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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the productivity performance at the firm level from the perspective of manufacturing capability development at the process level. Moreover, it reveals how alignment of manufacturing capabilities with market requirements has influenced a firm’s productivity over a period that includes the 2008 global recession.

A conceptual framework was derived from established theories and employed as part of a case study design encompassing a multiple methods research approach. The case of a UK SME was selected to reflect some of the issues associated with the wider productivity stagnation experienced by the UK economy in recent years.

The firm’s manufacturing strategy had become incrementally misaligned with market requirements due to external changes in its business environment. The complex relationships between capabilities such as quality, speed and cost were characterised. Realigning the firm’s manufacturing strategy to regain productivity performance required a range of prioritised actions including capital investment and changes in management practices concerning bottom-up process improvement and regular, top-down strategy review.

The findings of the case study cannot be generalised and the outcomes are specific to just one firm. However, the approach lends itself to replication, particularly within SMEs.

Prior studies have focussed on capability development at higher levels of abstraction. The study operationalized established theoretical perspectives at the firm level to derive context-based outcomes that can be used to improve manufacturing strategy alignment and productivity. Furthermore, the study contributes empirical evidence from the SME sector to the ongoing debate regarding the UK’s productivity puzzle.

Circular economy advocates innovations that upcycle wastes in the food supply chain to generate high added-value materials. These innovations are not only disruptive and green but also they are often initiated by startups, leading to the emergence of novel open-loop supply chains connecting actors in food and non-food sectors. While earlier research has highlighted the need to seek legitimacy for disruptive innovations to survive and grow, little is known about how these innovations occur and evolve across sectors. This paper aims to elaborate on this mechanism by exploring the function of the circular economy as a boundary object to facilitate legitimacy-seeking strategies.

An exploratory multiple-case research design is adopted and features food waste innovation projects with multi-tier supply chains consisting of a food producer, a startup and a buying firm. The study is investigated from the legitimacy and boundary object lenses.

The findings proposed a framework for the role of a boundary object in enabling legitimacy-seeking strategies for novel food waste innovations. First, the interpretative flexibility of the circular economy affords actors symbolic resources to conduct manipulation strategy to achieve cognitive legitimacy. Second, small-scale work arrangements enable creation strategy for the new supply chain to harness moral legitimacy. Finally, pragmatic legitimacy is granted via diffusion strategy enabled by scalable work arrangements.

This paper provides novel insights into the emergence of food waste innovation from a multi-tier supply chain perspective. It also highlights the key role of the boundary object in the legitimacy-seeking process.

Prior studies by Salaheldin (2009) and Talib et al. (2011) have assessed the relationships between TQM critical success factors (CSF) and business results. The purpose of this paper is to build upon this research by considering the relationships between these CSFs and their sequencing during the implementation of TQM. Furthermore, the influence exerted by the maturity of TQM implementation on the link between instrumental drivers and performance is explored.

The TQM drivers are clustered by means of three constructs: strategic enablers, tactical drivers and instrumental drivers and a model employed in which the strategic and tactical factors are treated as antecedents of the instrumental drivers. The direct effect of each cluster on business results and the indirect relationship of strategic and tactical factors via the mediating role of the instrumental drivers are assessed. These assessments use the partial least squares (PLS) approach which is a variance-based structural equation modeling technique using a sample of 113 Spanish organizations with experience of implementing a TQM program.

The findings confirm the existing relationships among the CSFs and business performance identified by studies Salaheldin (2009) and Talib et al. (2011). However, the results reveal that instrumental drivers possess the highest variance explanation power over business performance outcomes and it is possible to identify a CSF implementation sequence that generates the greatest impact on business performance. Furthermore, the study was inconclusive with regard to the influence exerted by the number of years of TQM implementation on the link between the instrumental drivers and performance.

The first is related to organizational bias. It seems likely that those firms which are not satisfied with their TQM system performance would be less likely to be motivated to contribute to the development of this study. Therefore, the authors have included in the sample a higher proportion of “good” systems than is the case in the population at large. Second, although the authors provide evidence of causality, causality itself has not been proven. Third, this research relies mainly on perceptions and the authors only used a single method to elicit these perceptions. Finally, this research was carried out in a specific geographical setting (Spanish companies) and the authors must be cautious about generalizing these results in other contexts.

This study offers a substantial number of practical implications. First firms’ managers should emphasize that continuous improvement, benchmarking and zero-defects mentality is a never-ending process. Especially, they should understand that reliable product/service design is critical to exceed the customers’ expectations, leading to improved business success. The results of this study should also lead managers to seeing a “return on investment” in their efforts to implement a TQM program by first, paying more attention on how to implement the instrumental factors, and second, avoiding the belief that the passage of time and experience-based learning will bring business performance enhancement and success on their own.

