportions and the prospect of war as the Russo-Ukrainian conflict intensifies.Originality/valueWithin the African environment, there is a greater focus on the human element in shared values, holistic well-being, cooperation and experience. The global community band together to deal with these complexities. This is a typical example of global connectedness with positive and negative connotations.
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VUCA is an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, used to describe an environment that defies confident predictions. An example of this environment is the Covid-19 pandemic, which has created uncer-tainty worldwide because it is an unknown and highly contagious disease that neither society nor institutions were pre-pared to face. This article aims to describe the scientific production of VUCA to understand its main research focus. This research analyzes 105 documents from the Web of Science (WoS) database using Bibliometrics and Content Analysis. The bibliometric analysis reported several production indexes: annual, personal, national, institutional, and journal productiv-ity. The content analysis analyzed 95 article s in nineteen clusters selected by comparing two clustering methods, Latent Dirichlet Allocation and K-Means, using the coherence and silhouette indices, respectively. VUCA is an emerging topic with increased scientific production in the last four years. However, there are no major producers to date. The most frequent topics are management, leadership, and change, where several works emphasize the role of the leader in deal-ing with change. The literature has focused on understanding the skills needed to cope with a VUCA environment and how to teach them. In addition, the use of two methods based on machine learning techniques to estimate the number of clusters of scientific papers is highlighted as an alternative to splitting articles into topics when the dataset is small. © 2023 CSIC. Este es un artículo de acceso abierto distribuido bajo los términos de la licencia de uso y distribución Creative Commons Reconocimiento 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0).
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analysis : VUCA is an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, used to describe an environment that defies confident predictions. An example of this environment is the Covid-19 pandemic, which has created uncer-tainty worldwide because it is an unknown and highly contagious disease that neither society nor institutions were pre-pared to face. This article aims to describe the scientific production of VUCA to understand its main research focus. This research analyzes 105 documents from the Web of Science (WoS) database using Bibliometrics and Content Analysis. The bibliometric analysis reported several production indexes: annual, personal, national, institutional, and journal productiv-ity. The content analysis analyzed 95 article s in nineteen clusters selected by comparing two clustering methods, Latent Dirichlet Allocation and K-Means, using the coherence and silhouette indices, respectively. VUCA is an emerging topic with increased scientific production in the last four years. However, there are no major producers to date. The most frequent topics are management, leadership, and change, where several works emphasize the role of the leader in deal-ing with change. The literature has focused on understanding the skills needed to cope with a VUCA environment and how to teach them. In addition, the use of two methods based on machine learning techniques to estimate the number of clusters of scientific papers is highlighted as an alternative to splitting articles into topics when the dataset is small.
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Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity-in a VUCA world the moment of surprise is everywhere, making things extremely unpredictable and planning and strategizing far more challenging. The healthcare industry is witnessing seismic shifts as medicine becomes more personalised, health data becomes valuable, and data sharing becomes essential, demanding the healthcare sector to re-strategise. This research aims to understand the various innovations and change-management techniques based on technology that have been adopted by healthcare industries in today's VUCA world while exploring the innovations needed to drive the Indian healthcare sector in the years to come. Thus, it examines and highlight the implications of the rising emphasis being placed on innovations in the healthcare industry - helping the sector to re-strategise and face the changes in today's VUCA world with greater clarity. This paper is also designed to call attention to and discuss contemporary perspectives taken by top healthcare organisations in India before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is based on secondary data, including intensive analysis of research papers, media articles and grey literature reports, along with examining the recent innovations undertaken by the top healthcare companies and hospitals in India. The findings suggest that moving away from a supply-driven healthcare system toward a patient-centred system is necessary, and therefore organisations in India have to embrace innovation, agility, and adaptability in unison to brave the VUCA times.
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The acronym VUCA as a description of a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous environment, has been gaining increasing relevance as a noun to describe a reality that is complex and turbulent. Besides the healthcare challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic has also caused drastic changes in the management world. Through a systematic literature review of 137 articles published before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (between 2009 and March 2020), we develop a conceptual framework that integrates complementary branches of theoretical and empirical research, with the VUCA environment as the central unit of analysis. Our objectives are to unravel how the main theories in this field address essential aspects of management and future study trends, we also propose a conceptualisation of VUCA as an essential element of the current environment and its relationship with the different disciplines in the business world.
