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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of unpaced unreliable production lines that are deliberately unbalanced in terms of their coefficients of variation (CVs).

A series of simulation experiments were carried out for five and eight station lines with mean buffer space set at one, two, four and six units. CVs were allocated in 12 different configurations for each of these lines.

The results show that the best unbalanced CV patterns in terms of throughput rates or idle times as compared to a balanced line counterpart are those where the steadiest stations are concentrated near the centre of the line. On the other hand, either concentrating the steadier operators towards the centre or close to the end of the line gives best average buffer level results.

The results provide guidelines for production line managers when designing unpaced unbalanced lines depending on their performance aims.

The investigation of the effects of unbalancing CVs in unreliable lines has not previously been studied and can provide insights into how best to place workstations with differing variability along the line.

Extant theory tends to treat Organizational Culture (OC) and fraud-related values as static, characterizing culture as synonymous with potential ethical values − but devoting less attention to how the culture and values arose and where they are headed. Buffer/conduit theory proposes that accountants learn to use a taxonomy containing three dynamic layers: collective fraud orientation, a buffer/conduit layer, and individual fraud orientation. The middle layer contains OC-related internal controls that buffer the orientation layers from spreading fraud-encouraging values, and serve as conduits transmitting fraud-deterring values − or, when controls do not function as intended, transmitting fraud-encouraging values. A factor analysis of 11 indicators of this three-layer taxonomy suggests that older generations of accounting practitioners apply the taxonomy, but millennials do not. Predisposition to commit fraud is especially salient to internally focused millennials, who uniquely perceive recruitment and training as compensating mechanisms and as collective buffers.

This paper aims to improve the debate linking the business models of banks to their riskiness by checking if diversification exerts different impacts on the probability of bank distress depending on the level of capital buffers.

The paper focuses on a sample of listed bank holding companies observed between 2007:Q3 and 2022:Q4. The authors use three subindexes of bank diversification. The authors estimate a dynamic model specification using a system generalized method of moments with robust standard errors and consistent estimators under heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation within a panel. Sensitivity and robustness checks are performed.

Asset and income diversification increase the probability of distress in low-capitalized banks during normal periods (excluding periods of crises and high uncertainty). Concerning crisis periods, a marginal increase in asset diversification during the global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis induces a more important increase in the probability of failure of well-capitalized banks relative to low-capitalized ones. Contrary to the results obtained for the GFC period, well-capitalized banks were found to pursue more careful funding diversification in reaction to the sudden increase of uncertainty during the Russia–Ukraine war.

Prudential supervision should concentrate on well-capitalized banks to encompass unexpected excessive risk-taking during crisis periods. Regulatory requirements should constrain fragile banks to avoid pursuing assets and income diversification strategies that increase earnings volatility.

The main originality of this paper is to consider the interaction between three different dimensions of bank diversification and capital regulation during stable and unstable periods using the marginal effect analysis. Moreover, this paper uses, initially, the GFC as the reference crisis period to study the impact of capital buffers and diversification interactions on the probability of bank distress. Then, the authors extend the observation period until 2022:Q4 to include two additional major events, namely, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Scholars have proposed that the negative effects of service failures can be countered by developing and maintaining high quality customer-company relationships or by providing excellent service recovery to customers. While both strategies have been proposed as ways to overcome the negative effects of service failures, there are only a limited number of studies that have examined their joint effects. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by investigating the impact of these two strategies jointly on rumination (brooding and reflection), anger and customer forgiveness (revenge, avoidance and benevolence).

The experimental design used in this study is an adaptation of Mattila’s (2001) research design, which manipulated both the level of service recovery and relationship. A total of 677 respondents were assigned randomly to one of the six experimental conditions. Multi-group structural equation modeling was employed to estimate the proposed model across three relational conditions.

This study suggests that the buffering effects are directly triggered by the impact of relationships, whereas, the magnifying effects are primarily related to the customer’s cognitive processes. This study reveals multiple forms of concurrent buffering and magnifying effects in service failures.

The findings of the study led to a classification system of the various forms of buffering and magnifying effects of relationships in the event of service failures. The four active roles of relationships are identified as damage control, benefit catalyst, benefit attenuator and damage catalyst. This proposed typology breaks new ground for theorizing about relationship utilization in negative incidents.

This study aims to test the effects of Technology-related Divestitures (TRDs) on firms' exploratory innovation. The moderating effects of firms' internal and external resource coordination activities, resource buffering and bridging, are also explored.

A set of data including 1,372 Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2018 is adopted. Based on propensity score matching sample, random-effect Tobit models were employed to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results indicate that TRDs inhibit firms' exploratory innovation, while both resource buffering and bridging can mitigate this negative effect. This implies that to promote exploratory innovation, resource coordination activities are the essential.

The research findings can contribute to both the exploratory innovation and technological divestiture literature. The test on the moderating roles of resource buffering and bridging can also extend our understanding of the effect of TRDs on firms' exploratory innovation. Accordingly, several practical implications can be provided. This is especially important for strategic decisions of firms from emerging and developing countries, which often lack sufficient internal resources and strong technological capabilities to develop exploratory innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on home care organization employees, and examine how the interaction between job demands (emotional demands, patient harassment, workload, and physical demands) and job resources (autonomy, social support, performance feedback, and opportunities for professional development) affect the core dimensions of burnout (exhaustion and cynicism).

