Editorial

Citation

Shaw, N. and Huaccho Huatuco, L.D. (2018), "Editorial", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 67 No. 1, pp. 2-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-11-2017-0286

Happy New Year to our IJPPM readers from the new Editors! We would like to dedicate this issue to our well-respected predecessors, the outgoing Editors, John Heap (who has been with IJPPM since 2004, and many more years before when the journal was known by its previous name: Work Study) and Dr Thomas F. Burgess (with IJPPM since 2009). Over the last few years, the IJPPM community has benefitted from their unwavering commitment. We, the incoming Editors, are extremely grateful for their trust placed upon us to continue their work. We are excited about taking on this new challenge, but we are also aware of its immense responsibility and are committed to continuing IJPPM’s upward trajectory. We will keep in mind the stated vision of IJPPM, to be the world’s premier journal in the field of productivity and performance management.

IJPPM has gone from strength to strength over the years. Back in 2004, when re-launched under its current name, it announced that the research papers will be “double blind peer-reviewed” – a feature that is taken for granted these days in academic journals. Tom’s predecessor, Professor Zoe Radnor, emphasised the academic rigour required for taking the journal on its upward trajectory and her six years of service contributed considerably to that. More recently in 2016, strategic academic guidance from both John and Tom resulted in IJPPM being accepted into the Emerging Sources Citation Index, making it searchable, discoverable and citable; this enabled authors and editors to get real-time insight into the journal’s citation performance. This was a great achievement and now IJPPM boasts a healthy citation score.

Over the last few years, the journal has been the outlet for 19 special issues, leading the way with the latest research trends in productivity and performance management in a variety of contexts. We will continue to consider special issue proposals on an ongoing basis, so please do not hesitate to contact one of us with your ideas.

The EAB members have been very supportive of the journal with their expertise over the years, some of them on a long-term basis. We are grateful for their contribution and we hope that they will continue to be engaged with IJPPM, helping it go from strength to strength. We will be inviting additional members to join the EAB shortly and look forward to welcoming them onboard very soon. Also, we would like to thank Tom Burgess for his willingness to continue supporting IJPPM as an EAB member.

So, about the papers in this issue, in truly international spirit, we have papers from countries representing Europe, Asia and America. The papers cover four main topics: Lean and six sigma, quality management, workplace performance and supply chain disruption.

First, on the topic of Lean and six sigma, Giordani da Silveira, Pinheiro de Lima, Deschamps and Gouvea da Costa present a systematic literature review on the use of Hoshin Kanri – a Lean-related framework that links strategy with execution, whereas Garza-Reyes, Betsis, Kumar and AL-Shboul present the evaluation of 37 European pharmaceutical manufacturers in order to address their level of Lean readiness. Furthermore, Al-Aomar and Chaudhry propose a unified six-sigma rating for assessing system-level performance using AHP and an entropy method, which is then integrated using a typical DMAIC process. Additionally, Chan and Tay present the benefits of using a combination of different techniques (line balancing, standardized work and standardized layout) to assess the effectiveness of two Kaizen interventions in a printing company. On the energy efficiency front, Abaunza, Hameri and Niemi offer an insight into how to objectively measure the efficiency of computing resources in data centres, the novelty being that their approach also considers energy efficiency and energy proportionality. The reflective practice paper by Chaplin and O’Rourke brings this topic together with insights from two case studies from UK-based companies with the suggestion that CSR and continuous improvement should be conducted jointly by the CSR department.

Second, on the topic of quality management, Salehi, Tagribi and Farhangdoust show the link between financial reporting quality and financial performance of stock returns, using panel data analysis between 2009 and 2014, and propose the determinants of stock returns. Furthermore, Bajaj, Garg and Sethi present a novel way of analysing the literature review on total quality management by applying the Pareto rule to separate the “vital few” from the “useful many” papers. Finally, Moschidis, Chatzipetrou and Tsiotras study how the development of a quality costing system depends on the level of quality management maturity, with specific focus on Greek food and beverage companies, using multidimensional correspondence analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis.

Third, on the topic of workplace performance, Tüzün, Çetin and Basım provide a study on how psychological capital identification influences job performance at individual and organisational levels using a SEM approach. This is done with a relatively large sample of 239 respondents from academia.

Finally, on the topic of supply chain disruption, Liu, Sarkar, Kumar and Jin present a study of supply chain disruptions and how they influence the stock market for both Japanese and US companies, using the event study methodology with data covering 2000-2013. The results show a negative average abnormal return for the Japanese companies, which is statistically significant, whereas for the US companies, this return is qualitatively smaller but statistically indifferent.

Looking at the future of IJPPM, we believe “productivity” and “performance” are still highly relevant and worthy of academic research, with issues such as Brexit, globalisation, climate change, immigration crises, financial crises and terrorism affecting productivity and performance at all levels (from individuals, to individual organisations to supply networks). It appears we will never be short of topics for carrying out research in these topics! We will continue to consider “Reflective Practice” papers, the more practitioner-focussed pieces for the journal, in order to continue addressing the balance of theory and practice in productivity and performance.

We are grateful for the opportunity to support IJPPM and will do all we can to help it continue successfully under our editorship. We will continue to rely on your contributions in the many roles as authors, reviewers, guest editors, EAB members, editorial assistant and staff at Emerald, who are all part of the IJPPM community. Thank you.

Nicky Shaw and Luisa Delfa Huaccho Huatuco