PurposeThis research brings together two streams of thought applied to decision-making: lean thinking and stakeholder theory. Both have been identified as ways to improve organizational value. Previous studies disagree regarding whether they can work together. This study investigates if managers balance stakeholders and lean thinking in decision-making.Design/methodology/approachThis research investigates if both lean thinking and stakeholder salience share common literature by using data mining. It surveys organizations that perceive themselves as lean and have multiple diverse stakeholders to determine whether waste and salience are considered when making decisions. An ANOVA is done to see if organization type, management level, organization size, geographic location, or lean maturity has an effect on the priority of stakeholder salience or lean thinking's waste variants when making decisions.FindingsFindings of this research are: 1) stakeholders salience criteria are considered more often than lean thinking's waste variants in decision-making by managers as a whole and in particular by middle-level managers and senior managers. However, lean thinking's waste variants are considered as often as stakeholder salience criteria by first-line managers. 2) The ranking of stakeholder salience in making decisions is not affected by organization type, respondent position, organization size, perceived lean experience, or geographic location. The organization type, organization size, lean experience, and location do not affect the ranking of lean thinking variants either. But the ranking of lean thinking's waste variants is significantly different for first-line, middle-level, and senior managers. Middle-level managers rank lean thinking higher than that of either first-line or senior-level. Because of this, middle managers have a more balanced approach in using lean thinking and stakeholder salience than other managers. 3) Stakeholder salience criteria have a significantly higher ranking than lean thinking variants in making decisions for all organization types: manufacturing and nonmanufacturing.Originality/ValueThis research demonstrates a significant disconnect exists between lean thinking and demands of stakeholders that impacts the value of an organization, and only middle-level managers bring balance and awareness of both streams of thought. An empirical instrument has been developed to balance the stakeholder salience criteria with the lean thinking variants.

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Academic integrity is one of the fundamental values that institutions must commit to uphold and to promote. This core principle is a foundation of students' achievement and growth and it also leads to good citizenship and the betterment of our society. With progressing technological tools and widely connecting of worldwide web, students can now plagiarize and cheat on their assignments with more ease. Student verification is another important issue of distance education to confirm that the person participating and receiving credits for the course is the student enrolling and doing the work. The number of university students who admit to cheating in some form is immense, and this dishonest conduct can damage schools' reputation and students' learning experience. The purpose of this study is to present effective tools and strategies used in student verification and assessment quality assurance. This paper comprises of current technology used as remote proctoring systems to verify students' identification, plagiarism software to compare students' assignments to massive databases, and applications to lockdown browsers while students take exams. The author conducted a mix of experimental and historical study by gathering data of 284 research papers using SafeAssign to check percentage (%) of matching. These papers were from 260 senior undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Technology between years 2011-2016. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 23.0 and Paired Samples T-test were utilized to test significant difference between variables at 95% of confidence level. Effective tools and strategies that can be used in online course development and delivery to promote academic integrity and quality assurance are assessment diversity, written assignment and threads, student verification system, plagiarism software, and lockdown browsers.

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