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This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-19 pandemic in five Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Qatar. It aims at scrutinizing how these countries responded to the education disruption caused by the pandemic between February 2020 and July 2021 and how they managed the resulting turbulence. We also investigate the extent to which these decisions were equitable and innovative. Data were collected from Ministerial notes, media content, and international organizations reports about the situation of education in the region. Walt and Gilson's (1994) policy analysis triangle and the Cynefin framework (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003) guided the objectives and the analysis of the data. Findings revealed that these countries muddled through the education policy at the beginning of the pandemic, centralized decision making, and faced difficulties to implement online and distance learning. In the second phase, most of these countries tried to save education, but were halted by structural challenges. Some differences were witnessed among these countries in how they have dealt with the evolving crisis. However, some similarities have also been noticed at the levels of context, process and actors. The decisions taken often lacked innovation and led to less equitable outcomes. The discussion of the findings has some implications for education policy and education management in turbulent times in the MENA region. © The Author(s) 2023.
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Today, amid a global pandemic, the world is changing rapidly. This bought a sense of urgency to adopt this change for the sustainability of both individual and corporate existence. The name given to the future world on the brink of this change and transformation is VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity). COVID-19 pandemic exposed leadership teams to novel challenges that required many changes to their practices. This has been the most volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) times in healthcare. VUCA software technologies that connect different geographies of the world over the Internet have provided institutions with standardization, harmonization, and acceleration. Understanding the VUCA world, adapting to it, focusing on the opportunities rather than the challenges it brings are the basis of sustainability. In order to increase or maintain the level of development of the countries, it is possible with the health institutions to provide a quality service and the development of standardization based on the VUCA approach. This global pandemic has clearly affected healthcare systems and workers throughout the world, with many worse affected than others. This chapter aimed to give information about the importance of why health managers should provide services based on the VUCA approach. © 2022 by Sema Ustgorul. All rights reserved.
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Leading through a crisis and volatile environment requires very different and unique leadership traits. This research sought to understand if the leaders at a state-owned (SoE) utility in South Africa, Eskom, are equipped with the required traits to succeed in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) induced crisis environment like the Covid-19 pandemic and if there is an alignment between how leaders perceive how well they can perform their tasks with their employees' perceptions of their ability to do the task in this environment. Ineffective leadership response to such an environment and crisis due to leaders lacking the essential traits can cost the SoE direly in financial terms, market value, service delivery, brand equity, and employee attrition. Thus, establishing the key leadership traits that leaders at Eskom lack for leading in VUCA and crisis environments would assist Eskom in identifying the appropriate upskilling for their leaders. Using a quantitative research design, the study surveyed a total of 65 senior managers and 45 employees at Eskom, an SoE in South Africa, using an online survey platform. The study found that the senior managers at Eskom are equipped to some degree with the appropriate traits required to succeed in a VUCA environment. They could not perform all 32 tasks well as per the SCAILES framework but do display key traits that align to 6 constructs of the framework: strategic, complex, adaptive, learning, emergence, and systems.
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Background: The business environment is increasingly becoming volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) because of globalisation, increased competition, random consumer tastes changes and environmental factors. Traditional procurement strategies are becoming increasingly redundant because of the volatility of the global business environment. The market has thus called for increased agility to conquer the VUCA nature of the supply chain environment. Objectives: The study sought to examine the role that e-procurement plays in augmenting the agility of supply chains. The four determinants of e-procurement, that is, e-design, e-sourcing, e-evaluation and e-negotiation, were linked directly with supply chain agility. Method: A census approach was taken to gather data from 219 supply chain and procurement employees of Zimbabwe's telecommunications and technology industry. A self-administered survey questionnaire was used based on a scientifically developed and validated supply chain agility measurement scale from the extant literature. Results: Using structural equation modelling (SEM), the study's results confirmed that e-procurement significantly predicts supply chain agility. All determinants of e-procurement were statistically significantly explaining supply chain agility in a volatile business environment. Conclusion: The study concludes that e-procurement augments the agility of the supply chain in volatile business environments, as e-procurement can increase swiftness and agility as it fosters ubiquitous business processes on a seamless real-time basis. It emerged from the study that the supply chain vulnerabilities volatile industries face could be eliminated through supply chain agility, augmented through e-procurement systems. The study's findings also implore supply network members from upstream to downstream to adopt e-procurement. Contribution: The study has practical implications for all supply network members from upstream to downstream. It implores these members to adopt e-procurement to revive supply networks amid environmental volatility and alleviate miscommunication. Study also offers theoretical implications for e-procurement and supply chain management. The study also contributes to the body of knowledge by extending the existing theories on e-procurement and supply chains in the context of environmental volatility.