Although, the literature agrees that strategic factors are valuable assets and have a crucial role in the deployment of TQM systems, the study empirically validates this assertion. However, at the same time it shows that this impact on performance is stronger and much more significant by reconfiguring instrumental factors. This implies that strategic and tactical factors do have an effect on business success, but they do so indirectly, by reconfiguring and reinforcing instrumental factors that better fit the stakeholders’ needs and expectations.

The results suggest the need to consider whether all the CSFs are equally relevant on the basis of their contribution to business success. For example, strategic enablers are generally considered to be of primary importance with tactical and instrumental drivers assuming a secondary position. The study challenges this view and highlights the role of instrumental drivers over strategic and tactical factors with the clear implication that managers should focus strongly on daily implementation tasks such as benchmarking, zero-defects mentality and continuous improvement processes in order to achieve good business performance outcomes.

This paper aims to explore the application of management control systems (MCS) to business processes when an organisation is operating in an uncertain environment. The limitations of conventional process control in this context are described, and the opportunities to exploit current MCS ideas are considered.

One such model, Simons' levers of control, is used for case study research in a European high technology start-up company.

The findings suggest that the organisation responded to its uncertain environment with a package of formal and informal control systems for its strategically important business processes. The relative importance of individual business processes was observed to positively influence the rigour of control systems' implementation. Also, the inherent uncertainty or unpredictability of an individual business process was observed to influence the type of control systems employed. The use of guiding or enabling systems, particularly interactive control systems, was more pronounced in those business processes which were inherently unpredictable.

These findings illustrate that adopting a MCS perspective to address business process control issues can yield new useful insights for managers when dealing with uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationships between congenital learning (CL) and realized absorptive capacity (RACAP) and tries to identify whether absorptive capacity impacts on international organizational performance (IOP) in today’s global business environment.

The research model and hypothesized relationships are empirically tested using the structural equation modelling approach, validated by factor analysis of 128 small medium enterprises (SMEs) in the UK telecommunications sector.

The findings suggest that, in order to achieve higher levels of RACAP, managers need to create and support a CL process. Furthermore, if an SME does not achieve the required RACAP then IOP is likely to deteriorate.

SMEs need to provide and support a learning process, which is customized and based on three sub-processes: first, the framework for transferring knowledge; second, the framework for transforming knowledge; and third, an open organizational context. Based on these results, transferring and transforming are important sub-processes but are not sufficient for updating congenital knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implementation and performance benefits of sales and operations planning (S & OP) within organizations in Asia Pacific.

A case study method was used, with two companies selected. The first company had recently commenced S & OP and applied it to facilitate new product introduction, while the second had integrated its supplier into an existing S & OP program. Supply chain performance data were collected and analyzed in the context of an S & OP maturity framework.

Both cases show significant improvements in supply chain performance. In one case, the implementation of a common form of S & OP resulted in a 67 percent reduction in order lead time for newly introduced products. The second case demonstrated a 30 percent reduction in inventory levels and a 52 percent improvement in forecast accuracy through more advanced S & OP processes.

This paper studies just two companies and is not intended to be representative of outcomes at all companies implementing S & OP. Further studies are required for a more generalized picture of S & OP implementations in the Asia Pacific region to emerge.

The findings illustrate the potential quantitative benefits of adopting S & OP and the circumstances under which these benefits may be achieved. The results are also supportive of the notion of a maturity model for S & OP implementations.

This paper strengthens the link between practitioner and academic literature by providing empirical evidence of the benefits of S & OP. Furthermore, the findings are derived from the Asia Pacific region for which there have been few academic studies on S & OP to date.

It is now widely accepted, perhaps with some qualifications, that the dominant British school of industrial relations in recent years has been the liberal‐pluralist or volutaristic‐pluralist school. Its centre has been Oxford and its main members have included Hugh Clegg, the late Allan Flanders, W E J McCarthy, G S Bain and A Fox. The influence of this group has been exhibited in its impact not only on industrial relations teaching and research, but also on policy, especially through the Donovan Report. Indeed, several writers have chosen to characterize it as a problem‐solving rather than a theoretical approach. However, it is important to acknowledge that a practical orientation may not in itself constitute an a‐theoretical position. Hyman and Fryer thus, for example, use the label ‘pragmatism’ to describe a component of the theoretical orientation of the ‘Oxford school’, thus recognizing that while its ‘theory may be only semi‐articulated and ….. partially developed’, the work of the school is not a‐theoretical.

The 1980s was a decade of far reaching change in the relations between management and the workforce. Flexibility can no longer be considered a ‘flash in the pan’, while the ‘Japanisation’ of production is probably the most influential concept since Fordism. Combining these two elements has enabled employers to introduce whole packages for the organisation of work and production where quality of product and process are no longer considered optional, rather a pre‐requisite for firms competing on a global scale.

Current library literature offers little advice for the selection of science books for the general public. Most articles and books concern the primary scientific literature, produced by scientists for their peers, information most useful to managers of sci‐tech libraries. The popular or general‐interest science book has apparently been overlooked by both science and general librarians. Yet this category of books is interesting and important in its own right,andopportunitiesabound for investigation into their selection and use.