The 3rd International Conference on Digitalization and Management Innovation (DMI2024)

Abstract: “Absorptive capacity,” a widely studied construct in management research, remains theoretically underdeveloped and practically largely irrelevant. In this presentation, Professor Arndt present new ideas to conceptualize an organizations’ abilities to recognize, assimilate, and apply external knowledge. He presents ideas for different conceptualizations of absorptive capacity in the digital age. In addition, absorptive capacity research is classified in four schools of thought that have the potential to leverage progress in this area of research.

Biography: Felix Arndt is a Professor and the John F Wood Chair in Entrepreneurship in the Department of Management at the Gordon S Lang School of Business and Economics, University of Guelph, Canada, and a Research Fellow at the Center for Business and Sports of the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. Dr. Arndt’s research agenda is centrally driven by the question of how novelty/change comes about in business settings. His work has been published or is about to be published in the Academy of Management Collections, the Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of Management Studies, the Academy of Management Review, Human Resource Management among many others.

Abstract: Despite the prevalence of women employed within health and human services, women have been especially underrepresented, unprepared, and unsupported in leadership development and roles. Our presentation will focus on our research with a sample of racially diverse women in a leadership development program and highlight the impact of their leadership learning and coaching on changes in individual, collective, and organizational behaviours. As women participants moved from learning to action, they applied a range of new ways of behaving and performing in their organizations that reflect more inclusive leadership styles and practices. We will also describe a Human-Centered Leadership development model focused on the unique leadership experiences and development needs of women that emphasizes meaningfulness, equity, agility and impact.

Keywords: Leadership development, Women, Health and human services

Biography: Dr. Karen Hopkins is Professor and Co-Director of the Human-Centered Leadership in Health and Human Services Certificate at the School of Social Work, University of Maryland. She is the Academic Coordinator for the Graduate MSW/MBA dual degree and teaches courses in human service management and leadership and performance management. Her research with nonprofit and public agencies is related to supervision, management, and leadership practices and outcomes, performance management, workforce development, and organizational learning and capacity building. She is a national peer reviewer for the Standards of Excellence Institute certification for nonprofits. She has served on the Boards of the Network for Social Work Management, Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), and the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA). She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Human Services Organizations: Management, Leadership, and Governance journal. She received a PhD from the University of Chicago, MSW from the University of Pittsburgh, and a BS from the Pennsylvania State University.

Abstract: This study examines how a retailer chooses suppliers and sets pricing strategies. The retailer can either select a single supplier, offering one product, or engage with two suppliers to provide quality-differentiated products. The retailer also needs to decide between uniform pricing and personalized pricing. The study finds that a retailer may prefer using both suppliers, even if one product does not sell. If the retailer opts for a single supplier, it chooses personalized pricing to maximize profit by adjusting prices based on consumer valuation. When selecting both suppliers, the pricing strategy depends on the cost of collecting consumer data. The retailer might use uniform or personalized pricing for both products or mix the two approaches, depending on the products’ relative selling efficiency and the cost of collecting data on consumer valuation. When product quality can be endogenously determined, the retailer is more likely to engage both suppliers and adopt personalized pricing strategies.

Biography: Jing Chen holds the William A. Black Chair in Commerce and is a Professor in the Department of Management Science & Information Systems at the Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University. Her research interests include competitive channel and supply chain management, the interface between operations management and marketing, and customer returns. She has published over 90 papers in journals. She is currently serving as an Associate Editor for The International Journal of Management Science (OMEGA), The Journal of the Operational Research Society (JORS), and International Transactions in Operational Research (ITOR).

Abstract: The preoccupation with quality in our production systems has a history stretching back almost a hundred years. This requirement has accompanied the rise of our industries in the global race for large-scale production. In this contribution, we propose to look back at these quality approaches, discussing the contributions and traces they have left in the management of our contemporary companies. In the face of numerous works extolling the benefits of ceremonial adoption of such approaches, few have attempted to evaluate them objectively (Zbaracki 1998; Mukherjee, 1998; Bénézech & ali. 2001; Boiral 2003; Lambert & Ouédraogo, 2008). This is no doubt due to the fact that the standards, reference systems or certifications that embody them are essentially organizational in nature. And nothing is more difficult to apprehend than a change in organization. This is particularly true as quality standards can be interpreted in very different ways by companies, sometimes as mere labels recognizing excellence, sometimes as genuine tools for change on which to build (Lambert & Ouédraogo 2010; Arab & Lambert, 2020). Here, we look back at this evolution and attempt to identify the principles at the very roots of these organizational change tools, which we believe are essential for modern management. Beyond the idea of highlighting best-practices and systematic process measurement, we show that the use of intuition and the role of organizational slacks, both vital in innovation dynamics, are at the heart of quality principles (Lambert; 2023).
Keywords: Total Quality Management, ISO 9000, Organization Change, Management Skills

Biography: Gilles Lambert is a professor of management sciences at the Business School of Strasbourg University in France. His research work is in the field of corporate finance and focuses on real options, the performance of family businesses, and governance from a diversity perspective within the boards of directors of companies. In the field of organizational change, his work deals with the link between quality and learning, innovation management and creativity.