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Over the past two years, ripple effects from the Covid-19 pandemic have amplified disconnection and loss while also fueling greater human creativity and connection through technological mediums. How can leaders continue maximizing technology and collaboration to best support and foster interpersonal connection and innovation while also navigating the human conditions and emotions present during times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA)? The unpredictable nature of these times requires leaders and change agents to continue learning and refining ways to help their teams, organizations, and communities to flourish. Within the current context of Covid-19 rebuilding and repair, this paper explores how participation in digital or virtual communities of practice (VCoP) and leadership centered on psychological safety and humanistic principles have been experienced by leaders and coaches. An informal discussion was facilitated, and a qualitative survey was conducted to begin exploring questions pertinent to VCoP and humanistic leadership (HL). Practitioner testimonials and key insights are shared. The findings of this exploratory study suggest that the main benefits of VCoP have been leader exposure to diverse industry practices and the bridging of physical and professional disconnection caused by Covid-19 social distancing and remote working requirements. Findings related to HL indicate that the leaders surveyed believe HL is essential in the work they do and that HL and fostering resilience entail both practicing and promoting holistic self-care and relational connection. Meaningful participation in VCoP and HL practices are framed as vital tools for leading and evolving in a post-Covid-19 world. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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Purpose: Agile organisations do not arise from a single characteristic but comprise a combination of various aspects. Thus, this study aims to examine the combined effects on organisational agility regarding firms' utilisation of digital technology to create value during the COVID-19 pandemic, how firms perceive uncertainty related to their own organisational response and the degree to which they have an entrepreneurial mindset. Design/methodology/approach: Using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, this study investigates 355 established firms and start-ups in Norway. Findings: This study finds digitalisation is required for agility to develop, but that it needs to be combined with having an entrepreneurial mindset or being a start-up and lower levels of perceived uncertainty. Hence, entrepreneurial mindset and low uncertainty are important factors for digitalisation, and in turn, for agility to be developed. Originality/value: Agility is recognised as being pivotal for firms' competitiveness and innovation and argued to be significant in overcoming sudden economic shocks. However, lacking empirical scrutiny are investigations into the relationship between digitalisation and agility, and how digitalisation might act as a driver for building agility, which the authors tackle herein. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
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The rate of change today, be it in political, economic, social or technological realm that impacts and disrupts many of today's organization, is to say the least, a daunting challenge. The chain of unprecedented events such as pandemic Covid-19, massive floods and other environmental disasters happening both within local and global contexts, are some of the lists of difficult challenges that characterized a VUCA world. As the challenges seem mountainous to school leadership, from navigating the quarantine guidelines, school closure and re-opening, remote learning, student engagement, and constant change, many are of the belief that teachers need to be empowered as leaders in order to move from the survival mode to a more thriving school environment. As such, there is a need to rethink on the development of teacher leaders' competencies against the background of a VUCA world by first, identifying the crucial competencies that need to be developed among teacher leaders. Thus, this paper aims to promote teacher leadership competency model that suits a VUCA context by integrating multiple perspectives and researches on teacher leadership, leadership development, the VUCA world and the teacher leadership competency model. The belief is that through a proper teacher leader development it will help to inculcate VUCA-readiness and responsive leadership among teacher leaders which consequentially enhance school effectiveness. Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.