Hypotheses were tested with a cross‐sectional design among 747 Dutch employees from two home care organizations.

Results of moderated structural equation modeling analyses partially supported the hypotheses as 21 out of 32 (66 per cent) possible two‐way interactions were significant and in the expected direction. In addition, job resources were stronger buffers of the relationship between emotional demands/patient harassment and burnout, than of the relationship between workload/physical demands and burnout.

The conclusions may be particularly useful for occupational settings, including home care organizations, where reducing or redesigning demands is difficult.

The findings confirm the JD‐R model by showing that several job resources can buffer the relationship between job demands and burnout.

Although workplace bullying has often been considered a significant source of health-related problems, only a handful of studies have deeply examined this relationship. This paper aims to fill this gap by inspecting the direct as well as indirect relationships between bullying and emotional exhaustion. This study also explores the buffering role of religion between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion.

This correlational paper used the quantitative method of data collection (N = 102) from employees in Malaysia and used SmartPLS to analyze the data. To operationalize workplace bullying as the second-order factor, partial least squares was used to estimate the two-stage model through the repeated use of a manifest variable.

The result of the current study showed that workplace bullying has a positive impact on job insecurity as well as emotional exhaustion while also having a positive indirect effect on emotional exhaustion through job insecurity. Moreover, the result of this study reveals that religion has a moderating (buffering) influence on the relationship between job insecurity and emotional exhaustion.

The study merely applied self-report measures, thus potentially involving the common method variance problems.

Human resource professionals must be aware that employees who are exposed to bullying actions may consider emotional exhaustion and job security needs to be restored among targets. For instance, they need to ensure that no unwanted and illegitimate relocation or alternation of work task has occurred. Furthermore, it is significant to encourage employees to regularly attend religious services because religious involvement could foster mental health, in part by lowering the risk of exposure to stressful life events such as job insecurity.

This study could be beneficial for organizations and researchers looking to address emotional exhaustion, security and bullying in a context broader than physical health and may further supplement the discussions around workplace bullying, mental health and religion.

Making decisions on preventive maintenance (PM) policy and buffer sizing, as is often studied, may not result in overall optimization. The purpose of this paper is to propose a joint model that integrates PM and buffer sizing with consideration of quality loss for a degenerating system, which aims to minimize the average operation cost for a finite horizon. The opportunistic maintenance (OM) policy which could increase the output and decrease the cost of the system is also explored.

A joint PM and buffer size model considering quality loss is proposed. In this model, the time-based PM and the condition-based PM are taken on the upstream and the downstream machine, respectively. Further, the OM policy based on the theory of constraints (TOC) is also considered. An iterative search algorithm with Monte Carlo is developed to solve the non-linear model. A case study is conducted to illustrate the performance of the proposed PM policies.

The superiority of the proposed integrated policies compared with the separate PM policy is demonstrated. Effects of the policies are testified. The advantages of the proposed TOC-based OM policy is highlighted in terms of low-cost and high-output.

Few studies have been carried out to integrate decisions on PM and buffer size when taking the quality loss into consideration for degenerating systems. Most PM models treat machines equally ignoring the various roles of them. A more comprehensive and integrated model based on TOC is proposed, accompanied by an iterative search algorithm with Monte Carlo for solving it. An OM policy to further improve the performance of system is also presented.

The purposes of this study were (1) to explore empirical challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their implications and (2) to organise those challenges into a framework.

In a multiple-case study following an exploratory, qualitative and empirical approach, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted in six cases. Representatives of all cases subsequently participated in an interactive workshop, after which a questionnaire was used to assess the impact and presence of each challenge. A cross-case analysis was performed to situate empirical findings within the literature.

Ten challenges were identified in four areas of dimensioning safety buffers: decision management, responsibilities, methods for dimensioning safety buffers and input data. All challenges had both direct and indirect negative implications for dimensioning safety buffers and were synthesised into a framework.

This study complements the literature on dimensioning safety buffers with qualitative insights into challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and implications in practice.

Practitioners can use the framework to understand and overcome challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their negative implications.

This study responds to the scarcity of qualitative and empirical studies on dimensioning safety buffers and the absence of any overview of the challenges therein.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the study to determine whether the dual earner model better offsets the actual risk of unemployment compared to other household models.

The authors linked the partner effect (household type) with macroeconomic institutional settings, such as employment protection, the active labour market policy, economic growth rate and globalisation, to study how these micro- and macro-level factors influence the unemployment risk of individuals.

Using European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) microdata for Finland from 2005 to 2013 and a multilevel modelling technique, the authors found that the partner effect is an important regulator of unemployment risks, but the effect is modified by institutional factors. Dual earners and breadwinners experience a less significant effect from employment protection legislation regulation and other external factors on the increase or decrease in unemployment risk compared to singles. The authors also found that unemployed singles are more exposed and vulnerable to fluctuations caused by economic events.

In this way, this paper contributes to the sociological theory of labour markets and a better understanding of how different household types buffer and mediate the risks of unemployment. The authors used the EU-LFS and novel multilevel analysis statistical solutions to determine the impact of macro- and micro-level factors. The case of Finland may also be of broader interest to researchers and policy-makers because of the long and strong tradition of the dual earner employment pattern and strong macro-economic fluctuations.