Abstract: We focus on applied research which helps companies develop innovative products. Digitalisation is one of the main innovation drivers and leads to novel solutions which benefit from artificial intelligence, natural language processing, advanced databases and other technologies. Industry wants to innovate and approaches academics to provide technical expertise allowing them to go beyond the state of the art in computing. This talk will discuss three collaborative industrial developments which took advantage of recent developments based on machine learning technologies. The work covers the following business areas: gig platforms, insurance, and business information systems, also known as ERP. To round off, we present a fun development: an SQL learning game which is very popular with our students who take database courses at the FHNW.

Biography: Dr. Pustulka is a Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Northwestern Switzerland (called FHNW in German). She teaches databases and programming and does applied research in databases, machine learning and natural language processing.
She holds an MA from the Jagiellonian University of Krakow in Poland, a BA from the Open University in UK, and an MPhil and a PhD from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She has worked both in the industry and in academia, in Poland, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland.
She supervised PhD students in Scotland, France and Switzerland in the areas of databases, bioinformatics, and visualisation. She held a research fellowship from the Medical Research Council UK and a Marie-Curie fellowship from the European Union. She is actve in peer review and grant application reviewing for the European Science Foundation, Research Councils UK and BMBF (Germany).

Abstract: This keynote speech would demonstrate the theory and evolution of Supply Chain Management (SCM), as the least innovations in research, as well as highlight the chronological perspective of SCM in terms of the time frame in different areas of manufacturing and service industries. The objective of SCM is to incorporate activities across and within organizations for providing the customer/stakeholders value.
There are several attempts made by researchers and practitioners to appropriately define SCM. Amidst fierce competition in all industries, SCM has gradually been embraced as a proven managerial approach to achieving sustainable profits and growth. This keynote would illustrate SCM from the raw material materials to finished products, i.e., suppliers to consumer at the various industries. Due to the application of AI, Automation, Blockchain, Bigdata, etc., this keynote speech demonstrates technology-enabled SCM, eventually resilient transparent SCM for various industries.

Biography: Prof. Dr. Md. Mamun Habib is a Professor at the School of Business & Entrepreneurship (SBE), Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB). Dr. Habib is the Visiting Scientist at the Dept. of Industrial Engineering of University of Texas – Arlington, USA. He is also a Visiting Professor at Unirazak, Malaysia and UCSI, Malaysia; PUP, Philippines; Beijing Wuzi University, China; and Universitas Ciputra, Indonesia. At present, he is supervising twelve (12) Ph.D. scholars locally and internationally and earlier five (5) Ph.D. scholars have been graduated.
As a Ph.D. examiner, he has several Ph.D. involvements with UUM, UNIRAZAK, AIMST, UNITAR, Asia e University (AeU), Universiti Selangor (UNISEL), Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia; Assumption University of Thailand; Institute for Technology and Management (ITM) – University, Birla Institute of Technology (BIT)–Deemed University, National Institute of Technology (NIT), SOA University, Chitkara University, Aligarh Muslim University, India; University of the Assumption, Philippines.
He has about 22 years’ experience in the field of teaching, training, workshop, consultancy, and research.
Dr. Habib published about more than 230 research papers, including Conference Proceedings, Short Journal Papers, Journal articles, and book chapters/books. Among them, about 75 articles are WoS and Scopus Indexed.
He is the Editor-in-Chief in International Journal of Supply Chain Management (IJSCM), UK and International Supply Chain Technology Journal (ISCTJ), USA. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief/Lead Guest Editor/Editor/Editorial Board Member/Reviewer of more than 60 journals, particularly Elsevier (Scopus) and Thomson Reuters (Web of Science) Indexed Journals.
As a Keynote Speaker, he delivers lectures more than 85 international conferences at various countries, particularly USA, UK, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Turkey, Korea, India, Philippines, Greece, Bulgaria, Australia, Italy, Nigeria etc.
He conducted more than 220 Webinar/Workshops/ Seminars locally and internationally.
He is involved in a few grant research projects in the USA, Malaysia, Thailand, Bulgaria, European Union, India, and Bangladesh.
He is a lead trainer at the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) International, UK.
Earlier he was affiliated with BRAC University, Bangladesh; UNITAR International University, Malaysia; Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), American International University-Bangladesh (AIUB), Assumption University, Thailand.
He accomplished his Ph.D. and M.S. with outstanding performance in Computer & Engineering Management (CEM) under the Graduate School of Business (GSB) from Assumption University, Thailand. His Ph.D. research was in the field of Supply Chain Management.
His core research areas are supply chain management, production & operations management, operations research, research methodology, engineering/technology management, and educational management.
Prof. Habib is an active member of different professional organizations, including IEEE (Senior Member); Chartered Fellow (FCILT), CILT International, UK; IEOM (President, SCM Technical Division); BSPUA (V.P, R & I); IETI (Senior Member and Board of Director); IRED (Fellow); GRDS (Vice-President) just to name a few.
He also serves as General Chair, Program Chair, Technical Chair, Organizing Committee Member, Technical Committee Member, Track Chair, Session Chair as well as Reviewer of numerous international conferences.
Finally, He is involved with QS World University Ranking/Times Higher Education Ranking as an academician.