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This study aims to introduce the potential of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) as a framework to explain the characteristics of current wicked policy risks. We also analyse how big data informatics help us to overcome volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous wicked policy risks in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, presenting a VUCA framework, this study illustrates how policy risks disturb policy results based on selected cases. Additionally, we argue that big data analytics has become an increasingly significant and feasible instrument for managing policy risks. We discuss potential challenges concerning skepticism about continued politics in policy decisions and implementation processes, and limitations of informatics and the nature of big data, which is often possibly biased and incomplete. Copyright © 2022 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
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The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted Higher Education as a whole, and the various educational institutions. It resulted in unexpected circumstances and unavoidable trade-offs to ensure that the curricula became more agile and flexible. Resiliency is also now a cornerstone, in order to navigate the disruptive change with the high levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Ten universities in South-East Asia and three in Europe have since 2018 been engaged in a project aimed at improving the quality of their STEM programmes. In the context of this capacity building framework, this paper outlines a curriculum design workshop to stimulate curriculum transformations for VUCA contexts. The paper shares insights into facilitating international collaboration, which enabled different perspectives and representations of an original curriculum to emerge. The value of online tools as a way of promoting international collaboration and curriculum development is also discussed. The approach is based on a serious games model, to train curriculum designers to better embrace change, to collaborate and work across cultures. It is transferable to locally support the future transformation of programmes, by sharing and challenging ideas. Target participants are University programme leaders, deans, educational quality managers, accreditation bodies, curriculum heads and council stakeholders, as well as partners from industry, and even students. The main objectives and phases of the collaborative workshop are presented, followed by implications and recommendations aimed at developing a Resilient Curriculum framework. © CDIO 2022.All rights reserved.
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PurposeThe purpose of the study is to assess the project leader's role in normal and new normal situations. This study aims to investigate the project leadership role in unforeseen situations and the new normal situations.Design/methodology/approachThe review is based on the content and contextual analysis. Most of the information was covered in the daily newspapers and practices were recorded in the media and social media. Moreover, recent articles were consulted for the comprehension of the phenomenon.FindingsThe study finds that leaders are supposed to develop strategies to balance the organizational needs and workers' priorities. An agile approach, empathetic and collaborative approach may be more helpful to handle volatility, unstable situations, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) situations.Research limitations/implicationsThe study leaders are expected to develop new strategies, collaborative thinking and a healthy workplace environment for social, emotional, physical, and psychological safety to make projects more productive.Originality/valueThe review assessed the kind of leaders required in the new normal situation after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) around the globe. Such a contribution is anticipated to serve as a call for emerging leadership frameworks for the VUCA work environments of the future.
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The volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) global context, amplified by two years of COVID has a profound effect on the predominant project based learning approach within design and design engineering curricula. Project management and affective or emotional factors are evidenced as significant but often overlooked within this context. Linking literature on the topics with data from n=200 participants from 3 HEIs, three aspects of popular industry Agile project management approaches are shown to correlate directly with addressing the VUCA context together with a model as a basis for considering the alignment of the topics. © Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Disrupt, Innovate, Regenerate and Transform, E and PDE 2022. All rights reserved.
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This study was to formulate a gender-responsive agile leadership model during the Covid-19 pandemic. A systematic literature review using PRISMA methods and field research on 18 purposely selected mid-level managers was conducted. The research discovers that first, agile leadership characteristics can be classified into individual and organizational dimensions. Individual characteristics include the personal values of agile leaders with good personalities. Organizational characteristics are characteristics to maintain and bring the organization to face a fast-changing and uncertain world. Second, the characteristics of gender-perspective leadership in the Covid-19 era are the commitment to change the management system, organizational culture, and the quality of leadership to promote gender equity. Finally, the Gendered-Perspective Agile Leadership model in the VUCA era during the Covid-19 pandemic is a leadership model that can quickly respond to gender issues through management system change, organizational culture, and character development of leaders oriented to individual and organizational characteristics. Individually trained leader characters are supposed to be intelligent, optimistic, communicative, accountable and compassionate, while organizationally oriented leader characters are adaptive, responsive, innovative, flexible, and transparent. This paper uses thematic analysis to fill the gap of the gendered-perspective agile leadership model by exploring the characteristics of gendered-perspective agile leadership in the COVID- 19 era. © 2022 by the Author(s).
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VUCA world situation such as COVID-19 had a significant impact on business sectors and the global economy. Due to continuous disruption caused by the crisis, businesses must remain resilient and adapt their business strategies in order to survive and transform this crisis into an opportunity. This research aims to (1) explore the resilient marketing strategy of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by systematic review of marketing strategy (marketing mix) and resilient marketing and (2) determine the factor of resilient marketing strategy of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). then (3) create resilient marketing strategy framework that will be used to increase marketing performance that led to increase company performance to thriving during the VUCA situation such as COVID-19. © 2022, Association Res Militaris. All rights reserved.